When I checked earlier this morning, that poster had 11 total posts here on SDMB, including other personal attacks including accusations of un-Americanism. He (she?) must’ve found the wrong side of the bed to get out of, today, and every other day.
No, I won’t feel guilty in the least. And I’ll very happily call the police anytime I see someone with a gun showing in public. I have no way of knowing that if they are a ‘law abiding’ citizen or a lunatic looking to kill someone, so I’ll let the authorities sort that out.
Odd for it to out itself in its user name like that. I wonder if anyone’s checked for footwear.
Looking at his posting history, and the fact that he’s been warned, I suspect that he won’t be here much longer. This is the pit, so insults are allowed here, but he’s been doing the same thing elsewhere.
Yes, but there are assertions in the article that the video did not confirm. For example, “They started badgering him with questions and accusing him of being anti-American.” Certainly they badgered him, but I never heard anyone accuse him of being anti-American.
In any event, I agree their undisputed conduct was beyond the pale.
Apparently even St. Ronnie thought open carry was a bad idea:
But this was different, of course. This wasn’t about angry white people brandishing firearms in public. No, this was about angry black people, specifically the Black Panthers, led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, brandishing firearms in public.
Cars can’t inflict irrecoverable injury or death on others?
How much training do you think you need to exercise this constituional right? It seems to me that all we can do it teach gun safety, teach them the laws surrounding the use of their guns and then trust them to be law abiding in the use of their guns as we trust them to be law abiding in the use of so many other things.
“commoners?” I think the vast majority of folks who carry guns would freeze if a violent situation arose. Would it change your mind at all if I showed you that states that went “contitutional carry” didn’t show an increase in homicides relative to states that remained “no issue” (i.e. homicides decreased across the board but homicides did not decrease any slower for “constitutional carry” states than “no issue” states).
And this is pretty much your entire argument. I don’t agree with you so there must be something wrong with me. I don’t know why I even engage you, you have nothing to add to the conversation but insults. Its the primary reason why gun debates don’t last long on great debates.
We as a society accept death every day. People die from vaccines but the benefit of vaccines are clear so we accept those “rare” deaths (can we use rare when referring to deaths in those cases, right, or is that sick too?). We accept that cars are really really useful so we accept a not insignificant number of deaths. Why are guns the only case where we are not allowed to compare the deaths caused by guns against the benefits provided by guns?
Its not “my” therapy. I don’t open carry, mostly because I have a CCW and open carry is a pain in the ass. Your irrational fear has fully taken over your mind, fear is the mindkiller.
I understand that you are using insults because your arguments wore thin long ago but what do you think I said? I pointed out that:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17411284&postcount=34
“there is a movement among some gun owners to try to normalize guns in society through exposure therapy, maybe that’s what they are trying to do. I’m not sure that things will work out the way they imagine.”
Nowhere do I endorse parading around with rifles at the local fast food restaurants. I think that a lot of hoplophobes have an irrational fear of guns due to lack of exposure but I don’t know if this is a good way to address that irrational fear.
I’m not arguing that mass shootings are a useless metric. I just assumed we were using the more familiar term used by the FBI defined as 4 or more deaths. Mass shootings is a more recently manufactured term.
How does this illustrate that anyone that works for the government can’t be trusted?
Are you saying that marines can’t be trusted? I don’t engage in our society’s warrior worship but I don’t think marines are any less trustworthy by virtue of being marines than the average citizen.
No. You do not share common, basic human understanding of the value of human life, therefore there is something wrong with you.
Not out of hope of fighting your own ignorance, obviously.
Because we don’t see those benefits. :rolleyes: Duh. Well, those of us without stunted moral codes don’t. To some, yourself included, the psychological value of barrel-stroking is worth *any *number of deaths. Which, btw, is what makes you a sick, sick fuck. One of the things, anyway.
You speak of it approvingly. Don’t be such a coward, stand up for what you say or don’t say it.
You sick fuck, you still don’t get that the fear is not of guns, but of the people carrying them. You’re so sick that you don’t even think the fear of dying is real, do you?
Did you read that cite yet, you lazy shit?
How trustworthy is the average citizen, especially when armed? 
I hope you’re not expecting answers. 
What does “manufactured” mean here? Seems like an effort to try to de-legitimize the statistic. One doesn’t “manufacture” a count. And people say that you have a knee-jerk reaction to try to negate evidence you don’t like! Wherever would they get that idea?
FYI, the “manufactured” count so far this year is 112 (out of 151 days to this point in the year).
These open-carry activists are apparently too crazy even for the NRA. Here’s a section from a statement posted on the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action site on Friday:
Holy shit. That means that some people, including some posters here, are to the RIGHT of the NRA on gun control.
Why is that surprising? The NRA is quite moderate 
I don’t support open carry of long guns to make a political point, but I don’t think it should be illegal. There may be times where open carry of long guns is appropriate. I think constitutional carry is the way to go. I doubt the NRA supports that, though about 5 states have it.
Constitutional carry? What’s that - you can carry a flintlock musket as long as you’re in a militia uniform?
I’d settle for just a powdered wig.
Something’s going on with guns that doesn’t seem to be going on with, say, cars. There’s at least a gun out there for every American, but most Americans don’t own any guns. People have been buying guns like crazy over the past 6 years, but it seems to be without a substantial uptick in the number of gun owners.
I expect that the majority of gun owners are sane, responsible people, but the population of gun owners clearly includes an irrational minority of nontrivial size.
An irrational, well-armed minority.
Yeah, I’d be scared if I were living in an area where they were abundant. There’s no reason I’d trust them to be no more threat to me and mine than anyone else would be. They’re irrational. I’d be looking for employment elsewhere, you betcha.
Because as I said a few posts back, most of us are quite aware that we share the benefits of cars and vaccines. In sixty years on this planet, OTOH, I’ve got no reason to believe I’ve ever benefited from civilian ownership of guns, nor have I ever been in a situation where I’ve wished I or someone else had a gun.
Also, I will repeat that despite the obvious benefits of cars outweighing their, um, carnage, we continue to work on making them safer. Deaths by automobile are down >35%, in absolute terms (i.e. not adjusted for population growth, mileage, etc., just the raw total), in the past 50 years. But efforts to make guns safer are opposed by the pro-gun crowd, even to the point of intimidating gun store owners into dropping plans to sell safer guns.
Sure, you can do the comparison, but for most of us it looks like (deaths caused by guns) > 0 = (benefits of guns). Maybe the presence of gun owners is secretly protecting us non-owners from threats we never see, but the evidence for that belief is pretty thin, AFAICT.
Please. Read the sentence in its entirety. Don’t pick out only four words from my sentence and twist my intended meaning.
Certainly more than what your typical CCW class requires. It’s far too easy to exercise this “right”: pay attention in a classroom for a few hours, then put a few rounds downrange and show the instructor that you aren’t a total fuck up with a handgun, and you qualify for a CCW, and for as many years as that CCW is good, you don’t need any refresher or follow-up training. Great. Is that who we want out there, armed and concealed?
You just made my case, or at least part of it. Then what happens if they draw their weapon? How many people does their barrel point to as they present towards the threat? Where is their trigger finger while they’re drawing?
Front Sight’s 4-day Defensive Handgun class provides excellent training, and I DG’d it on my first attempt, and I’m proud of that. But it doesn’t prepare me for being armed and concealed among the common public. I’m a retired Msrine, a marksmanship instructor, and I’ve run my battery through qual day on the rifle and pistol ranges, and all of my training, USMC and otherwise (including NRA), isn’t sufficient for having a loaded weapon in public.
But I carry sometimes. And I feel safer when I do. I trust myself, but I don’t trust any other civilian to be armed out there. Certainly not you. Like I said earlier, it’s a double standard. I fully admit that.
I hope to God a threat doesn’t develop to me or my family. I’ll resond, yes, but I hope I don’t F it up, for my family, or for me, or for any innocent bystanders.
My B.S. degree is in Applied Mathematics, with a Comp Sci minor. I know how data can be twisted to support the gun lobbyist’s side. Similarly, data can be twisted to support the anti-gun position. You have to be very careful with how that data is collected snd then you must use the data in a manner consistent with how it was collected.
Thanks for sharing this! I agree with Reagan here. (I’m a Reagan fan, and I realize many here don’t agree with Reagan. That’s cool.)
I hope to God the threat isn’t you, and how can you reassure me or anyone else it won’t be? You’re human, I take it, and susceptible to anger, fear, and even accidents, and despite your conditioning and training you’re capable of being overpowered in an actual confrontation. Your aim isn’t perfect either, I’m sure.
Ahh, now, you’ve hit the nail on the head. And that is why I don’t trust anyone else.
And I do hope the threat isn’t me. I am human, and far from perfect.
And I’m not about to try and reassure you that it won’t be me - I think that would be pretty presumptuous of me.
Therein lies the quandary, and that’s basically why, even though I am a gun owner and would love to hold CCWs from many states so I’m covered in most of them (CA - another issue altogether), that I am concerned about many John and Jane Q. Publics walking around armed.
But then, many criminals are armed, too. So, what to do, what to do?