Re: Judge not, lest...

I stay in training _because_ I choose to possess guns. And training needs to be regular to retain any real proficiency. I choose to possess them because I live in a country where every adult can get a gun and boxes of ammo while buying vacuum cleaner bags, a few bars of candy, and a bottle of booze all at the same time (Bymart) ... and about 1/5th of the country are Dominionists who'd as soon shoot me as see me and 1/3rd of the country imagines themselves going to civil war and running around talking like Jim or Lord Loose-Valve whenever they get a little angry over something or another. In my state, anyone can get a concealed weapons' permit after sitting down to a two hour lecture and the police cannot deny it without there being some kind of violent felony charge using a weapon in their history.

Most of my neighbors have handguns and rifles. Two doors down, one neighbor owns and regularly uses fully automatic weapons on his property. Just last week he was shooting off some hundreds of rounds, in fact.

In a country like this, you'd be a fool NOT to be familiar and skillful with handguns and rifles. You _will_ encounter them frequently enough and you are much safer being aware and trained, than not.

Having been in one situation where I had to risk my own life (I very nearly lost it) and had to use a handgun to save the life of another, none of this is a joking matter to me. I've also had to take care of and help transport to safety women and children, hundreds of them, who lost their families and their own children to bullets and weapons sadly supplied by a right-wing US gov't administration; weapons illegally paid for and supplied under our own laws at the time with full knowledge how they'd be used.

Listen to the cries at night of a mother holding her only remaining child long enough and you know just how serious it is. One should never joke about civil war or killing your own countrymen. And over some minor policy difference of opinion? It's inexcusable.

Try going to your local international airport and joking with them about the "bomb in your suitcase" when asked if you have "anything to declare" and see just how many get the joke you just made. See just who laughs it off and who doesn't. That's about how I take these 'jokes' here.

Yeah, it scares me to know people here have no sense of what war is like and talk big about how they'd like to maybe brandish weapons like a young child with a toy pistol and imagine killing people for such idiotic reasons.

Jim is no one to be encouraging weapons-fire. He's not fit enough to want to be anywhere within a thousand miles of a civil war or any kind of shooting match. He'd be dead before anyone else was. Old folks have stuff worth taking and are ready targets, should all hell break loose. They should be the last people stirring up lethal violence emotions.

This whole discussion about killing groups of people for slight differences in points of view is insanity of the worst kind. I think Europe has much history with which to teach these idiots. As if the US didn't have enough of our own experiences to draw from.

Jon

Considering all the people who claim to own guns for self-defence, the number of cases when they actually manage to shoot anybody in what they think of as self-defence is small.

"Of the 13,636 Americans who were murdered in 2009, only 215 were killed by firearms (165 by handguns) in homicides by private citizens that law enforcement determined were justifiable."

Funny use of the word "murdered" but that's what was on the web-site.

The number of times they hit an innocent bystander is even smaller. I can remember a couple of cases, but not in any detail.

The US statistics are dominated by murders and suicides

Murders represented some 40% of gun deaths in 2007 (12,632), and suicide

Have a gun in the house, and you are much more likely to shoot yourself or your spouse than a burglar, and there's a comparable chance that one of your loved ones will use it to commit suicide.

The NRA doesn't seem to encourage people to make films about that.

Gun ownership greatly deters burglary, so naturally few burglars are shot in the US.

Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ?disproportionate? action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ?the feds?.

I think there's a town somewhere in the US that requires residents to shoot burglars. I bet the burglary rate there is low.

John

You don't know me at all. A co-consultant on this project just opined that he thought I was 50-55... astonished when I told him I was 71.

Fortunately I'm a really good shot ;-) You seem to keep forgetting that I was raised in WV, my early years on a farm, in deer hunting country.

Leftist are, in my book, expendable. With attitudes of taking some of my property for their benefit, can you blame me for having an "attitude"?

I understand, if they're slow cooked, they make excellent stew, though a bit stringy ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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Actually, yes. Your government already takes a remarkable amount of money for the benefit of your military-industrial complex, who enjoy the same income stream as the next ten national military industrial complexes down the pecking order put together. If you restrained yourselves to spending as much as the French and Chinese put together, you'd cut your defence spending by a factor of four, and could afford to spend as much on social security and public health as the other advanced industrial countries.

You are complaining about the depredations of the leftists - who at least spend the money on widows and orphans - and ignoring the depredations of the the right, who spend it on their rich friends. This just the kind of reasoning we can expect from Jim-out-of-touch- with-reality-Thompson, who needs to be reminded that ignorance is a capital crime - what you don't know can easily kill you..

bit

Skip the brains. Alzheimer's may be contagious.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Got any statistics to support that claim, or are you just blowing smoke? My statistics showed 215 US citizens were killed in 2009 in homicides by private citizens that law enforcement determined were justifiable. I'd be surprised if many of them were burglars. Guns figure largely in domestic violence - spouses killing one another - and my guess would be that most of those killings would be within the family.

The British police really don't like violent crime, and prosecute at every opportunity. Even in the UK only a relatively small proportion of crimes actually even up being prosecuted, so the numbers the right-wing nitwits at the Daily Mail are trumpeting say a lot more about the prosecutors than they do about the level of crime.

Nobody seems to mention income inequality, which does seem to correlate with disaffected youth.

The word "disproportionate" leaves householders with quite a few options. Basically, you can disable a burglar, but once you've gotten them down you aren't allowed to go on to beat them to death.

Burglars much prefer to break into empty houses.

But you can't be bothered to look up the statistics. IIRR it was a very small town, and there were never many burglaries - not enough to justify the claim that the sheriff's posturings had had a significant effect.

I run a 5k every single morning and often another one in the evening. Doctor says I have the heart of a runner. Still doesn't mean I'd be out trying to get 20 year olds riled up for a civil war. I kind of like living in benign peace with my neighbors. Feels good to me. Especially compared to the alternative.

I took first place in a few local contests, too -- nothing to shout about except that it means I'm not completely without a clue. But it doesn't mean I'm looking to get involved in any shootouts just because I can shoot straight. First thing I think of when I hear guns in the area is about how best to leave that area under cover and concealment and not about how to start digging in for a fight.

I'd like to live for a while, yet. When bullets fly, they really don't notice how good a shot you are. They hit you just as well as the next. Best thing is to not be there when they are.

Yes, I can. That's a terrible attitude for you to have about your own countrymen and I won't willingly return it in your direction.

But I'll keep it in mind if I see you around here carrying a weapon.

Now _that_ I'll take as a kindly retort from a 71 year old and no more than that. I don't mind being teased. I just hate it when I see folks seriously suggesting we get into a civil war in the US. That is very bad medicine.

Jon