Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Eric the Green]

(03-06-2018, 11:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(03-06-2018, 03:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(03-06-2018, 02:11 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-05-2018, 02:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Guns are dangerous. I'd say 97% of us would agree that guns are dangerous. How many people view themselves as dangerous people and view most other people as being dangerous people? 3-5% maybe. How many assault rifles are currently in the hands of civilians? Millions. How many have been used for mass shootings? Less than 100 over several years. The most dangerous gun in America is the handgun which are owned by millions of more people. How many people buy guns to kill innocent people? I'd say less than one percent? How many buy them for individual self defense or the protection of people or hobby/activity or hunting? I'd say 99%.

The AR-15 is a lousy hunting rifle.  It destroys the meat of the animal.  Owning one for self protection is foolish, since most uses are either indoors, where length is a negative, or in close quarters, where the same applies.  It's intended for use at 10 yards or more.  So all that's left is having one for the enjoyment of shooting it, which is pretty minor in comparison to the number that have been killed with it.  The same applies to most LEGAL assault rifles.  The M4 carbine is good in close quarters, but it already banned in any form.

Classic-Xer Wrote:The rounds that I use mushroom on impact and release shrapnel and make a large exit hole coming out.

The rounds from an AR-15 don't mushroom.  There is a video (I looked but couldn't find it) that shows the results of one round fired at a watermelon.  The entry hole is small; the entire back side of the watermelon is missing.

Indeed, inside a house you are better off with a dog, an animal that can turn on a dime from being a placid pet to 'the other Big Cat'. Dogs will often scare off a troublemaker just by barking. The dog whose bark you know is a strong, powerful, agile, cunning predator with sharp claws and teeth, keen senses, and great bite force. This is the worst enemy that a criminal can face, as is demonstrated by the use of K-9 unites by police forces. Dogs can disarm an offender with one bite, and any large dog (or multiple medium-sized dogs) can instill the primal fear of being killed and eaten. Small dogs can do horrible damage to an intruder, too, and even a kitten-sized (but tiger-like in behavior) Yorkshire terrier can do grievous harm to flesh. I look at a Yorkshire terrier with much more misgiving than I see with a cat of like size.... I do not want my ankles bitten.

It is very difficult to extricate oneself from a dog attack. I wish that Dr. Pettit of Cheshire, Connecticut had gotten a dog for each of the females in his household (that would be four), in which case the scum who murdered his wife and put him at risk from death and daughters would be dead if they tried to pull off the home-invasion robbery. Two Dobermans per attacker -- dead attacker.

Once the dog is neutralized, the dog is useless as far as your defense. What are you going to do when the dog is unable to defend you, surrender and hope for the best. Can you trust criminals with your well being, your life or the respect of your wife's or daughters or little children's bodies?

A dog is a good warning alarm, a good deterrent for an unarmed criminal and a bit of a challenge for an armed criminal. My dog wasn't trained to kill or attack and fight with armed humans like police dogs or security dogs or military dogs are trained to do on a regular basis. My dog fair very well with an armed intruder and most likely would end severely wounded or dead.

I don't quite understand the red mentality. You are not a rural resident, but you like to hunt and kill deer. Rural gun advocates argue that it takes too long to call 9-11 if you are attacked, so you need your own gun for protection. But there's a couple of things to say about that argument; at least a couple. 

Besides there being other self-protection methods such as dogs, locks and so on, rural areas are sparsely populated, and have less change, and so there's more community feeling (like at the grange), and less crime. In a rural area criminals are less likely to show up. In fact, the northern red states frequently have slightly lower murder rates than average, which means that their much higher level of gun violence almost entirely accounts for all their murders. There would be a lot less murders in northern red states and red counties if there were fewer guns there. And suicides too of course. But the gun culture in these red areas condemns them to more violence than need be.

And why do folks like Classic Xer and other gun advocates (who predominantly live in red states and counties; the red/blue divide is quite stark on this issue in terms of which states have gun control and which don't) constantly assume that they live in a world where a criminal might attack you at any moment? Why do red Americans have this view of the world? The attitude Classic Xer is voicing here is that you have to assume the worst about humanity at all times; you might get attacked by an armed criminal at any moment, so only an AR-15 or other military-style assault weapon will protect you in this violent world. It goes without saying that this attitude also influences the reality it helps to create.

Other developed nations don't have this attitude, and are quite willing to ban or control guns. Is this a heritage of the 2nd Amendment? Or our wild west history? Our capitalist dog-eat-dog (no pun intended) economy, and our individualist hatred of socialism and dependency on government and taxes? Or is this a "classic Xer" attitude of that generation? Or is it American show business? Or all of the above? And when will we start to put this attitude to bed, instead of red Americans doubling and tripling down on it in the face of contrary movements since the sixties and in blue states today?