General Interest > Tacitus' Realm

Thoughts abouts Virginia High

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Antigen:

--- Quote from: ""Oz girl"" ---Now now I dont think that opposition to an object that can only be used to cause harm to others is that crazy an idea. I do think that the whole America and Guns thing is something that outsiders will never get.
--- End quote ---


Leme see if I can help clear things up a bit. There is no lobby, no not for profit, no contingent or movement against that dreaded killing object. Absolutely no one is trying to eliminate fire arms. What the gun control people are asking for, and getting inch by inch, is total government control of killing force. That only seems like a good idea to people who have a very optimistic view of the nature of government. The rest of us don't trust the bastards w/ that much authority. Better to have everyone armed physically and mentally prepared and accustomed to self defense than to lay it all off on the government and hope they do it right. It actually works out very, very well. We have very little of any serious violence around here and part of the reason is that damned near every household has at least one serious hunter in residence. Guns are everywhere around here and people are so accustomed to factoring that into their caluclations when deciding how big an ass they want to be that polity just becomes automatic.

Oz girl:
Ive heard this argument before and  I am afraid it does not make any sense to me. If everyone in America *except* pollies and beauraucrats walked around unarmed but up in Washington everyone had their own Uzi I would understand.
But having a blanket law that says unless you need a gun in your line of work (farming etc) you may not keep one in your home or about your person does not seem unreasonable at all. Afterall govt may be bastards but someone makes the law an these are the bastards who do it. Such an extreme distrust comes across as paranoid.There will always be guns in the criminal underworld but this is where they belong. Not in the hands of peaceful ordinary citizens.

The idea of 20 yr old kids walking around a uni with a gun expecting that they will need to arm themselves against a mass murderer seems really odd to me.

Antigen:

--- Quote from: ""Oz girl"" ---Ive heard this argument before and  I am afraid it does not make any sense to me. If everyone in America *except* pollies and beauraucrats walked around unarmed but up in Washington everyone had their own Uzi I would understand.
But having a blanket law that says unless you need a gun in your line of work (farming etc) you may not keep one in your home or about your person does not seem unreasonable at all. Afterall govt may be bastards but someone makes the law an these are the bastards who do it. Such an extreme distrust comes across as paranoid.There will always be guns in the criminal underworld but this is where they belong. Not in the hands of peaceful ordinary citizens.

--- End quote ---

Paranoid? No. I've just been paying attention.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/ ... ctims.html

I know the mindset of the people running our government over here. That's why I don't trust them with sharp objects.


--- Quote ---The idea of 20 yr old kids walking around a uni with a gun expecting that they will need to arm themselves against a mass murderer seems really odd to me.
--- End quote ---


No, of course you wouldn't expect that because it's so incredibly unlikely that anyone will go postal in your presence.

But let's talk about expectations, shall we? You can expect that people will sometimes be at odds with one another. You can expect people to try and rob each other in various way and to fight over it. You can expect jilted lovers, disgruntled employees and students and others under emotional duress to act out of line sometimes. You can't expect any better than that from human beings no matter whether they work in the public or private sector.

Now put yourself in the shoes of someone intent on doing harm to others. Say a robber or rapist or someone in a jealous rage. If you live in DC, you can safely assume that, unless you get unlucky and pick a cop or body guard as a target, your chosen victim will be unarmed and no one in the vacinity will be armed iehter, so just carrying a .22 automatically puts you at an advantage over everyone you can expect to encounter.

Where I live, only a couple of hours drive from there, it's a whole different world. A criminal does not expect to find easy targets. The target or a bystander may have been expecting to go hunting later, but if he has to, he'll use his weapon on the bad guy. You don't walk into a store around here expecting to find the clerk unarmed so very rarely does anyone even attempt it.

This gets into behavioral science deeply! The mindset around here is just different. There was a cute story in the local papers a couple of years ago. Some joker pulled a gun on a teenaged clerk at a retail store. The grandmother in line behind this genius picked up her cane and beat him silly till the cops got there and rescued him. When asked what she had been thinking, she said she didn't think at all, she just saw how frightened the little girl was and it sent her into a rage.

People around here are entirely accustomed to upholding a certain standard of conduct. They don't expect the cops to do all the work. We've got hillbilly grannys for that.

Oz girl:
Well without coming off as all snotty and european in outlook :wink:
I would argue that heavy handed policing is definitely a factor which contributes to the culture of fear which allows a gun culture to flourish. it is like the chicken or the egg debate. If police were not encouraged to practice a zero tolerance dirty harry sort of mentality people would not have to keep guns in their homes and learn to shoot to kill.

As to the Nana beating the burgular off with a stick :rofl: I have no issue with that. It is all about degrees.

Anonymous:
I think people should be concerned with the normalization of violence via the media, Hollywood, television including/especially children's shows, overcoverage of the gruesome on the news and so on. It really does affect the way people behave.

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