Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work.

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Default Take yer gun to the mall

I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Sun, 9 Dec 2007 22:05:46 -0800, "SteveB"
wrote:

I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


There is nothing at the mall I want enough to suffer the milling
cellphone-bleating flock this time of year. My CCW is to defend
myself and mine, other citizens have the same option available to
them. I shoot rather better than decently but I'm a private
citizen, not a cop or a sojer. Defense of the public is not on my
agenda, nor may I even legally do that in MN. YMMV.

Try to minimize collateral casualties, please. It isn't trivially
easy to do in a crowd sit. You must consider fire drawn to yours as
well as what's behind your target. I don't know anyone good enough
to be sure of one-shot-drop with a concealable piece on a moving
target in a ****sit. Even rapid fire from a semiauto, 3 rounds per
second from anything capable of one-shot-stop with attendant recoil
limiting rate of delivery of accurate fire, will draw return fire if
the first couple of rounds don't end the debate ... and the other guy
is probably a lousy shot.

Not sayin' you shouldn't do it, just sayin'...


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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:48:33 -0600, Don Foreman
wrote:

On Sun, 9 Dec 2007 22:05:46 -0800, "SteveB"
wrote:

I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


There is nothing at the mall I want enough to suffer the milling
cellphone-bleating flock this time of year. My CCW is to defend
myself and mine, other citizens have the same option available to
them. I shoot rather better than decently but I'm a private
citizen, not a cop or a sojer. Defense of the public is not on my
agenda, nor may I even legally do that in MN. YMMV.

Try to minimize collateral casualties, please. It isn't trivially
easy to do in a crowd sit. You must consider fire drawn to yours as
well as what's behind your target. I don't know anyone good enough
to be sure of one-shot-drop with a concealable piece on a moving
target in a ****sit. Even rapid fire from a semiauto, 3 rounds per
second from anything capable of one-shot-stop with attendant recoil
limiting rate of delivery of accurate fire, will draw return fire if
the first couple of rounds don't end the debate ... and the other guy
is probably a lousy shot.

Not sayin' you shouldn't do it, just sayin'...



Better the perp maybe shoot a few bystanders, while trying to prevent
you from punching his ticket, than shooting a ****load with no one
trying to stop him.

Judgment call, only each individual can make.

My prayers and best wishes to anyone put in that situation.

Keep in mind..that if you ever find yourself in a stand up, High Noon,
fair gun fight..your tactics simply suck.

Shooting the sumbitch in the back, or head, is an approved and
encouraged method of pest eradication.

If he is capping off rounds at the innocent, shouting "Freeze" is
simply a waste of perfectly good air, better used in making that
perfect sight picture and squeeze from cover.

Gunner
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Default Take yer gun to the mall

In article ,
Don Foreman wrote:

I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


There is nothing at the mall I want enough to suffer the milling
cellphone-bleating flock this time of year.


Ditto that, I never visit a mall between Thanksgiving and New Year. In
any case, the more innocent shoppers who get slaughtered by a perp the
sooner sanity returns to Malls

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/
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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.






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Default Take yer gun to the mall


wrote in message
...
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........


We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US. What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....


That may be your impression, particularly because such shootings come in
clusters and the media jumps all over them like each one is the World Cup or
the Superbowl, but the fact is they're extremely rare.


How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...


As for coping with it, again, the chances of being caught in one of those
situations is orders of magnitude less than that of being hit by a car and
killed on the highway. That doesn't make the shootings less dramatic but it
does permeate one's consciousness that you're looking at something that's
remarkable because it's so exceptional, and that the attention paid to it
has more to do with the media's (and the public's) hunger for melodrama.

If you want paranoia, there are parts of most large cities into which you
could venture for your bottle of milk and have much more reason to be
paranoid. Most of us just don't go there. Suburban shopping malls are not
where the real problems lie.

I don't make light of what you're saying, but I think you'll find that such
rare-but-dangerous situations are treated similarly around the world,
wherever they're encountered. Interviews with Israelis who have had narrow
escapes from suicide bombers provide a much more significant example of how
people react to higher incidences of such horrors. They shock and give one
something to think about, but the fact is that the chance of *you* being
caught in one is statistically remote. So life goes on, almost without a
hiccup.

--
Ed Huntress



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Default Take yer gun to the mall

In article , "Ed Huntress" wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US.


Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really believe that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??

What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalac...f_Law_shooting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Woodham

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.


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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:36:45 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


Oh..you lads have the same issues. However, unlike us...you simply can
only stand like sheep and be butchered. Dunblane could have been
prevented by anyone with a simple .22

Shopping center massacres are quite rare as are any massacres
actually. Ours involve guns, yours involve bombs.

Ill take an armed assailent anytime. Least Ive got a decent chance of
putting him down like a mad dog.

Evil and madness are common in the world. Shrug..and it manifests
itself many ways.

Someone made a comment about "being paranoid and finding a need to
carry a gun to a mall", yet started a thread about a madman with an
illegal gun.

I note that your coppers are carrying machine guns now days. And
using them. Yet it was not long ago, that Bobbies never carried guns.

Thugs with machine pistols are shooting up parts of the UK..and yet
you call our culture paranoid.....

Gunner




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Default Take yer gun to the mall



wrote in article
...

Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...








A while back, the liberals insisted on the rights of the mentally
challenged - who were being housed as much for their own protection as that
of innocent civilians - to be mainstreamed into society....

.....and they were all released from a protective custody that was, in
actuality, a two-way street that protected the mentally-incapacitated from
themselves, and the innocent from the mentall-incapacitated/dangerous.

Of course, the liberals are NOW whining about the plight of these
"....poor, often mentally-challenged, street people....." - a class which
they, themselves, created.

One - not necessarily the entire - answer would be to again house some of
these people who are now roaming the streets - threatening innocent people,
shoplifting and stealing to survive, commiting crime, etc.

Everybody would be better protected by such a move.




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Default Take yer gun to the mall

Well said, especially the comments on how the media makes a bad situation
even worse.

-Carl

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........


We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection against the most extreme and remote possibilities.
Statistically it makes little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in
the most absurdly dangerous pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might
have seen the discussion here a month or so ago about Dallas; people who
continue to live or work in the dangerous parts of our most dangerous
cities have a choice, and they've chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US. What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....


That may be your impression, particularly because such shootings come in
clusters and the media jumps all over them like each one is the World Cup
or the Superbowl, but the fact is they're extremely rare.


How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...


As for coping with it, again, the chances of being caught in one of those
situations is orders of magnitude less than that of being hit by a car and
killed on the highway. That doesn't make the shootings less dramatic but
it does permeate one's consciousness that you're looking at something
that's remarkable because it's so exceptional, and that the attention paid
to it has more to do with the media's (and the public's) hunger for
melodrama.

If you want paranoia, there are parts of most large cities into which you
could venture for your bottle of milk and have much more reason to be
paranoid. Most of us just don't go there. Suburban shopping malls are not
where the real problems lie.

I don't make light of what you're saying, but I think you'll find that
such rare-but-dangerous situations are treated similarly around the world,
wherever they're encountered. Interviews with Israelis who have had narrow
escapes from suicide bombers provide a much more significant example of
how people react to higher incidences of such horrors. They shock and give
one something to think about, but the fact is that the chance of *you*
being caught in one is statistically remote. So life goes on, almost
without a hiccup.

--
Ed Huntress





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On Dec 10, 5:36 am, wrote:
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:

I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.


Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


Perhaps ask some people in London England? I understand
personal violence there (less murders, of course) is three
times that in the U.S. Now _that_ must be a madhouse.

dennis
in nca
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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Dec 10, 6:21 am, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article , wrote:

On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.


Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........


Don't you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you have them)
that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society that does not
permit the populace to be armed to cope with its nuttier members, or the
criminal element?

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.


What??? You mean sticking your head in the sand isn't
"good enough for you?"

dennis
in nca


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Default Take yer gun to the mall

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:36:45 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


If you were to visit, I think your impresssion would be very different
than the one you've formed from the sensational media and from a very
few but very vocal gun owners. Except for perhaps a few gang-infested
inner-city neighborhoods, the USA does not rattle with gunfire as the
media might lead you to believe. One might hear gunfire in the woods,
fields and wetlands during hunting season, not otherwise.

I live in a major metropolitan area, the Minneapols-St. Paul
(Minnesota) seven-county metro area. I have never in the 40 years
I've lived here seen a gun even brandished, much less fired, in any
public place other than a range. It is safe to go to any mall when it
is open. Children go to them routinely. Malls have security guards
to curb shoplifting, but they are very rarely armed.

Between 1% and 2% of the people in my state have CCW permits. Not all
that have permits actually carry routinely, frequently or even
occasionally. I have a permit but do not carry because I feel no
need to do so. I have the permit for two reasons. First reason is
convenience: the permit frees me from some pesky rules regarding
transport of my guns to and from shooting ranges. The second is in
the highly unlikely event of a major disaster like Katrina, when
people demonstrably get crazy. There was a thread on this NG after
Katrina re the question of whether or not it is moral to steal from
another in such a situation. The majority of posters thought it was
moral for the imprudent to steal from the prudent in such a situation.
Wow! I secured my carry permit shortly after that.

I regard the likelihood of an armed intrusion into my house as
vanishingly small. There hasn't been one in my community in 40 years
as far as I know.

I have guns for the same reason you have radios: because I enjoy
them. Shooting, like machining and welding, is a skill that can
always be improved but never can be completely mastered. The fun is
in the quest. I enjoy firing my guns reasonably well just as I enjoy
making a nice job of a tricky weld or machining something that fits oh
so nice. A correspondent and I frequently email photos of targets
back and forth. Our recent targets look a lot better than those of
only a year ago ... and next year's targets will be better yet. The
current challenge is to punch a hole in a dime at 100 meters with one
round. One fouling round and one wind-check round is permitted before
loading one round to fire for record. A miss or a nick flunks, don't
get another try-for-record until next range visit. Only a clean hole
completely surrounded by metal counts. When we accomplish that,
we'll then move out to 200 meters, and so on...

Accomplished long-range shooters put several rounds thru the same hole
at ranges considerably beyond 100 meters. We're not there ... yet.

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On Dec 10, 9:24 am, "*" wrote:
wrote in article
...







Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........


I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....


How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...


A while back, the liberals insisted on the rights of the mentally
challenged - who were being housed as much for their own protection as that
of innocent civilians - to be mainstreamed into society....

....and they were all released from a protective custody that was, in
actuality, a two-way street that protected the mentally-incapacitated from
themselves, and the innocent from the mentall-incapacitated/dangerous.

Of course, the liberals are NOW whining about the plight of these
"....poor, often mentally-challenged, street people....." - a class which
they, themselves, created.

One - not necessarily the entire - answer would be to again house some of
these people who are now roaming the streets - threatening innocent people,
shoplifting and stealing to survive, commiting crime, etc.

Everybody would be better protected by such a move.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


You've hit one of the nails directly on the head. although it was
under Regan or Nixon (no veto) that California did this.

dennis
in nca
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On Dec 10, 8:48 am, (Doug Miller) wrote:
In article , "Ed Huntress" wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.


Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US.


Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really believe that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??

What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalac...i/Luke_Woodham

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.


Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really

believe that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in

"the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??


And the fact that when citizens DO help control the
situation, while armed, this almost never gets re-
ported by the media. And also ignored are the
thousand of times each year (acknowledged by the
Dept. of Justice and FBI) guns are used to thwart a
violent crime.

Anyone looking around at their world and saying "it
can't happen here and therfore we don't need it" is
either blind, or a selfish ******* (or bitch) uncaring
of others subject to the readily available crime
statistics, or both.

dennis
in nca
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On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:35:33 -0800, Gunner
wrote:


Not sayin' you shouldn't do it, just sayin'...



Better the perp maybe shoot a few bystanders, while trying to prevent
you from punching his ticket, than shooting a ****load with no one
trying to stop him.

Judgment call, only each individual can make.


Exactly, and I think you know what I'm sayin': don't take a shot in a
sit like that unless you're damned sure what the effect of that shot
will be. To do otherwise is to become part of the problem.

My prayers and best wishes to anyone put in that situation.

Keep in mind..that if you ever find yourself in a stand up, High Noon,
fair gun fight..your tactics simply suck.


I avoid "fair" fights of any kind whenever possible, and I've always
found it possible one way or another.

Shooting the sumbitch in the back, or head, is an approved and
encouraged method of pest eradication.


The laws, prosecutors and courts of MN strongly disagree.

If he is capping off rounds at the innocent, shouting "Freeze" is
simply a waste of perfectly good air,


and a possibly noble but very foolish way to become the next chosen
target.

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A while back, the liberals insisted on the rights of the mentally
challenged - who were being housed as much for their own protection as
that
of innocent civilians - to be mainstreamed into society....

....and they were all released from a protective custody that was, in
actuality, a two-way street that protected the mentally-incapacitated
from
themselves, and the innocent from the mentall-incapacitated/dangerous.

Of course, the liberals are NOW whining about the plight of these
"....poor, often mentally-challenged, street people....." - a class which
they, themselves, created.

One - not necessarily the entire - answer would be to again house some of
these people who are now roaming the streets - threatening innocent
people,
shoplifting and stealing to survive, commiting crime, etc.

Everybody would be better protected by such a move.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


You've hit one of the nails directly on the head. although it was
under Regan or Nixon (no veto) that California did this.

dennis
in nca


it was under Regan, it was conservatives not liberals, and the "no new
taxes" arm of the conservative movement is a strong force in preventing
proper care for mentally ill, so we get to enjoy them as homeless folks
sleeping in doorways downtown - It is most assuredly a bit disingenuous, to
say the least, to blame this on "liberals", though I know that many use the
word "liberal" for any person with whom they disagree. Of course, that not
only prevents communication on issues, but it corrupts the language, we have
already lost the use of the words Christian and Patriot - both now carry
heavily loaded political meanings that neither carried a decade ago - and
both of the overlaid meanings are abhorrent to me at least.

So, please, if you are going to argue politics instead of discussing metal
working, at least make a small attempt to steer towards objectivity and
leave the slathering invective to other venues.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com



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On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:52:22 -0600, with neither quill nor qualm, Don
Foreman quickly quoth:

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:36:45 -0800 (PST), wrote:


How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


If you were to visit, I think your impresssion would be very different
than the one you've formed from the sensational media and from a very
few but very vocal gun owners. Except for perhaps a few gang-infested
inner-city neighborhoods, the USA does not rattle with gunfire as the
media might lead you to believe. One might hear gunfire in the woods,
fields and wetlands during hunting season, not otherwise.


Yeah, the media show only the negative happenings in the societies of
the world. TV is -NOT- real, boys and girls.


I live in a major metropolitan area, the Minneapols-St. Paul
(Minnesota) seven-county metro area. I have never in the 40 years
I've lived here seen a gun even brandished, much less fired, in any
public place other than a range. It is safe to go to any mall when it
is open. Children go to them routinely. Malls have security guards
to curb shoplifting, but they are very rarely armed.


I regularly hear them on the 4th of July and New Years Eve (idiots),
but only occasionally from the bush (BLM land all over the place here
so there are hunters in season.)


people demonstrably get crazy. There was a thread on this NG after
Katrina re the question of whether or not it is moral to steal from
another in such a situation. The majority of posters thought it was
moral for the imprudent to steal from the prudent in such a situation.
Wow! I secured my carry permit shortly after that.


I don't recall that point in the discussions, Don. Can you give me a
reference point to google? I thought folks here were much more sane.


I regard the likelihood of an armed intrusion into my house as
vanishingly small. There hasn't been one in my community in 40 years
as far as I know.


My pistol is for insurance, both in the house and out
hiking/photographing nature. I carry auto insurance for the same long
odds of something happening. shrug

--
My future starts when I wake up every morning...
Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
-- Miles Davis
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Larry Jaques wrote:

Yeah, the media show only the negative happenings in the societies of
the world. TV is -NOT- real, boys and girls.


I believe the phrase is, "If it bleeds, it leads", in the news business.


I regard the likelihood of an armed intrusion into my house as
vanishingly small. There hasn't been one in my community in 40 years
as far as I know.


My pistol is for insurance, both in the house and out
hiking/photographing nature. I carry auto insurance for the same long
odds of something happening. shrug



Speaking of your house all sane peoople have fire insurance on their though
we do not expect the house to burn and actively try to prevent such a thing.
Fire insurance for a house that can be replaced, arms to protect a life that
can not be replaced.

Wes
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"Doug Miller" wrote in message
t...
In article , "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly
dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion
here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US.


Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really believe
that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??


The combined population of those three towns is 49,158. That's 1.63 * 10^-4
of the US population and the shootings you're talking about are spread out
over a period of just over 10 years at three distant locations. I think that
falls deeply into the "most extreme and remote possibilities" category.

If, to be generous, 100 people at each location actually saw what was going
on, and assuming even more generously that each one of them could have done
something about it, that's 1/1,000,000 of the US population who, if they
were armed, in position to shoot, and actually *did* shoot, might have
intervened on one occassion in ten years. Whether they would have been
successful is another question entirely.

If you're armed for the purpose of intervening in such events that means
your chance of encountering one is roughly one in ten million per year. That
falls into the category of "statistically it makes little sense."

The legitimate reason to be armed is for your own defense. If your idea is
that you're going to protect other people from murderous madmen, you're in
cloud-cuckooland.

It isn't a question of whether you pay attention to the news, Doug. It's a
matter of having a realistic measure of the probabilities.


What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalac...f_Law_shooting


Yes, we know about that shooting, which was stopped by off-duty cops, not
ordinary students. John Lott himself was here on RCM to tell us all about
it:

http://timlambert.org/2003/01/roshhuntress/

--
Ed Huntress


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In article , "Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
et...
In article , "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US.


Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really believe that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??

The combined population of those three towns is 49,158.


My point exactly: you *don't* have to be in the most dangerous parts of the
most dangerous cities for stuff like that to happen.

That's 1.63 * 10^-4
of the US population and the shootings you're talking about are spread out
over a period of just over 10 years at three distant locations. I think that
falls deeply into the "most extreme and remote possibilities" category.


You're being deliberately obtuse, I think. I mentioned those only because they
were the first three that sprang to mind. If those were the only such events
of the last ten years, then you'd have a point. They're not, and you know it.

If, to be generous, 100 people at each location actually saw what was going
on, and assuming even more generously that each one of them could have done
something about it, that's 1/1,000,000 of the US population who, if they
were armed, in position to shoot, and actually *did* shoot, might have
intervened on one occassion in ten years. Whether they would have been
successful is another question entirely.


I wasn't arguing with you over the likelihood of an armed citizen being able
to stop such an event. I'm just objecting to your egregiously, absurdly false
claim that such dangers are confined to "the dangerous parts of our most
dangerous cities." Certainly they are more common there, but manifestly they
are not *unique* there.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.
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That's funny!
The only place I've ever been where I heard literally dozens of gunshots
in one night... was in Washington, DC (after they passes their handgun
ban).
I have no idea what the area is like now, but we were staying at the
Hyatt Regency... which was pretty nice:
http://washingtonregency.hyatt.com/h...tels/index.jsp
All night long... pop, pop, pop.


"Don Foreman" wrote in message

If you were to visit, I think your impresssion would be very different
than the one you've formed from the sensational media and from a very
few but very vocal gun owners. Except for perhaps a few gang-infested
inner-city neighborhoods, the USA does not rattle with gunfire as the
media might lead you to believe. One might hear gunfire in the woods,
fields and wetlands during hunting season, not otherwise.

I live in a major metropolitan area, the Minneapols-St. Paul
(Minnesota) seven-county metro area. I have never in the 40 years
I've lived here seen a gun even brandished, much less fired, in any
public place other than a range. It is safe to go to any mall when it
is open. Children go to them routinely. Malls have security guards
to curb shoplifting, but they are very rarely armed.

Between 1% and 2% of the people in my state have CCW permits. Not all
that have permits actually carry routinely, frequently or even
occasionally. I have a permit but do not carry because I feel no
need to do so. I have the permit for two reasons. First reason is
convenience: the permit frees me from some pesky rules regarding
transport of my guns to and from shooting ranges. The second is in
the highly unlikely event of a major disaster like Katrina, when
people demonstrably get crazy. There was a thread on this NG after
Katrina re the question of whether or not it is moral to steal from
another in such a situation. The majority of posters thought it was
moral for the imprudent to steal from the prudent in such a situation.
Wow! I secured my carry permit shortly after that.

I regard the likelihood of an armed intrusion into my house as
vanishingly small. There hasn't been one in my community in 40 years
as far as I know.

I have guns for the same reason you have radios: because I enjoy
them. Shooting, like machining and welding, is a skill that can
always be improved but never can be completely mastered. The fun is
in the quest. I enjoy firing my guns reasonably well just as I enjoy
making a nice job of a tricky weld or machining something that fits oh
so nice. A correspondent and I frequently email photos of targets
back and forth. Our recent targets look a lot better than those of
only a year ago ... and next year's targets will be better yet. The
current challenge is to punch a hole in a dime at 100 meters with one
round. One fouling round and one wind-check round is permitted before
loading one round to fire for record. A miss or a nick flunks, don't
get another try-for-record until next range visit. Only a clean hole
completely surrounded by metal counts. When we accomplish that,
we'll then move out to 200 meters, and so on...

Accomplished long-range shooters put several rounds thru the same hole
at ranges considerably beyond 100 meters. We're not there ... yet.





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David Courtney wrote:

That's funny!
The only place I've ever been where I heard literally dozens of gunshots
in one night... was in Washington, DC (after they passes their handgun
ban).
I have no idea what the area is like now, but we were staying at the
Hyatt Regency... which was pretty nice:
http://washingtonregency.hyatt.com/h...tels/index.jsp
All night long... pop, pop, pop.


According to recent reports, DC is only getting worse (go figure...).
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Ed, some of what you say is true, but as an American born and brought up in
Boston and now living in Europe, I have the advantage of looking at my
country from a distance. This has given me a perspective that an American
living in the US does not have. You are are too close to the problem, which
creates a certain bias in your view point. The American society is more
violent than the one in Europe. This difference in the level of violence is
real, not imagined. I am not a social scientist, so I have no intention of
spouting BS on the cause of this difference, but we are more violent. In
point of fact, we are more of everything. Americans never do anything a
little bit. Maybe we are not a nation of extremists, but we do work at it.
Steve

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........


We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection against the most extreme and remote possibilities.
Statistically it makes little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in
the most absurdly dangerous pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might
have seen the discussion here a month or so ago about Dallas; people who
continue to live or work in the dangerous parts of our most dangerous
cities have a choice, and they've chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence in
the US. What you're hearing is mostly fantasies born of frustration and
wishful thinking. Even in the most heavily-armed states the density of
citizens who are carrying concealed firearms is so low that there's only a
slight chance that one of them could make a difference in a situation like
this. That's why you almost never hear of it.


I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....


That may be your impression, particularly because such shootings come in
clusters and the media jumps all over them like each one is the World Cup
or the Superbowl, but the fact is they're extremely rare.


How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...


As for coping with it, again, the chances of being caught in one of those
situations is orders of magnitude less than that of being hit by a car and
killed on the highway. That doesn't make the shootings less dramatic but
it does permeate one's consciousness that you're looking at something
that's remarkable because it's so exceptional, and that the attention paid
to it has more to do with the media's (and the public's) hunger for
melodrama.

If you want paranoia, there are parts of most large cities into which you
could venture for your bottle of milk and have much more reason to be
paranoid. Most of us just don't go there. Suburban shopping malls are not
where the real problems lie.

I don't make light of what you're saying, but I think you'll find that
such rare-but-dangerous situations are treated similarly around the world,
wherever they're encountered. Interviews with Israelis who have had narrow
escapes from suicide bombers provide a much more significant example of
how people react to higher incidences of such horrors. They shock and give
one something to think about, but the fact is that the chance of *you*
being caught in one is statistically remote. So life goes on, almost
without a hiccup.

--
Ed Huntress





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wrote in message
...
On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


One time, I saw a TV interview with Louis L'Amour. (sp) He was a Wild West
writer. He said the reason people liked his books were that they were
historically correct. He said Hollywood's depiction of the Wild West was
terrible. Cowardly townfolks cowering in the shadows. At that time a lot
of the men had come from the War Between the States, and knew guns and
killing very well. He said that very frequently, cowboy justice was meted
out in a dark alley or behind a building, and the sheriff didn't think twice
because it was one less piece of trash he had to deal with. It still is
like that in rural America, where roaming around on someone's property at
night is a recipe for disaster. Different than in the cities. I think the
predators prefer large population areas because prey don't put up much of a
fight.

As for coping with the paranoia ......... it ain't paranoia when they
actually ARE out to get you. And, if you ever notice on those African lion
shows, it's always the liberal ones dancing lah tee dah on the outskirts of
the herd and not paying attention that end up as lunch meat.

There's a difference between being paranoid and being realistic. With
paranoia, there is no actual threat.

Steve


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Gunner,
You have struck a very interesting point. England used to have a very active
gun culture. I used to shoot in one of the best International pistol
competitions in the world. It used to be held in Bisley, just south of
London at an old Royal Army camp. This 5 day event attracted shooters from
all over the world. In fact, it was necessary to apply to compete a year in
advance. Well, right after Dunblane I believe, a law was passed that
outlawed ALL privately owned hand guns in the UK. They all had to be turned
in to the police, as these were the source of terrible crime and violence.
Today, gun violence and gang shootings are all over the UK and significantly
more than before pistols were make illegal. I cannot quote the percentage of
increase this represents, but I believe it is many times over what it was in
the early eighties. The point I am making is that it is now absolutely clear
that it is not guns that kill people, it is people that kill people. This is
a fact that Europeans and the British are blind to.
Steve


"Gunner" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:36:45 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 10, 5:05 pm, "SteveB" wrote:
I saw a clear full body picture of the Omaha shooter. Anyone who had a
concealed weapon and who could shoot decently could have lessened the
carnage. If you got a CCW, carry your weapon.

Steve


Dont you wonder, in your more lucid moments, late at night (if you
have them) thats there is something fundamentally wrong with a society
where the populace need to be armed to cope with the nuttier
members........

I know its historical for you people, wild west, Hollywood, etc
etc..something in your constitution, but don't you wonder WHY shopping
centre massacres are a almost weekly occurrence....

How do you cope with this, the paranoia of buying a bottle of milk? -
there MUST be some alternative besides being armed to the teeth...

Andrew VK3BFA.


Oh..you lads have the same issues. However, unlike us...you simply can
only stand like sheep and be butchered. Dunblane could have been
prevented by anyone with a simple .22

Shopping center massacres are quite rare as are any massacres
actually. Ours involve guns, yours involve bombs.

Ill take an armed assailent anytime. Least Ive got a decent chance of
putting him down like a mad dog.

Evil and madness are common in the world. Shrug..and it manifests
itself many ways.

Someone made a comment about "being paranoid and finding a need to
carry a gun to a mall", yet started a thread about a madman with an
illegal gun.

I note that your coppers are carrying machine guns now days. And
using them. Yet it was not long ago, that Bobbies never carried guns.

Thugs with machine pistols are shooting up parts of the UK..and yet
you call our culture paranoid.....

Gunner








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"Pete C." wrote in message
...
David Courtney wrote:

That's funny!
The only place I've ever been where I heard literally dozens of
gunshots
in one night... was in Washington, DC (after they passes their handgun
ban).
I have no idea what the area is like now, but we were staying at the
Hyatt Regency... which was pretty nice:
http://washingtonregency.hyatt.com/h...tels/index.jsp
All night long... pop, pop, pop.


According to recent reports, DC is only getting worse (go figure...).


But how can that be with all those laws?

Steve g


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"rigger" wrote

And the fact that when citizens DO help control the
situation, while armed, this almost never gets re-
ported by the media. And also ignored are the
thousand of times each year (acknowledged by the
Dept. of Justice and FBI) guns are used to thwart a
violent crime.


Just as an aside, the press totally ignored Denzell Washington. He was
visiting a military hospital. He was visiting one of the wings that the
families stay in. He asked how much it would cost to build one. One point
five million was his answer.

He wrote a check on the spot.

All those other perverts and kooks in Hollywood fill the papers daily with
their antics.

I guess even man bites dog stories are out of vogue now.

Steve


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Mainly, because that particular story isn't exactly true... not the way
it's written: http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/denzel.asp



"SteveB" wrote in message
...

Just as an aside, the press totally ignored Denzell Washington. He was
visiting a military hospital. He was visiting one of the wings that the
families stay in. He asked how much it would cost to build one. One
point five million was his answer.

He wrote a check on the spot.

All those other perverts and kooks in Hollywood fill the papers daily with
their antics.

I guess even man bites dog stories are out of vogue now.

Steve



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"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the
subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have
allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall
by so doing."

Adolph Hitler



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On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:36:12 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:


I don't recall that point in the discussions, Don. Can you give me a
reference point to google? I thought folks here were much more sane.


My point. Sanity seems to prevail less under extreme circumstances.

The only reference I can offer is date: it was during the aftermath
of Katrina.



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"Doug Miller" wrote in message
et...
In article , "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. net...
In article , "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

We don't need to be armed. Being armed is something one does for
protection
against the most extreme and remote possibilities. Statistically it
makes
little sense, unless one spends a lot of time in the most absurdly
dangerous
pestholes, like Gunner seems to do. You might have seen the discussion
here
a month or so ago about Dallas; people who continue to live or work in
the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities have a choice, and they've
chosen to stay where the danger is.

Outside of those areas, you're unlikely ever to encounter gun violence
in
the US.

Have you been paying *no* attention to the news? Or do you really
believe that
places like Columbine CO, Pearl MS, or Grundy VA are included in "the
dangerous parts of our most dangerous cities"??

The combined population of those three towns is 49,158.


My point exactly: you *don't* have to be in the most dangerous parts of
the
most dangerous cities for stuff like that to happen.


Well, what are you arguing with? I said that it makes no sense
statistically. And then I showed you the numbers on your examples. If you're
living your life on one-in-a-million probabilities, Doug, you should be
investing heavily in the lottery.

According to the NSC, your chances of being killed in a firearm assault are
1:324. Your chances of dying from accidental poisoning are twice as high.
Your chances of dying from taking a fall are nearly twice as high as dying
in a firearm assault, and your chance of dying in a car accident are four
times as high.

I don't feel the *need* to carry a gun for the same reason I don't feel the
*need* to hire someone to taste my food before eating, or to have myself
fitted with springs to prevent injury in a fall, or to have a NASCAR-type
roll cage installed in my family sedan.

Likewise, we don't *need* to carry a gun, unless we buy milk in stupid
places or hang out where the danger from gun violence is known to be high.
We may *want* to carry one, for a variety of reasons. But most of them make
little or no sense on the basis of probabilities.


That's 1.63 * 10^-4
of the US population and the shootings you're talking about are spread out
over a period of just over 10 years at three distant locations. I think
that
falls deeply into the "most extreme and remote possibilities" category.


You're being deliberately obtuse, I think. I mentioned those only because
they
were the first three that sprang to mind. If those were the only such
events
of the last ten years, then you'd have a point. They're not, and you know
it.


How many more such examples do you want to add to the list? You asked me if
I pay attention to the news and then you gave examples of wacko mass
murders. Did you intend to give examples of something else? Because the
wacko mass murders are too rare to bother about.

If you're going to start adding up all of the individual reasons for having
a gun, then pay attention to the other things I said. I said the legitimate
reason for carrying a gun is self-defense, not preventing mass murders,
because you'll never get a chance in your lifetime, or in 10,000 lifetimes,
to encounter one of those. And I said that your chances of needing a gun in
any case are so vanishingly small that it makes no sense, statistically,
unless you choose to live or work somewhere dangerous.

But purely rational odds-making is not the only issue on self-defense. If
you want to carry, by all means, carry. I was responding to the OP who
wondered why we have to carry guns to go out for milk. And my response is,
we don't have to carry. Statistically, there is little rational basis for
carring a gun, unless we stupidly get our milk in dangerous places. As Don
said, and as I've experienced, most people have almost no chance of ever
encountering a drawn gun except on a shooting range. And that's the fact.


If, to be generous, 100 people at each location actually saw what was
going
on, and assuming even more generously that each one of them could have
done
something about it, that's 1/1,000,000 of the US population who, if they
were armed, in position to shoot, and actually *did* shoot, might have
intervened on one occassion in ten years. Whether they would have been
successful is another question entirely.


I wasn't arguing with you over the likelihood of an armed citizen being
able
to stop such an event. I'm just objecting to your egregiously, absurdly
false
claim that such dangers are confined to "the dangerous parts of our most
dangerous cities." Certainly they are more common there, but manifestly
they
are not *unique* there.


I didn't say they're confined there. I said that, except for such dangerous
places, it makes little sense statistically. And that's the fact, too.

--
Ed Huntress


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Default Take yer gun to the mall


"Steve Lusardi" wrote in message
...
Ed, some of what you say is true, but as an American born and brought up
in Boston and now living in Europe, I have the advantage of looking at my
country from a distance. This has given me a perspective that an American
living in the US does not have. You are are too close to the problem,
which creates a certain bias in your view point. The American society is
more violent than the one in Europe. This difference in the level of
violence is real, not imagined. I am not a social scientist, so I have no
intention of spouting BS on the cause of this difference, but we are more
violent. In point of fact, we are more of everything. Americans never do
anything a little bit. Maybe we are not a nation of extremists, but we do
work at it.
Steve


No doubt this is a more violent country overall. But most of what you're
talking about is different emotional reactions to unexpected deaths. We
react differently, that is, based on the *cause* of deaths, not really the
number of deaths, the "quantity" of violence, in this case.

Back in the late '60s, when Europe's per-km highway death rate was running
40% or so higher than that of the US, I used to ask my friends in Europe how
they cope with so much risk on the roads. They didn't understand what I was
talking about. They'd incorporated that much risk of unexpected death into
their lives and just went on with them.

Now that Europe has lower per-km death rates, you seem to have incorporated
*that* into your expectations just as easily. We react differently to these
things, and it's all emotional. Our total rate of unexpected deaths is of
the same order as that of Europe, although somewhat higher on most counts.
But we've built our emotional expectations around these rates, just as
Europe used to cope with its higher highway death rates.

One thing that most people outside of the US don't realize is how
concentrated our violence is, geographically. Take away the hot spots and
the numbers start looking like those of Europe. Stay away from the hotspots,
and it *feels* more like the levels of safety you expect in Europe.

My experience with this, BTW, is based on having been a student in Europe
back when your highway death rates were so high.

--
Ed Huntress


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Default Take yer gun to the mall

In article ,
"Steve Lusardi" wrote:

Ed, some of what you say is true, but as an American born and brought up in
Boston and now living in Europe, I have the advantage of looking at my
country from a distance. This has given me a perspective that an American
living in the US does not have. You are are too close to the problem, which
creates a certain bias in your view point. The American society is more
violent than the one in Europe. This difference in the level of violence is
real, not imagined.


Was WW1 violent? WW2? Ever hear of Bosnia?

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/
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Default Take yer gun to the mall


"David Courtney" wrote in message
. ..
Mainly, because that particular story isn't exactly true... not the way
it's written: http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/denzel.asp


I have been corrected. My comments about the other Hollywood low lifes
stands, and I doubt if that can be debated by Snopes or anyone.

Steve


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