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Four more years!

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Re: Four more years!
Post by KNick   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 8:38 pm

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As a US citizen, I sometimes forget that other countries do not have our history of reliance on firearms in daily life. I have been a hunter for about 45 years and started shooting competatively a couple of years before that. Said competion was part of a class in gun safety required to obtain a hunting licence. It was offered by the local college in the basement of the Science building (the room were they did their "go boom" experiments).

Having said that, I live near the edge of the city I live in and until a couple of years ago, I had a standing invitation from a local cattle rancher to come on out to his place to hunt "varment" any time I wanted to. The varments he wanted me to hunt were the raccoons and skunks raiding his corn fields.

I have hunted deer, elk, duck, pheasants, grouse and geese for the larder. I also fish when I can and carry a gun when I do so because of the presence of rabies in animals were I prefer to fish. I have also been known to take a shot or two a cayote now and then. Most stockmen carry guns in their work vehicles for the same reasons. And you will not catch me in the high back country around here without a gun. Between the bears that have forgotten to be afraid of humans and the wolves that have never learned, it is dangerous to be weaponless.

In spite of what easterners in the US think, there are still valid reasons to carry firearms "out west". To give you one example of the diferences. While I was in the Navy, I was sent to a school in San Francisco. Every morning, before class I would get up about 5 in the morning and drive my motorcycle about 35 miles down the coast to a resturant in Half Moon Bay for coffee and a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven. When a classmate from Rhode Island found out I was driving that far, he asked me if I was crazy. To him, it would have meant driving to another state. To me was just a short hop. In Montana, that would not even have gotten me out of my home county, so I thought nothing of the drive. Just goes to show that even in the same country, expectations are different.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by KNick   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 8:52 pm

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Donnachaidh wrote:I do have a question. While the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to have guns, what about bullets? Are bullets covered under the 2nd amendment or could bullet sales just be banned?



To many people already reload their own ammo for that to work. My younger brother already manufactures everything he needs for his own guns. All he does not do is make his own shell casings. Since he has between 5 and 10 thousand rounds of brass, it would take him a while to run out. I don't shoot as much as he does, but I have around a thousand rounds myself. And as pokermind can confirm, a flintlock pistol is not that hard for a machinist to make. Between my two brothers, my sisters husband, my mother and myself, we have 8 or nine reloaders. Just try to take away my bullets.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by Daryl   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 9:52 pm

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I grew up on an Australian sheep and cattle station (ranch). For my 8th birthday I got an air rifle, for my 10th a 0.22 rifle, for my 15th a 0.303 ex military rifle, and for my 21st a beautiful shotgun. I still have those guns plus others and in recent years have had to register them and keep them locked up. Big change from my teens when I would be mustering cattle on a horse, with a carbine in a saddle scabbard and a pistol in a holster. Many city people can't understand this and would consider my parents to have been irresponsible, but it was a natural part of life.
I do have difficulty understanding how some people in some areas of the US believe that it is normal to carry a concealed hand gun in an urban environment or have fully automatic assault rifles loose in the home as security. My initial home security is provided by a display bastard sword that I forged myself which is razor sharp. The US homicide statistics show that carrying guns is not providing a lower incident of crime than elsewhere.
In regard to hunting I believe there are three classes of people; vegetarians, those like me who are prepared to kill their own meat if needed, and hypocrites who play mind games that the red stuff in supermarket packs is not actual flesh.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by KNick   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 10:43 pm

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The only place I would disagree with you on the hunting part of your post is the hypocrit part. There are some people who are not vegetarians who simply do not have the skills to hunt successfully. That makes them a danger to those of us who do hunt, so let them buy what they want, instead of getting in the way.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by Daryl   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:28 pm

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Sorry my bad phrasing. I didn't mean that they had to hunt, just that they should accept that to get meat animals have to be harvested. In French the same word is used for the animal as for the meat, but English often substitutes other words, instead of a cuddly calf we have veal, or mutton instead of sheep. Tell a trendy socialite that her venison is actually Bambi & wait for the tantrum.
KNick wrote:The only place I would disagree with you on the hunting part of your post is the hypocrit part. There are some people who are not vegetarians who simply do not have the skills to hunt successfully. That makes them a danger to those of us who do hunt, so let them buy what they want, instead of getting in the way.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by KNick   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:46 pm

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I thought we were the only country with flakes like that.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by Donnachaidh   » Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:46 pm

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The use of different word for animals and meat are actually the fault of the French. After the Norman invasion the nobles all spoke French while the people who took care of the animals spoke contemporary English (or Gaelic or Norse or Welsh).

Daryl wrote:Sorry my bad phrasing. I didn't mean that they had to hunt, just that they should accept that to get meat animals have to be harvested. In French the same word is used for the animal as for the meat, but English often substitutes other words, instead of a cuddly calf we have veal, or mutton instead of sheep. Tell a trendy socialite that her venison is actually Bambi & wait for the tantrum.
KNick wrote:The only place I would disagree with you on the hunting part of your post is the hypocrit part. There are some people who are not vegetarians who simply do not have the skills to hunt successfully. That makes them a danger to those of us who do hunt, so let them buy what they want, instead of getting in the way.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by pokermind   » Fri Nov 09, 2012 12:10 am

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Yep a flintlock is not hard,

Image

want hard try a wheel/matchlock,

Image

Yep that's welding striker flint in the jaws works way better than iron pyrite.

Course a hand mortar ain't for hunting criters <G>

Image

Course when bar or wolf comes round camp,

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thar be nothing better than a mountainman's shot gun:

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Me in 1983, had a black beard then. Course some flatland wimps need wheels for their artillery <G>

Poker

KNick wrote:
Donnachaidh wrote:I do have a question. While the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to have guns, what about bullets? Are bullets covered under the 2nd amendment or could bullet sales just be banned?



To many people already reload their own ammo for that to work. My younger brother already manufactures everything he needs for his own guns. All he does not do is make his own shell casings. Since he has between 5 and 10 thousand rounds of brass, it would take him a while to run out. I don't shoot as much as he does, but I have around a thousand rounds myself. And as pokermind can confirm, a flintlock pistol is not that hard for a machinist to make. Between my two brothers, my sisters husband, my mother and myself, we have 8 or nine reloaders. Just try to take away my bullets.
CPO Poker Mind Image and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.

"Better to be hung for a hexapuma than a housecat," Com. Pang Yau-pau, ART.
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Re: Four more years!
Post by Spacekiwi   » Fri Nov 09, 2012 5:42 am

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I don't disagre with the right to bear arms, and indeed, would bear them myself if need be. however i do find it interesting in what Americans seem to consider essential guns. I saw some stuff on a gun show a while back, and one guy was offering rocket launchers and military assault rifles, as well as submachine guns with 60 round mags. Another was selling scoped pistols and night vision 50 cal sniper rifles. now that to me just seem like overkill, whether you are hunting pests or as self defense. what on earth would you use a rocket launcher for? sure you could use it to get a raccoon out of a tree, but there wouldnt be much tree or raccoon left. and for personal protection, my dad gets issued to him a bushmaster and a 9mm glock, both of which have been used on people and dangerous animals before, and both proved effective at bringing down their targets. my thought on this is, surely there must be a reasonable point at which you can go, wait hang on, thats a it much isnt it? getting them for collections is fine, but you wonder what some of this stuff is supposed to be used for if its not in a collection. heck, some of the guns you can own are probably better and more powerful then the soldiers get.
is it just me, or is the concept of civilians being more heavily armed then a front lime soldier a bit weird?




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Re: Four more years!
Post by dscott8   » Fri Nov 09, 2012 10:20 am

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The most fundamental right in a free society is the right to defend yourself. If you can't fight back against thugs, you have anarchy. If you can't fight back against oppressive governments, you have tyranny. If you can't fight back against foreign invaders, you have no country anyomre. All of the other rights -- freedeom of speech and conscience, freedom to worship as you please or not at all, etc. -- must be defended, because there will always be someone who wants to take them from you.

The right to self-defense is meaningless without the tools to exercise it. Those who ignore rights and laws will have weapons regardless of any laws against them, so laws banning weapons are impractical. They do not work. How can you enforce them? With the same methods that have kept our streets free of illegal drugs for decades?

I live in the state of Florida in the USA. I know very few people who do not own a firearm, and I'd say that probably 60 - 70% of my acquaintances have concealed weapons permits. Aside from drug and gang related stuff (bad guys versus bad guys), there is very little violent crime against the person here, because there is a huge chance that the bad guy will wind up looking down the barrel of a gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen who is guaranteed by law the right to put a bulllet through him. This is called deterrence. It works, and in the few cases where the bad guy is too stupid to be deterred, it is he, not the law-abiding citizen, who gets shot.

A win-win situation, if you ask me.
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