I have all Western swords - for sharps I have two smallswords, one rapier, and one longsword. Fierra has a Damascus steel Chinese gim with matching short sword, a truly scary “workhorse” katana, a custom-made longsword and matching dagger, and an Italian sidesword (sort of between a longsword and a rapier in design).
For martial arts, we fence both “late” and “modern” smallsword, and “late” rapier. For sport, we fence the three “Olympic” weapons.
Even with that distinction, I’d be a bit taken aback if the model aficionado angrily responded “because I CAN and you can’t STOP ME!” and would think he was a bit of an asshole, if not somewhat unhinged.
And yes, I realize that unlike gun owners, model airplane builders need not live in mortal fear that any day, jack-booted thugs will batter the door and confiscate their stockpile of Messerschmidts and TIE Fighters and then try to hunt down the millions and millions and MILLIONS of model airplanes that are already spread out among the population of the U.S., in safes and closets and bedstands and glove compartments and basements and attics and…
(Please assume a large variety of smileys all over the following text. Otherwise I’d render it illegible)
However, from the mid-80s into the early-90s, if you took mass media representations at face value (indeed a risky proposition at any time) you could be forgiven for getting the impression that gangs and militia-types in the USA were on a shopping spree for very dangerous “military type” weapons that were slightly modified assault rifles, MPs and SMGs which were trivially convertible to full-auto with “a five-cent plastic part” or some such (e.g. the TEC 9). Thing is, those weapons that did meet that description were often cheap gear that was in criminals’ hands because it was cheap and looked gangsta, not because it provided awesome firepower (except volumewise when compared to police of the time who often were still equipped with 6-shooters or just got 9mm sidearms); but this in turn got conflated with legit situations of outgunned police such as the 1986 Miami FBI shootoutto create the impression that there was a risk from the easy availability of “assault weapons” in the hands of criminals, militia-types, and just clueless civilians. Why the law went on to consider the flash suppressors or pistol grips as determinant characteristics of the dangerousness of the weapons escapes me.
I bolded the part I want to respond to. Do you actually know, or have met, any gun owner who fits this description? Is it possible that you are responding to a media ‘bogey man’ invention that does not exist, or is very rare, in the real world?
Guns are very popular in the US. During the latest holiday season record numbers of guns were sold. The ‘Black Friday’ shopping day after Thanksgiving set a new record for one day NICS background checks.
These people are not reacting to some threat to take their guns away, nor are all these hundreds of thousands of people afraid of the current presidential administration.
There were over a million and a half NICS background requests in November, another half million in the last six days of December, 120,000 two days before Christmas.
Since you are charged a minimal fee for running the check, you can translate those background checks into actual sales. There are not millions of freaked out red-necks arming themselves for the end of the world. But there are a lot of people who like guns. And this popularity is not slowing down.
Here is a revelant CNN article:
I recognize those type of people are rare. It’s literally the next sentence. However, they do exist. And to assume I couldn’t possibly know about a type of person because I’ve never met one personally is silly. Surprisingly enough I’m actually quite the gun nut (relative to where I’m from, which honestly is not saying much), the only reason I don’t own a gun is because in Massachusetts, my resident state, you have to be 21, which I am not. Out of my own interest I have viewed many gun-related youtube channels and message boards. This is not my only view on gun owners though, I know a handful or so (which in Massachusetts is a lot) and while there is a vast majority of responsible gun owners, there are many I question, not because of their competence with a firearm, but their opinions about them and the importance of the second amendment (i.e. people who think the second amendment is by far THE most important amendment) Again, as I stated before this is an extreme minority. You cannot, however, dismiss them. I was simply making an extreme example to prove a point. Those type of people are the kind that give gun owners a bad rep. People fear what they do not understand. People see dude with a gun and assume the worst, because they only know what they’ve seen in movies and criminals. And as far as things like open carry go, people see a stranger at Wal Mart toting around a gun strapped to his thigh and suddenly they are at a disadvantage, because they don’t trust this guy and honestly why should they? This way of thinking won’t go away until every single person has a gun, or no one has a gun. None of which are ever going to happen, so the debate will never go away.
Great response, Craz3d117.
I wasn’t slamming your post, I just wanted to comment about the common perception that there are a large number of real gun nuts out there when there just aren’t. The sentence in your post that I highlighted was convenient to use.
And you are absolutely correct, people fear what they do not understand. I am glad to see you are a new poster here. You are being way too reasonable for the Pit. 
Reading some of the responses has reminded me of a follow-up question I forgot to articulate in OP. “The 2nd Amendment gives you the right, but is it clearly a good right, or do you instead impart an almost-mystical value to Founding Fathers’ decisions?”
Perhaps I’m hypocritical here. People mention “free speech”, “trial by jury”, “no self-incrimination” as Constitutional rights without articulating why they are good rights. I’d never question further because the goodness of these rights seems obvious to me. Not so with gun rights. The Founding Fathers may have worried that without such citizen rights, a maleficent government could develop more easily. Is this why we have the 2nd Amendment? I’m agnostic on the question myself; I just like to see honest understanding and debate.
FWIW, I’ve never asked the question “Why a gun?” nor heard it asked in person except in the MM film. On the rare occasions where I might have the asked the question, I refrained due to one or more reasons: shyness, apathy, desire to be polite, or just guessing the answer.
Despite America’s reputation for guns, I don’t recall witnessing a gun fired (or even brandished) in anger during my decades there. (This may speak more to the tamishness of my life.) I do remember a bridge tournament where my partner laughed, using the phrase “surrogate penis”, at our opponent who showed us an “Honorary Deputy” badge and concealed gun. (I filed the whole incident under Mundane-Pointless, concentrating instead on whether I had enough value for a three-level bid.)
Well, IMHO, it has less to do with the Founding Fathers, and more to do with the process. The 2nd Amendment wasn’t just put there by a few guys, in fact it was left out of the Constitution entirely as originally drafted (hence the Amendment part). It was the people who demanded the amendments, in large part via the anti-Federalists (some of the states that were unlikely to ratify the Constitution include New York, New Hampshire, Virginia, and North Carolina - some of them ratifying the Constitution only conditionally at first). 12 proposed amendments were given to the states, for approval by the various legislaures. The states ratified 10 of them, the 10 we know today.
So, the 2nd Amendment, like the others, was voted on by the people and has remained in place in spite of the capacity built into the Constitution to repeal it.
Missed edit window. Also consider this:
So, it’s not like it was super easy to get people to agree on this stuff.
And if you’re really concerned, consider this:
Uh, Bricker, that you buddy? What’s up with you and treaty power?
So were the other nine. But protection of free speech and security from arbitrary prosecutions are often treated as blindingly self-evident, while already in the very text of the 2nd Amendment they felt a need to include a justification (“A well regulated militia being necessary…” more on that later), thus precipitating heated debate two centuries later. Yet within a few years of passing the Bill of Rights many of those same legislators who approved of the amendments (it was not, could not be, c. 1790, the masses at large) were already chipping at those other freedoms (e.g. the Alien and Sedition Acts). The Framers were fine gentlemen but were part of a political class that were every bit what politicians have ever been.
That tends to be the Article of Faith. That because the brave Minutemen were able to rally to their muskets we were able to overthrow King George and thus we should be ready to do thus ever to tyrants. Or something of the sort.
One can also consider specific historic circumstances - the proto-USA was in a situation where various parties felt they either could not afford or could not *risk * maintaining more than a token national Standing Army, so for the first few decades they relied on local citizen militias for mobilization situations; but it did not take that long for these to be superceded by government-run organized State Militias. What did exist for a much longer time, though, was a reliance upon calling up an at least partly self-armed citizens’ posse for law enforcement purposes (still an instrument available to LE today). One could then read the two clauses of the 2nd Amendment as the first flowing from the second – the Framers saying, not that we want only people who serve in the militia/posse to be armed, but as that there being a right of the people to be armed (Note 1), we will leave it alone AND, THAT is what will allow us to raise a militia/posse (IOW as long as y’all are armed, in an emergency you’re coming along: we apologize for the inconvenience 
). The eventual abandonment of the citizens’ militia model then does not make the right moot.
(Note 1) If you lived in the frontiers or even in rural areas of settled lands, it would not be out of the question to be armed for hunting for food or revenue, or to protect your household from predators animal or human. The common law right to self protection would carry within it the corollary that you should be able to exert the necessary force to achieve said protection and have the tools for such exertion. OTOH it does not mean that* every* able citizen was a self-contained infantryman with his own Brown Bess musket. Hardly. Early militiamen equipped themselves partly from personal gear and partly from inventory of the town armory.
So, we who are here now carry the responsibility for what someone else has said in the past? :rolleyes: I’ll bear that in mind :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Try doing a board search, in Great Debates no less, and read some of the shit that’s been said to and about gun owners and gun ownership, all in the guise of “fighting ignorance” in “enlightened” political debate.
If you had been treated as such, you too would be…edgy, about anyone bringing up this topic. And yes, certain players are going to get the proverbial stinkeye :dubious: from several of us. If it spills over onto you, but you know you’re innocent of past transgressions, don’t sweat it.
Like my old Drill Sergeant told us after the company First Sergeant reamed out the whole company, “If the shoe fits, wear it. If not, don’t sweat the bullshit.”
FWIW, I think you’re aces. 
Fuck it. In my past I’ve been dealt shit for what other males have done to women, what other whites have done to colored people, what other Westerners have done to Africans, etc., etc., etc. What other people have done in the past ain’t my fucking responsibility, and I don’t like to be given shit for that. Same thing in here. Even with your condescension.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a gun that needs cleaning.
signing off
Oh, great, now I’m picturing unhinged asshole ARMED aficionados…
No, what you need to bear in mind is that I don’t care what your opinion is of our gun laws if you are not a citizen of this country. If you think you handle things better where you are, then stay there. I see no pressing reason to emulate your way of doing things and am not saying you should emulate us. Bottom line: your opinion is not germane to start with and your fellow Euros at this board have predisposed me to not bother listening to you. I don’t owe you a fair hearing, in any case, since it is our affair and not yours.
Don’t post on a messageboard with international members then, if you don’t want to talk to them. Especially one designed for discussion of topics like this.
“Euros”? What the hell are they? I guess it’s not racism, not being skin colour related, but “I don’t care what your opinion is if you’re not American” is something pretty akin to it.
Prejudice, generalisations, stereotypes, a nickname for a group of 500 million people; these things shouldn’t happen on this messageboard. 
Would your comment be OK if the desultory name “Euros” was replaced with “black people”?
I love it! You’re actually trying to play The Race Card. Weeping, creeping, Krishna on a cracker, you are pathetically retarded. I’d never dream of telling your country what they should do wrt to guns, but you are evidence they need to examine their incest policies.
Which country are you imagining I’m from?
“Pathetically retarded”, huh? “Incest policies”? Nice.
For the record, I’m pro-gun. I believe that guns reduce burglary, increase politeness (not in your case, obviously), and empower the weak.
However, I believe that you’re a terrible advocate for it, and incredibly bigoted. It’s things like this which damage the pro-gun cause, and it’s embarrassing.
How’s about I just use the “Ignore” function instead?
You really aren’t listening to what Scumpup has been saying here.
Do you think Scumpup has been rude and insulting in his thread? He’s been downright pleasant compared to some of the shit we barbaric American gun owners have had to put up with in moderated, allegedly decorous forums like Great Debates.
For over a decade, we’ve had “Euros” telling us that *we *are barbarians for being gun owners, that we are sick in the head for it, and if we were only as smart and as enlightened as they are with their socialized medicine and near-total gun control, then we too could stand with them as a truly civilized nation.
That shit kind of wears thin real fucking fast. It’s especially jarring when what begins as an otherwise civilized discussion/debate turns suddenly hostile and insulting, and then turns into a pile-on of, yes, he called it, sneering elitism. It predisposes one to stop listening to anything someone from a certain viewpoint or geography has to say.
They are still free to say it, of course. But we, individually or as a group, are not obligated to give it so much as a second glance, much less dignify it with a response.
Oh I quite agree. A gun owner shouldn’t be labeled a dickless coward, a wannabe Nazi, etc., etc., just for the fact of owning a gun. When engaged in a debate in Great Debates about gun control and Second Amendment advocacy, such actions shouldn’t be categorized as “Worshipping At the Church of the Holy Bangstick.”
And the shark has been jumped.
[QUOTE=ExTank;]
Do you think Scumpup has been rude and insulting in his thread?
[/quote]
Raise your gaze three inches up the screen.
I have no idea what that had to do with me.
If anyone had said that, I’d be laughing at them along with you. That’s an extremist point of view and very insulting.
Nobody has done that here.
[ quote]
They are still free to say it, of course. But we, individually or as a group, are not obligated to give it so much as a second glance, much less dignify it with a response.
[/quote]
Then do so when and if it happens. Don’t just insult enormous groups of people based on what they might say.
I agree too. They shouldn’t be. Luckily they haven’t in this thread, and certainly not by me.
Yet I’ve been called “pathetically retarded” and accused of incest.
Does that sound OK to you?