(February 17, 2019 at 6:09 pm)fredd bear Wrote:I really could not care less about the loopy gun culture in the US. The continuing mass shooting are very sad, but utterly predictable.(February 17, 2019 at 5:42 pm)onlinebiker Wrote: But your badassedness will protect us all with a Kbar knife, right?[quote pid='1885506' dateline='1550439754']
Sho nuf
I don't own such a knife. I do have some wicked sharp chef's knives AND one of those huge old meat cleavers butchers once used. But what makes you think I'd rush to protect others? That's why we have police.---in Australia, ordinary criminals, even armed robbers, don't usually have guns.... Here, there is no reason for an ordinary urbanite to own a firearm. There is some justification for farmers to own a rifle to kill foxes, 'roos, and other pests..
Nor do I have any enemies of which I'm aware. I lack the paranoia to believe some armed criminal is coming to rob me of--exactly what? I have nothing worth stealing, and no money in the house. The house is as secure as I can make it--and I have taken police advice on security--I just rang my local cop shop and asked. They were very pleasant to me.
The ordinary ,untrained , gun owner is more likely to shoot himself or a loved one than a criminal. AND of course, there is a serious risk of the accidental shooting of loved ones, especially children who get at the gun.
But hey, I live in Australia, where gun related crime isn't an issue.
I still think the NRA are bunch of cynical dickheads concerned with personal power. They don't give a rat's arse about the ordinary US citizens
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The much vaunted power of the NRA is massively exaggerated by its opponents. So much so that I jokingly tell people that the NRA thanks them for mentioning the NRA when they are kvetching about the NRA. Seriously, if everyone who is opposed to the NRA would stop talking and writing about the NRA, then the NRA would pretty much fade into oblivion. Opponents of the NRA really are the NRA's best publicity.
I am not sure about mass shootings being predictable. A few decades ago, we didn't have them. We had guns. Mass shootings? Not so much. Something has changed. I'm not certain of what it is, but I have a strong suspicion that it has something to do with the disintegration of the nuclear family in America. The overwhelming majority of mass shooters came from single parent homes. I'm always careful to say single parent, but some have accused me of 'attacking' single mothers. I'm not. It is a lot more common for women to be the single parents, but there have been mass shooters whose single parent was their father. When I say nuclear family, I just mean a couple and their dependent children. The couple can be husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, wife and wife, or husband and husband for all I care. But the statistics say that being raised in a single parent home correlates strongly with criminal tendencies, and most mass shooters came from such homes.
It should also be noted that despite mass shootings, shootings in general are down by half over the past 30 years.
We do not inherit the world from our parents. We borrow it from our children.