Planetfurry BBS

[Kellan Meig'h]

You know, I might nominate you for President next time around. Good viewpoint.

*applause*

What follows is my POV. YMMV.

All kidding aside, what the USA needs are politicians that will step up to the plate and enforce the existing laws. The existing laws would address the problem fully but I guess it's more important to put money into buybacks, new laws that need some committee to oversee them and a pile of red tape to go with it (read; $$$ to politicians, nothing to the streets, where it could pay police wages).

There are laws that if they were enforced, would keep those that are mentally infirm from owning firearms. There are laws that prevent 'straw sales' to those who cannot possess weapons. In California, we actually have laws that contradict one another!

Some of this violence stems from our 'hands off' attitude toward things in general. The playground bully gets away with being a bully because the Education Code doesn't allow for punishment that means anything. We try to keep our kids from violent video games, which foster a violent attitude but we give them cell phones and tablets that will run these same games.

Our court system allows plea bargaining for gun possession while committing a crime. Doctors need to report those that really shouldn't have a firearm to the proper authorities. These are just some of the things that need fixing the most.

If you ever make it out to California, I'll take you to what was my favorite range, just for a few minutes. Not to practice shooting, but to see the 'Obviously Certifiable' folks that have been coaxed out of the woodwork by the latest perceived congressional gun grab. No hunting or sporting rifles, mostly camo-clad g00bers with AR-pattern and AK-pattern rifles. Terrible shots, too. These guys don't put game in the freezer every year, that's obvious.

On the last trip to the range to sight in the scope on my Vepr Hunter chambered in 7.62X54R (a very good elk round), I was chastised by one of those camo-clad nut cases for buying a rifle without a pistol grip, plastic/composite stock/forearm AND magazines that didn't hold 10 rounds or more!! Sheesh! If I can't take down a buck to fill the freezer with five rounds, five more sure ain't gonna help. By the (if needed) second round he's most likely tail lights down the trail. Besides, that pistol grip and long magazine are a hindrance in the field. I really wish that they made three-rounders that would fit flush with the stock.

And . . . since this whole 'they're taking away my firearms' thing started, I'm still waiting for two extra five-round magazines for my Vepr Hunter. At last check, maybe in two or three months. Maybe. Or maybe not. I just want them to have as backups, just in case one of the two primary five-rounders decides to quit functioning.

I'll admit to being an NRA life member but let me tell you, these camo-clad certifiable yahoo's do not represent my best interests. Let's just enforce the existing laws, please? That is the direction that the NRA seems to want to steer this thing.

Just sayin', from a former military member and a responsible gun owner's point of view.

[Aslaug]

Did you see Wayne LaPierre's embarrassing show in front of the Judiciary committee only last night, Kellan?

He doesn't even support mandatory background checks for all gunsales.

Look, I have friends in Denmark who are hunters too. I LIKE game-meat of all sorts of types. Deer is an absolute favorite. Wild fowl is -awesome- in many cases. I am all in support of responsible hunting. But let me give you a comparison. If you want to be a certified hunter in Denmark, you have to take a course. I believe it is six or eight evening classes. You will be taught a lot of things, chief amongst them gun safety and how to shoot an animal to put it down in one shot. If someone thinks you're a trigger happy nutcase, you won't get your certificate, regardless of how good a shot you are.

And believe it or not, it is national news if a gameskeeper or forrester finds an animal that has been shot "badly" and survived. It actually makes it into the news and WOE BETIDE the rotten scumbag who shot that animal and DID NOT follow up to the ends of the earth to put it out if its misery, if he is ever found.

A good hunter will put down anything from a wild grouse to a crown stag with -one- -shot-. Sure, people do miss ... that's why there are usually two barrels in a hunting rifle too, I guess. But one shot, one kill is genuinely a standard to aspire to for hunters, and I applaud that.

It is, in fact, what makes hunting an artform in so many ways. Stalking the prey, lining up a good shot, and NOT TAKING IT until you are absolutely -certain- it will put the animal down.

People who need four or five shots to kill even an animal as large as crown game would find it veeery difficult to find hunting buddies where I'm from. I've known hunters for many years, as I said, and I doubt ANY of them would voluntarily go hunting with someone like that.

Fair enough, I also know that you have creatures like elk available for hunting, and those are truly massive animals ... no argument there. And believe me when I say, I think you are a responsible gunowner, Kellan. You have never come across as anything else.

But this is about a change in mentality. Not just about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and known criminals, not just about more control or better enforcement of existing laws and not just about any other -one- -thing-. It is about ALL of it, coupled with a change in attitude towards guns.

If Americans could stop seeing guns as "cool" or "necessary" and start seeing them as "tools", it would be a nice first step. If they could be considered tools for hunting, that would help. They should NOT be considered tools for hunting people, and they should not be seen as "our only defense against the tyrants in Washington" when there ARE no damned tyrants in Washington.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: the closest thing the United States has ever gotten to actually having a tyrant residing in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was during the precidency of Richard Nixon, a man who wished to monopolize power on his own hands through clearly and provably illegal means. And he was forced out through PEACEFUL MEANS. Not a single, solitary firearm was included in forcing that man out of power when his rotten ways were discovered.

What does that tell you about American Democracy?

It tells ME that for all its flaws (and those are many), and for all its weak points (and those are legion as well), the American experiment with Democracy ACTUALLY WORKS.

In fact, it works astoundingly well.

And if you follow that thought even a few steps further along, it also proves that military grade guns are not needed to defend against government's tyranny.

Though I do, to a large extent, hold Tricky Dick responsible for destroying his nation's faith in the national government, and by association, therefore also this incessant need for more and bigger guns in private hands.

[Kellan Meig'h]

Once again, I must stand and applaud your attitude. Are you sure you wouldn't like to run for office?

*second round of applause*

A few more random points, then I'll shut up. It's late and I'm making too many typos.

You said it right when you said a rifle is a tool. Some might find a 'coolness factor' in some of my collection, such as a vintage, not reissue Winchester 94 Wrangler. Short 16 1/2" barrel, chambered for .32 Winchester Special. Lightweight, nimble to point and shoot, kicks like the proverbial mule. Guaranteed to bruise your shoulder or your money back. It's a tool, though. Plain and simple. A tool that I have used to put meat on the table.

And for the record, I have never needed a second shot. I was taught to hunt by my father, who grew up in rural South-Eastern Oklahoma before and during the Great Depression. The importance of 'One Shot' was deeply ingrained in my training.

And I can remember when some of my friends didn't pass the hunter safety course. A few of them never passed it.

These people that see a 'need' to have a military rifle, all decked out in the latest tactical bling just boggles my mind. Remember what I said about getting chewed out for buying a rifle with five round capacity magazines? Next time you're by a sporting goods shop, see if you can be allowed to sample the weight of one hundred rounds of .308 NATO ammunition. These camo-clad bozos talk about loading up four or more (!) 20-round magazines to put in their tactical web gear, just to look cool! I just don't know about them . . .

What's even stranger, those that see a need to 'have more guns' just because Obama was re-elected, they boggle my mind even more so. Buy more guns, so if he can manage somehow to pass the legislation to take your guns away from you, he will take more of your weapons away from you. First off, that doesn't make monetary sense. Second off, I really don't think a total ban of firearms will ever happen.

I think you and I are on the same wavelength, as far as the issues at hand are presented. I, too am very dismayed at my fellow beings for acting in such heinous ways recently. All of these senseless acts were unnecessary and I would like to think, maybe preventable if the right tools were in place.

If we all work together, maybe we can continue to make Democracy work, and find some semblance of sanity in all of this, some middle ground that appeases everyone and allows for the beginning of a meaningful dialogue. Maybe then, we can make things right again.

We will have to learn to work together, though.

[Aslaug]

I think you and I are on much the same wavelength. Fortunately, you are also reasonable, sensible person who ... as you say ... own firearms for hunting purposes. Your weapons are there to put food on your table and in your freezer (though I suspect you, like most modern hunters, get a certain personal and WELL DESERVED satisfaction out of the hunt itself).

I'm certainly not one of those people out there who want to forbid people from going hunting. Not only would it make me a prize-winning hypocrite to do so, since I like wild game myself, but it makes no sense. In Denmark, for example, there was a debate a couple of years ago about how certain politicians of the vegan variety wanted to introduce a total ban on all game hunting.

A couple of gameskeepers came on TV and shrugged politely, saying something to the effect of "Your choice, but we will need to find a solution to the deer-problem then. Because if the population is not kept down by hunting, we will have millions of them in short order, with insufficient living space and too little food. There are no natural predators left to keep their numbers down, except humans, within the borders of Denmark".

You know, it shut up the vegaticians with unbelievable alactrity.

But why does a private citizen need an AR-15? Hell, living where I do, I find it difficult to see what a private citizen would EVER need a Desert Eagle for either, but let's start at LEAST with what is realistic. Semi-and fully automatic weapons do, in my opinion, belong exclusively with armed forces and the police.

For hunting purposes, I again agree. One shot, one kill has to be the accepted norm.

Yep, we seem to be largely on the same page of the book here.

[Frazikar]

Nicely said filly, nicely said...

[The Silver Coyote]

In what some might say is a clear example of exactly what the Filly is referring to, former SEAL Chris Kyle was murdered last Saturday afternoon, shot to death on a gun range ... by a fellow American veteran, a former Marine.

You're right dear, there is something wrong with us, with our culture, when we continue to murder our own. Guns aren't the issue, they are simply the handy tool that allows us to more easily reveal ... and revel in ... the sickness that is eating this nation, my nation, alive from within.

There is something wrong with a people who desire to take up arms against the government they themselves elect, that they themselves empower. There is something wrong with a people who view the death of those who hold contrary opinions as a viable solution to their problems. There is something very wrong with a culture that breeds individuals who find it quite acceptable to murder their young.

We are dying from within. Nikita Khrushchev would be so happy ...

And before any of you decide I need to burn at the stake for my views, let me offer the knowledge that, like others here, I own weapons systems, some of which include ballistic firearms. I also share my life with a large canine, a German Shepherd, which is also a formidable weapon. I also own various other things, tools, toys, and what have you, any of which could easily be used to end someones life. I also own several vehicles which can do the same thing.

The point is this: it doesn't matter what tools you put in a sick society's paws, those sick individuals will find a way to kill with them. Deprive those individuals of easy access to firearms and the sale of edged weapons will skyrocket. Demand for the materials necessary for the construction of home-made bombs ... IEDs (improvised explosive devices) will increase. Ask anyone who has served in any of the past or ongoing Gulf conflicts about how effective some of those can be. Take away all of that and we'll start attacking each other with baseball bats and pipe wrenches and screwdrivers. Are we going to cripple one of our national pastimes, put plumbers, boilermakers, and pipe fitters out of work, and deprive every citizen of the right to repair his or her own home in the interest of "being safe?"

It's not the guns, folks, it's the warped, twisted, sick individuals that are picking them up and turning them on their fellow citizens ... on their friends and family ... on their own children. The real crime in our country is that we don't give a damn about these poor deranged individuals, nor do we care or even wonder as a society what it is about living in America that breeds these types of individuals. Until we address that issue, "gun control" will continue to be a meaningless exercise in pontification, politicking, and finger pointing while more of us die.

Personally, as an owner of weapons, I support the idea that individuals should be required to go through a screening, training, and certification process before they are allowed to purchase or own any ballistic weapon. Why not? We have to do the same thing to drive a car on any public thoroughfare! What's the big deal? All we are trying to do in either case is prevent those who are incapable of shouldering the responsibility of owning something that can cause death and destruction from having those tools available to them. If you have physical or mental limitations that would make it difficult for you to properly and safely operate a motor vehicle, the state has the right to deny you a driver's license. In most states now you must have some sort of classroom and / or behind-the-wheel training to qualify to test for a driver's license. And once you get that license, you may occasionally be asked to present it as proof of the fact that you passed those tests and met those qualifications. We accept this without complaint, and "the gubmint" hasn't swooped down in their black helicopters to take our cars away yet. Why not a similar process with weapons as well?

Sure, criminals will get those weapons anyway. Maybe. As part of that training and screening process maybe we could convince the masses of the advisability of things like gun safes, trigger locks, and secure ammunition storage. Make it harder for the criminals to easily get and use those weapons.

I'm soap-boxing, I know. The point, in my opinion, is that Aslaug is right. We're all up in arms about the wrong thing. It's not the tools, folks, it's the few out-of-control, deranged, sick individuals who are picking up those tools and taking lives with them. That is our national problem. As soon as we stop trying to persecute the tool and start worrying about who is holding it ... then things may start to improve.

SC ... out.

[Aslaug]

Thanks for the support, guys.

I do very much appreciate it. Especially since I know guns and gun-rights are such tender topics for many Americans.

As I said, I will never see the need for private citizens to own military grade hardware, but I cannot and I will not harass people who enjoy hunting, for example.

Until someone higher up the foodchain than us lowly bottom-feeders start realizing that the problem lies in the culture rather than in the guns themselves, we are going to continue to see these kinds of statistics.

It is not only about mentally ill people. Sad to say, some shooters are not mentally ill in the clinical sense of the word. Sure, some are completely bonkers and so coocoo they should displayed on the front of Coco-puff packages (that'd be something, though, wouldn't it ... walking down the aisle at the grocers and seeing deranged killers on cereal packages and John Feckin' Cena on the front of Fruity Pebbles-packs ... I think I'd stick with toast, thankyouverymuch), but bottom line is, even people with no history of mental illness can snap.

What needs to be thoroughly addressed, in my opinion, is the perception of guns.

Look back a hundred years. The United States, prior to World War I, had the SEVENTEENTH largest army in the world. Behind such notable military powerhouses as Egypt and Romania. The American army was outdated, outclassed and generally equipped with weaponry that could not stand up to modern warfare. It was led by morons like Pershing who would not listen to the input of men who had gone through three years of trench warfare hell and developed their tactics as a result and tens of thousands of American boys died because of it.

The United States at that time was not a country in which the armed forces played ANY kind of prominent role. None of the arms of service were considered particularly important in society. Sure, people owned firearms but the numbers per capita were FAR below what they are nowadays. But two World Wars, a deep depression, a period of utter anarchy and lawlessness during prohibition, a fifty year long national paranoia under the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, two stints in Iraq and one in Afghanistan ... plus sundry other military actions such as Granada and similar brief shows of force ... have all contributed to a deep, fundamental and often horrifying change in American perception of violence and the need for private citizens to be able to dish it out in small-L liberal amounts.

I can't remember which European politician it was who said this, but someone did ten or twenty years ago, that the US is a country which has never had to fight a modern war, and shows all the signs of it.

You've fought IN modern wars, but you've never fought it ON your own soil. The most recent war fought on American soil ended in 1865, where the majority of the men fighting still used front-loading rifled muskets, able to fire AT BEST four rounds per minute. Now a soldier can easily rip off many hundreds of shots in the same time, using automatic or semi-automatic weapons. You've never seen your country laid to waste. Your soldiers have marched through the devastation done to others, but all in the knowledge that they would go home to Wyoming, Michigan, New York, California, North Dakota, Louisianna, Texas and all the other states, where the houses are still standing, there is still food on the table, there are no snipers in the streets, no artillery in the hills, no corpses littering the sidewalks.

You've never seen what it does to people from THAT angle. Only from the outside, and because of that, you have never grown to detest weapons the way Europeans have. We've had to live with the destruction. We inflicted it upon ourselves, in our own folly and stupidity, because we were not sufficiently afraid of these weapons.

Because we did not respect their power, but only thought of them as "cool" or even righteous.

Now, I realize that Pearl Harbor was an attack on American soil. I also fully acknowledge that the September 11th attacks were attacks on American Soil. But Pearl Harbor is far away from the US Mainland, and the September 11th attacks lasted one single day, and did not result in widespread physical destruction except in those few places that were targeted. The destruction was HORRIFIC. It was a tragedy that went beyond America's borders, don't doubt for a minute that I think otherwise, but your culture has never had to look at an entire city the size of Hamburg or London or St. Petersburg and wonder how you would ever put your lives back together again afterwards.

How you would even live.

Because they weren't your lives destroyed down to the smallest detail.

I am caught reminiscing on a short clip of film shot by an American Army Cameraman at the end of World War II, where an old German man, probably at least 70 years old, perhaps even older ... it is hard to tell ... sitting on the steps leading up to the sad remains of his home in Berlin. It is totally destroyed. A small part of the front wall remains, nothing else. Rubble is strewn everywhere. He sits there with a face grimy with dirt, with tears having drawn long streaks through the dust covering his features, and around him are maybe ten or fifteen glass jars with jam and vegetable-preserve.

It is all that remains of his worldly goods. There is nothing else left. No furniture. No home. No family. No pictures to remember them by, no music, no books ... his whole life at that moment is made up of maybe fifteen glass jars of jam and pickles.

It's experiences like that, which has taught Europe ... all of Europe, not just those who were defeated during war, but those who won despite suffering through the Blitz on English cities, "Schalburgtage" in Denmark where private residences were blown up by the occupation forces at random in retaliation for saboteurs blowing up factories and workshops working for the Germans, in spite of Oradour sur Glane in France (Look that up ... right now! Look it up, I tell you), despite Sant'Anna in Italy (look that up too!), despite thousands of villages in Russia and Bielorussia, and the Balkans and Baltics. Despite all of that ... the winners grew to loathe weapons too.

Americans, bless the lot of you, never had to. Your boys could go home, and we are grateful for the effort they made in helping us. Again, please don't think otherwise.

But watching from the outside, when I see America and that weird fascination with guns, I think of the old man on those stairs in Berlin, and his fifteen jars of jam and pickles.

That's why we think hunting rifles will do just fine, and even those need to be tightly controlled and those who own them need to be well educated.

Guns don't kill people on their own. But they are things to fear and respect regardless, and we've had to learn that the hardest of ways imaginable.

My grandmother and grandfather were part of the Danish resistance during WWII. My grandmother once, when I was a teenager, showed me the gun she had owned. A pistol. I was a teenager and fascinated by it.

She didn't even let me touch it. It is one of the very few times I have heard her be upset with me. She didn't shout, but the disappointment was there in her voice.

"I want you to remember that I never fired it," she said. "I want you to remember that if I had, I would have killed another human being."

I rest my case with that.

[Kellan Meig'h]

Once again, you give us good food for thought.

A modern war has never been fought on our soil and I'm not sure I would want to see that happen. For the most part, we would be like that man, sitting in front of his destroyed house with just a few remaining possessions. I have friends and relatives that wouldn't know where to start, should such an event ever happen. They would be totally unprepared. They would be that man.

I'm not sure where I would be in the scheme of things. My family and I would hunker down if we could or load up the truck and head for family property in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Yeah, it would be life changing, for sure and I know I wouldn't like it but you know, I'm sure if I survived the initial influx of war, I could make a way. Deer meat, cooked over an open fire is very tasty and there would be the possibility of some bear meat, too. Just sayin'.

Americans, for the most part, have never had to deal with war on our soil. Even the atrocities of the Civil War did not leave behind a legacy from what I can see. We don't remember what that war did to the South.

When I was a small child, maybe ten years old, my Great-uncle came to visit. He did not serve in the Civil War, but he did participate in the latter part of the reconstruction of the South. When he visited us, he was 103 years old and he passed not long after that, just before his 104th birthday. Despite his age, his accounts of the war as a young child himself were chilling. The descriptions of the destruction that was left behind left an indelible mark on me. My military service only reinforced those feelings.

That is why I do not revel in war and I see something fundamentally wrong with today's world that sees nothing wrong with killing their fellow beings. I just commented to my tigress just the other day that there is something wrong, bad wrong, when people just go out and kill for the sake of killing. I'm not sure why this has started, maybe a byproduct of our economy, the election, our media . . . I just don't know.

[EXan]

The "Invincibility" of the US' armed forces is something that is projected around a lot.
But about half a year ago I heard a little story of a Dutch diesel submarine "Walrus" reigning havoc on a US carrier battle group during an exercise. "Sinking" The Roosevelt aircraft carrier and several support ships, including a nuclear attack sub.

Turns out Nuclear subs are not stealthy they're loud as all heck. (Reactor cooling use pumps... BIG loud pumps.)

Of course I heard about this because I'm Dutch. However the Canadians and Aussies do the same thing with their diesel subs! They love going after those big squishy targets during exercises.

I got most info about this from the book (Lessons not Learned by Roger Thompson it's on google books) It's a good read and even if half it is rubbish (though there are references) the other half is still enough to make you cringe...

There is a sentence about how long a carrier group would survive actual warfare on page 102. I will not copy + paste here you can read it yourself.

[Aslaug]

And now for something completely different.

This one got my attention, especially at the start, when the swordsman demonstrates WHY the the power of the Katana has been exaggerated. Take a look at how he uses a bastard sword ... and how he does not cut himself, but how he demonstrates why it is just as useful for cutting as the katana.

And the rest of this is actually not too bad either. It is quite ... interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXbLyVpWsVM

[Kellan Meig'h]

A story with many unanswered questions . . . just my kind of tale!

I'll have to finish this after work today - 54 minutes long.

Kel

[Kellan Meig'h]

. . . and I finished watching the show. Quite enlightening, although I would have liked to have seen the 'new' Ulfberht take a few swipes at the rolled bamboo mats. It is always piques my interest to watch a master blacksmith forge something from raw materials.

1) Crucible steel - I have to say that I was amazed by the quality of steel that resulted from such a crude recipe. Well, I won't say crude, since he did weigh his materials. His use of glass and sand as a flux to draw off the slag was interesting.

2) More interesting is the fact that 33 of the 44 known ancient Ulfberht swords are possibly counterfeit. Tenth century copyright infringement?

Thank you, Aslaug for the link. That was food for thought.

[The BioCobra]

[Aslaug]

Thank you, both of you

For the record, since you two both proofread for me, now you should have a better understanding of the Southlander smiths and what it is they are creating, and why the metal they produce is so much better than anyone else

[Kellan Meig'h]