Right on, nametag. The main reason I don’t own a gun is that the firearms culture has become so completely saturated with just such mythic conservative Kool-Aid as you quote above. (I also hate loud noises and don’t want any more responsibility for deadly force than I take on when driving my car.)
One may own a gun or not as one chooses. But anyone who feels like more of an American when he picks up a piece is not someone I want as a friend, neighbor, or associate.
<$.02>
I didn’t say there is a “monolithic group of gun owners that commit violent crimes, or sell firearms to criminals, or leave firearms unsecured for children to easily access and injure or kill themselves or their playmates, or espouse less regulation, or advocate Concealed Carry, etc., etc.”, you stupid jackass.
That, itself, is an overgeneralization.
Blah, blah…my name is ExTank and I’m a fucking idiot with a martyr complex.
Excuse me, is that a threat? I’m going to give you a chance to explain how that’s not a threat before I report you to the moderators.
As opposed to your carefully worded, logical argument above, eh? 
That’s pretty funny:
“How DARE you say I’m in the NRA? Why I’ve never been so insulted in all my life…Think I’ll join the NRA.”
If you think that’s the “same logic”, then there is no hope for you.
Yeah, you’re doing a bang-up job of it so far. :rolleyes:
Well, you’ve got ad hominem down, but you’re doing pretty shitty on the logic part. What on EARTH does whether it’s voluntary or not have to do with my point? It is QUITE possible to be against guns without subscribing to a policy of physical violence against those with whom one disagrees.
Well then, how many anti-gunner’s positions and abuse must I listen to before I can, in your “esteemed opinion”, reach a tolerably justified conclusion that anti-gunners, aside from the occasional pleasant suprise, are narrow-minded, ignorant hypocrites whose bigotry (against gun owners) is matched or exceeded in scope only by the KKK’s bigotry against non-white’s?
Amend the challenge to read:
As far as my alleged “ignorance” goes, would you care to back that up with something more substantial than insults?
My apologies if you felt I was offering violence; upon reflection, I can see how my challenge could have been interpreted that way.
By a git. :rolleyes:
Blowero, I’m waiting for a response to my reasons. I think they’re decent ones.
Beware of Doug, I do feel vaugely patriotic when I go out target shooting. Many reasons, from family history… (Great g’uncle was an early Ranger, the histories say. Don’t know if we believe them, as they have him being scalped at 80, and walking home, but they’re darn patriotic!) to the same feeling of general satisfaction I get when I read Common Sense or visit the real spot Benedict Arnold was captured (Bout a hundred yards off where the statue is, or spend money in a truly capitalistic fashion, on something well made. When I do something and think about it as being an expression of my rights, inherent to me, subject to no man or government, I feel damn patriotic.
The gun’s just an expression of that. But it isn’t a bad one, really. Course, I really need a brass cannon to set up shop, but I don’t have anywhere to keep it yet.
I know of (and am related to) quite a few people in Missouri who stretch their incomes considerably with a couple of deer a year, thus saving money that would have otherwise been spent on store-bought meat.
Considering the hundreds of pounds of meat their annual take represents, one, perhaps two year’s deer hunting pays for itself in costs of rifle, ammunition and hunting license.
DOH! Hit Submit instead of Preview!
Anyway, I was just going to add that the money saved over several years has gone on to purchase other things; some necessary, some foolish (by my reckoning, anyway), but it’s their money, to do with as they please.
blowhard:
Fuck off. I responded to enipla’s stated opinion with one of my own.
It’s my opinion.
I have a right to it.
Since it is a vaguely insulting one, it belongs in The Pit, instead of IMHO.
If you don’t like, tough shit.
If you want to prove it wrong, go argue about it in GD.
If you want to insult me for it, well, go ahead, you’re in the right spot for it.
And now that you’ve had your say, why don’t you just shut the fuck up and move on to your next piece of inanity, already?
Or do you somehow feel the need to make me retract my statements? Since you can’t physically climb into my face (I doubt you’d have the sack to do it IRL, anyway), is your visceral response your substitue for feelings of manhood?
Or did I just hit a little too close to the mark with my comment about anti-gunners being as stupid, block-headed and obstinate as racists?
Nametag, and Beware of Doug…
Where in this world is dependency a desirable trait. Hmmm?
Rugged individualism? Is that supposed to be an insult? Whatever. I happen to think that being able to take care of oneself is a good thing. The better I am at that, the more likely I am able to help others. The ‘dependent folks’.
If everyone is dependent, just who is everyone going to depend on? I got a day job.
You’ve said nothing to refute it, and quite a bit to confirm it. Your bluster isn’t hiding your ignorance.
Nope, wrong again. I never said I was insulted, simply that your idiotic assumption was wrong, just like everything else you’ve said in this thread.
I notice that you have chosen empty rhetoric instead of addressing the issue, which is about what I figured I’d get because my comparison is spot on and you know it. You just refuse to admit how stupid it makes you look.
I got you beat by a long chalk in this thread, Skippy.
Considering that your initial response to me in this thread consisted of out and out insults in response to a simple question, I’m not sure if I’d bring up ad hominem attacks if I were you, but in deference to you I’ll use simple words. Being pro or anti-gun is a personal choice. Being black or not isn’t, dumb ass.
It sure is. Nowhere in this thread have I said that it wasn’t. It’s possible to be anti-gun without being a drooling idiot and resorting to nothing but personal attacks too, but if all anyone had to go on was you, nobody would believe it.
I appreciate your opinion that my post was ‘well said’. Though not as eloquent as I would have liked, I’ve been thinking about the lack of knowledge that anti-gun people expose.
ExTank, It’s ironic that those that seem to know nothing about the subject would call you ignorant.
It makes a rational debate pretty much impossible.
And I agree with your explanation of the slippery slope. It’s there. It’s clearly there. That’s why I now refuse to agree with any more gun laws. I’m not a stubborn person. Not at all. But when some of the individuals of a groups agenda want to remove firearms completely, I look at their ideas very closely.
Especially when the middle of the road folks just follow along blindly.
The rational anti-gun folks are OK. But they are unknowingly supporting a group that want’s to just get rid of guns completely.
I don’t own any guns, but I have to do periodic weapons qualifications for work… which is odd because they don’t give me a gun at work, either. Hmmm.
Anyway, do you enjoy playing darts? horseshoes? bowling? golf? any skill-based operation that involves putting one object in a particular location? Target shooting can be entertaining for exactly the same reasons.
I like all of those activities, except golf. In all fairness, I never really tried to play it though. I also don’t look down on people that do. Or prevent them from their game. Whatever floats your boat.
I also enjoy pool.
“Able” to take care of oneself? Nothing wrong with that. It’s not what I’m talking about, of course. “Individualism” is not “self-sufficiency” – it’s an attitude that goes beyond ability into defiance. It says “dammit, I’m going to handle this myself.” Admirable, if you’re threading a pipe; not so admirable if you’re enforcing the law. Those who depend on the police to capture criminals, those who rely on public transportation, those who endorse their labor unions to engage in collective bargaining, those who support and make use of universal health care – these people are not moral defectives, nor incompetent weaklings. They are civilized people who have discovered that interdependence is one of the crucial lubricants that keeps society working smoothly. Those who refuse this give and take often throw sand in the works, preserving their independence at the cost of others’ well-being.
Of course, a fully functional citizen must both give and receive, and there’s much to be said for taking only what you need, for minimizing one’s drain on resources, and for maintaining the ability to function without a net. But there’s no virtue in clutching one’s personal prerogatives like a child who won’t share his toys.
I responded to this earlier, but I’ve just now noticed that I read it wrong earlier, so my previous response proably didn’t make much sense.
Your question is sort of along the lines of the, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question. Gun control laws come in many varieties, from outright gun prohibitions, to size/caliber restrictions, to anti-hunting laws (thinly disguised as “game preservation laws”), to the now infamous Armor Piercing/Cop Killer Bullet Ban. Quite a few are nuissance laws, as well, designed with only one thing in mind: the further inconveniencing if gun owners.
Implying that most pro-gun groups are anti-control is disingenuous at best; “anti-control” alone implies that most pro-gun groups oppose gun control legislation. As I stated in my earlier response, there are a few groups of fruitcakes who want just that, but these willingly break from the mainstream, and go off and form their own small gun clubs/groups.
Overall, the vast majority (98%+ at a guess) of pro-gun groups support restrictions aginst certain people owning guns (felons, substance abusers, mentally deficient), and don’t oppose some form of background check, so long as the system isn’t being used as a “back door” national gun registry, something both the FBI and BATF have been “smacked down” for by the Courts and Congress.
Almost all pro-gun groups oppose Waiting Periods, because the real reason for a waiting period is to condition gun owners to getting guns only when the state says you can have them.
Almost all pro-gun groups oppose Mandatory Storage Laws, either at Police Stations, Gun Clubs, or even in their homes, becuase in the first two, its real reason is to condition gun owners to accessing their guns only when the state says they can access them, and in the last, it’s to condition gun owners into allowing the state unconditional open access to their homes.
Almost all pro-gun groups opposed the Armor Piercing/Cop Killer Bullet Ban initially because they way it was written, it would have banned just about every bullet type and caliber. After it was re-written to ban only those bullets manufactured with armor penetration aids (hardened alloys, for instance), the pro-gun groups dropped their opposition.
Of course, that didn’t stop Sarah Brady (and like) anti-gunners from trumpeting from the rooftops that the NRA supported criminals armed with Cop Killer Bullets because they opposed the legislation as originally written; or from espousing Evil Gun Lobby conspiracies after knowledgeable pro-gun experts were called in to consult with the legislative committee rewriting the legislation to actually make it effective without banning all ammunition.
You say Slippery Slopes don’t exist; the world proves you wrong, and American pro-gun groups aren’t going to roll over and die.
In the United States, anti-gun and pro-control are so synonymous now that any distinction they may have had in the public forum is now meaningless; they can only be separated and discussed civilly in small forums such as this, between people such as you and I.
Pro-gun groups now oppose just about any proposed legislation, because behind every reasonable person like yourself, there’s an unreasonable one riding your coat tails, planning the next “reasonable gun control measure” even before the ink is dry on the current one.
Consecutive thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=308160
A lot more than one anecdote.
You really are a drooling idiot, aren’t you? You said back it up with “MORE THAN JUST WORDS”, not “something more substantial than insults”. It’s not my fault that you lack the ability to effectively communicate in English.
And honestly, I doubt the sincerity of your “apology”, since you went on in your next post to get right back to your Neanderthal taunts about physical confrontations:
Here’s a clue: not everything is about physical confrontation. For a supposedly non-violent person, you sure talk about it a lot. :rolleyes:
Oh, please. Is that the best you can do? God, you’re pathetic.
Pot, kettle, etc.
Dude, I tore your shitty, illogical argument to shreds. Already done, my friend. You can take your KKK comparisons and shove 'em up your ass, 'cuz that shit don’t fly. You couldn’t argue your way out of a paper bag.
In your fucking dreams, son.
Look, man - you’re completely missing the point. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You don’t understand that it’s illogical to make pronouncements about an entire group based on one incident, and you’re wrongly harping on something that’s completely irrelevant to the point at hand. You need to stop embarassing yourself.
Are you paying attention at all? ExTank made an incorrect generalization about anti-gun people, based on one alleged event. Then YOU defended what he said. Don’t fucking try to backpedal now, you stupid piece of shit.
Oh, please. Hate to break up the circle-jerk, but ExTank’s very presence in this thread is what makes rational debate impossible.
Oh, you lying sack of shit. What’s even stupider is that in this forum, your words are preserved as you wrote them. It’s easy to demonstrate that you’re full of shit. To whit:
I present for the masses, in all of it’s glory, straight from post #303 of this very thread, your brilliant, insightful commentary that “tore my shitty, illogical argument to shreds”:
Wow. Breathtaking. Here’s a hint, child. You’re not talking with mommy in these forums. “Because I said so” doesn’t constitute any type of proof.
Actually, in this thread. Is reading comprehension something you have a problem with as well as simple reading?
I’m fine with that. Thank you for conceding my point: By your logic, the KKK is not to blame for the murders I mentioned earlier in this thread. I think you’re screwy for arguing that, but it’s consistent at least.
As I have demonstrated, the person embarrassing them self is you. Insults do not make a coherent argument, nor grandiose pronouncements of “it is so” actually make it true. When you can tell me how a voluntary association is the same as a genetic trait, I’ll admit that you’re correct. Until that time, you will remain an utter moron, and it’s amusing to watch you prove it over and over each time you post.
I’m not backpedaling at all. Ex-Tank was assaulted by a group of anti-gun fanatics. Referring to these people as “the anti-gunners” is entirely consistent with the facts of the story and common usage of the English language. He never said that all gun opponents were proponents of violence, you inferred that. When you read what he wrote, your knee jerked so hard it smacked you senseless, and you proceeded to jump to a conclusion that took you right off a cliff. Instead of reevaluating what had done and admitting your mistake, you’ve chosen to scream at gravity on the way down. It’s amusing as all hell, but not productive in the least.