packsaddle

"...a bunker filled with canned food." Smiling....I'm remembering our basement when I was growing up, filled with hundreds of jars of vegetables and fruit we canned all summer. I guess we just didn't see the need for so many firearms back then.

scoutingagain, I think you have to take the delusional paranoia seriously, if for no other reason than what seems to be its prevalence. I was just reading some of the statements by NY and CT governors on this topic and the thought occurred to me that perhaps religious leaders have something useful to add. But I'm not aware of anything from the Catholic Church or really, any of the other churches on this topic. Does mainstream Christianity call for more guns? The Unitarians aren't Christian and anyway are from Outer Space so they don't count. But how about Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. Do any of these find doctrinal support for more guns? Just curious. Oops, I just remembered Jimmy Swaggart suggesting that he could solve some kind of moral problem with a machine gun and sufficient ammo and, oh yeah, the Branch Davidians. But are those guys really 'mainstream' Christians? OK, I also just remembered...the minister down the street has an AR15 and seems to be a gun 'nutter'. So I guess the answer is 'yes', Christianity endorses more guns. It actually must BE what Jesus would do. I never would have guessed. Beavah, forgive if this is from one of the parallel threads (hard to keep track) but I note that while I support your idea for requirement of liability insurance for gun owners (it makes sense from the standpoint of responsible ownership, if nothing else), that idea still suffers from the same weakness that gun 'bans' suffer from, namely, that crooks and crazies don't often pay much attention to laws.

Eaglemom2b, I was just responding in the spirit of the subject given in the thread title. Sorry if I misunderstood.

"There are ornery, misguided people in the wilderness..." Heck, I'm ornery and misguided...but I'm not a criminal, lol. The vandalism you experienced would have occurred even if you were packing. It happened while you were not present. I've caught vandals before. One person had hacked down some trees in order to get a better view. In that case I don't think I'd draw down on the guy: the trees are dead already and what he really needed was some education...which I gave him. In another case, I have often caught people littering. Most of the time they'd rather just pick up the litter and get the heck away from my 'education program'. Pulling a gun probably wouldn't improve the lesson much. People who are going to commit a major crime that causes serious property damage or bodily harm are likely to pick a time in which its' not going to help much for others to be carrying a weapon. The criminal will likely either have the advantage of surprise in which case your weapon is just as likely to become 'their' weapon or else they'll do it when they know no one is around. Yes, I've encountered badly-behaved persons, drunks and the like. Most of the time, even if they're aggressive, I can just leave them in my dust. You're right about wilderness use. The more crowded it gets with people, the more often people will bring their bad behaviors to the wild. It's sad but true. But I still don't see that any of this is improved if all of a sudden there's an abundance of guns out there as well. Most likely, all that will happen is more people will get shot, and not necessarily the 'bad guys'.

Honesty, Eagledad. He staked out an absolute position and sticks with it no matter what. He doesn't try to 'spin' some rationalization for violating that position just because things are uncomfortable.

"In the case of rape, I feel that's an extreme circumstance that makes it hard for me to think abortion should be completely outlawed." Here is where OGE is consistent. He (and the Catholic Church) has an absolute position and makes no exception. I don't agree with his political solution but I do understand that he is being consistent and honest about this. If "all life is sacred" then that is an absolute that cannot be breached without violating whatever is there to 'back up' the idea of sacred life in the first place. You can't stake out an absolute position like this, then attempt to weasel out of it when it gets uncomfortable, AND claim to honest about it. I respect OGE's honesty.

OK, I'm trying to find out the origin of the idea that life is sacred. Help me out. What is the origin of that idea? What do we mean by 'sacred', in that context? Edit: BS87, life does NOT begin at conception. Life is a continuum. Human sperm and eggs are both human AND alive. We choose 'conception' to be a starting point out of convenience or some other reason I'm unaware of, but it isn't the beginning of life.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Thinking about this thread title. A few years back I was in a hospital for emergency surgery. That experience is why I know what it feels like to be stabbed in the chest multiple times. It actually doesn't hurt as much as you might think, but breathing is kind of hard. The scars are spectacular though...makes for great campfire stories. And...some women think they're sexy. Cool, huh? During the hospital stay, while I was waiting for one of a whole bunch of x-rays, another patient near me told me what had happened to her. She had had an argument with her husband and he tried to hack her to pieces with an ax. Just another Southern marriage with the wife 'submitting' to her husband, lol. Tonight there just was news of one more domestic dispute. The wife is dead. This makes at least six domestic fatalities in just a couple of weeks for this county alone. All of them from gunshot. Only one of the guns (the one tonight) was 'illegal'. It made me think about the contrast of that poor woman whose enraged husband hacked the hell out of her with an ax but she survived anyway...between her and all these people lately who were dispatched quickly and completely with the pull of a trigger. Thing is, punishing the perps is impossible for most of them - murder/suicide. The knowledge of the outcome of suicide hasn't scared people out of doing it as far as I can tell. I wonder if all those people would be dead if there hadn't been a gun in the story, if instead there had been a knife? How many people who would simply pull the trigger to commit suicide could get the courage to do it with a knife? How many of them would find it as easy to slide that blade into the chest of someone they 'love', to see up close their facial contortions, their eyes, tears, the fear, the screams? How many would keep thrusting the blade until the 'love of their life' was dead? To watch the blood and feel its slick warmth and still continue stabbing away? To hear their 'love's' last sounds as they take their last breath? Would all of those people be dead if not for the guns? ...instead of a blade, the simple, clean squeeze of a trigger and a shot spitting a projectile at high velocity from enough distance that eye color isn't noticed and quickly enough that none of those other things matter much because that projectile can't be called back. The motion of a knife blade is available for recall right up until it slices a filet from some vital organ. That bullet has a life of its own, distributing entropy all the way until it is spent and no way to think twice about what's just been done. We never had this kind of sad news so often about family members killing family members when I was young. Very few people had the kind of fire power that seems to be awash in society today. There were fewer people too so I admit this is unscientific. It's just the way it seems to me. And because there ARE so many guns, we need more of them? Sure, husbands back then beat wives and there were bar fights and such, pretty much par for Southern society back then, maybe now. But brass knucks were a big deal back then. Pulling a knife was well-known and considered the ultimate response in a fight. People just weren't blazing away at each other with guns, at least not around where I lived. THAT kind of thing was reserved for dealing with other races. Guns, in that sense, are a truly cowardly thing. I worked summers with guys who'd spent time on the chain gang for violent crimes. Some had terrible scars on their faces and arms and backs from the knife fights. Only one of them had actually killed someone, or at least admitted it. We'd talk about what they did over lunch break sometimes. They were a rough bunch but I wonder what they could have done if they'd had access to abundant guns and ammo? I'm fairly certain that the woman who'd been hacked to pieces with an ax wouldn't have been alive to tell me her story, if her husband had had a gun. When people tell me that people kill people, not guns, I have to question if 'guns' are completely 'innocent' of any part of these sad stories. Is it local? My answer is that the gun allows us to do these things in the most 'non-local' way, to spit a bit of high-velocity metal at great distance, to consider that other person merely as a target. It's not 'local' in the sense of having to get right up with the victim with a knife. I think there's quite an important difference. Do we really need more guns? Really?

A big student at the middle school is overcome by hormones and anger about something and in the middle of the day, she pulls a knife and starts screaming and making verbal threats at everyone around her. The coach, the custodian, the assistant principal, and one of the nearby teachers produce their concealed weapons and take aim. The assistant principal is scared to death to the point of shaking. The kid is so angry she doesn't care about her own life and sees the chance to let the staff do the deed for her so she charges right at the assistant principal. You think this girl deserves to die?

OK, now I KNOW you're talking about ME. No offense taken. Just try to read most of my stuff for the sake of comic relief. I mostly get serious when it involves science. OGE, it scares the hell out of students too. But that's all I have available...simple pleasures.

I have never used it, never even tried. I don't ignore anyone although it probably looks like I do at times. I know my 'drama queen' daughter has that opinion at times. But mostly I just roll my eyes and think to myself in my mind's own Valley Girl voice, 'what-EV-er!' and then just keep on truckin'.

As Vernon Pinkley said, "Never heard of it." OGE, this one is a cream puff.

"It's true that we're all much more likely to be influenced by factors that influence us than we are to be influenced by ones that don't." Wow! This one is going into a lecture for sure.

I agree. Plus it gives me an excuse to celebrate a little longer. Here in the so-called 'Bible Belt', I'm just a little surprised to see how ignorant so many people are of their own faith. Around here an Epiphany is when some bone-head realizes that he probably shouldn't be doing whatever it was that caused him just moments ago to tell everyone, "Hey, watch this!".

Yeah, everyone KNOWS that non-minority liberals are NEVER lampooned or ridiculed. Never, Ever!

Yeah, Moosetracker! What's the matter with you and Calico? Are you completely ignorant of our history? Everyone knows that Kennedy and Johnson were opposed to the Civil Rights Act and that Goldwater and Nixon were great supporters of it. That's why all the minorities flock to the Republican Party.

OGE, I care. I really do. I'm just trying to account for the difference I see in your postings. My family always uses the 6th as the 12th day and I just discovered that both the 5th and the 6th are used, depending on whose tradition it is. We don't take our decorations down until the afternoon of the 6th. A lot of people here in the South take them down the day after Christmas and don't even seem to be aware of the Epiphany at all.

OGE, I'm guessing you believe that the 5th is the 12th day of Christmas, not the Epiphany on the 6th. Am I correct?

NJ, at first I was a little surprised that JoeBob would bother to let us know that the writer was an Orthodox Rabbi and that it was somehow important that he had the largest Orthodox congregation in Teaneck. It also made me wonder how large the Orthodox community IS in Teaneck, if his was described as the 'largest' congregation. But overall I wondered, why is any of that relevant...until I got to the Israel connection. And then I shared your reaction (except for that part about 'my people' since I can't claim to be Jewish, except for a very slim bit of DNA code from a very distant ancestor - which if it does make me Jewish, in that case I'm probably also 'black' somewhere back there but things are already confusing enough...and I digress). It was pretty clear that you and Beavah were right about the intent of the diatribe. What I was surprised about is how completely I misunderstood JoeBob who turns out to be someone who 1) follows the advice of Orthodox Rabbis and 2) is terribly concerned about the effect of USA politics on Israel. The world is just full of wonderful surprises! Nevertheless, I heard something similar after Kennedy's election in 1960, Johnson's, Carter's, Clinton's...and this kind of hand-wringing probably went on after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (no need to mention 'W' I suppose). One other thing that caught my eye was the Rabbi's use of a quote from that well-known ultra-conservative, Adlai Stevenson, who in 1956 ran against the radical left-wing, progressive pinko, Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, that's exactly they way I remember that election, . Nice.

Yes, you're probably right. I just always wondered why my true love would give me nine ladies dancing. H'mmmm....perhaps this is a reference to ballet and NOT pole dancing.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Nine ladies dancing. I've never quite 'gotten' the symbolism of these various things in the verses. We did our annual Christmas bird count hike yesterday and cooked a traditional New Years Day meal on a campfire. But it was cold rain the whole time and not too many birds. We saw wild turkeys, hawks, a couple of species of woodpeckers, and various nuthatch/titmouse/wren species. We all were soaked but the black-eyed peas, collards, and corn bread were just fine.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

I guess my view of the political division could be biased by the fact that this region is so totally dominated by Tea Party Republicans. There just isn't enough of an opposition to present the appearance of division.

Moose, when school desegregation-thru-busing began in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system I was a student. When, for the first time ever, black students were no longer passed by but instead picked up by buses going to my school, the tensions and conflicts were something you cannot imagine. And they were nothing compared to the political divide that resulted. I was one of those student bus drivers. I saw that and much more first hand. That was the first time in my life that I saw armed citizens threatening the political process (not to mention their different-colored neighbors). Of course, back then the concept of an 'assault rifle' had not appeared on the street. Mostly it was revolvers and the occasional pump shotgun. Semi-automatic actions were rare and expensive luxuries. Vol-scouter seems to have missed what I saw and perhaps it's because I was at one of the epicenters that I have the outlook that I have. But considering that a decade later I experienced a man in Vol-scouter's state proudly proclaim that "...that was the first time I killed me a ni****..." and went on to describe the crime: considering that, I suspect Vol-scouter's state did have some of the divisions I saw back then. Or else that farmer out in the plateau was merely a criminal who would have done what he did no matter what. I doubt it. Incidentally, that was not the only time I heard such confessions in the South, there were other individuals as well. None of them showed any remorse whatsoever and only one of them (in the 1980's) expressed any caution for fear of being 'found out'. Of course these were things I mostly observed in the 'adult' world: teachers, school administrators, parents, politicians. The students...we just had the usual fist fights and the occasional knife fight. Guns simply weren't that available, at least not pistols. I only knew a handful of adults who had a revolver at that time and I remember the 'reverence' given to one guy who had an 'automatic', a Luger from WWII. Most of the firearms I saw or heard about were hunting arms. Mostly .22 rifles, an occasional larger caliber, and plenty of shotguns. Back then, double-barrels were still popular. Pump actions were occasional. We heard about 'automatics'. Like I said before, students settled differences using non-lethal means. I can't remember a single instance in which fights resulted in a death. The only deaths I remember back then were from automobile crashes (no seatbelts). Anyway, while it is possible that you're correct about things being more divisive today (especially up where you are), I think you do not have the benefit of what I've seen back then, the worst of which I find it difficult to describe. The anger and hatred was, let us say, not merely expressed in words or by stupid people signing stupid petitions.

I'm searching through the internet trying to find where the NRA says it's a good idea to leave children alone at home with unsecured loaded guns. Someone help me out here. There MUST be something to this effect in their gun safety literature.

"Well I think we are as close as we have ever been since the civil war for a new civil war." Where were you in the 1950's and 60's while the South was reacting to the Civil Rights movement?