All right, maybe the “Official Hunter Card” (or whatever I said) comment did little to get my point across considering people need to have licensing when hunting, anyway. What I should have asked was, “Should people have some giant, visible-to-strangers, Don’t-Call-The-Cops-I-Am-A-Real-Hunter sign on them every time they go hunting, so that busybodies don’t call the cops on them while they exit a vehicle during hunting season, wearing hunting gear, holding a (gasp!) hunting gun?”
Again, I have to go back to my point. Why is seeing two guys with actual weapons near a dangerous place like a nuclear weapons plant no cause for concern, when a bottle of Prell will shut down O’Hare for a half a day? Because you see hunters all the time in Texas? Guess what … I used to see shampoo in my fucking suitcase all the time.
Well, it isn’t as if the 911 switchboards all lit up with panic calls. This isn’t a slippery slope towards banning the NRA or something. I’m sure the little old lady across the street wouldn’t consider it worth putting down her knitting over.
I’m not sure anyone even called. They certainly didn’t call 911. The employees (who work at the NUCLEAR FACILITY) saw some hunters with guns, maybe they didn’t know if they were supposed to hunt there, so they mentioned it to someone at work. Maybe it gets passed through a couple assistants and sounds like “GUNS, GUNS, GUNS!!!” by the time it gets to the guy who gets paid to hit the “lockdown” button in situations just like this. That was all internal to the facility. Then someone called the local sheriff and said, “can you check this out?” and that’s about that.
I’m not getting the outrage.
2 miles away is not “near”.
12 oz of Head and Shoulders is not dangerous.
It could be, if mixed with the right stuff. But again, that is screening people about to actually board an airplane. Not people washing their hair 2 miles away from the airport.
Do you know what the chances are that someone is going to mix up a Pantene bomb and successfully set it off on a plane? About the same that two guys with shotguns might make their way to a nuclear weapons plant two miles away and start some shit.
Quite a few years back, shortly after the first OKC bombing, I was walking up to the entrance of the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC. I saw two guys in cammo, moving these very large boxes around in the back of a Ryder rental truck, parked on the street in front of the entrance. I thought it was odd enough to tell the guard as I walked in. He said, “thank you”, and didn’t move an inch, or pick up a phone or anything. Maybe he knew what was going on, or maybe he was just a lazy SOB with a death wish. 
Anyway, the museum didn’t blow up, so I figure the bomb was a dud. 
I recently read P. T. Deutermann’s book The Moonpool. He goes into a lot of detail how a Nuclear plant could be sabotaged.
Two good ole boys with shotguns hunting 2 miles away certainly don’t pose a threat.
Disclaimer: I have lived in “the big city” all my life, I am a Yankee, I have never gone hunting, and I do not know of anyone within my social circles who hunts.
That being said, if I saw people in camoflague climbing out of a vehicle carrying guns, I would be concerned.
You need to stay away from very large sections of the country then. You would probably have a nervous breakdown in about a day during hunting season and the police would tell you to quit calling them every 5 minutes. It is perfectly normal behavior in many parts of the U.S. and nothing to so much as blink at. However, I would be a little concerned if I saw some people get out of a Mercedes in camo robes and turbans with gold plated rifles. They may be trying a little too hard to fit into the local culture a little too hard and not get it quite right if you know what I mean.
I am a Yankee, and honestly, the mind boggles.
First, they were found two miles away from the plant, having been first seen some time before. We do not know how close they actually were when the Pantex employees, who are presumably used to people hunting because they live in fucking Texas, reported the incident. Then security was dispatched, and only after some time did they actually find the hunters. The fact that they reported it is hardly enough to conclude that they are just “yankees” or whatever else the smug SDMB clownerati wishes to infer. They were probably ordinary locals who had a much stronger basis for judgment than the armchair rent-a-cops upthread.
Second, the plant has some rather intense security procedures that kicked in immediately suspicious after behavior was reported. Want to know why?
Because it has more guards than Fort Knox and stores tons of fucking plutonium. If there were ever a place where conservative security procedures that don’t actually harm anyone might possibly yield some return, it would be here. With this level of outrage, you’d think the government were wiretapping phones or dragging people to foreign countries to torture them with impunity or something.
Or in this case, two country miles.
The perfect disguise for terrorists then, you mean?
Because it’s two miles away. Do you feel concern every time you see someone hunting? Should people in Bloomington, MN not be allowed to have a weapon because they’re two miles from the airport?
Yeah, and the new shampoo rules are stupid as fuck.
Finally someone agrees with me.
If we’re going to have stupid as fuck rules for shampoo, why not stupid as fuck rules for shotguns? Or, maybe we just don’t have stupid as fuck rules. Either way, I’m good.
You’re okay with stupid as fuck rules for everything, so long as we’re consistently stupid? Ha, fair enough.
I felt like an ass last time I had to fly, squeezing my shampoo and lotion into little 3 oz traveler-size bottles. I didn’t think 3 oz of lotion was going to be enough for entire trip, so --check this shit out; I’m a total genius!-- I used a second 3 oz bottle, and ended up with 6 oz of lotion. That’s right, TSA, I brought more than 3 oz of a gel onto an airplane! So apparently, you can blow up a plane with more than 3 oz of liquid/gel, but only if those oz are in the same bottle.
Hey, what’s with the Yankee comments?
I’m a Yankee, I own guns, and I live in the next town over from Seabrook Station. On my way to work in the morning I see trucks pulled off the road in wooded areas within a couple miles of the plant, and I assume they are hunting, not attacking the most heavily guarded facility in the state.
I drive past past the place (well, past the end of it’s loooong driveway) fairly often and I sometimes have guns in my truck. Should I be reporting myself?
By the way, I also see boxcutters in hardware stores. Should I be reporting the store owners, or the cashiers?
They didn’t twitch because of two hunters in the woods; if that were the case, they’d have a nervous breakdown, because it’s [del]almost[/del] always hunting season for something or other in Texas.
I’m gradually becoming cetain they twitched because some jackass saw two Bubbas with long-barreled shotguns and either lost control of their bowels (OMFG!!111 GUNZ!1!1!1), or, as some people on this here Board have given me citeable reason to believe, thought they were a couple of evil redneck peckerwoods out hunting poor widdle defenswess bunny wabbits, with their big evil guns, and thought it was their moral duty to put a stop to this barbaric practice of killing Mother Earth’s fellow creatures.
Given your stated position on guns, I’m sure you would love this as an issue for further restrictions and bans on firearms.
Look, people, check out this facility on Google Earth at 35* 18’ 30"N / 101* 33’ 33" W. Another lower-angled picture here. Watch the top banner; it scrolls through various plant images, including a few dealing with security. Note the up-armored HUMVEE with the machine gun on the roof.
This isn’t some standard office/commercial/industrial park; I’ve seen federal maximum security prisons that looked more accessible. Two guys with guns several miles away pose ZERO threat to a facility of this magnitude.
ETA:
Well, apparently, yes, we should! :rolleyes:
Well, boy howdy, you’ve all changed my opinion. I’m now firmly on board with the proposition that anyone should be able to wander around in cammo carrying weapons wherever they want as long as it’s hunting season. Clearly, anyone who wants to take relatively unobtrusive methods to make sure they’re on the up and up is deranged and hates America. Or has an unnatural love of bunnies.
Oh, I forgot, since we seem to be throwing these around…:rolleyes::rolleyes: