Oh dear not another one.This must be the new AMERICAN shibboleth…losing hands down in a debate ,so lets change the rules…and pretend we are English Linguists and cannot parse…(a word which you do not understand) but taught at primary level schools and properly known as parsing and phrasing.
My diffiulty is trying to imagine you both, with a personality. Still life goes on.
I honestly cannot understand a good deal of what you write, because you do not use any punctuation except for the occasional “…” “…”. Punctuation is the ONLY clue that written language provides as to how the writer intends his or her phrasing to sound; without understanding the phrasing, a sentence becomes a mass of words that could mean ten different things.
I really don’t understand what you mean by this. I can kind of figure it out but not well enough that I would engage you in debate - you can’t argue with someone if you don’t actually know what they’re saying. Well, you can, but it makes both of you sound equally stupid.
Then again, if the final statement I quoted means “Nobody talks mean to me on the internet and gets away with it, dammit!!!” then you’re just an idiot anyway. Oh no, not another INTERNET TOUGH GUY! Internet tough guys are FAR less worthy of attention than those who simply don’t know how to use punctuation.
You have a personality. Don’t sell yourself short.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. :wally
Actually, Finn, your difficulty is that you jumped into a debate about personal choices, dragged politics into it, and exaggerated to the point of lying about your knowledge of firearms.
Your first post to me was completely off the wall and un-called for. You continued to try to support your ‘position’ (whatever it might be) with non-sequiturs and vague references.
If you have something to contribute, or would like to ask questions, fire away. The SDMB (Straight Dope Message Board) is a wonderful resource.
If you want to insult someone, the Pit is where to do it. But you better have a hell of a lot of ammo.
So now its tough guy and punctuation…NOT PARSING… then you’re just an idiot anyway…tough talk, OH FUCK ME!!!
You know, nothing i would write,punctuated or not would make one damn bit of difference to someone with your mindset; you are not interested in what others say,you want your tuppence worth in…YOU lecture anyone on parsing or punctuation,you little arrogant feckin asshole…your arguement was shot down in flames,so,as i said change attack to complete bollix talk…PARSING thats it, i dont understand him,and he can’t punctuate now…so how could i win.
Just who the fuck you think you are kidding,I can’t understand you, i’m lost. you know full well what i have said and meant, but your crybaby whiny opinions are bollix, so i’ll get out on a technicality…tough guy well what i said was Nemo me impune lacessit. that means… No one provokes me with impunity and no one does…OK AND YOU TAKE THAT, WHATEVER WHY YOU WANT you little fucking crawler trying to impress the board…could i just tell you one fact,and check it out, one of your better writers…MARK TWAIN sent his hand written manuscripts to his publishers…with a note…BOOK FINISHED…you punctuate thats what i pay you for!!!
And being witless I see you set aside special times to humiliate yourself in public.
slan
What’s my opinion? What argument have I lost in this thread, much less had “shot down in flames?”
There are two differences between Mark Twain and you. One is that Mark Twain had the good sense to hire an editor so that people could read what he had written. The other is that Mark Twain was a clever and engaging writer whose words were worth having edited and read in the first place.
When my father and I are in the same room, there’s sixty years of firearms ownership present, along with the firearms, and in all that time there’s a grand total of 0 injuries, accidents or negligent discharges. Do you have any reason whatsoever to suggest that I will ever do something ‘stupid’ with a firearm, or that I am, in fact, a stupid person?
I didn’t think so.
You can stop slandering me by suggesting that I am a knuckle-dragging moron who will do something stupid and kill you.
No. I keep my belongings in my house. I consider that reasonable.
Well, IMO, it doesn’t need to be fixed because it’s not broken. Since I live in the US, guess whose opinion matters more?
No doubt. Perhaps it has something to do with the image you’ve been marketing to the world for as long as I can remember – and I’m a child of the fifties.
Point being, as ratified by any number of posts in this thread, your society as whole tends to glorify the image of the gun tottin’ hero who only draws his weapon as a means of last resort in pursuit of justice – visions of John Wayne. While in reality, weapons are just as likely, if not more, to be used/misused in all sorts of wrongdoings/accidents. Yeah, sure, guns don’t kill people, people do, but to try to explain away the availabilty of same with the number of deaths directly attributable to the ease with wich they can be had is, well, worthy of the very Hollywood movies that glorify the gun culture.
As for my bringing Iraq into the conversation, how could I not? The whole fuckin’ murderous farce only plays into the very stereotype you’re trying to dismiss. American pseudo-heroes with the world’s most expensive killin’ toys and the willingness to prove just how tough they are…if by sending someone else to do the killing and/or dying for them.
“Bring them on! Dead or alive!” said the head gun tottin’ imbecile. Enough for most of you to finally vote the dimwit into office. Now there’s something to be proud of.
USA! Number 1! You can pry my gun from my dead fingers…
Gee, I’d thought I’d proven that some of us here DO worry about these things, and don’t support “the gun culture”, whatever that is.
If you really think that’s what the Iraq War is all about, I’m afraid you’ve missed the entire point of what America was trying to do. Even those of us who are opposed/uneasy about it know it wasn’t all about men playing with big guns. We honestly try to improve the world, blundering as we are–I can’t blame Europeans from being so afraid of trying, though, given their history.
OK, now you’re just being silly.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, this Irish guy who is a total stranger to me has insulted me on an anonymous message board on the Internets, and I therefore must cry myself to sleep. 
IIRC, you Brits didn’t seem to mind fucking over the North American indigenous population when it was your “colonies,” so don’t go pointing the “brutal imperialists” finger too far, too fast.
There’s nothing in that article to suggest that the shooter(s) legally purchased and possessed their firearms; the police are still investigating the motive behind the shooting.
You don’t know shit. 30,000 a year? Since when?
And another reason NOT to live in a socialist, statist Europe. If it weren’t for the beer, you guys wouldn’t be good for much of anything at all.
That’s right ExTank you just show us that you’re as clueless about over here as some of us are about over there.
Irish laws are just that Irish laws. They are not the laws in the UK, France or any other country in the EU. It’s not just one superstate…yet.
Ireland is not socialist. You ninny. We have quite a right wing government at the moment. It’s just we don’t want guns. It’s the 4th month of the year and so far IIRC 1 person in the whole bastarding country has been killed by a burglar. That was a women doing the dishes and got attacked from behind with a knife. A fucking AK47 under her bed would have done her no good what so ever.
People who have shotguns for clay pigeon shooting etc have to keep them broken and in a separate area than ammunition. That’s the law. It can be changed at anytime but at the moment people don’t really have a problem with it.
There is NO lobby for gun controls to be eased. No politician ever campaigns on it as it wouldn’t help them whatsoever. If there were enough people who wanted gun control weakened there would be politicians all over it as it would be a vote winner.
This isn’t the US so can’t just transpose your cultural views on people that don’t share them. It works the other way as well which is why I think the Europeans in this thread trying to argue about your culture are talking out of their collective arses.
We shouldn’t be making judgments on you about things that we don’t really understand and never will as we haven’t been brought up in that culture and you shouldn’t be doing it to us either.
One things that is clear from this thread is that Americans and Europeans can be a clueless and stupid as each other. That’s at least is one thing we share.
This is just my impression yojimbo, but I think what ExTank was specifically referring to was the idea that defending yourself from attack, a legitimate case of self defense, could be considered a crime if you use a gun to do so. I personally find such a concept baffling and frightening, to be honest. This is not a condemnation of Europe as a whole but rather a response to this one specific issue: Man, that’s is all kinds of FUCKED UP! The inmates really are running the asylum.
Seems pretty general to me although I agree it was my statement that sparked it.
anyway…
I went out shooting clay pigeons(great fun) and the owner of the shotgun told me the info I’ve given.
Once you have a safe secure storage area and pass a quick police background check almost anybody can get a shotgun. Most people don’t however as guns just aren’t thought of in the same way as the states. Very few criminal v’s public incidents involve guns. Mostly it’s bank raids and scum on scum shootings were guns come into play.
The gun license is given for specific reasons. It is not for defence. It’s for sport, shooting foxes etc. The gun has to be in a state so it can’t be just picked up and used. This rules out crimes of passion/heat of the moment events etc. as you’d have to put the gun together and then go get the ammo and load up.
You can use reasonable force to protect yourself and your family but from what I understand if you use your gun you are in trouble. I’ve never heard of anybody saying we need guns for protection.
I’ve been trying to look for the specific laws but google isn’t helping as I get a huge amount of US hits when searching.
If anybody corrects my info I’ll gladly accept it.
It sure does work both ways. Some of my responses were directly in reaction to the usual “Americans suck” and “you kill Iraqi kittens” nonsense. Now someone is dragging cowboy movies into it. Well, there is a big worldwide market for that stuff. Stop buying into the “wild west vigilante” image, and Hollywood won’t make any more. Meanwhile, don’t assume we all really believe it. Anyone who bases their perceptions on a movie is “out there”. That’s like me saying all Chinese are killers because of a Jackie Chan or Jet Li movie :rolleyes:
It’s a false argument, even worse than any of my arguments.
I do have issues with the idea that “the state” tells people that they can not use whatever is handy to defend themselves, if their home is broken into, or if they are attacked. I don’t say we should turn a 30mm Gatling or Claymore mine on a simple burglar, or anything like that, but the choice should belong to the home owner / victim. Any time a government says you can not protect yourself, it has just stepped over the line. Whether it’s a pointy stick, a shotgun, or a sock full of half dollars, the robbery /burglary / assault victim gets arrested for (let’s call it) using the wrong defense item? That is wrong.
It appears that Ireland has made accomodations for sport shooters. You seem to feel they are reasonable. But, the general tone of the antigunners has been to completely ban and outlaw all guns for any use. That is a “whole nother ballgame”.
IIRC, we stopped some way short of pinching the entire fucking continent and visiting something not far removed from genocide on them, though. And I bet the American indigenes would swap places with “our” Indians in a heartbeat - or with the Irish, for that matter. All of which is a little tangential to the silly supposition that in this day and age you need massive private gun ownership to protect yourselves from the risk of invasion. It’s just a romantic tradition based on the wonderful memory of the time you threw the Evil Empire™ out. You haven’t needed an armed militia, well-regulated or not, in, ooh, bloody ages.
Europe does indeed have great beer compared to that odd-tasting stuff you insist on drinking. Additionally, the inmates are not running the asylum. Despite not being able to mosey on down and shoot ourselves a burglar, we live in remarkably little fear of violent crime in our own homes. That’s not to say it never happens - only that we don’t consider it prevalent enough to need to go armed. We didn’t, by and large, even when the law did permit private handgun ownership.
99% of the native Americans died out within the first century or two of being exposed to the Euro-pandemic diseases brought over by English, French, Dutch, and Spanish. By the time of the Revolution, the damage was largely done. If the “colonists” hadn’t kicked your sorry asses out, the “United Colonies of Great Britain” would be “from sea to shining sea.” Maybe they would’ve treated the American Indians better, maybe not; the British conduct in both Africa and elsewhere argues otherwise.
Gun ownership is not just about protecting from foreign invasion; that’s one of the biggest misunderstandings the Euro trash brings to these discussions.
It’s about shooting our own politicians when they forget who they work for, it’s about shooting the “uncivilized” members of society who think they have a right to take by force what others have worked for, it’s about hunting, and it’s about recreational shooting.
Considering that, by your own admission, Europe (the odd nation notwithstanding) already had much lower crime rates even before enacting oppressive gun control just lends credence to the argument that your gun control measure were largely unecessary in the first place.
Now go bow-and-scrape to your natural betters, and don’t forget to tug the forelock, 'less you want your Lords and Masters to flog you, you filthy peasant.
The above statement has the equivalent level of understanding that the Euro-trash posting in this thread has of American culture and history.
As far as the beer goes: you got me there. It’s why I generally make my own or get it from friends or relatives who make their own. My cousin makes a Stout that has it’s own viscosity rating and is potent enough to knock a horse on its ass.
Taste-tested and heartily approved by a native German.
Now you’ve gone too far you young pup. What the fuck would a German know about stout? Lager yes, Stout no.
It was nvented by a Brit by mistake and perfected not 1/2mile from where I sit now in the Guinness brewery.
Sent some over here and I’ll give it a real taste test
I agree with you there.
Actually better still. If I ever make it over to your part of the work ExTank you can bring me shooting and then get me pissed on it 
World not work.
The Germans (Og Bless Their Beer-Swilling Souls) may not have invented Bier in all of it’s wonderful and various incarnations, but they went a long way towards perfecting it. Considering that (IIRC) they practically had laws governing the manufacture of Bier before they had laws governing most anything else gives them (IMO) a leg up on just about everyone else.
Guinness is great stuff, no doubt about it; but even it pales before Rauchbier.