Is it time to talk about guns?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Balbus, Mar 24, 2021.

  1. Tishomingo

    Tishomingo Members

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    I fear the society where every nutjob and his dog can possess an arsenal of weapons with little or no regulation. This recently from my state of Oklahoma.
    .Woman shot in back while trying to steal man's Nazi flag, authorities say
    The man was standing guard over his Nazi flags cuz he'd been warned by a neighbor that Antifa was out to get them and him. So he shot this woman in the back four times with his AR15 for snatching a flag from his yard. Fortunately, she's recovered and is suing him. He's claiming the "stand your ground" defense, that he was reasonably in fear of his life from an Antifa invasion. To appreciate the ludicrousness of it all, you need to understand that it happened in Hunter, OK, a town of 173 (mostly redneck) people. I doubt that there's been an Antifa member spotted in all Garfield County, including Enid, the county seat (anybody heard of it?) There's an Air Force Base there, a community college, and a shitload of wind turbines. And Antifa would happen move in, I doubt that the good folks of Hunter would be able to tell. The guy had an arsenal of fourteen guns in all. I seriously doubt that the pretty young lady he shot was a member of Antifa, although she seems daringly liberal for the community and obviously doesn't like Fascists..
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2021
  2. jagerhans

    jagerhans Far out, man. Lifetime Supporter

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    IDK if i could live up to the standards of my father and grandfather and uncles and aunts. No idea. Any attempt to drag me in a quarrel is vain however no matter how hard people tries. I am not here to start a flame war. I leave that to facebook, which i abandoned exactly for this.
     
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  3. ~Zen~

    ~Zen~ Ancient Mariner Administrator

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    I am sorry to hear that the moderator of this section has been attacking site members like you personally. That is against all of our forum rules.

    Constantly challenging people to debate is not the purpose of HipForums.
     
  4. erofant

    erofant Members

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    I am, by no means, a right-wing lunatic fringe dweller - but I believe in the right of a U.S. citizen (who IS NOT a convicted felon or a proven mental case) to own a gun for protection of life, to hunt legally, or to target shoot. I also believe that sensible gun laws should prevent those with mental problems from buying guns. We have regulations on driving vehicles, forcing prospective drivers to train in a vehicle and pass a driving competency test - written as well as on-road. If prudence is called for with vehicles, should we not be as cautious and prudent when it comes to guns?? Mixing alcohol with driving is against the law for safety reasons - but we see "beer-muscle tough guys" shooting at people at bars and after being out on the town drinking for hours. Does THAT sound safe??

    I've hunted ethically all my life (after taking gun safety and hunters' safety courses) - but I've NEVER mixed alcohol with hunting ........ EVER.

    I DO NOT fear the "bad old Democrats" coming to take everyone's guns away from them. That's a REPUBLICAN scare tactic to gather votes from outdoorsmen / women and "rednecks" - and it has worked since the early 1980's. Many Democrats own / want guns - LOTS of them do.

    And these days, with all the drug-affiliated crimes out there / violent home invasions - the cops can't be everywhere. So you either protect yourself - or risk being killed / family members being killed - by criminals invading your property. It's a sad world we live in today, that we even have to consider such things. We're re-living the "wild-west" days all over again.
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2021
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  5. FritzDaKatx2

    FritzDaKatx2 Vinegar Taster

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    Thats a pretty good example there, why would we call this dude a hero?
    I mean tbh, any American who truly valued life, liberty, freedom and **Independence from colonialism** really had no business fighting a civil war defending French Colonialism and I think for those Americans who hold these men in reverence really don't take a lot of time to analyze situations very well.
     
  6. Twogigahz

    Twogigahz Senior Member

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    You're not kidding. It's the OK-fucking Corral out there, where the Marshall is outgunned, even by the barkeep in the local saloon..
     
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  7. wrat1

    wrat1 Members

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    Speaking to the statement above, this situation happened to us several years ago : Our dog woke us up late one evening with an unusually aggressive non stop barking so I got out of bed to see what the ruckus was all about and in our backyard ( which was completely fenced and gated ) was an uninvited young adult male , I told my wife to call 911 while I leashed our 100lb German Shepherd and walked out into our backyard I told the subject to vacate or property or I was letting my dog go ( who was frothing at the bit by this point ) the guy glared at me and my dog and just stood there so I approached closer with my dog still on the leash and said again to leave my property and let my dog go the guy jumped back onto the fence ( 6ft chain link) and scrambled over . At this point I gather our dog and go inside ( a little shaken) where my wife tells me " 911 said we are busy cant help you " and hung up on her.. about an hour later the police show up and arrest the guy as he is breaking into the car across the street...

    we were LITERALLY the only home in that small couple block radius that was NEVER broken into

    The cops cant and wont always help so protect yourself and your family
     
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  8. scratcho

    scratcho Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Good thing he didn't have a gun! Frankly, I wish all guns / armament were confined to ranges where folks could go and blast away with machine guns, bazookas, rifles, pistols almost any weapon available at targets near and far, throw grenades, , drive tanks, etc---in short, get the jollies off blowing shit up. With no guns available for citizens or governments at all. NOW---see how great that would be --IF ALL CITIZENS OF ALL COUNTRIES WERE CIVILIZED AND MANY WERE NOT POWER MAD?? The world over? Yes , a peaceful world would be a wonderful thing to behold. However--I'd like to ask---when the fuck has that EVER been the case? When is it GOING to be the case? Think now. Think real hard. If you are not illiterate and you have even the most vague knowledge of history through word of mouth and have lived some amount of life---you will admit--IT AIN'T EVER GOING TO HAPPEN! If we did completely disarm here in the states--citizens and government------The result would be catastrophic.I don't think that I have to further delve into what would happen.

    Throughout most of my 82 years, I had one gun. A shotgun that was gifted to me from a relative. I hunted birds for a while, but eventually I soured on the idea and the practice, so I stopped hunting and sold the gun. Personal choice and I don't care that others feel differently. I grew up (sometimes debatable) in a town where doors were never locked, even at night. Crime consisted of a drunk maybe going to jail for a night , but that was rare. For sure there was crime of all kinds going on everywhere in the states during the 40s--50s when I was a kid. There were some horrendous crimes happening. But not the same. Not the same at all. You old ones that are reading this know what I mean.

    This original small area of this country, like many, was gained and formed through violence. Manifest destiny expanded it across the rest of the area we now recognize as the USA, regardless of contemporary inhabitants. Guns are mainstays of our history and we love them. -----------------TO BE CONTINUED.
     
  9. FritzDaKatx2

    FritzDaKatx2 Vinegar Taster

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    You are an incredibly compassionate soul, I'd have been diggin a hole in the desert after that encounter.

    .45 at my side and a .30 at the door, the worlds gone to shit and I wont stand no more.
     
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  10. Tyrsonswood

    Tyrsonswood Senior Moment Lifetime Supporter

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    No gun here...


    Swords, on the other hand....
     
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  11. FritzDaKatx2

    FritzDaKatx2 Vinegar Taster

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    That's another good option, probably scare off those "less sincere in their intent" even if they did have a gun.

    Sure makes a good plan B in any case.

    messages_0.jpeg
     
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  12. FritzDaKatx2

    FritzDaKatx2 Vinegar Taster

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    I gotta add though, the scenario could end up with the both of us having a beer down the street provided some sort of conversation evolved, but damn they call it Dead silent for a reason :D
     
  13. scratcho

    scratcho Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Continued from 929.

    The debate about the availability of guns goes on and on here in the US of A. The killings from the use of guns--likewise. It appears that as long as machines exist that can hurl death dealing pieces of material that are extremely hard on the human body and they continue to be manufactured--there will be deaths from them. People just seem to disagree on many issues and disagreements often lead to using the aforementioned machines to solve their differences. In addition, some citizens allow the desire to have what they want, when they want , such as the possessions of others, to over ride any compunction of learned and commonly accepted behavior in society. And of course there are those psychopaths that are born devoid of conscience altogether. There is no right or wrong with those individuals. Just what suits them is what is important. If you're unlucky--you might become entangled with one of these types.

    There was a time in my life--in the jungle ---on the big island of Hawaii--my relationship to the experience of my life, tempered with some serious illegal substances--one could say existentially speaking, I suppose--when all was right with the world. It was a very peaceful existence for me alone and among others of like mind and experience. I felt at one with all. At that point in life, I had zero thoughts of ever owning a gun. It was ridiculous to think that it would be important to have such a machine. And I can remember feeling and espousing the belief that in the event an other human were to confront me with a death dealing machine or even use such a device on me --it was surely meant to be that way and I was fine with it. I had become a very passive dude.

    ( a condensed finish) I reluctantly left the jungle and came back to the mainland with my lady friend of that time frame and settled on the Oregon coast. ( health reason--another story). Life rolled on, I hooked up with a different lady friend and Lo and behold--a child!! A most auspicious and wonderful event, for sure. We went to Florida to do a sailboat--(another story) ended up back in Oregon--3 kids total! Happy days.:) Well now--not so suddenly--but inexorably--I began to feel that maybe "things ' that I had felt over my years as a mental traveler were not quite as important as I had thought. I began to read the newspaper again. I began to listen to the news. ( I did not have tv--for the kids sake.) The Manson saga--the friends of mine that were killed for no reason --the hitchhikers constantly killed--Ted Bundy, robberies, houses broken into, etc, etc. Yes--"things"were not exactly to my liking. What about my kids? I'm not even sure that I even knew what REAL love was until those precious little being showed up. What about my mate? Would I feel so disconnected from fear of danger because of my previous existentialism?

    To sum up--not a chance. The decision to preclude some dangerous human from playing god with me and the ones I was beholden to protect was not in the cards. So now, I'm a gun owner. I've never had to decide to use a gun against anyone and I never had to go to war, but I'm stating here and now--I will if it comes to it. And I will with no regret. I believe that I could and would protect ANY law abiding citizen. And I think I would be right in doing so.

    I could have confined the two posts to the last sentence in the previous paragraph I suppose. It wasn't easy deciding to own guns from where i was mentally, so that's why I put all this down. I'll bet there are some others that have have gone through the mental hoops you have to jump through in order to buy guns. I don't hunt, but I do shoot targets and enjoy the machines that way. :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2021
  14. FritzDaKatx2

    FritzDaKatx2 Vinegar Taster

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    I'm glad you mentioned Bundy @scratcho , if we step back and look at per capital rates we've come a long way from the days before the AR platform became such a hot item following the Columbine massacre, but who wants to look at averages and "social norms" when one's argument is better served by big scary numbers :eek:

    We are quite in fact moving further away from things resembling the wild west, becoming a more polite society (not yet perfect by any means but steadily improving as time goes on
    )

    We have but the Media to thank for driving any thoughts to the contrary.

    What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.
     
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  15. Toecutter

    Toecutter Senior Member

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    American military does not decide who or when they fight, it is politicians who decide.

    Historians make Heroes.
     
  16. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    So how many times are guns actually used to stop a home invasion?
    But a report by criminologists Gary Kleck claims 200,000 people reported shooting an assailant in 1995.
    Odds of dying from a gun assault (assault isn't defined but I assume that includes murder suicide, family and relatives, and mass shootings) 1 in 289 in the U.S. in 2019.
    Odds of dying from a car crash, 1 in 107
    Fall,1 in 106
    Opioid overdose 1 in 92
    Suicide 1 in 88 ~ Odds of Dying
     
  17. Toecutter

    Toecutter Senior Member

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    https://www.just-tactical.com/post/how-often-a-gun-is-used-in-self-defense

    Using guns in self-defense can help save lives, but what is the percentage for that? what is the actual number of defensive gun uses?
    According to many researchers, including Pew Research Center, 50 percent of gun owners confirm that they own a gun mainly for protection. At the same time, was a debate over how often people use guns in self-defense. Numbers range from the millions to hundreds of thousands, depending on the country, population, criteria, time-period studied, and other factors.

    Low-end estimates are in the range of 500,000 and 3 million times each year. So, as you see, there are more than a few and is good reason to believe that most defensive gun uses are never reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets.

    One of the most commonly cited estimates of defensive gun uses, published in 1995 by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, concluded there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.
     
  18. erofant

    erofant Members

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    Regardless of political affiliation ............ I have to say - sadly - that we ALL better plan to protect our families & properties. Even with fully staffed police forces, they can't be everywhere. In some cases - they DON'T WANT to be in certain places either.
     
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  19. erofant

    erofant Members

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    I can't answer that question. I'm only interested in stopping ANY home invasion at OUR PLACE. If someone kicks in the door at our place, it'll be the last thing they ever do on planet earth. My son and I are FULLY READY. Not knowing whether they have a gun or not means I won't be taking ANY time to talk to them or figure anything out. BOOM - BOOM - BOOM - BOOM. Invading our place will be their LAST mistake.
     
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  20. MeAgain

    MeAgain Dazed & Confused Lifetime Supporter Super Moderator

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    So, anybody know of anyone who used a gun to stop a home invasion?

    I know of one, a love triangle, out of thousands of people I've known over 70 years.
     
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