Lotsa health propaganda coming for 2020

[RideTheGlide]

Lots of assumptions made. I am not against people owning firearms. I believe in common sense controls. Trump rolled back Obama's executive order against selling firearms to certain mentally ill individuals on day one. I think that was a sensible control that should have been left in place.

As far as other forms of viloence in the world, it is true that people are killed lots of other ways. Here is a list of the intentional homicide rate per 100,000 worldwide:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?most_recent_value_desc=true

Our rate is 5, which doesn't seem too bad when you look at El Salvador at 83, Honduras at 57. Lots of others have it really bad, overrun by drug lords, war lords and gangs. At only 5, we are down lower with Kenya, Cuba, Angola and Sudan. At 4, you find countries like Lebanon and Pakistan. You mentioned the violence in the UK. They and most of the EU are down lower with a rate of 1 per 100,000. That's right - you are 5 times more likely to die of intentional homicide here.

Oh, and guess what - all those "other causes" of violent behavior - video games, isolation, etc, etc, etc - they have them too.

The anecdata about gun owners with no trouble - I have some stories also. 5 per 100,000 is a low number and most of use won't be killed that way. But is it really acceptable to have a rate 5 times that of peer countries?

[Area 10]

Night Wing, that’s a nice fantasy you have described - where you are the hero saving all the people, with bare feet like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. But sadly life doesn’t go down like it does in the movies. Your bullet would probably e.g. go straight through the gunman and kill an 8 year-old girl. That’s the way life is. It bites you in the ass.

You’d be more likely to save peoples’ lives by volunteering at a crisis centre for people with mental health problems. Especially depressed and disenfranchised young men having suicidal and nihilistic thoughts. Then you really would be a hero.

[Night Wing]

Nightwing:
Like you, I own a lot of guns. Like you, I've never accidentally discharged one or shot anyone. I'm not actually certain how many, a couple of pistols, a few deer/elk rifles, a few accurized .22's that I built, lots of shotguns. I don't view any of them as personal protection, just sport. Would I mind having them turned into high-grade steel if there was a national gun elimination policy? Not at all.

Take the pistols, leave me a shotgun and a deer rifle and I'm fine. I'm not part of a militia. I don't connect guns to my manhood. I have seen firsthand how many people who I wouldn't trust with a slingshot are armed to the teeth. Would I give up my guns to have them disarmed? You bet. I'll bet dollars to donuts you know people like that too.

I'm a little like you some ways and in other ways, I'm not.

All of my rifles and shotguns I've owned were for hunting. The centerfire rifles were used to hunt deer and wild hogs. When it comes to game, everything I have ever killed with my rifles, I ate the wild game.

My shotguns were "originally" used to hunt birds (quail, pheasant, doves, ducks) and I ate every bird I killed with my shotguns. Rabbits and squirrels were also table fare and I used my shotguns for these animals as well.

The 22 caliber rifles were used primarily for target shooting and in reality, to get me to used to a rifle when I moved up to the bigger centerfire rifle calibers with their kick.

Our handguns were mostly used for tactical combat training and my dad taught me those tactics starting when I was 16 years old.

Unlike you, even if there was a new law which would disarm the American people, I would never turn in my firearms to the government. Not now, not ever. As the say and I'm sure you will understand my reasoning behind my "never" statement. The reason is; "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions".

Of all of my 12 firearms I presently own, 9 of them were mine, 3 of them belonged to my late dad. Two of my late dad's firearms hold a very special significance to me. And those two are below.

My late dad had a Remington Model 700 bolt action deer hunting rifle in 243 caliber. But he always liked a Winchester Model 70 in 270 caliber. But he would never buy one because at that time, all the 270's came with a 22" barrel.

One day I got a wild hare and called up the Winchester factory in the month of July in 2000 and found out Winchester came out with a Model 70 in 270 caliber with a "24" barrel. I was giddy with excitement. Winchester told me there was one shipped new in the box to a pawn shop just 12 miles from me. I called the pawn shop and was told it was still there and not spoken for. I told the person I wanted it and I would be there in 20 minutes.

The person was right on the money since it was a Winchester Model 70 Classic Classic Sporter with a tapered barrel in a 24" length. I bought that rifle and gave it to my dad that July. We had scheduled a November 2000 year deer hunt together. And I was really looking forward to this trip since my dad was 85 years old.

But disaster struck. My dad had a massive heart attack in the October of 2000 and passed away, two weeks short of our hunting trip together. To make a long story short, since I lived 221 miles from my parents home, when I returned to my home, after selling his house and squaring things away (I spent two two months at his house), when I returned home, his Winchester Model 70 rifle came with me.

And so did his stainless steel 4" barreled Smith & Wesson Model 66 Combat Magnum 6 shot revolver with target sights in 357 caliber which became mine and which is now my licensed concealed handgun. As for handguns; handguns have their place, but not in the place where, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions".

I'm old and I don't care if people call me a "fuddy duddy" or a "luddite". I'm not naive or gullible. Criminals do not obey laws and if need be when "push comes to shove", neither will I. 

Sooner or later, if you (or someone like you) find yourselves in an active shooter situation in a large public place, you better hope there is someone standing close to you wearing a long sleeve sport coat on a hot summer day, just like I do, because what is underneath that someone's sport coat just might save your life.............if you get my drift.

[RideTheGlide]

Pono & NightWing,

I don't have much issue with you being able to have a weapon that could take out an active shooter. I have a little; I think you should have to take a test like a driver would before they can hit the streets in a car. The shooter in Dayton was killed in under a minute, but he shot 35 people. I have a very big issue with people being able to walk around with high capacity rapid fire weapons.

[Night Wing]

Night Wing, that’s a nice fantasy you have described - where you are the hero saving all the people, with bare feet like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. But sadly life doesn’t go down like it does in the movies. Your bullet would probably e.g. go straight through the gunman and kill an 8 year-old girl. That’s the way life is. It bites you in the ass.

You’d be more likely to save peoples’ lives by volunteering at a crisis centre for people with mental health problems. Especially depressed and disenfranchised young men having suicidal and nihilistic thoughts. Then you really would be a hero.

It is not fantasy. Some people can take a life and some people can't. I've known all my life I could take a life if need be. And I'm just like my late dad. And this wasn't about being a hero. The only person I'm saving was "me".

And for your comment about putting a bullet through a shooter and hitting an 8 year old girl and killing her, in this day and age parents teach their children to run from shooters. Not stand around to be used as a stationary target. The mother or father will instinctively run away from the shooter and the child will be running also with their parents or their parents will be carrying the child.

One last item. I'm not from the "hand wringing" or "bleeding heart" persuasion. I don't care if a shooter is "having a bad day, has a history of mental illness, is disenfranchised with suicidal or nilhilistic thoughts or is pissed off if I don't bend to the shooter's ideology". If a shooter comes across me in a public place and I'm carrying a concealed handgun, then I'm the shooter's immediate problem because I have no qualms about killing a shooter no matter what the shooters problem is. To put it bluntly, I'd be a lone shooter's unexpected nightmare because my backbone "doesn't" have the consistency of jello either.

I figure it this way. if a shooter crosses my path, there are only two outcomes. With my combat firearms training which I do 4 times a year and have been doing for the last 30 years, the shooter has about a 1% chance of killing me while I have about a 99% chance of killing the shooter. And I like those odds.

If I don't keep up with my firearms skills, my skills will degrade over time. And since I have to re-qualify on the shooting range every so often to keep my concealed handgun license "active", I make sure I pass on the very first time when I re-qualify because a shooter "isn't going to give me a second chance".

When I re-qualify, the person who is giving me my re-qualifying test on the shooting range will tell me, "this is one time only". I either pass and keep my license or I fail and I lose my license. But I know I will always pass the test because on the outdoor shooting ranges I go to, to keep my skills from slipping, I practice at longer shooting distances that what the state of Texas official shooting distance is, to get or keep a concealed handgun license.

Now for another hypothetical scenario.

If you lived where I live and had a concealed handgun license and you were carrying a concealed handgun on your person; if you were in a enclosed place where there was an active shooter coming your way, would you go towards the shooter and engage the shooter or would you turn tail and hurriedly go the opposite way?

[LBsup]

Hi Night Wing,  Do you think there should be a ban on automatic weapons?

[RideTheGlide]

If you lived where I live and had a concealed handgun license and you were carrying a concealed handgun on your person; if you were in a enclosed place where there was an active shooter coming your way, would you go towards the shooter and engage the shooter or would you turn tail and hurriedly go the opposite way?

If I were in that situation, I would draw and fire if the shooter came my way. I would not draw a weapon and start moving into the area where the shooter is. LEOs show up and are confused by a civilian with a gun out. Others with your same mind set may be moving in also and you can end up shooting at each other. Lots of these shooters are trained and wearing body armor. Anyway, there are many things that can go wrong.

IMO, we need to do more to try to prevent these situations from happening in the first place and try to limit the carnage when they do by limiting access to high capacity rapid fire guns to those that can prove a need.

[Night Wing]

If you lived where I live and had a concealed handgun license and you were carrying a concealed handgun on your person; if you were in a enclosed place where there was an active shooter coming your way, would you go towards the shooter and engage the shooter or would you turn tail and hurriedly go the opposite way?

If I were in that situation, I would draw and fire if the shooter came my way. I would not draw a weapon and start moving into the area where the shooter is. LEOs show up and are confused by a civilian with a gun out. Others with your same mind set may be moving in also and you can end up shooting at each other. Lots of these shooters are trained and wearing body armor. Anyway, there are many things that can go wrong.

In my state of Texas, when you have a concealed handgun license, which I will now refer to as a "CHL", there is a great responsibility that goes with owning a CHL and in how a concealed handgun is used depending on the situation at hand.

An LEO is trained to look for an active shooter who usually has more than one firearm on his person and the shooter is also carrying lots of ammo. They are also trained to look for shooters wearing body armor.

So if the LEO's find me, they are going to find a guy wearing a long sleeve sport coat, a colored shirt opened at the neck, slacks for pants and on my feet, most likely a pair of penny loafer shoes (when it comes to shoes, I'm not a slave to "fashion". I wear what is comfortable on my feet) which I've been wearing for the last 52 years. In other words, I don't fit the profile of a mass shooter.

I will put my handgun on the floor, put my arms and hands high in the air, back away from my handgun on the floor while stating my name and also telling them I have a concealed handgun license in my wallet. The LEO's will most likely come over to me and while one LEO is covering me with his weapon, the other LEO will be going through my wallet looking for my CHL and confirming my photo ID on it and also looking at it to make sure my CHL is still active.

Continuing on. Most LEO's will most likely NOT show up in one (1) minute of time like it was done in Ohio. Most LEO's will (hopefully) show up in five (5) minutes of time. That is fast, but for me, that is 4 minutes and 50 seconds "too long" in time.

If a mass shooter is wearing full body armor including face and head armor, I'm going to aim for the shooter's head or face depending on what the shooter gives me as a target to shoot at. A 357 revolver loaded with six (6,) 158 grain Federal Hydro Shoks hollow point bullets with a post in the bottom of the hollow point, each bullet packs a lot of foot pounds of energy.

If my 357 bullet would hit a mass shooter in the head or face, even with the shooter wearing face and head armor, the 357 bullet is going to knock the shooter to the ground on his backside. And if you don't believe me with regards to the foot pounds of energy, go find a bullet ballistics table on the internet and look it up. Then with the mass shooter lying on the ground, I would run over to the shooter and kick his weapon away from him and keep my weapon trained on his head or face until the LEO's show up.

Now, if there is another CHL guy in the place, we would find a way to quickly communicate with each other and then tag team the mass shooter until the LEO's show up. If fhe LEO's don't show up in time, then it would be up to us to take the shooter out.










 

[RideTheGlide]

Nightwing,
Profiling? Really? That's part of your potential plan?

There is a common profile in mental/emotional state:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-04/el-paso-dayton-gilroy-mass-shooters-data

Physical attributes? Not so much, except for the last couple of years where they have been almost exclusively white males. Lots of follow up stories with various pictures that look like just another average guy. I would hope the LEOs would be better trained than to discount the possibility that you were the shooter based on appearance. But following protocol, after wasting a couple of minutes of precious time, they would figure out you probably weren't involved.

BTW, I strongly agree with the conclusion of the linked article:

Instead of simply rehearsing for the inevitable, we need to use that data to drive effective prevention strategies.

[Wetstuff]

'Save me Heysus, from those who would save me.'  When you listen to 'gun nuts' speak, there is an inflated sense of self, and paranoia, that changes gun ownership from defensive/sport use to judgemental aggression.  I would never knowingly walk into a public facility where some civilian was armed. 

I was supposedly trained to shoot in the Army, they give you little badges. BUT, they had God's good sense—not to let us play with guns like pet Cobras ...or obsess with their biblical potential to right the wrongs of the unjust/unworthy  ...or overcome a poor relationship with our mothers.

The guys I know who used them in Asia—used them hard.  They maintain some historical/experiential prejudices but none would walk the streets with a weapon.  This is truly a unique, national pathology that will likely not see a cure in my lifetime. 

Jim

[eastbound]

we have a serious problem with many types of gun violence in our country

in many ways the milk is spilt, given the incredible number of guns already floating around in our country

it is time that the gun manufacturers and the nra no longer control the gun agenda, so we can finally work to rein in gun violence in our country

we need to get going asap to study our problems and work to fix the terrible gun violence in our country

who the eff thought that the 100 round magazines should be legal and easily bought by effing civilians?

this device allowed the dayton shooter to shoot 45 rounds in less than one minute--appalling---is this a democracy?? really??

[Bean]

This really becomes a question about whether meaningful gun legislation could be enacted without diminishing the checks and balances provided by the 2nd Amendment. That is of course, only if you subscribe to the premise that the Amendment actually provides any significant form of checks and balances. 

[RideTheGlide]

This really becomes a question about whether meaningful gun legislation could be enacted without diminishing the checks and balances provided by the 2nd Amendment. That is of course, only if you subscribe to the premise that the Amendment actually provides any significant form of checks and balances.

Big can of worms if you read some of the old correspondence with Alexander Hamilton. It's pretty clear that how it is currently interpreted was not the intent. It was intermingled with the idea of not having a standing army.

The NRA and some gun owners are intractable as far as any compromise goes. They see even the slightest changes as a first step to taking away their guns. most of us are fine with people having guns for reasonable uses - target shooting, hunting and even personal protection in places where no other measures provide it. But I would like to see other measures providing protection in public places.

[eastbound]

i think the second amendment has little to do with contemporary society

fewer than 25% of americans own a gun

we dont need another hero

[Bean]

EB, if you are saying that we should scrap the 2nd Amendment, are there other checks and balances within the Constitution that you are also prepared to let go?