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 POLITICS as USUALI have against the good people of America harboring weapons --- It's the out of control bearing and/or concealing of weapons in public that I take issue with (see: "packing iron"). My math on packing iron argues that the more people who pack iron in public, the more one needs to wonder if is it might be smart to pack iron for one's defense, and the fewer who pack iron ... ... ... ... --- well: You do the math for this part, Don. |
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minor typo correction I have little against the good people of America harboring weapons, but I have BIG issues the out of control bearing and/or concealing of weapons in public (see: "packing iron"). My math on packing iron argues that the more people who pack iron in public, the more one needs to wonder if might be smart to pack iron for one's defense, and the fewer who pack iron ... ... ... ... --- well: You do the math for this part, Don. |
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stalhandske 25-Feb-21, 06:54 |
2nd Amendment |
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stalhandske 25-Feb-21, 06:56 |
2nd Amendment |
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Nine It's my opinion that the 2nd Ammendment more specifically gives the people to bare arms to protect ones country against insurgents (foreign or domestic) and the occasional wild animal even if it's human. |
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I've never packed iron and I've only had a couple bear related instances where I might have felt more comfortable if I had had a gun to play with. |
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stalhandske 25-Feb-21, 07:39 |
2nd Amendment |
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stalhandske 25-Feb-21, 07:42 |
2nd Amendment |
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nine |
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Packing heat Think of the mind set it takes to be so worried about bad people and animals that you feel compelled to pack a deadly weapon to the bathroom, 'just in case.' Scared is a way of life I guess - home invaders, 'illegals,' car jackers, evil gub'mint, commies, 'those people,' muggers, bears, rabid wombats, trannies in the bathroom...... these guys are scared of everything. Lol. A water bottle, pocket knife, utility tool, space blanket, rain jacket, 1st aid kit or lighter is 1000x more likely to be useful. I'm with One - these guys just get a woody when they feel the weight of a piece against their leg. |
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We used a sierra cup and heavy spoon to fight most of the bears off during the good-ole days, but they weren't grizzlies either. |
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When the shoe is on the other foot. |
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Stal 7:42 and Zorro 8:25 I have heard that same idiocy about "armed to protect America from tyranny!" Anyone who spouts that is completely in cuckoo-land (NOT the Land of the Carolling Currawong!). As if ten thousand crack marksmen, all armed with assault rifles and dozens of spare magazines, would pose any threat to Armed Forces equipped with tanks, artillery and napalm from ground-attack aircraft! Because that is what 'tyranny' would use; they wouldn't worry about collaterals. The best defence against tyranny is the Oath taken by members of those Armed Forces, to defend the Constitution. Not to attack the Capitol trying to lynch democratically-elected representatives. Zorro, Don't worry about rabid wombats. No rabies in Australia, unless Johnny Depp's dogs brought it in. Or Johnny himself. It's the fully healthy Wombatus Ursinus Horribilis that is the big danger. I often wonder exactly how a gun can 'protect' someone. Does it make bullets from the other guy's gun miss the target? Or does it work on the deterrence effect? If deterrence, wouldn't it make the baddy shoot first from ambush or in a surprise attack, rather than just wave a knife under your nose, take your valuables, and then run for it? A gun does nothing except raise the stakes, and the bad guy will always have the initiative in a game like that. But even the deterrence effect is a worry. Carrying a loaded gun in public 'just in case' is incredibly stupid. Anyone can whack you over the head and take it. Or just shoot first. Or the safety could click off when you drop your trousers in the bathroom cubicle. But carrying an unloaded gun is no deterrent, rather a dangerous provocation, because while you're loading it the other guy will respond by shooting. Nah! if you want to be safe, then the smartest tactic is to be a threat to no-one. As Proverbs 30:28 says, "The lizard you may grasp with the hands, Yet it is in kings’ palaces." But how long do you think a free-roaming lion might live in the king's palace? I'd rather be the lizard. |
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I have a Dream.... |
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Athena Donald would insist that he be given number '1'. |
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The best defense And not to look like a target/victim. And to learn to deescalate. There are times a firearm is the best defense. That's not the question. but like the man with a hammer to whom every problem appears to be a nail..... well... you can see that attitude at play easily, even in these threads on GK. If you insist on being prepared for every eventuality, you'll be so loaded down you'll never move. But most of these guys aren't prepared for any eventuality - just the ones requiring FIREPOWER to solve. If it's a pandemic or earthquake, fergedaboudit! |
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Zorro 14:37 Australian police are trained to de-escalate where possible, using potentially deadly force only if required IMMEDIATELY rather than prospectively, and only to protect, not to apprehend. Sure, criminals know this, and that means some criminals escape. But they can be hunted down and picked up later. Better than requiring said criminal to kill the cops or anyone else in his attempt to escape. |
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More from Stan Grant By International Affairs Analyst Stan Grant So, Xi Jinping has eradicated poverty. The Chinese President has declared "complete victory" this week, in what the Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times has called "the great miracle". It is easy to scoff at this as a piece of propaganda, but it is not to be underestimated. China's poverty reduction is remarkable. In three decades, the lives of nearly 1.4 billion people have been transformed, as a country that could not feed itself has become the world's engine of economic growth, and stands on the cusp of usurping the United States as the most powerful economy humanity has ever known. How we got here. The span of Xi Jinping's life tells this story. He was born in 1953 just a few years after the victorious Communist revolution. By the late 1950s China was plunged into famine, which would ultimately kill as many as 40 million people. From the mid 1960s, his life was turned upside down by the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. What Communist revolutionary hero Mao Zedong started, Deng Xiaoping, as China's leader, built on, by opening China to the world and kickstarting its economy. Xi Jinping now aims to finish the work of rejuvenating the nation. He is a brutal authoritarian, locking up rivals and crushing dissent, yet he has delivered on empowering the nation and is now extending its global reach. Keeping faith with the poor is critical; it is the source of the Party's legitimacy. The party will make the people wealthy but will not set them free. Xi is breaking the rules, turning the international order on its head: China has embraced market reforms but rejected political liberalism and democracy. And he is winning. Democracy is on the back foot. It has been declining globally for more than a decade. Democracies have been hijacked by demagogues and populists; the people have lost faith in the institutions of government. Growing inequality, corruption and the monopolisation of power by a "rich-get-richer" self-serving elite have revealed democracy to be a sham. In a head-to-head match up with the United States — a country devastated by COVID-19, racially divided, opioid-addicted, ravaged by gun crime, with a seething, disenfranchised underclass, and reeling from the Trump years — Xi Jinping's China appears more stable and more secure. America is a warning for the West. As goes America, so goes what we call "the West". Just 20 per cent of the world's population has dominated the global political order: it has done so by colonising and dispossessing other peoples, exporting its own tyranny and, yes, making the world richer. But it was never sustainable and we are paying the price: with environmental degradation, alienation, hollowed-out communities, disillusioned and unemployed youth, a lack of vision. What leaders like US President Joe Biden offer is just more empty talk of unity and hope. It belies reality and the people no longer believe it. The West is failing its own test of moral leadership. Philosopher Herbert Marcuse saw this coming. More than 50 years ago he warned that the West had become "obscene": "…obscene in producing and indecently exposing a stifling abundance of wares while depriving its victims abroad of the necessities of life; obscene in stuffing itself and its garbage cans while poisoning and burning the scarce foodstuffs in the fields of its aggression; obscene in the words and smiles of its politicians and entertainers; in its prayers, in its ignorance, and the wisdom of its kept intellectuals. Look around the world today and try to deny Marcuse was wrong. We are living through a diabolical moral failure. In a world with enough food to feed everyone, the United Nations has warned that the world is on the brink of mass starvation and famine. More than 700 million people do not have enough to eat. UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has called hunger an "outrage … a gaping hole in the heart of a society". The World Food Program executive director, David Beasley, has warned that if we don't act "we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions". Which countries are most at risk? They are not in the West. They are Yemen, Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Haiti. While the West throws away food as others go hungry, it is also hoarding vaccine for the other world crisis: COVID-19. Just 16 per cent of the world's population has bought up more than 60 per cent of the world's supply of vaccine. Antonio Guterres says this vaccine nationalism is "wildly unfair". He calls this the "biggest moral test before the global community". But it isn't a test of the "global community", it is a test of the rich West, and it is a test the West is failing: looking after itself while poor nations suffer. Xi Jinping has sensed an opening. China is now exporting its vaccine to 27 countries: overwhelmingly developing nations. It represents a soft-power coup for Xi, extending China's influence, but it is also doing something good for the world. From COVID to climate change to international trade and globalisation, Xi Jinping is trying to present China as a responsible global power. Of course he bends and breaks the rules to suit himself and abuses human rights in his own country — particularly what has been described as genocide or ethnic cleansing of Uighur Muslims — but criticism of Xi by the West is tainted by its own hypocrisy. A shipment of 200,000 doses of China's Sinovac vaccine arrived in Bangkok on Wednesday. Herbert Marcuse said that corporate capitalism makes individuals complicit in their own misery. They are trapped in a system that offers them happiness in return for their own obedience and conformity, and at the expense of others. "The happiness of the ones must coexist with the suffering of others," he wrote. The answer, he said, was for people to "think free"; "they will not have redeemed the crimes against humanity, but will have become free to stop them". For liberalism and democracy to survive, the West needs to confront its history — its assumptions of universalism, the dangers of exceptionalism, and its own moral and political failure. In the meantime, Xi Jinping declares victory over poverty, doubles down on his tyranny and exports China's growing power in a world that increasingly does not believe in the best of the West. If China does usurp the Western global order, it won't necessarily be because China is better — it will be because the West is tied to its worst. |
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Chaz 1. The Right, generally speaking, want to minimise the footprint of government and are more in favour of individualist solutions. 2. Psychological research has also shown that people who favour 'right' political positions tend to be motivated more by fear than by hope, compared to lefties. Hence their traditional emphasis on 'Law and Order'. Putting these two together, I guess that Right individuals are more afraid of becoming victims, plus they rely more on their own efforts to protect themselves. This contradicts their demands for more 'Law and Order', but the subconscious is never famous for being consistently rational. Hence, the desire to be armed to the teeth. That fact that this allows possible attackers to also arm themselves to the teeth is again an irrational inconsistency, but we are still talking about gut motivation, not logical thinking. There is also a thin crust of those who argue that an armed society somehow prevents dictatorial government, for fear of a popular uprising. What a disorganised population armed with assault rifles hopes to achieve against a dictatorship backed by the largest armed forces in the world is another irrational question; winning any sort of conflict is perhaps 1% firepower, 9% organisation and 90% logistics. Guess who is behind by every measure. Some time ago this was a thread of discussion, and back then Thumper led the argument, but could never manage even an attempt at answering these criticisms. The whole Right position is, as you say, emotional rather than rational. The primary emotions are Fear and Distrust. Perhaps that answer might goad a weapons advocate to set me straight! |
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stalhandske 27-Feb-21, 20:47 |
Chaz- |
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Sadness “From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” AL |
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stalhandske 27-Feb-21, 21:54 |
BC |
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Athena "America will do the right thing; even if only because all other options have failed." |
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Bob, BC, & Stalh... |
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Chaz I said to him "Let's pretend you have a handgun in you right pocket right now, but I don't know about it." "OK," he said. I pulled my mobile phone out of my own pocket, pointed it at him and said "Bang! Bang! That's just in case you're silly enough to resist robbery. How well did your gun protect you?" "Not a fair test. I wasn't ready." "How many muggers give warning? At least I stood in front of you, drew your attention and let you see me reach into my pocket. Most sneak up from behind and the first thing you know is the barrel pressed into your back." Needless to say, he was not convinced. |
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bobspringett... |
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