<p>To some of our liberal-leaning friends owing a firearm is nearly as bad as believing in the Bible. They can’t ban either, so they ridicule both.</p>
<p>It is easy to ridicule owning a firearm. What do you need one for unless you are a hunter?</p>
<p>To be your own militia man? To privately patrol your property? What?</p>
<p>Why own a firearm?
antique or collectible investment
target practice
hunting
family protection
because you can if you want one</p>
<p>Why own:
books that other people don’t like
a cat
an air conditioner
a salad spinner
a wierd hat
an old car
a new car
a wood stove
a pocket knife
wine
bourbon
chocolate
organic food
junk food
food that I don’t like to eat</p>
<p>Dorothy–I’ve printed that recipe out…going to have to try it! How do you do that gray box thing for quotes?</p>
<p>Baseballmom–great answer! The vast majority of gun fear is due to ignorance, and I think that would apply to “fundy-fear” as well. (I hasten to add that I mean “ignorance” in the non-derogatory form, i.e “complete absence of knowledge of a subject.”</p>
<p>I think that many of the posters here are making the false assumption that schools “expect” or “encourage” gun ownership. Instead, they are just recognizing that responsible gun ownership is an important part of American life, and it’s not simply the “God-heads and their guns” issue that pervades this very uninformed thread. For example, here is the gun policy from Middlebury College–one of the top-ranked colleges, and not known for being either conservative or religious:</p>
<p>“Middlebury College recognizes that a number of men and women have an interest in hunting and target shooting. Firearms and ammunition are not permitted on campus, unless they are registered and stored with the Department of Public Safety. Discovery of a loaded firearm in a College building, residence hall, on College grounds, locked in a vehicle on College grounds, or in the possession of a student or employee on campus may result in disciplinary action, and confiscation of the firearm.”</p>
<p>I call that an appropriate policy put forth by an institution that is in touch with the American tradition and has faith in the common sense and integrity of its students.</p>
<p>parent2noles:</p>
<p>I have absolutely no issue with firearms. I own about a dozen. They’re unloaded and locked away in gun cabinet.</p>
<p>My issue is that so many who own firearms are so incredibly irresponsible. They want the right, but not the responsibility that comes with it. So, we get stolen weapons used for crimes, kids killing other kids with a gun left lying around the house, people shooting first and asking questions later and killing innocent people, etc.</p>
<p>Personally, I think those who own guns should be subject to stiff prison sentences and very high civil liability if they screw up as gun owners. If you take on ownership of a deadly weapon, you’d better be ready to go to jail and lose everything you have if you screw up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>First off, I completely agree that name-calling is an inappropriate way for adults to act. For that reason, the term “fundie” is offensive. </p>
<p>As to the issue of ignorance, I will readily admit that I fear the fundamentalist factions of virutally all religions. Perhaps I am ignorant in the sense that I have “a complete absence of knowledge,” but I don’t think so.</p>
<p>For one thing, I was raised as a fundamentalist. This would seem to give me at least some knowledge, since I spent Sundays and Wednesdays in my youth attending long church services with fundamentalist ministers presiding. I’m guessing that this would amount to about 1600 hours of fundamentalist sermons, all told. Of course, if you add in Bible School, church camps, and the like, it’s probably well over 2,000 hours, which is equivalent to a working year. Add in non-sermon activities, such as Sunday school and the like, and I’m guessing that we’re getting up around 3,000 hours absorbing Protestant fundamentalist doctrine.</p>
<p>For another, I spent much of my childhood around fundamentalists, listening to them talk over dinner, while watching baseball games, while sitting in lawn chairs as the sun went down, and in just about every walk of life, from classroom to Boy Scouts. </p>
<p>How can I be afraid of all those people? Because they’re really @#$%$ scary, that’s why. What I remember about John Kennedy’s assassination is how excited and happy these people were about it. What I remember about Martin Luther King, Jrs.’ death is loading the guns and sitting in the hall by the front door ready to kill any black rioter that might show up on our lawn (and scared witless about it, I might add).</p>
<p>I have never lived with or near a meaner bunch of people, on average. I actually had a minister who kept punching the parts of the Bible that said it was OK to have slaves. He was making the point that, instead of desegregating, we should return black people to slavery, which, in his words, was their natural state.</p>
<p>As for history, I think it’s pretty clear that those who went up against fundamentalists ended up being tortured or killed in rather large numbers, whether this be religious fundamentalism or some other “ism.”</p>
<p>To me, fundamentalism is one of the scariest parts of the human race.</p>
<p>I agree, tarhunt, owing a firearm is a serious responsibility. In Florida, civil liability attaches if the weapons are not properly stored and someone gets hurt or something gets damaged.</p>
<p>Frankly, there’s no winning on this issue politically for those who dislike firearms. It gets you beat at the ballot box every time. So why go there?</p>
<p>Likewise, name calling is just plain foolish and kind of mean. Everyone knows what is meant, there’s no escape. Also, everyone tends to do it from time to time, so just let it pass…we can all be clobbered on that.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it’s worse, for one. If you hunt, you accept the responsibility for your action. You know something is going to die, and you know what you are doing is for real. I don’t hunt (or even own a gun), but I have more respect for real hunters than I do for city-folk who play FPS games.</p>
<p>I would agree with Tarhunt about the fear of fundamentalistis of all stripes.</p>
<p>BBM, I don’t think equating a gun (which can kill people inadvertently, and often does) can be compared to a cat (which gives people companionship and pleasure) or an air conditioner (which keeps people cool and comfortable) or a salad spinner (which eases the washing and drying of lettuce).</p>
<p>Even the other items on your list have a purpose, if only to provide entertainment, enjoyment, ease in a way of life, etc.</p>
<p>Aside from hunting, what IS the purpose of owning a gun? What entertainment, enjoyment, etc. is involved, unless one is an avid gun collector, and is looking for vintage equipment? That I could more readily understand. </p>
<p>The real and serious danger of a gun cannot be equated with the danger of a pocket knife…or junk food. There is very poor regulation of firearms, and many people who are gun owners are irresponsible in their use. If people want to eat junk food irresponsibly, they only hurt themselves. Someone else’s irresponsibility with a firearm potentially harms others besides themselves.</p>
<p>In my humble opinion, this was the best said of the ‘testimony’ of post #48:
This is, of course, the fuel that turns any crooked wheel. It is the “ism” of any belief or any person worthy to carry the name that turns the cultural wine sour.</p>
<p>And to say it is “fundamentalism” does nothing to clarify or specify the object of our reprehension. Since fundamentalism lies at the crooked hub of any narrow dogma, from religious-fundamentalism to secular-fundamentalism; that is to say, from secularism to Islamicism to scientism it is, in the end, a fanaticism that possesses its high-tension advocates to excoriate whatever falls outside their zealously adopted strictures. </p>
<p>From bans on alcohol to bans on guns;
from bans on textbooks to bans on religious displays.</p>
<p>Sadly, each fundamentalist–secular to religious–has at its center a mal-shaped human heart.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To insure the security of a free State?</p>
<p>How about because you can and because you are free. Is that too naive?</p>
<p>Frankly, Dorothy, I think that is a lousy reason.</p>
<p>Not to mention that the Founders thought it important enough to enshrine as Right #2, just after a bloody revolution. It ain’t peanuts.</p>
<p>The Founders were unable to peer into the magic glass ball and foretell the future either. That has become abundantly clear.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I always love this one. Invariably, it comes from people who’ve never seen so much as a firefight, let alone a full-blown engagement between modern, mechanized units.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen more than a firefight, personally, but even those generally involved mortars, RPGs, hand thrown grenades, and APCs (eventually).</p>
<p>The idea of WashDad out in a field with his 12-gauge holding off professional soldiers and their mechanized support is pretty funny, really.</p>
<p>snake - to get the gray box for quotes [ quote ] at the beginning of the quote(no spaces) . Then [ / quote ] . No spaces but if I try and actually type it properly it will do the grey box thing. Same with b for bold i for italic etc.</p>
<p>I’m not going to get into the whole gun no gun argument 
. The original post of rules did strike me as somewhat funny. Question - why do they not allow christian music? I was confused by that. Is contemporary Christian music regarded as bad?</p>
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<p>I don’t like to see anyone talk about Fountain Siren that way. Not even FS.</p>
<p>
It certainly lacks the necessary fundamentalist panache espoused by the severe moralist…even here.</p>
<p>See last page moralizing^^^</p>
<p>P2N:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, it’s been a few years, but my father once drove his pickup truck into the backyard of a house he owned in N. Florida. He didn’t want to wake up the tenants. The woman of the house came out with a shotgun and shattered the rear window of his truck with buckshot. Luckily, he was lying down on the seat at the time, trying to sleep, so he wasn’t hurt.</p>
<p>I was told by a local lawyer that, had he been killed, nothing would have happened to the woman under Florida law. Now, maybe things have changed since then and maybe not. But what I took away from this is that the woman could have:</p>
<ol>
<li> Called out to the truck to see if it was someone she knew</li>
<li> Called the local police</li>
<li> Waited inside the house in case someone from the truck actually did something threatening</li>
<li> Shot to kill “just in case.”</li>
</ol>
<p>She took option #4, which I would call irresponsible but which Florida law, at that time, would call justified.</p>
<p>I just don’t see it that way.</p>