Are you for real with this? How hypocritical can you be? Your posts have been some of the worst as it regards being “snarky” and using words like “stupid,” “stupidity” “dumb” “anti-gun nuts,” etc. IMO your posts have been among the nastiest in the thread, and NOT because you take a pro gun stance. You often seem livid that anyone would dare to disagree with you.
Pot, meet kettle.
Last weekend, D2 was terrorized when an intoxicated male tried repeatedly to kick her door in. The lock held, fortunately, and her security system summoned the police. He told the police that he thought his housemate had locked him out of his house, which is actually several streets over.
DH has been mulling over getting her some kind of protection device. I am on the fence about it, with concerns about just what that entails. He told me last night he is leaning towards a taser, as D2 is very small and petite, and he worries she could be overpowered and shot in the event she tries to use a gun for protection. I don’t know what to think.
I think you are choosing to ignore a lot of gun owners while simultaneously ignoring the legal efforts of both drivers and automobile manufacturers, who have in the past fought against various laws promoting safer driving. The fact that I am a gun owner does not mean that I support the NRA, which primarily serves the interests of firearm manufacturers. Indeed, polls have consistently shown that the NRA pushes many positions that are overwhelmingly unsupported by their own membership.
Well first, everything you just cited applies only to those under 21 because they are specifically aimed at fighting a subset of dangerous drivers. My oldest brother, for example, didn’t get his first driver’s license until he left the Navy at 26, and he had zero training hour requirements - he just had to pass the tests! As a 21+ year old driver in IL you have zero training requirements provided you pass the tests.
Second, the GDL requirements are not overseen by the state, it is essentially an honor-system where any currently licensed driver can sign off that you have completed those requirements. I’m sure every one of those hours actually happen and that only safe practices are instilled.
Lastly, driver’s ed instruction has been offered free (or nearly so) in schools in most states with a minimal license fee, $30 or less in IL. For this to be a worthwhile comparison, required firearms instruction would need to be comparable, and the last time I checked, the 16 hours of education required in Illinois for a carry license came with a $200+ course fee and a $300 license fee.
What percentage of new drivers are under the age of 21 - I’d say a huge amount - you’re reaching the majority of drivers.
And of the hundreds of parents I’ve talked to regarding whether or not their kid adhered to the 50 hours, I can think of 1 or 2 who joked under the table that they signed their kid’s form short of the 50 hours. Nonetheless, those kids also have to have had their learner’s permit for a minimum of nine months before they even qualify to be driving alone.
And no comparison with the gun license/course fee, because gun owners aren’t then required to carry any insurance - at least car owners are required to notify their insurance company and have a jump in rates when their teens start to drive.
FWIW… my kids did drivers ed through a private company so yes, we paid around $300 for it, and that was 12 and 15 years ago.
Some seem to be so pathetically desperate to defend guns at any cost that they insult, condescend, lecture and create falsehoods with no supporting evidence. When the initial post (1141) was posted at 8 am yesterday, all that had been reported was that there was a shooting on the Durham campus. And that is what was posted. No exaggeration, no embellishment. Just the facts. Sometime later it was apparently reported that this had been an argument, and some idiot pulled a gun. Nowhere, NOWHERE has it been reported, or even suggested (except in post 1149) that the gun was possibly pulled “in self defense”. The victim was shot in the butt. Maybe he shot an air biscuit (that means passed gas, for any not familiar with the term), but there is no evidence that he shot anything else. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lockdown-lifted-nc-college-student-shot-injured-34726353
So please, stop with the snide, cocky, condescending, pedantic,chest-thumping tone. It is wholly unpleasant. If someone accuses others of being childish or middle-schoolish., they might need to first take a hard look in the mirror. But be careful. That reflection might be armed and dangerous.
And for the record, yes, any argument between 2 people where some idiot pulls a gun is beyond dangerous and amazingly, remarkably stupid.
But not all of them. I was in my 30’s when I purchased my first firearm, should I be exempted from firearm training requirements?
My kids are too young to drive yet, but I know that when I started driving I had nowhere NEAR 50 hours behind the wheel when I took my test. And you should always consider that (a) your friends may not have been totally honest with you and (b) your friends may not be representative of the general populace.
Making insurance mandatory for gun owners has been proposed many times on this thread.
Great, but that was an optional extra that you chose to get. You could have paid a hundred times that much and it would still not matter in comparison to something that you want to legally require in order to exercise a Constitutional right.
@Nrdsb4, consider the Sabre police grade mace with the UV marking dye. The larger canisters that you would keep in your home have a “stream” that can go quite a distance.
I looked into tasers and for most of them you need to get too close to the intruder - you have to be able to make taser to body contact. No thanks. They do have tasers that you “shoot” but the ones available right now to the public are far from being perfected. I would not depend on them.
But then where are the responsible gun owners such as yourself when the NRA goes around with its hair on fire because some sensible gun regulation is proposed? Seems like the voices in the debate tend to be on the one side people who don’t have guns advocating regulation, and on the other side the NRA’s odious Wayne LaPierre and his ilk.
Was there any better information when post 1149 hit the boards at noon today? I can’t find any better information now. There was a student shot in the buttocks after an argument. The poster said it was silly to conjecture what had happened and offered some alternate theories as to what happened. I see no insult greater than “silly”, which I think compares pretty well when it only took you 5 words before you hit “pathetically desperate” in your response. I don’t see any condescension or lecturing, nor any falsehoods created (unless the “coulds” before the theories offered are just in my imagination).
None of which tells us what actually happened. No, it doesn’t tell us that it was possibly a defensive shooting, it also doesn’t tell us that it possibly wasn’t. So why get so riled up?
If you think your tone here has been any more pleasant, I assure you that from my perspective it has not. You claim accusations of childishness, but launch into “snide, cocky, condescending, pedantic, chest-thumping”, which neither proves your own superior tone nor improves the conversation.
You are generally correct here, although I think that depends on the circumstances. I don’t ever expect to get into a fight with my neighbor, but he is a professional mixed martial artist and if he came at me in an argument I would absolutely pull a gun rather than find out whether his unlikely aggression would be enough for him to kill me with his bare hands (as he absolutely could do).
And yes, that is a highly unlikely scenario, which is why I said you were generally correct. But many people carry firearms for self-defense because they lack any other recourse should some physically superior drunken idiot decide to take an argument too far.
cosmic,
Please try to widen your thinking if you can. My comments to that poster were not simply in reference to that one post. His tone throughout this thread and elsewhere has made everyone of the adjectives used quite valid. Lets add obnoxious too.
And for the record, if you’d read more carefully, you’d have perhaps noticed that my post was YESTERDAY at 8 am when the news was fresh. AW’s post was TODAY at 1 pm when there were plenty of updated reports available on the web. So there was no need to “conjecture” as to what happened. It was already reported. Two guys got into a fight and one idiot pulled a gun and shot the other in the gluteus maximus. Only unlike car accidents, shooting incidents on campuses causes an entire campus to be put on lockdown and students who were off campus at the time to worry about the safety of their friends (read the interviews-- this isn’t “conjecture”.
Yeah, it’s not like anyone ever drives w/o car insurance or a revoked license. It’s not like law-abiding drivers have to take out uninsured- driver coverage.
Are you saying that there is some organization like Gun Owners for Sensible Regulation, with many gun-owning supporters, but the media inexplicably refuses to interview its spokesmouths?
BTW, cosmic, ,if you are familiar with martial arts, you’d probably know that most are trained to use their skill defensively, not offensively, so unless you attacked your neighbor first, his skill would not be used against you. So put your silly gun away. You would pull a gun on your neighbor?? Lovely.
No, I am not, any more than there is an organization like Non-Gun Owners for Sensible Regulation. But just because I (or we?) are not up to fighting the NRA or the Brady Campaign for air time does not mean that we do not exist.
I am familiar with the martial arts… and I am also familiar with the idea that “most are trained to use their skill defensively, not offensively” is exactly what they train out of you when you become a “professional mixed martial artist”. Regardless, it should not be that hard to imagine that there are violently aggressive people who are better at fighting than most gun owners, and that was the real point. Are you denying the possibility of defensive gun use?
My silly gun is the one that shoots a little flag that says “bang”. Per your request, I have put it away.
In self defense, in fear of my life? Bet your backside I would, assuming that I was carrying, which I don’t - if they don’t break into my house, this situation doesn’t come up.
And you don’t know my neighbors past or present. We don’t always choose who we live next to, and if you’ve never seen a neighbor or coworker or friend taken to prison for violence against someone who thought themselves safe, then congratulations, you’ve managed to avoid some of the kinds of people I know.
And that’s a good point. Some political issues are dominated by the people who really care about them, and the vast majority of people don’t vote based on those issues. So if the NRA and its supporters REALLY REALLY hate any gun regulation, but the majority of people, gun-owning or not, would favor some regulation, we get no regulation.
My DH has a black belt. I have never, ever seen him even so much as take a defensive posture in any situation. Ever. He is very mild mannered. Few would know he is a black belt.
And while no, I don’t know your neighbors nor where you live, we’ve had some folks in the neighborhood (usually renters) who are pretty inconsiderate of their neighbors and, shall we say, don’t attend the progressive dinners. Not much interaction other than maybe an occasional polite wave, which is just fine. No one confronts anyone.
When I see two guys fighting, I start with the one swinging now - I am not invested nearly enough to go sorting through a thousand posts to see if your name calling was caused by his behavior or not. Let’s just ALL stop calling each other names and see what happens.
When I searched for information on this shooting an hour ago I did not find any more information than “argument led to some guy getting shot somewhere embarrassing”. If you found more information than that, then congratulations, your combination of dedication to the issue and google-proficiency is greater than mine or, apparently, his.
Great! Which one was the aggressor? Was the injured person armed? Was the person carrying the gun doing so legally, and would proposed gun control laws have reasonably stopped him from doing so? Was all that reported?
I have known a few people involved in shootings, I’ve been pretty danged close when one of them happened, and it usually takes a while to get to the point where authorities at the scene can confidently state what happened.