I can think of many an issue in the US that would not equate to being "free, modern or progressive"...Originally Posted by Alan
I can think of many an issue in the US that would not equate to being "free, modern or progressive"...
And why is the government free to do whatever it wants? Isn't it a servant of the people, or have we advanced beyond that?
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
Good - Someone I can hide behind :-)!!
But seriously, I know that several other's have mentioned that even a professionally trained marksman wouldn't have been able to shoot this guy because of the smoke, darkness and people running and josutling each other. And I totally agree. However, with the exception of a "Lone Gunman in the Bell Tower" kind of thing, these kinds of shootings almost always follow a certain pattern. After people run away or hide and things calm down a bit, the gunman usually will walk thru whatever area he/she is in indiscriminatly shooting those people in hiding. This happened in Columbine, in VA Tech, in Toronto, in pretty much every mass shooting ever - often times killing more people during that time then in the chaotic beginning. That is the time when someone who is armed can "probably" attempt to stop the shooting. Why this man stopped is a mystery to me. Even with one weapon jammed he still had 3 more and could have inflicted even greater harm and death. Maybe at some level the reality of what he had done caught up with him. As other's have pointed out Hollywood glamourizes these things but the reality is much much different.
Liizi - When I was in the US Coast Guard I was stationed on a patrol boat in Maine and we did patrols up to the Canadian border. During that time we picked up many vessels illegally running guns and weapons of all kinds up to Canada. Almost all were from South or Central America and the various caribeen island nations. I'm sure that the ones we caught were only a tiny fraction of the weapons that made it thru to Canada (along with drugs, illegal aliens, and pretty much any kind of contrband you can think of). Heard it's even worse on the West coast where they have to deal with smugglers from Mexico, China, and the Far East.
In the summer of 1981 I saw one of the boats that got by the blockade put up by Spartana's patrol boat. I was sleeping on a sailboat at anchor in a cove on the outside (open ocean side) of Swan's Island at the mouth of Blue Hill Bay which is between Deer Isle and Mt. Desert. I awoke in the middle of the night to see a large trawler and a normal sized lobster boat enter the cove and tie up stern to stern. The spent about 20 minutes transferring stuff from the larger vessel to the smaller. From the distance I couldn't tell if it was bales of pot, kilos of cocaine or weapons. I doubt if the cargo was legal because legal cargo is unloaded at the dock.
He He - that's what mine is for :-)! I agree with everything you said and I think most people have them just for plinking at stuff, target practice, etc... They aren't very practicle unless, like my sister, you work in a security or law enforcement field. Even them it's limited IF one adheres to the laws (i.e. no extended magazines, etc...). Of course criminals at al don't always adhere to the law.
I agree with the government part creaker and I do think that is a problem, but I find the first part of your statement more compelling. Freedom, to me, does not imply that we can simply walk around and do anything we want without limit or consideration of anything except ourselves. It comes with responsibility and must be exercised with conscience. No one should try to stop you from pursuing life, liberty or happiness as long as you are not disrupting the same pursuit of someone else. The Aurora shooter obviously did that in about the most extreme way imaginable. Even in our (supposedly) free society he had no right to do what he did. Different societies establish moral and ethical norms over time and they will vary depending on a host of factors. But even though there is no absolute set of rules, I can't think of any society in which James Holmes' actions would be justified.
Yes but unless we line our tin foil hats with kevlar then body armour is useless :-)! In Calif you can not carry a loaded firearm (concealed or in the open) unless you have a permit (I do). You can, I believe, carry an unloaded gun holstered but they may have changed that. So if you are transporting a firearm - say going to the range, having it in your car or on your person - it has to be in a locked case, unloaded and seperated from any ammo. I personally like gun control laws - especially ones that have waiting periods, age requirements, mental health and prior conviction checks, training, qualifing and re-qualifing on a annual basis, and licensing of both the firearm and the owner, restrictions on types of firearms, restrictions on the amount of ammo a person can buy, maybe some way to track large ammo purchases over time, etc.. While it is all very Big Brotherish to me, I also recognize that, like driving and owning a car with all it's requirements and restrictions, you often have to make concessions to personal freedoms for the sake of safety.
Last edited by Spartana; 7-24-12 at 2:53pm.
Ah yes, the one that got away :-)! Small world! I think we were down in the caribeen doing patrols there at that time. Lets see - winter patrols in Maine and summer patrols in the Caribbeean? What's wrong with that picture :-)
really interpreted this as just an existential statement, the way things are. I don't think many are going to defend the actions of the Aurora shooter. I mean really anyone want to argue for random senseless mass murder? But neither are governments having vast firepower and using it as they see fit some big cause for celebration. And governments (cough the U.S. government) don't always use this power morally (as that wasn't obvious). Governments having firepower is just the inevitability so long as well governments are instituted among men I guess. Wanna try anarchy now? Although of course we have gone along (even cheered?) with this inevitability progressing way too far, far beyond what is reasonable (biggest military on the planet, militerized police etc.) - crazy. How many guns do they need anyway?We're free to do whatever we want - just ask the Aurora shooter. But so is the government - and they have much more firepower to back them up.
Trees don't grow on money
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