Not anymore. Not after gun thread number 8675309 of the week where the insults fly with impunity. Anything you might have had to say that might have appealed to me went away after Der Trihs/BobLibDem/ElvisL1ves’ 1500th screed against gun owners. So I told it like it is. If you don’t want to be dismissed so casually, call off your dogs and discuss this like normal, rational human beings.
On the question of “gun nuts”? No such people exist? No such people with such a paranoid and fetishistic attachment to firearms that they would contemplate (or perhaps “fantasize” is the right word…) committing treason? The kind of person who only has one relevant political question about a politician: is he a “gun grabber”?
May we use that as a rough definition of a “gun nut”? Does anyone want to advance the notion that no such creature exists, that he is a chimera made up by “grabbers”?
Then they had best get over it. Because the curve of public opinion is clear, it is headed towards more restrictions and regulation. Mock their fears all you like, if you think that will help anything.
You want as few restrictions as possible? Then act calmly, quietly, and make the deals. Negotiate. Take what you can get and let the rest slide.
Personally, I don’t think any public action on this issue is likely to be effective, and almost certainly not worth the costs it will entail in enforcement and political chaos. But if public action is taken, it will at least allay their fears to some degree, lower the temperature on the hysteria. Give the NRA a chance to work its magic, slow walk and slow talk action to death.
Because if you successfully resist every jot and tittle of gun control, you are only banking the fires and ensuring that the next time something like this happens…and bet on it, there will be a next time…the reaction will be that much worse, that much more unreasonable. Scared people are not sane people.
If we are to avoid dozens of Ruby Ridges in our future, we must be reasonable, even when confronted with unreasonable fear. A position of absolute refusal is not reasonable.
The true “gun nuts” amongst us are about to eat a shit sandwich. They can have mayo, or they can refuse, but eat it they will.
Time like this, I wish I had Someone to pray to, but all we have is each other. And we will live together, or die. That’s it. Period. Full stop.
I appreciate your lack of hysterics to make a point. I also appreciate that I don’t have the full scope of perspective that anyone making “rules” would really need.
I have no problem with hunters whatsoever - be it for sport or subsistence. I was merely making a point that **August **got all butthurt over. Guns can not, and will never, be fully divorced from violence. No society which permits guns, especially as liberally as ours, will ever be non-violent. Since he got super duper hung up on a minor point about hunting - I guess he’ll get left behind. That’s what happens to people who get hung up on things.
luci, luci, this is the pit; this is no kind o’ place for yer sense-talkin’.
That…doesn’t sound recreational. At least to me.
Wait a second, he may be on to something. Right advertising campaign, this could solve a lot of problems. Not an ideal solution, but still…
I know, start in internet rumor that guns give off limp rays, that render organic matter that ought to be rigid all soft and flaccid. Like celery. You sure don’t want that happening to your celery.
You can’t miss with the classics! Well, you can, but it’s not as easy as it is with an AR or AK. 
I’m not going to pretend that the purpose of a gun is not to be extraordinarily effective at doing violence. But there is a difference between doing violence and standing ready to do violence. You can’t escape the latter in this world, whether you rely on a standing army or a citizen militia. If you are not prepared to do violence (or to have it done on your behalf) you will be preyed upon by those who are.
We may differ on how much of that capacity for violence we are willing to entrust to the citizenry at large (me, a small amount; you, perhaps even less), but it’s always going to be there.
Dang. How long have I got?
Its not the monkey who learned to kill who set us on the path to human, but the one who learned to cook. Female, a pretty good bet.
Being another who likes yummy venison sausage, I see it as artisan food gathering.
:dubious: Your practices are illegal in most states, condemned by Scripture, and offensive to all animal-rights groups. And how can you run that fast anyway?!
elucidator, I’m not sure that’s true. People’s stances on guns have increasingly been towards viewing gun ownership as an individual right over the years - with the poorest and richest dissenting and favouring gun control. Unless you have cites to the contrary?
Not catching the reference here. Politese for “Huh? Wha?”.
Regarding full-on gun fetishists who are preparing for the next revolution, I thought this post at TPM summarizes my feelings pretty well, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/01/rage_bait.php?ref=fpblg
Ha!
I just got that. :eek:
From Momosa on the first page:
You political ranters will not win. Guns are too much an important part of our history, current culture and required for our future. It just won’t happen.
The part I take some issue with is the “required for our future”.
I enjoy target shooting, and my son wants nothing so much as for me to find someone to take him hunting (I don’t have the expertise).
But any rational being, looking at the statistics, would have to agree our society would be safer without all of these guns, like just we are safer with seatbelts.
As far as I’m concerned, given that the lady in article is much more likely to have her four AR-15s stolen and end up on the street, or used in a domestic homicide/suicide, she’s part of a problem, not part of a solution.
I close with agreement, however, that “It just won’t happen”.