(10-25-2017, 02:11 AM)Galen Wrote:(10-25-2017, 01:59 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-24-2017, 12:15 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:I've got a big dog and I've got a gun around to back him up and protect him with. Geez, only a liberal would place more value on the life of a criminal than they do on the life of the family dog.
The creature above is far safer than a firearm, except perhaps to a criminal. With this dog, burglars (many of them rapists) are meat. It can read people for bad intentions, and it knows who does not belong where by scent.
That is a typical liberal, sacrifice a person or an animal for their benefit. These days that would probably get you sued by the animal rights people.
As a practical manner, some of us live in places too small for a dog of useful size. Dogs are pretty high maintenance and there are a great many places that won't allow you to take a dog. Come to think of it, many apartment buildings will not let you keep a dog. In that case I find a hand cannon to be quite useful and necessary.
As for the suicides, they will just find another even messier and more painful way to take themselves out. A tragedy to be sure but they are only a threat to themselves.
1. The dog has far better night vision than we do, and more acute hearing.
2. A terrier may be 'only' an ankle-biter... but that painful ankle bite can force a fall.
3. Your loaded gun poses a danger to the family dog just as it does to any loved one.
4. The gun is the easiest, fastest, and most reliable way with which to commit suicide. There is no 'neat, clean suicide' any more than there is a 'neat, clean coronary'. Any delay in committing a suicide, such as having to buy a gun and go through the hoops of background checks might give someone time in which to think of doing something else.
I have been there. I had a visit by the police after I said a few things about putting an end to a nasty, unpromising situation in life and debasing the value that many people put on life.
5. A criminal can turn your gun against you if he gets to you before you do. But if he gets to your dog before you do, he stands to be mauled.
6. It is telling that one of the first regulations that the Nazis imposed upon Jews was a ban on their ownership of dogs. Cats were OK, but dogs might deliver nasty bites to the Gestapo or the SS when it came time to haul off the Jews to prison or the camps.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.