Slashdot Mirror
Geohashing Meets an Angry Rancher With Firearms
katicli writes "Geohashing, an obscure xkcd pastime which involves going to random coordinates generated by md5 hashing, the date, and the opening status of the stock market, appears to have just gotten far more interesting. The official wiki reports a warning for other geohashers intending to go to the spot designated for June 14th in the San Francisco area, as several avid fans of xkcd were met by an angry rancher and firearms."
My first reaction is that the geohashing folks overreacted. I might be a little concerned and take photos of license plates if a bunch of people suddenly showed up on my property somewhere out in the boonies.
As to the firearms, were they scared at the mere presence of firearms or did the ranchers actually point them at anyone? If they simply saw the guns in the truck, what possibly could have scared them? Ooooh, guns.... scary.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I can imagine that this experience was extremely frightening for the geohashing crowd, but they should know that it's pretty normal for American ranchers to have guns around.
http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Known_Issues
"If someone says you are trespassing, it is probably best to heed them and turn back. Shotguns are a good indicator of trouble. See Template:Disclaimer."
Sounds like that other thing where you use GPS and leave a bowl with stuff in it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If these people were scared by the mere presence of a few guns, this seriously worries me about the future of the 2nd amendment. I guess there is solace to be taken in knowing that the people who would read that comic and go to that place aren't a very good representative set of the people though.
Still it worries me.
Too many people wigging out nowadays with the "unattended package" scares to geocache anymore. If you go out in the woods and leave something hidden, or interact with something hidden, and someone sees you, too great of odds that they will call the bomb squad or DNR or something like that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Get off my lawn!
On the other side of the pond we would regard anyone waving a gun around as very scary and wonder if he was a lunatic. In the UK we keep guns under strict control and at places like licensed competitive rifle ranges. Yes: farmers do have them, but they keep them out of sight. We also have fewer gun related incidents, although an illegal gun culture is unfortunately growing.
WOW! a bunch of people from San Francisco ventured out in to the real world and found that people have strange ideas like property rights and the right to bear arms. I'm glad they got an education.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Hey, your irrational fear of firearms is showing. RTFA. There was no waving of anything. It says they were in plain view in his truck. In other words, he had a gun rack... Oh no. He had a gun rack with guns on it. RUN TO THE HILLS!
Oh, even though I read the entire "article" I seemed to have missed the part where somebody was waving a gun around. I did read the part about guns being visible but nothing beyond that.
Over here in the US, if somebody was waving a gun around, we too would consider that to be scary and would probably call the police who would arrest that person.
"In plain sight" in this context probably means a gun rack on the rear window of the pickup truck. I seriously doubt they were "waving them around".
BTW, how is that rash of knife crime coming out? I've noticed a lot more stories about stabbings on the Beeb.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I mean seriously, you are going to a random location about which you know nothing about; for fuck's sake, it could have been a government base for all they knew. How would you feel if you were a rancher out in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of people just suddenly showed up on your property? He is well within his right to defend his property against trespassers. Thankfully nobody got hurt, but this seems like an accident waiting to happen.
Captcha: murders - LOL
Ah... the once great Great Britain. The land that gave us people such as Churchill. Where have you gone Great Britain?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
No one was "waving a gun around". The article doesn't even imply that anyone was even *holding* the gun.
If farmers "always keep [guns] out of sight" in your country, what's the point in them having a gun? Surely, it must be visible at least occasionally.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Why would somebody owning a gun be "scary" or "a lunatic"? I can understand the fear of guns empowering criminals (even if I don't agree with the conclusions some reach on that basis) but guns in the hands of the good guys should probably be reassuring, not alarming.
Who was waving a gun around? Are you talking about the rancher with a legal firearm that was put away IN HIS TRUCK, when a group of trespassers entered his property?
BTW, I think you mean "In the UK, we keep legal guns under strict control." Your chav gangbangers don't care much about the gun control laws. Good thing you have a camera every 11 yards to keep an eye on them.
how is that rash of knife crime coming out? I've noticed a lot more stories about stabbings on the Beeb.
One advantage of knives is that they're easier to aim. I have yet to hear a story about a drive-by knifing in which the culprit missed his target but accidentally killed someone who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If someone really wants to kill someone else, it's very hard to stop him. But getting them to use knives instead of guns at least cuts down on the collateral damage.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
BTW, how is that rash of knife crime coming out? I've noticed a lot more stories about stabbings on the Beeb.
Don't worry. It won't be a problem once they ban knives, too.
Because no complex social problem is so intractable that it can't be addressed by laws against possession of inanimate objects.
I guess its just unforuneate that most firearm incidents are unintended. Considering that the chances that a 'good guy' gun owner has to successfully defend himself against intrusion or theft are infinitesimally small, add to the mix that any gun owner is far more likely to injure or kill himself or someone they love than prevent any crime... and, yeah, I see some cause for concern.
The Admin and the Engineer
This means that we must outlaw photography.
Quick! Someone call Cory Doctorow!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Actually they were just sitting on the bed of the truck. They didn't even have a gun rack.
So we'll have more recipients of the Darwin award.
Just because people steal from rhe InterNet all the time doesnt mean the world willbe so benign when one tresspasses.
True. But knives are much easier to conceal and more common in clubs and pubs. There seems to be less of a threshold for pulling out a knife and stabbing in an argument and firing a gun. Both suck, however.
Drive-by shootings are not exactly common in Middle-America. Downtown Oakland, maybe, but in San Ramon it would be practically unheard of.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
On our side of the pond we hear that the illegal gun culture has been huge for years. One of our celebs moved over there like 10 years ago, kept having people walk into her house with guns to rob her (note: if it happens once or twice a year to the same person, it's considered chronic and excessive here; I don't know if she got hit up a couple times or if they kept showing up every month or so or daily or what), got real bitchy about it.
Near as I can tell, the news is propaganda'd over there to suppress reports on gun crimes. Our local news over here used to emphasize every time someone showed up anywhere (private house) or got shot at with a gun, unless a gun was used by an ordinary citizen to correct the situation (i.e. remove a crazy shooter trying to gun down as many kids as he can... by shooting him a half hour before the cops show up). They don't like talking about heroes wielding weapons, only villains. We had a few minor incidents a year but the overall impression of stuff like that hitting the news every month or so is that it's happening everywhere, all the time, to everyone just because it seems "normal" with all the reporting and you know it shouldn't be a "normal" occurrence.
As far as I can tell our rape rate here is massive. I know too many people who got raped (like, almost every girl I know?). In general this isn't considered a problem in this country; most girls simply don't talk about it, a lot of girls haven't gotten raped, but a lot have. Go outside, you don't see rapists everywhere or hear about this horrible rape culture; yet you're living in it and oblivious. Over there you might have the same sort of issue with guns-- hasn't happened to you or most/any people you know, but it's still a significant problem compared to other places. It's really hard to tell.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
So a bunch of citiots tried to go onto private property without permission to have a party and got warned off. Why is this news?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
a) Darcy is a bigot.
b) I wonder how these geohahsers would like it if a group of people showed up in their back yard, or house, unnivited.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I dunno why people always think a fear of firearms is irrational, it is a device made for the sole purpose of killing or wounding a living creature, it does so in an instant with the twitch of a finger. couple that with the general fact that people are idiots (the geohashers in this case seemed to be the idiots, but it's a fair general rule to live by, unless proven otherwise: people are idiots.). I'm afraid of firearms, I'd rather they never be anywhere near me. I'm not one to advocate that they all be taken away either because unfortunately the cat is out of the bag there, people have guns and getting them away from criminals AND legitimate owners would be pretty much impossible now.
Anyways, yeah they overreacted to someone just having guns in their truck, but I don't think being afraid of or uncomfortable around guns is all that irrational.
Because, you know, on this side of the pond (Europe), good guy and bad guy are virtually not distinguishable at first sight. So safety dictate that if somebody has a gun, he MIGHT be a bad guy, better play safe than sorry, especially when gun/riffle sighting are exceedingly rare. A bit like if you saw somebody with a package of dynamit or a drawn sword, you might worry a bit... Furthermore, Now, I dunno, maybe in the US the good guy are tattooed "GOOD" on their face in the USA, and bad guy are tattooed with "EVIL" or "666" or "I AM A BADDY", so you can easily recognize a bad guy with a rifle from a good guy with a riffle. The reaction of those geohashing guy is the most safest one. And the reaction of a few poster "why do you fear somebody with a riffle" is certainly not.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
That is absolutely made up. Most firearm incidents are not unintended. You simply don't here about 99.99% of the gun incidents because they don't get reported. Why? Because someone picked up their gun, and showed it to an aggressor, thus ending the conflict before it ever becomes violent.
Here is a little hint for you. Most humans are far more likely to enter a physical conflict that they believe they are sure to win. As soon as someone sees a gun, they are no longer sure they are going to win, and thus are far less likely to continue the aggression.
Actually, it is a device made for the sole purpose of propelling a projectile to really fast speeds. Any application of this function is the responsibility of the individual user.
It always amuses me that the slashdot crowd will defend some technology (e.g. vulnerability detection software, p2p, etc) and claim that the individual is responsible for the use, but then say things like what you've said.
By the way, bittorrent is made for the sole purpose of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works. (see how that sounds? now reread what you wrote)
I guess we only believe in individual responsibility here when it fits our agenda.
The bullets come out of one end. Point that away from you. Are you seriously unable to figure it out? Maybe I should draw a picture. Also your comment, "most firearm incidents are unintended," what are you smoking? I have had a firearm "incident" about three or four times since I was 8 years old. These "incidents" involve learning about responsibility and safety, things my parents taught me. We like to call these "incident trips" because we go out to a field and have "incidents" with our guns. Oh, and during our "incident trips" no one has every gotten hurt. Turn off the TV and go outside.
Lest the entire San Francisco bashing party begin, let it be known there are a lot of us who live here in the SF Bay Area who are 2nd Amendment supporters and firearms enthusiasts. Come visit us on http://www.calguns.net/ before jumping to any conclusions that we're all gun-hating crazies. :)
Lordy.... hikers, snowmobilers, and others enjoying the outdoors have dealt with these issues for decades. Usually if you respect fences and signs (well, notwithstanding Woody's advice), and ask permission where neccesary, a lot of landowners will accomodate you.
And if they don't, well, go somewhere else.
Three Squirrels
Define good guys - I don't think my townhouse's neighbor is a 'good guy who needs a gun' but he has one anyways. So my kids will not visit his house, as it's dangerous - there's NO NEED for the average citizen to have a gun, and based on US-vs-UK stats, it's more dangerous to live in an area where just anyone can get a gun.
That's real damn close to where I live. I've been up in that area on numerous occasions. In fact, I took some riding lessons at a ranch up there. My guess, the rancher has had some problems with teenagers harassing his herd. Teenagers do stupid things, like chase the steer around for the fun of it. There has also been the rare occasion of steer and horse thefts. Just a little information. A rancher with a shotgun is as common as a rancher with a nose on his face. Nothing to get excited about.
-- Will program for bandwidth
If I was confronted by "easily excitable," well-armed people way the hell out Bollinger Canyon Road in the hinterlands of Contra Costa County, my first instinct would be that I was way too close to someone's meth lab and that prudence would dictate an immediate, apologetic retreat.
Ranchers usually don't carry guns with the intention of chasing off humans. The guns were more likely there to chase of coyotes, or to help keep down the jack rabbit population. Or because the guy's also a hunter and just didn't bother to take the guns out of the pickup before making effort to call the cops on the trespassing yahoos.
The really sad thing is. I grew up in an area where farming and ranching is the primary business. And if these idiots had taken the time to walk up to the ranchers house, explain why they were there and ask permission, they probably would have been welcomed. Or they might have been told pertinent reasons why they should go there. I don't go through neighbors fields just in case they have a mean bull in the herd or a territorial dog.
Removing knives from the hands of Brits will also cut down on the number of crimes committed in the kitchen.
My apologies to our British friends, this was a cheap shot at your cooking which has admittedly improved.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Bad example - bittorrent *was* - the creator admitted it publicly.
Yes and the purpose of a gun is to kill. Your definition is like saying 'the purpose of a car is to rotate wheels at a specific speed'. It's meaningless.
damn... /. has an entertainment section ?
Imagine if they randomly chose the location of one of the 740th Missile Squadron's ICBM launch sites near Minot Air Force Base.
Would they be surprised to see people show up with guns and cameras to take picture of them?
There isn't a lot of point. They used to use them for fox hunting but that was eventually banned. Most of the time they're heirlooms (yes, I know a few farmers.. they don't use guns).
If they are doing this in NorCal or Oregon, they'd best steer of even public land, lest they end up in the middle of a MJ field and some drug runner guns them down w/o taking any pictures or calls any cops...
Don't these people know better (or have they been smoking too much)?
You're absolutely right, but I'd say it's less a matter of fundamental hypocrisy as it is one of fear. And that's mostly from unfamiliarity ... people are afraid of the unknown. We're pretty much hardwired for that, and in this case I think the government does us a disservice by discouraging people from owning firearms or learning how to use them properly. I'd rather have someone who knows what he's doing with a gun holding one on me, rather than someone who's never fired one before and is terrified of it. That applies as much to criminals as it does to us law-abiding types.
.44 Magnum. If everyone carried a gun, but only a few drove automobiles, we'd all be irrationally afraid of cars.
It's a machine people. Yes, it's one that requires some knowledge and self-discipline to own and use safely, but that's all it is. Would that We the People spent as much time bitching about the poorly-trained drivers we have in this country as we do about gun owners. The untold millions of four-wheeled sociopaths on the road today are responsible for a hell of a lot more death, destruction and general mayhem than all gun owners combined. But that's okay, you see, because cars are technology that we all find comfortable and familiar, in spite of the fact that a car is just as much of a weapon as a
Personally, I'm far more concerned about being killed on the way to work by some lobeless, cell-phone-wielding, SUV-driving thimblebrain than I am about being shot. If the Feds really (I'm mean, really) want to make our lives safer, they should force the states to implement some serious training requirements for obtaining a driver's license. That should mean a CV (Commercial Vehicle) license for anyone that wants to drive a big SUV. Do that, and leave gun owners alone, and they would save a lot more lives each year.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
>It always amuses me that the slashdot crowd will defend some technology (e.g. vulnerability detection software, p2p, etc) and claim that the individual is responsible for the use, but then say things like what you've said.
Are you advocating that individuals ought to be able to own atom bombs? After all, maybe they just want to pretend to ride them in their garage.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
They should be used only in a shooting range or by people with uniforms.
I'm fascinated by your assumption that wearing a uniform automatically qualifies someone as trustworthy with a gun (albeit only at a shooting range).
It doesn't seem to mention an encounter with the owner of the vehicles/guns, though. Perhaps because they apparently wet themselves and fled at the sight of the gunrack in the pickup (where my family lives, gunracks in pickups are so much a part of life that the only time you notice them is when the pickup does NOT have one)/
I do, however, agree with this statement by one of the geohashers - "in the future, we should respect property owners". A lot of trouble can be avoided by following that guideline.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It took a few moments to sink in. "In the San Francisco area" ... with guns mounted on trucks? Why, unless people are using one of those really broad definitions of San Francisco, that could be nowhere else but ... yup. Upon checking the address on Google Maps, it turns out to be none other than San Ramon, California -- about 15 minutes from where I grew up.
I know what you guys are thinking. "A bunch of uptight yuppies from San Francisco got in their cars and drove out to the wild wilderness and got a taste of the real world..." Yeah, right -- if by that you mean "took a pleasant drive out among the trees along the curves of Crow Canyon Road," just off the 580 Freeway kinda wilderness. Maybe they took the long way back and stopped off at Stoneridge Mall on their way home.
News flash for ya, folks. The exact location where these folks went is out a long, undeveloped road, sure. But San Ramon is a suburb, people. Yeah, if you're out there you'll find that 80 percent of the people are white. But that's not "white trash missin teeth an' drinkin moonshine" white, that's "53 percent of the people in this town are college educated and 17 percent have graduate degrees" white. It's "48 percent of the families in this town have median incomes higher than $100,000" white. Look it up.
Clearly, these "geohashers" must be even bigger peckerwoods than the people I grew up with (in neighboring Castro Valley) if that environment makes them uncomfortable. If white guys with guns mounted to pickup trucks makes them uncomfortable, I hope they had a speedy return to wherever they came from, completely bypassing Oakland, California, whose demographics are markedly different. And whatever they do, they should not wait for the bus on the streetcorner out in front of my local bar. It's gotten pretty hairy over there a couple times over the last few years.
Breakfast served all day!
Shut the fuck up or I'll send dick cheney to shoot your face off.
GUNS ARE FOR WIMPS
~Belzevuthe~
http://www.vos.bladebreak-perpetua.ca/
I looked up my area's geohash a few times, but, since my degree is 90% Lake Ontario, 5% my side, and 5% the other, I'd have to drive five hours to get there 50% of the time.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
It always amuses me that the slashdot crowd will defend some technology (e.g. vulnerability detection software, p2p, etc) and claim that the individual is responsible for the use, but then say things like what you've said.
By the way, bittorrent is made for the sole purpose of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works. (see how that sounds? now reread what you wrote)
I guess we only believe in individual responsibility here when it fits our agenda. AMEN BROTHER!
Goddamn liberal hippy sons-a-bitches.
Near as I can tell, the news is propaganda'd over there to suppress reports on gun crimes. Our local news over here used to emphasize every time someone showed up anywhere (private house) or got shot at with a gun, unless a gun was used by an ordinary citizen to correct the situation (i.e. remove a crazy shooter trying to gun down as many kids as he can... by shooting him a half hour before the cops show up). They don't like talking about heroes wielding weapons, only villains. We had a few minor incidents a year but the overall impression of stuff like that hitting the news every month or so is that it's happening everywhere, all the time, to everyone just because it seems "normal" with all the reporting and you know it shouldn't be a "normal" occurrence.
As far as I can tell our rape rate here is massive. I know too many people who got raped (like, almost every girl I know?). In general this isn't considered a problem in this country; most girls simply don't talk about it, a lot of girls haven't gotten raped, but a lot have. Go outside, you don't see rapists everywhere or hear about this horrible rape culture; yet you're living in it and oblivious. Over there you might have the same sort of issue with guns-- hasn't happened to you or most/any people you know, but it's still a significant problem compared to other places. It's really hard to tell. You don't specify which side of the pond you're on but it sure doesn't sound like the side I live on. I live on the U.S. side.
The news over here is NOT "propaganda'd" to reduce reporting of any type of crime. Period. If it bleeds it leads. Pretty much every crime involving shooting will get a mention, however brief. The more sensational and more lurid the more extensive mention it'll get.
Couple gangbangers shoot each other? It'll get brief mention. How brief? "This just in. Two thugs shot each other. Now for more interesting news. Water is wet." Ho hum. Don't pay attention and you won't even see it. And you likely won't even get follow up. If you're really attentive you might notice a mention of a trial or conviction later, probably in print media.
Two little girls get murdered in cold blood for no reason? That'll get mention and follow up until solved or it goes cold.
Now as far as your rape anecdote, "Go outside, you don't see rapists everywhere or hear about this horrible rape culture; yet you're living in it and oblivious." that sure sounds a lot like the BS "rape awareness" and "Take back the night" crap that goes on on many U.S. college campuses due to rape activists selling a chicken little act. Supposedly there's an epidemic of rape on campuses but somehow 9/10 of it goes unreported. Yeah right.
A far as oblivious, it sounds like whichever side of the pond you're on people are oblivious that someone is trying to keep them scared of guns and rape. And it sure as hell doesn't sound like my side of the pond.
You're totally right with your analogy. In fact, enriched uranium has the sole purpose of generating energy. I wonder why I can't have it at home, I'm a really responsible person! And I'd like to generate my own energy given the cost of electricity and gas these days.
I'm fascinated by your assumption that wearing a uniform automatically qualifies someone as trustworthy with a gun (albeit only at a shooting range). I don't know why I got moderated flamebait, did I write something offensive? What I was trying to say is that an individual wearing a uniform probably has a good reason to have a gun too (not only at a shooting rage, or an individual at a shooting rage). Where did I write that that a uniform automatically qualifies someone as trustworthy? Of course there are untrustworthy people in uniforms as well, but that is usually not the case.
Here where I live you are free to have a gun in your house only if you have a gun-license, and you can carry it with you only from location A to location B with written permission from the police, and you have to keep the gun separate from the bullets while you carry it.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
If you go to private property people pull guns on you. No one saw this coming? Dumbasses.
I grew up on a farm in Indiana and lived in the rural Midwest until about 10 years ago. Like many of my neighbors, I had a gun rack with, usually, one or more firearms in the back window of my pickup. I wouldn't know what percentage of pickup truck drivers did this in the rural places I've lived because it was so normal that you didn't notice it. It would be like noticing that a pickup has a trailer hitch or a bed liner.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
All of my handguns must be broken, since they've never killed or wounded any living creature!
There was no "General Overreaction" - from TFA the meet wasn't on private property, it was across the street from it. The rancher neighbor was taking pictures and a group went to a nearby ranger station to confirm that the meet was on public land.
While that group (apparently from one of NASA's labs) was at the ranger station two vehicles pulled onto the ranch and one had the weapons in it. The people that were waiting for the NASA folks to return from the ranger station saw the guns and felt that they might be assaulted by the rancher if they remained.
Because the rancher was already visibly paranoid it isn't a stretch to worry that the weapons you see arriving on the property might be turned against you. I know that I'd be worried about that, especially with the number of random shootings you hear about these days. And I was raised with guns - I fired my first rifle before I was in school and my first pistol when I was in the third grade.
Basically it wasn't "Oh noes, guns!" - it was "Paranoid rancher is now known to have guns, lets not take a chance that hes crazy enough to turn them on us."
. . . the Ranchers have now been exposed to, and contaminated by, Geohashing culture . . . although they are primitive civilization, they will quickly learn to emulate the Geohashing behaviour . . . so don't be surprised if an onery horde of heavily shotgun-and-GPS-armed Ranchers pop up in YOUR backyard in pickups, real soon . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Those cameras are really helping the double-digit increases every year in armed crimes since they basically outlawed firearms aren't they? Gun laws don't reduce crime rates, they just make law abiding citizens helpless and dramatically increase their chance of becoming a statistic. "Out of my cold dead hands!"
You do realize that you went to an unreasonable extreme in a vain attempt to discredit the original poster? That he was not, in fact, advocating the large-scale distribution of weapons of mass destruction to the general population?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Additionally, most firearm murders* are criminal on criminal. If you're not a criminal, hanging out with criminals, you're as safe or safer in the United States than you are elsewhere. Personally, I blame the war on drugs.
*I'm excluding suicides because they'd just find another, and accidents because the real accident rate is insignificant.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm pretty sure most of our chavs aren't gay, let alone participants of gang bangs.
It's ironic. You have people with no respect for private property referring to the land owners as "hopefully-better-educated-less-having-of-chip-on-shoulder-Arkansas-visiting-property-owner".
Well, this is what you would expect from people who live in the San Francisco Bay Area. An area where property rights have diminished value every day.
We don't have this problem. Then again, in Texas people usually ask before trespassing. When someone can legally use lethal force to defend their property you don't take that risk as often.
That's a complete troll, but I'm bored so I'll play.
If an individual in the US had the money and technical ability to make an atomic bomb, I'd be OK with him / her owning one.
Hell, we let organizations run their own nuclear reactors (one is down the road from me now as I write this, run by a local university ) right now, so I don't see how this would be any different.
A Human Right
It's funny that you start your comment with "That is absolutely made up." Because I'm fairly certain your "99.99%" statistic is "absolutely made up" as well.
I guess it's a cultural thing, but I would *never* feel comfortable having someone in sight wearing or holding a gun whoi is not a policeman or a guard or something.
And that's the problem - you're 'feeling', you're not 'thinking'.
A farmer or rancher often has reason to be carrying a firearm. This is normally either a rifle or a shotgun, mainly because either has serious advantages over a handgun. It is used to control the local pest population, acquire food, etc... It's not normally used against humans.
As for carrying, in most areas of the USA there's the assumption that there are many good people, who, while not police, military, or security, are perfectly capable of handling a firearm responsibly. This includes hunting and self defense. In most states you can get a 'CCW permit', enabling the holder to carry a firearm concealed. Despite fear mongering, we do not whip it out routinely as a dick measuring contest. We are not looking to ventilate somebody. We merely wish to have an extremely effective means of defense available if somebody not willing to play by the rules attempts to cause us harm. Areas in the USA that attempt to ban guns historically have higher violent crime rates than those that don't.
By the same token, crime rates DROP when people are allowed more effective means to defend themselves, and tend to increase when they aren't. Look at what's happening in Britain, for example. They've banned guns, yet gun crime is on the rise, and now they're looking at banning knives, swords, bats, and everything else. Heck, there was a school shooting in Germany around 7 years ago that had more fatalities than Columbine. There was an incident in Japan with a big knife/short sword that had about a dozen fatalities.
We'd do far more good cleaning up our health care system, getting out of the 'war on drugs' mess than trying to ban guns.
I don't read AC A human right
Hey, Randall here (hey, my account still exists!)
Sometimes the coordinates fall on military bases. Sometimes they're in the ocean. Sometimes they're in the middle of Bill Gates's house (when that one happens, maybe we can work something out). So even if it weren't for the legality issues, there's a big common sense element.
The idea is that you get as close as you can to the point without going onto private property without permission. Most of the time, this means meeting on a road or cul-de-sac or whatnot. The point is just to get people close enough that they can all exchange high fives and then go to a nearby park or bar together.
I've met unfriendly people while out hiking (both for geohashing and for fun). I've also met some astonishingly friendly people, more than you'd expect. People on the whole are decent. But if you're wandering around in strange places in the real world, there are risks inherent to that, and you do have to use your judgment. If you treat the coordinates like commands and try to get at them no matter what, you're doing it wrong.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Those are my hills yer running to, boy!
Fnord.
It depends on the area and the farm. When I was a kid you might have had a gun handy or not. The gun really wasn't there to deter people it was there to maybe take game or put down a badly injured animal.
In Indiana in some areas within the last few decades there have been enough incidents involving strangers that farmers do go armed for people. A farm near my parents had an incident where someone started shooting at a combine. There was no warning and no reason was ever found. There was also a sniper incident in that area recently where several people were killed. While there are hunters in that area the sniper incident encouraged a large number of people to learn what a rifle is and what it can do. I suspect there are more non-hunters who can shoot than hunters in that area now.
If you're going to go to a rural area and be an ass expect to get cornholed. I like the comic but if it's readers are such stupid fucking morons as to trespass they can be hog feed for all I would care.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
America has it's very own Farmer Palmers!
Stick Men
Mod parent up, of particular amusement "Because someone picked up their gun, and showed it to an aggressor, thus ending the conflict before it ever becomes violent." - if drawing down on someone isn't an escalation in violence I have no idea what is. +5 informative my ass.
Are you advocating that individuals ought to be able to own atom bombs? After all, maybe they just want to pretend to ride them in their garage.
Dumbest argument ever. If I have my own nuclear arsenal, you and what army are going to take it away from me? I obviously consider myself above the law at that point, just as common street thugs consider themselves "above" gun-control laws.
There are indeed reasons for that Rancher to be armed. First off, if you get into trouble, it can take 911 longer than the rest of your life to get there. Pretty much you're on your own. Secondly, I don't know if anybody's noticed or not, but it's spring and cows drop calves and sheep drop lambs this time of year, and Coyotes are everywhere. Worse still, coyotes have something in common with man-- they frequently kill for the hell of it. And the margins on running a ranch are close enough that you can't afford to lose livestock to random predation unless you want to go broke, so this time of year, if you see a coyote, out comes the SKS or whatever, (very popular as a ranch rifle) and the coyotes in question become fodder for vultures, magpies, ect. There are places where there is a tradition of free range. Most of Nevada outside of Clark or Washoe Counties for example, still let you roam around as long as you're not damaging anything. A lot of ranchers are looking at keep out signs though, because of idiots who do things like cut locks, cut fences and shoot at water troughs. (And in a desert, shooting a water trough is actually a crime that merits hanging, even though nobody does) and sometimes livestock. In order to prevent such things, if you're working a ranch, you pack a rifle. And it is considered good manners to ask, and if you're hunting and get lucky, a couple of cleaned birds on the way out is usually appreaciated. And I usually carry some stuff to take a few minutes to fix a downed section of fence if I find one. One makes friends that way. The bottom line is that those young idiots who seem to have gotten a case of the vapors over a rancher with a camera and guns that happen to be his working tools in the gun rack, were handled far more gently than they probably deserved and they should be thankful rather than complaining. And they do owe him an apology, so that little suggestion that was on their website is one that they should take to heart.
In the UK we keep guns under strict control and at places like licensed competitive rifle ranges. Yes: farmers, royalty and others who are of a higher class than me do have them, but I've been taught from a young age not to question why some people can have guns if they want while I'm subject to a more restrictive set of laws more suitable for my class.
Fixed that for you.
Entering private property without permission is trespassing and is illegal just about everywhere. Clueless induhviduals think it's OK. They enter someone elses land just as recklessly as they would enter someone elses computer. It's called RESPECT, people! Learn it. Do it. Get some.
No.
Most modern firearms share some lineage with models originally designed for military use. If you read the military specifications you'll see no mention of killing anything in connection with the design of the firearms itself. You will see it for the cartridge design, so you can make a case there.
This is splitting hairs and bogging ourselves down in pointless technicalities, but if we didn't enjoy doing that we wouldn't be at Slashdot in the first place.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
It's your finger that sounds twitchy. Please don't try to project your own failings on others, thanks in advance.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I own several guns. Several of those have never even been pointed at a living thing, despite having thousands of rounds put through them. One of those was designed and manufactured "for the sole purpose" of punching little holes in paper (hopefully, very close together). Another, for breaking small clay disks.
You fear is irrational. It springs from ignorance. There are a great many things that are far more likely to cause you bodily harm than firearms. Granted, there are some gun owners who shouldn't be trusted with anything even as dangerous as a pointy stick, but there are, for example, even more automobile drivers who shouldn't be trusted with anything faster than a skateboard. Do you likewise have a fear of cars? I'll wager that you do not, despite that fact that you are far more likely to be gunned down by some arrested-adolescent speeding through traffic in buzzing import car than you are by a gun owner.
That said, if someone here caries a gun, I would "feel" something is wrong because it's an unusual thing. As for carrying, in most areas of the USA there's the assumption that there are many good people, who, while not police, military, or security, are perfectly capable of handling a firearm responsibly. Do you have to get a gun-license to carry a gun in America, or can anyone buy one? If I have some psychological problem will I be able to buy one? This includes hunting Well, if you hunt you are probably in the the middle of the wood or something, and it's hunting season. Or can anyone go hunt everywhere with whatever gun he/she likes? I am asking. I am really curious as to how it works over there. and self defense. I never had the need for a gun, as nobody here has one. And I know nobody that has a gun, except those who go to the shooting rage regularly (those who don't go regularly rent it there). In most states you can get a 'CCW permit', enabling the holder to carry a firearm concealed. Despite fear mongering, we do not whip it out routinely as a dick measuring contest. We are not looking to ventilate somebody. We merely wish to have an extremely effective means of defense available if somebody not willing to play by the rules attempts to cause us harm. Ok. But in that case I guess you wear it, and don't show it to everybody (like some nerds playing MD5 GPS). Areas in the USA that attempt to ban guns historically have higher violent crime rates than those that don't. Maybe. Maybenot. Here arms are banned. And we had 1 killed person because of firearms maybe 15 years ago. I don't know if the higher violet crimes depend from gun control or not. Can you link some studies? I think that would be very difficult to prove. Heck, there was a school shooting in Germany around 7 years ago that had more fatalities than Columbine. There was an incident in Japan with a big knife/short sword that had about a dozen fatalities. Yes, but you can't really say that that depends from gun control. We'd do far more good cleaning up our health care system, getting out of the 'war on drugs' mess than trying to ban guns. I agree.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Now I wish moderator could also post somehow the why and how of their moderation. Because with my best will I cannot understand how this was modded flamebait. It certainly use sarcasm to point out that the "good guy with riffle" of the parent was not realistic, but it certainly don't call for a flamebait mod... Can one of the other poster explain why I was modded flamebait ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Wolves and mountain lions are responsible for very few deaths. We have far more to fear from rustlers, than from a lion or a wolf pack. But 100 years that was the problem. Now, they are far and few in between. During calving, yeah, have to pay attention esp. for coyotes.
And as to the re-introduction, yeah, the folks outside of Yellowstone report issues, but few losses. They problem is that they HAVE come up to the houses AND have gone after a couple of pets.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
don't mess with Raven, he's a nuclear power
MP3 Search Engine
While you make a good point, you're forgetting one thing: an idiot misusing P2P won't result in my death, ever (insert some crazy "unless.." here).
I'm not against the use of guns, I own a nice shotgun and i have some friends with some very nice rifles, but i just figured i'd point that out.
So while you're right that we shouldn't say guns are only made for killing/murder, etc, we also shouldn't lump something so potentially dangerous in the same category as filesharing.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I live in a rural area in the Midwest. If a horde of people I didn't know suddenly descended on my property, and I don't see some badges or blue and red lights accompanying them, those people would see a gun too...and mine wouldn't be in a rack.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Well unlike the UK the US hasn't killed off every animal larger than a squirrel. Not many natural predators when you've already hunted every perceivable threat to extinction.
You clearly do not know what the word 'violence' means. Showing a person a gun is in no way violent. It might be a threat to commit a later act of violence, but to call it a violent act in and of itself indicates that you do not understand what the word means. So, no, drawing a gun on someone is NOT an escalation of violence in any way shape or form.
<quote>Run to the hills!</quote>
<iron_maiden>Run for your lives!</iron_maiden>
2nd amendment and all that.
Rural areas have, in the recent past, had serious problems with meth cookers. Either stealing anhydrous ammonia or using abandoned or unused houses and buildings to cook meth. Since meth cookers are usually tweakers and tweakers are usually paranoid and borderline psychotic, they have a tendency to be dangerous. And then there's just thieves stealing cattle or farm equipment, who are also generally armed and dangerous.
I've heard this from BLM rangers in Arizona and landowners in North Dakota.
Even if geohashers aren't doing anything "wrong" and are trespassing in error, at a minimum ranchers/farmers know that a sheriff may be 30 minutes or more away and that confronting an unknown quantity in a rural location and unarmed is inherently dangerous. So you grab your rifle from the truck.
While this might get you in hot water in the city when the police show up, in the country it means when your wife's cousin's husband (ie, the sheriff or deputy) shows up he usually will ask the landowner what time the barbecue on Saturday is and does he want those people arrested or just escorted out of the county.
And getting arrested in a rural area sucks. They'll treat you nice, but the "punishment" means spending 2-3 days in jail until bail is set and someone can drive down to bail you out (they won't let you out to go to the bank to get money wired to you) and if you choose to fight it or have to go to trial, making several trips at inconvenient times, hiring a local attorney (whose rates tend to go up for outsiders) and then paying some fine.
You have 60 million people crammed in a space about the same size as Minnesota (whereas MN has 5 million). Freedom is inversely proportional to the ratio of population to land area.
Indeed they do WITH GUNS that where invented for the sole purpose of killing things.
It is not as if some boys where shooting guns in the garden and a military guy walked by and thought: Hey, we could use that in the battlefield.
So pleasse grow up and accept that guns are a weapon. A weapon intended to stop the enemy by any and all means possible, including death.
So please grow up and accept that a gun is in the first place a device to kill. The fact that there are guns that are not intended to do so or that people use them for other purposes does not change anything aboutt whatv the tool is for.
A hammer is to put nails in wood. A gun is to kill people.
The fact that this is done by propelling an object realy fast is irrelevant and just symantics. It is as if I would defend by saying: I was not hitting the person, all I did was propelling my fist forward with realy fast speed.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
So I take it you are terrified crossbows? Granted a bow takes more skill to fire, but it is just as deadly and is a "device made for the sole purpose of killing or wounding a living creature".
He uses a rather simplistic approach to a complex issue. The origin of weapons was hurting living creatures, I'd even consider enriched uranium more practical than bullets. Can you list more useful uses of weapons than enriched uranium?
There's a plenty large enough sport culture around guns that *doesn't* involve killing that you can't just blanket say it's purpose is to kill. The car analogy, as usual, doesn't work here.
I wonder how upset they each time the find new evidence that the real world isn't an amusement park there for their entertainment sanitized and clean and all about hugging them
You know, that's really too bad, because I'd say that's half of what xkcd is about and what people like about it. The world is -- among other things -- a pretty interesting and amusing place, and if some people weren't supreme tightasses, more of us might get to enjoy it that way.
Now, sanitized it's definitely not, and most of us know it: there's some pretty crappy parts of belonging to this universe, from the second law of thermodynamics to the (possibly related) fact that everyone you love will die. And the fact that some people are supreme tightasses (or worse, actually evil).
But seriously. Lighten up, Francis. Just because some people find life an adventure doesn't mean they need you in the role of Captain Obvious pointing out that the world has some harsh barbs.
And FWIW -- It is not at all clear from the "article" or the summary that anybody actually invaded someone else's property. There are some conflicting accounts, some people are saying they were found on private property, some people are saying they were on a road near it.
Tweet, tweet.
Like you guys wouldn't get shot, or at least have the police show up, if you walk into someone else's place without permission in town so why do you think you could get away with it out here? Often the police show up after the funeral so it pays to be pro-active in the defense of your own property. For a lot of people their property is their income source (you know, livelihood) and they have alot invested and work damn hard for it. So it becomes fairly critical when people show up and drive all over their property without permission or any understanding of whats at stake.
The long sentence is intentional indicator of how arrogantly stupid those insensitive selfish kids were.
Short headline: City kids meet the country people that feed them and run home.
In the kids defense: They most likely wouldn't have known who to ask as a lot of the time ownership and tenant information out here can be hard to come by. Of course, if you don't have permission, stay off still reigns.
Coyotes were responsible for significantly more sheep deaths but even then it is a small portion of the population. A bit over 100,000 deaths were due to coyotes out of a population of 4.6 million. Coyotes often experience dramatic population restructuring in areas where wolves (which are bigger and stronger) are reintroduced. Coyotes however are also much better at living close to humans. I saw one in my backyard twice this year and I live 5 miles from one of the ten largest cities in the US.
Mountain lions have a total breeding population of around 50,000 spread across both of the americas. They are a threatened species and there are estimated to only be several thousand of them in the US most of them in and around the Rocky mountains with a few in south Florida. Like wolves, in most places their numbers simply aren't large enough to constitute a serious threat to most ranchers.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
"Weapons are the tools of power. In the hands of the state, they can be the tools of decency or the tools of oppression, depending on the righteousness that state. In the hands of criminals, they are the tools of evil. In the hands of the free and decent citizen, they should be the tools of liberty. Weapons compound man's power to achieve whatever purpose he may have. They amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus, we must regard them as servants, not masters, and good servants of good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it."
-Jeff Cooper
Your puny weapons are no match for our superior GPS.
Eh? I thought the creator said that he didn't engage in piracy (because he feared getting caught after inventing it).
I don't recall that he ever said "this is for piracy!" but maybe you read that "this is to facilitate large downloads" as "piracy" as many ISPs are wont to say.
Or do you have a source on that?
[All Americans suck because they cant drive]
--
Cheap +5 Insightful: just say "All Americans suck because {insert generalization here}" Wow, it does work!
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
Well, that's certainly news to me. Suppose that you want to walk across some undeveloped land. There is no fence, no gate, no signs, and certainly no landowner warning you off. Are you saying that in some states it is illegal trespassing to pass over undeveloped land even if you haven't been warned off by the landowner directly or by signs, fences, etc.? In which states does this rule apply?
Further, there are more motor-vehicle-related injuries than gun-related injuries in the US (45,520 v. 30,694 respectively in 2005 according to http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html) that one could easily say 'the purpose of a car is kill' by your reasoning.
"There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly." - Marko Kloos
who knew? That makes it actually interesting!
I dont do meaning of life questions.
This land is my land
This land is my land
I got a shotgun
An' you ain't got one
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off
This land is private property
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I am not really for or against guns. I don't really care. I feel comfortable not having one, and I feel comfortable knowing that almost nobody else has one, except police officers, security guards or hunters in the hunting season. But that is me.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
If you read the military specifications you'll see no mention of killing anything in connection with the design of the firearms itself.
Its a military spec, there really is no need to say "this is for killing shit" because, you know, its the military, thats their job it would be rather redundant. Unless the military is now only a target practice organization, of course.
Most people have guns to kill things, basic gun training even tells you "don't point it at someone, unless you intend to kill them", this is in classes, and in most of our childhoods, this exact phrase.
I'm not anti-gun, but lets not split hairs. You have a gun in your dresser to defend yourself by killing the assailant.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
tee-hee!
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
huh. So... during heated domestic arguments, does a gun owner actually have less of a chance to shoot his wife in the heat of the moment than the non-gun owner? Like guns all you want, but guns cause far more violent gun crimes than they prevent them (you count up your hero stories, and for each I'll find you 10 gun murders.)
The Admin and the Engineer
there's NO NEED for the average citizen to have a gun
I spend lots of times in the wilderness, looking for a valuable metal. There are lots of insane people up here who I don't trust, may I have a gun now? I'm not going to mention snakes, javelena, mountain lions, angry bulls, coyotes, and wild dogs, but sometimes a gun is comforting. May I have one now?
Yes, I have used it too, but I've never killed a damn thing with it, nor do I want to. Its just nice in case.
There is a story up where we prospect, where the sheriff of a near by town pulled out an gun and killed someone because they were too close to their gold claim (the victim was on his own, neighboring) claim. Up here there isn't conflict resolution because there are no roads, and the nearest law enforcement is about 4 hours away, IF you can get a cell signal.
You statement is too broad. There are needs to have guns.
The US is a VERY big place, with lots of wilderness. Having a gun is a nice thing out there, it might even be considered a necessity from time to time.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Actually, you're wrong. According to the Center for Health Statistics, there were 52,000 nonfatal violence-related injuries and 23,000 nonfatal accidental discharges, give or take. In addition, they report that most firearm deaths are suicides, rather than homocides.
The level of crime that is prevented by the use of a handgun is harder to track, but the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are in the range of 1.5 to 2 million defensive gun uses in the U.S. each year, based on studies conducted in 1994 and 2004. In a separate study available here they conclude that while self-defense without a handgun resulted in a wound or death for the victim nearly half the time, the use of a handgun dropped that to nearly one-fifth of the time. Furthermore, only 38% of defensive uses of firearms involved shots fired.
However, in addition to being factually incorrect, you make the logical error of presuming that aggregate statistics accurately reflect the circumstances of an individual gun owner. The department of justice issued an advisory last year supporting the idea that gun crime statistics were "more of a map than a compass", meaning that rather than indicating future trends of gun violence, they should be used by LEOs and concerned civilians to train for the most likely defensive scenarios.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
"I dunno why people always think a fear of firearms is irrational"
Because a firearm is a machine or a tool? It has no free will. It has no malice, no hate, no grudges, and no agenda. It simply is.
Do you also fear chainsaws? Tablesaws? D-8 cats? Dump trucks? Your car? A bicycle? Hoes? Shovels? Candlesticks?
Personally, I find all the above much less frightening than dogs, who do have free will, malice and an agenda.
However, even dogs lack the second requirement for evil, the knowledge that their actions are evil. So if they are not evil, then certainly a piece of wood and iron can't be evil. So again, why fear it?
Why are they not good in good hands? You don't deny that there are bad people on your side of the pond, people who would hurt or maim or kill you for little or no reason- wouldn't you rather have the ability to defend yourself than pray the police show up *before* your corpse starts to smell?
By the account on xkcd's wiki page now:
- the meeting was NOT on private property, it was in a public place.
- the attendees did NOT venture onto private property.
- the other side of the road from where they were, was private property, owned by someone who drove up, with guns in sight, and proceeded to take photos of their numberplates (without permission, one presumes)
(this is all taken/derived from the wiki entry.)
I can't vouch for the behaviour of the meeting attendees, but by all means the property owner acted like an asshat, in an intimidating fashion. However the dialogue went, arriving with guns (and note, NOT on his own property) is not a cordial way to start investigating what is going on.
This is news to slashdot, perhaps the headline should read "Warning to geohashers: outsider-hating, gun-toting rednecks may crash your meeting on public property and take photographs of you or your vehicles without permission, because they 'don't take kindly to your kinda people round these parts'"
It sounds like typical media scare. Think of all of the stories you see in the paper or on the news about "man with a gun." It's as if the mere presence of a gun denotes wrong doing.
Isn't that the problem though. If a stranger approaches you with a gun, how do you know that they know how to handle it? What if they are a psycho, or worse, incompetent. It's quite possible that they might shoot you by accident.
Here in Arizona, where I openly carry a gun every day, it's pretty simple. If the gun is in a holster on their hip, and not being touched, then you don't worry about their proficiency with it. If it's in their hand, they better be in actual fear for their life, or they're looking at being arrested for "brandishing". The consequences of brandishing can be pretty severe, so it doesn't happen much, except with criminals who already have lengthy records, and don't even own their firearms legally.
If you see somebody coming towards you down the street in a car, you think nothing of it. If you see somebody coming towards you with a gun, you know they are expecting a confrontation that might go badly. That's the problem with guns, the situation gets escalated just by their mere presence.
I don't know where you live, but it's the opposite for me. If someone is coming towards me with a gun on their hip, I don't worry about it. But if someone is driving towards me in a car (or worse, SUV), then I make sure they see me or I'm not in a place where I'll be hit, because most car drivers are incompetent and don't look for pedestrians. Being around car and SUV drivers is far more dangerous than being around legal gun owners.
To be fair, the act of pointing a gun at somebody could be construed as increasing the likelihood of violence, which is what many people mean by "escalation". On the other hand, by the time most people feel the need to draw, violence is already in the air and on the way, which pretty much neuters the point they were trying to make.
BANG!
The question is verbal slight of hand- rather than saying "does the gun owner have less of a chance to shoot his wife", the question should be "does the gun owner have less of a chance to injure/maim/kill his wife". The answer, as provided by the department of justice in the below statistics, is no- but the wife's odds of ending the encounter without being hurt go from 80% to 50% when you remove the gun.
I also wonder about the phrasing of "guns cause far more violence"- it seems to me that the old NRA saw about "guns don't kill people, people kill people" may be the one thing that old charleton heston was right about. If you're right, and the possession of a firearm inevitably leads to violence, why is it that violent crime among CCP/CWP holders is so low? For that matter, why do we let the police have firearms, when the police mistaken intent rate is more than five times the civilian mistaken intent/identity combined rate?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Here, there are serious predators- in addition to coyotes, there are bears and mountain lions, both of which can do serious damage to your herd. Firearms are a must for ranchers especially.
.308 or 7.62x51mm ammo will eat up your ammo budget very quickly.
Bears and mountain lions aren't just a threat to herds, they're a threat to humans too. Bear and mountain lion attacks on humans aren't uncommon (I think bear attacks are far more common than the mountain lion attacks though). Rabid animal attacks are especially a big problem. Usually, animals like coyotes and mountain lions won't bother with people, but when they have rabies they'll attack people indiscriminately. Even smaller animals, like bobcats, are extremely dangerous to humans when they're rabid. A gun is the best way of dealing with these threats. However, if you're facing down a bear, you need a really powerful handgun, because a typical 9mm won't hurt it much. A 44 Magnum is a much better choice.
Civilians aren't allowed to carry automatics unless they have a special permit which is virtually impossible to get,
Not true. I know several people with caches of automatic weapons, and I've fired several. Automatics (as in fully-automatic) require a special BATFE license to purchase and own, which of course comes with a background check (mainly to make sure you're not a felon or nutcase). I think it's $200 or so.
The main problem with automatics, and the reason more people don't own them, is cost. Getting the license is very easy if you're not a criminal, but there's a law where only guns made before a certain date are allowed, and no new automatics are allowed to be manufactured for civilian use or imported. Because of this, the supply of automatic firearms is artificially restricted, and the price has gone through the roof, and it's not easy to find one--you have to buy one from someone else who wants to sell theirs. Of course, many of these guns tend to be quite old (like WWII vintage) and not terribly reliable.
So it's certainly quite possible for you to go out and buy an M-60 or other belt-fed machine gun and the license to own it, but it'll cost you a small fortune. In addition, owning a gun isn't much fun if you never shoot it, but with current ammunition prices, firing an automatic weapon of any kind is prohibitively expensive. It's not too bad with a MP-5 which fires standard 9mm handgun rounds, but something like a M-60 which fires
What I find really funny about all this arguing in this thread is that all these silly anti-gun Europeans live virtually next door to Switzerland, where every able-bodied male has a fully-automatic Sig550 assault rifle (similar to the US's M-16, but better in many ways) at home. Here in the USA, while it is certainly possible to obtain a fully-automatic rifle as I pointed out above, it's extremely uncommon in practice. There's really nothing to stop thousands of Swiss guys from going nuts, loading their government-assigned ammo into their government-assigned rifles, and shooting up a crowds up people, but it never happens. Maybe your fear of guns really is irrational.
... survivors will be shot again.
Someone's sig on slashdot.
Depends on your state and the firearm. Shotguns are generally unlicensed, requiring only a background check and, in some states, a waiting period. Rifles are also require a background check but have widely varying regulations, and many calibers are restricted to military or police use. Handguns are the most tightly regulated, since they have little sporting or utility use- there is always a background check, and there is almost always a waiting period. In some areas they are banned altogether, although those areas are under increasing pressure to repeal the bans as a result of rising crime rates.
All this completely depends on your state. Here in Arizona (and many other western states), I'm pretty sure rifles and shotguns don't even have background checks. Handguns are easy to get too; there's an instant background check (basically to see if you're a felon), and there is NO waiting period. When I bought my XD-45, I think they did the background check in about the time it took to ring up the purchase at the register.
There are some places where handguns (and maybe other guns) are banned altogether. The worst places in the USA for gun owners are: Chicago (and the rest of Illinois by extension), NYC, DC, New Jersey, Hawaii, and the populated parts of California (LA, SF, etc.). Interestingly, many of these places also have the highest crime rates. Coincidence? I don't think so. Of course, this isn't to say that guns illegal == high crime. I didn't feel a need for my handgun when I vacationed in Kauai, Hawaii, but then again on an island with a population of 60,000, there really isn't any crime to speak of anyway. NYC, interestingly, seems to have a pretty low crime rate, at least in Manhattan, though it's only been that way in the past 15 or 20 years. But there's no way I'd go to DC or LA without my gun, legal or not (of course, I luckily have no need to travel to those cesspool cities anyway, so I simply don't go).
"When seconds count, the police will be there in minutes."
It's Eric S. Raymond!
Do you have a link to that? In all of the interviews that I have read with Bram Cohen he's stated that his main purpose in creating Bittorrent was to allow content creators the ability to host distribute their own content efficiently and affordably. He further goes on to say that he thinks BitTorrent is a pretty stupid tool to use for piracy because it does absolutely nothing to hide the identity of the trackers and clients.
All the Churchills went off an died defending the Chamberlains who stayed home and bred.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Can you list more useful uses of weapons than enriched uranium?
... neither side ever wants to use the things but they both have them.
Certainly. I think if you were to educate yourself on the primary function of weapons in civilized society, the reason the Founders wanted us to have them, and the current most-common application of firearms in the U.S. you'd be surprised. Very surprised. Start with a researcher by the name of Gary Kleck if you want to know more about the defensive uses of firearms (which, by the way, most often involves individuals not discharging their weapons.)
Going up the scale to nuclear weapons, you'll find that with only two exceptions those weapons have had no place in war to date. The reason nations want nukes is not to destroy, but as a deterrent to military action by a hostile power, and as a tool for intimidation. Take India and Pakistan, for example
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Probably. Here nobody carries guns. Farmers are no exception. When the hunting season is open you can go hunt, but only with guns that are allowed for hunting (you can't carry a Kalashnikov for example) and only in those areas.
.30-30, which has a long history as a very popular deer round.
.50BMG, mostly because of complaints by city folk. Reportably, at least one hunter switched over to a .600 Nitro.
You might be surprised. They probably keep them out of sight because of people like you. As for guns allowed for hunting, I find it interesting that you specified a 'Kalashnikov'. AK actions are actually very popular for hunting in Russia. Presumably you're talking about the AK-47, which is indeed not normally suitable for hunting. On the other hand, it's terminal ballistics are very similar to my
On the other hand, the SKS can be very useful for it. Heck, the AR-15 'Poodle shooter' is actually a good small game round.
Do you have to get a gun-license to carry a gun in America, or can anyone buy one? If I have some psychological problem will I be able to buy one?
1. Most areas no, and yes, as long as they aren't a felon, committed, under 18 for long guns or 21 for hand guns.
2. Depends on whether or not it was bad enough for you to be committed to a mental health institution by a court.
Well, if you hunt you are probably in the the middle of the wood or something, and it's hunting season. Or can anyone go hunt everywhere with whatever gun he/she likes? I am asking. I am really curious as to how it works over there.
The rules vary by state, but generally:
1. It's always hunting season for something. Farmers/Ranchers are always allowed to shoot(IE kill) nuisance animals - feral dogs, for example.
2. Location - you can't hunt from the road, though distance from a road varies. Hunting within city limits is generally disallowed, though sometimes a special season for bowhunters will be opened if there is a particular problem with a game animal inside a city. Some cities hire 'professional hunters' for big $$$, others have realized that they can get hunters to pay for the privilege, while still being able to enforce a higher skill standard. Such as using quiet and short ranged bows.
3. The rules for hunting generally have minimum round size/power for large game hunting(IE deer and up). In many states, the popular 5.56x54 and 7.62x39 are considered too light for deer. For bird hunting, magazine limits are common. Some states have banned the
I don't know if the higher violet crimes depend from gun control or not. Can you link some studies? I think that would be very difficult to prove.
It's more culture than gun availability. For example, if I was in your country I'd merely need access to a machine shop for several hours I'd build a firearm. In Japan, their murder rate is really low, but their suicide rate is so high that it actually exceeds the USA's suicide and murder rate combined. Mexico has extremely strict gun control - but their murder rate from machine guns exceeds our firearm rate.
Fix a couple problems with our system, mainly the WOD, and the US murder rate would plummet, including those from guns.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm not even going to make the joke that it sounds pretty strange that "almost every girl you know" has been raped, and that you're the common link in this.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I'm pretty sure rifles and shotguns don't even have background checks.
;)
I figure he was talking about the federal NICS check, which is a requirement for any firearm sale by a dealer in the USA.
When I bought my XD-45, I think they did the background check in about the time it took to ring up the purchase at the register.
No mention of the thoroughness of the check.
For Uninformed Americans, Europeans, and people from other parts of the world, the NICS check is a simple criminal background check - along with some minor ties into mental health for people who have been committed by a court.
If you want a full auto weapon, the check is much more thorough.
I don't read AC A human right
I believe that the law says that you can post your property - then you have the right to call the cops on trespassers. If your property isn't properly posted (in some places this means every 20 feet along the entire boundary), you can then ask the trespassers to leave and if they refuse call the cops (but usually you can just call the cops without asking). In almost no cases (there are a few exceptions), you can't just shoot people, or even shoot at them, or even just attack them however you want. This all makes perfect sense (and should do so to those who think about it a bit).
As someone who lives in the american west, I've been threatened a few times by folks with guns. Almost always it has been on public land, leased by the federal government (who owns a lot of land out here) to ranchers for grazing - but open, by law, to people crossing it to get somewhere else for recreational use and for other uses. But the ranchers don't think so and like to threaten those who don't know any better.
These same ranchers using leased land often move fences between leases or even remove fences between leased land and other (federal and private) land in order to get their cattle to better pastures (vis, scraggly grass on desert). I had one neighbor who liked to take down the fence between his land and the land belonging to the place I was living (without permission) to let his cows through. I asked him not to (the landowner said that he threatened to shoot the cows) and, after repairing the fence a dozen or so times, eventually took to driving them down the driveway and on to the public way - from where they'd left his land it wasn't blocked at all - so they could have made it on their own, but I do admit I helped.
No the gun says "I have the power to kill" sometimes this threat of power is used to protect, but the gun is there for the killing.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
So criminals deserve to die?
funny because the MAFIAA keep calling people like us criminals, should they just come round and shoot us?
but people 'defending their right to injest substances', they're not worth human beings and should die?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Again you're assuming I'm talking about Nukes. Uranium is used in reactors and for propulsion in submarines, so you think bullets are useful, and generating energy is not? That's my point I think you're blindly defending a bullet and just trying to sink a powerful energy resource.
You just say "defensive" and "surprised" and I never got any example. What can you built out of a bullet? I told you already uranium at least can help to generate energy, does a riffle or a pistol has a different purpose than shoot stuff and most likely hurt people?
Some people can never stop amazing me.
It's still the land that wins wars fought halfway across the globe, but people form queues without being told. It's currently active in two war theatres, but guns and knifes longer than 3 inches are banned. It used to be an Empire that ruled a quarter of the globe and all the open seas, yet abolished slavery and gave up that Empire without bloodshed. It is above all a very civilised country, along with the rest of the Commonwealth and the US (although times change).
I just do not see a contradiction where you do.
I suppose it might be because no-one was ever killed by Limewire accidentally discharging.
You're allowed to be afraid of firearms, just like you're allowed to be afraid of snakes. However, there's little rationality behind being afraid of either - caution is warranted in both cases, but there is no need to be afraid in the general case. If a gun is being waved in your face, or a cobra seems to be upset at you stomping on it's tail, a more serious reaction than caution may be warranted. However, blind irrational fear gets people killed, while caution allows a considered response to a non-immediate threat - such as guns in a gun-rack.
In case you were wondering, yes I'm a gun-owner, no I'm not american.
February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
>device made for the sole purpose of killing or wounding a living creature
Are police, then, misusing their firearms when they draw them and order a dangerous person to disarm and drop to the ground?
So criminals deserve to die?
Such a rant, so misguided. I'm sorry I forgot to stick 'violent' in ahead of criminal.
When I was referring to criminals, I was talking about violent ones - the ones in gangs, the mob, etc... The illegality of drugs has created an underground criminal network, and they fight and kill each other over territory, supplies, disputes. Territory that wouldn't matter if drugs were legal. Supplies that could be had out of a catalog. Disputes could be settled in court.
I don't read AC A human right
And I don't mean SF.
Apparently the proliferation of MJ fields on public land in NorCal and the drug gangs that "manage" the crops, carrying firearms around with you when you see "kids" hanging around in that area is generally considered good reasoning skills because the authorities are too scared to go out there to help you (even if you call 911).
And how do you recognize a bunch of "geeks" anyhow?
> effective means to defend themselves, and tend to increase when they aren't.
Oh really?
Funny that you mention Japan later on, after spouting the above line of nonsense. Contrary to that the gun nuts would have you believe, guns are NOT actually illegal in Japan. They are simply well regulated. Hmmmm... "well regulated". That sounds strangely familiar; like maybe I've heard or read it somewhere, specifically relating to bearing arms, before.
Sure, every now and again, someone simply flips their lid and kills a bunch of people. But that happens pretty much EVERYWHERE. Meanwhile, on average, Japan has a MUCH lower crime rate than many, if not most other countries (At least the ones on which we bother keeping the stats.) Also note, that those graphs show crime rates in absolute numbers. Click the "per capita" tab (Japan has about half the population of the US.), and their place in those lists drops down to about the level of your floor.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Double-talk. Obviously, showing off a killing-utensil is handy for intimidating people, but if its main purpose wasn't killing, that wouldn't work.
Ok that's great. Now can we get the good guys to all wear green, and the bad guys to wear red or something? Y'know, so we know whether to be reassured or alarmed.
Because the world IS divided neatly into Good Guys and Bad Guys, after all.
Actually, to anyone but a gun nut it is a device with one purpose to kill or injure. What type of seld delusion leads you to try and make a case for any other purpose. Ah US citizenship-of course.
"That is absolutely made up. Most firearm incidents are not unintended. You simply don't here about 99.99% of the gun incidents because they don't get reported. Why? Because someone picked up their gun, and showed it to an aggressor, thus ending the conflict before it ever becomes violent."
This gets thrown around a lot, but I've yet to see any proof of this. One could also point out that an agressor could point the gun at a victim, and thereby reduce or prevent any defensive actions. At least the level of gun-related crime has statistics available.
If you would like your argument to be taken more seriously, I'd strongly suggest you advocate people to report such incidents to the police so that they may be recorded, and provide you with a stronger argument then ancedotal.
Its interesting what you say about full autos, I was told by one of the local SLED officers that a full auto permit was on the order of several thousand dollars. I'll have to check into it- he's the source for a lot of my understanding of the laws surrounding gun ownership in South Carolina.
See my post below. According to DOJ statistics, only 2% of civilian-on-civilian shootings are mistaken intent or identity, compared to 11% for police. That augers strongly for the idea that it is relatively easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys.
"That is absolutely made up."
"You simply don't here about 99.99%..."
that's just too funny for words.
No it hasn't improved, it's been diluted: Britain is crawling with foreigners, moreover they've set up shop and are serving food. The Economist went as far as saying "There's nothing particularly British about London".
I was indeed speaking of the federal background check, as an uninformed American, though, it's much easier to find information on it now that I know the name though. Thank you.
Great quote. A favorite of mine is "I carry a gun because I can't carry a cop".
Erm, 11% of police shootings are mistaken intent or identity? I can't find this post of yours with more information, but if I read that correctly, that's rather scary.
Anyway, that doesn't help me if I see someone with a gun coming towards me. Ok, he's unlikely to shoot me because he mistakes my intentions. How likely is he to shoot me for any other reason?
My original point was that there is (hardly ever) any such thing as a "good guy" or "bad guy". It always disturbs me to hear that phrase on mainstream US media. It belongs in children's cartoons. Not on the news. The world is not that simple.
In any case, even if someone isn't a criminal, that doesn't mean I trust them with my life, which is what I'm doing if I hang around while they wave a gun around (although I accept there was no actual gun-waving in this instance, but then again neither was there any trespassing).
Screw the hills, that's what got them into that situation in the first place! Run to the City!!
It doesn't matter what your stats say or whether they are legit or made up.
The Supremes will likely rule that the Second Amendment means what it says and gun "bans" will go the way of the Dodo bird.
Reasonable regulation, such as that applied to speech, will be available though.
And regarding the knife...it is widely recognized that a knife can be deadly if the perp is less than 20 or so feet from you (assuming your weapon is holstered, maybe even not).
So the rule is shoot early, shoot often!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"I dunno why people always think a fear of firearms is irrational"
Because it is irrational to fear guns. If your fear is based on ignorance then it is a rational fear, and can be corrected.
Your post attempts to rationalize your fear with the injection of a form of understanding. If you Fear an inanimate object simply based on its designed or perceived designed purpose then it is an irrational fear.
Hoplophobia along with Agoraphobia, Arachnophobia, and any of the other host of phobias are all defined as irrational fears.
If in fact your fear is based to a degree on ignorance (unfamiliarity with the workings of firearms), I suggest you spend some time taking lessons at a local shooting range.
As for the guns are designed to kill thing.... Well yes, most guns are deigned to, or are based off of guns designed to kill. But the truth about that is, some things need killing. Animals don't sacrifice themselves to be food on a table. If its made of meat it was killed to be put on your plate. If its made of red meat, then it was killed with a gun (firearm or captive bolt) to become food. As for killing people, "couple that with the general fact that people are idiots" you summed up why some people need killing, because some idiots will take your life for their personal or political gain.
...a car is just as much of a weapon as aI agree with arguments for legal gun ownership that count it as an additional check on government power, but to compare them directly with cars is invalid.
And you're still running to the nanny state because of all the scary people with knives (and have proposed legislation that bans carrying a swiss army knife)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I am aware that you can legally own a firearm in Japan. They're also 'may issue', and the issuance is extremely rare. They're effectively around DC in difficulty in most areas. In context I'm also talking about 'for self defense', which your very link points out, self defense is not a valid reason. At any point police can, and often do, say no.
As I pointed out in another link, Japan's suicide rate is such that it exceeds the USA's murder and suicide rates combined. While I normally support a person committing suicide in substitute of committing murder, I think that that indicates a serious problem with Japan's culture.
If you read some of my other posts, I make the point that culture makes a very big difference in violent crime rates. Japanese emigrants into the USA have even lower rates of committing violent crimes in the USA. Sad, but true, black violence is vastly disproportionate from their population. To the point that removing all of them would drop us to around Europe's crime rate. Personally, I blame the inner city culture.
Also, historically, when you combine multiple ethnic groups crime rates soar; under that context it's amazing the US crime rate is so low.
I don't read AC A human right
Arguably, if guns are less accessible, there will be the same number of suicide attempts, but possibly fewer actual deaths.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Please be very careful when talking about automatic weapons. There is absolutely no special BATE license to purchase and own. What you are referring to is a tax stamp and yes it is $200. The paperwork requires a signature from the local Sheriff or for a Sheriff who doesn't follow the 2nd Amendment, a Trust or Corporation can be setup to "own" the registered firearm. In my case the Sheriff ran a quick background check and signed off on the paperwork. The ATF will do some more background work and by the end of the summer I will be able to own a 7" AR15.
One of the interesting little tidbits about the $200 tax stamp is that the cost of the stamp was set in the 1930's and at the time was a huge burden to anyone wanting to get one. Now I make more then $200 in a day and I'll likely have 3 or 4 tax stamps by the end of the year.
One of the most abusive laws to the 2nd Amendment was the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act which made it illegal for civilians to register new automatic weapons. This has caused an extreme artificial price increase in automatics. An M16 that went for less then $600 before 1986 will now cost at least 15K and closer to 20K is more normal. The cheap MAC10 type machine pistols will run 4K.
Do you really think the world is divided between "good people" and "bad people"?
If you're a Christian, read over the gospels. This is pretty much their biggest, most profound underlying message, and certainly the most important one, whether or not you actually believe in some sort of higher power.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The number of stabbings in all of Britain in a month is less than the number of shootings in Detroit in a day.
I'm too lazy to dig up the numbers (again), but you can indeed look it up and confirm it.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Arguably, if guns are less accessible, there will be the same number of suicide attempts, but possibly fewer actual deaths.
Not if Japan is any example. They manage to have a suicide rate higher than the US's combined murder and suicide rate, without a significant number of firearms.
Substitution is high, and success vs failure is more easily tracable by sex in the USA than method. It's one of the oddities that more women attempt suicide than men, but more men commit suicide - Men are about three times more likely to succeed. Of course, men are more likely to use a firearm, but lacking that they'll go for other 'high success' options. Perhaps ones more dangerous to others, like running their vehicle into oncoming traffic(actually happened, the woman survived, but killed three others).
I don't read AC A human right
If you take something like only 1% of the gun incident get reported (a far cry from your 99.99% or 0.01% reported) and look at the statistic, then you suddenly get an enormous amount of gun incident. Which make no sense unless you have gun blazing all the day long. A similar statistic I disputed was the one from the NRA pretending that every year 800000 rape are avoided (or so was claimed by a NRA member), which is roughly 20 time the rape rate per year in the US (800K=~0.7 percent as opposed to 34.2 per 100000 for rape). To put it in perspective one of the worst country with has got a 0.12% rape rate per year (I think it is South Africa). So NRA was pretending in essence that attempted rape rate in the US was nearly 1 women out of 150 roughly per year, AND 6 time the worst rape rate of the worst country on earth for which statistic is available.
Your claim is about as good as the same above. You pretend that gun stops incident and thus are not reported is about the same quality : zero evidence of that happening. On the other hand there is a well documented amount of incident which would not be happening if gun were restricted (all domestic incident involving non intended wounding/killing by firearm). I am not saying that the US and NRA are inherently wrong with their support of weapon for people in absolute (I personnally dislike gun and would be distraught at them being available freely by anybody, but this is a personal preference based on my own culture, and not a real "scientific" opinion on whether really a society with freely available gun is better off), but using fake statistic and pulled out of a dark place numbers certainly make you seem to have a very weak position, since you need to made up fact for it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
On behalf of GP, I did the math. His argument does not look weak.
Mountain lions 6 deaths in 130 years - in California. ( 6/130 )
Black widows 63 people in the US in 40 years. ( 63/40 )
The first issue is how to scale those two facts. Currently, California has about 11% of the US population. 130 Years or more ago it had probably close to 1%. Assuming a constant growth - which is the best I can do without a lot of research, that averages out to California having 5% or 1/20th of the population of the US.
So, when we scale the numerator by multiplying by 20, it would be 120 people in 130 years.
Now let's try to scale the denominator. If the population were not growing, we could use a factor of 130/40 or 3.25. But the early poulation was small, so I'm going to guestimate about three. 63 * 3 = 183.
So, we have the two pieces of data roughly scaled. 120 lion deaths vs 183 black widow deaths. ( There is easily a range of error of 50% on these figures, but it's the best I can do without a lot of research ) GP's argument still looks kinda weak.
Now let's introduce the one major fact that P didn't mention: exposure. The range of the black widow is almost all of the US. It hides in woodpiles, sheds, garages, attics. For the vast majority of the US population, there is one within 50 feet of you right now. In the last month you have probably walked within a yard of one. ( You probably didn't know about it, of course, because it was scared to mess with you. )
But most people are not that close to mountain lions. Again, the figure is hard to calculate, but most of us never come close to a mountain lion. I'm going to make a guess that the exposure is maybe 100th of that of a black widow. ( Don't like the 100 figure? Please feel free to improve on it by doing more research than I. Or do the following mental experiment: swap 'em. Imagine lions where every spider is, and spiders where every lion is. Feel safe? )
So when we compensate for exposure ( 120 * 100 = 12000 ) the ratio is now 12000 for lions, 183 for spiders. GP seems right: lions are dangerous. If you get near one, they are way more dangerous than spiders.
Triple-talk. Is the "main purpose" based on the design, the intentions of the owners, the most common usage, or what?
Clearly the design is to kill. Just as clearly, an extremely common purpose for actually having a gun is to demonstrate an ability and willingness to protect a person's rights or property.
Consider cars. Is the "main purpose" of a sports car transportation, getting women, or showing off wealth? It can really be any of the three, or more than one, depending on the owner. The fact that cars are nominally designed just for transportation doesn't mean that is really their main purpose for everyone.
It is important to be able to consider many aspects to the question, and shutting it down by saying that guns are only about killing doesn't get you anywhere.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Let me go ahead and say that I do think that under most self-defense conditions there is a clear good guy and a clear bad guy. If somebody is breaking into your house, they are the bad guy. If somebody is raping your wife, they are the bad guy. If somebody is robbing your store, they are the bad guy. The statistics bolster the fact that it is pretty easy for most good guys to distinguish between the person doing any of those things from john q public. The circumstances where a shoot is justifiable are so limited, so constraining, that I don't see the moral ambiguity you seem to be finding. Do you have an example of such a situation?
As far as the 11%, yes- according to DOJ statistics, 11% of police shootings are cases of mistaken identity or intent. Scares the hell out of me.
I think you misunderstood the DOJ statistics I quoted. The mistaken intention stats are only of justified shoots, which means that we pretty much start out with the presumption of good guy on good guy violence. It doesn't say anything about bad guy on good guy violence, which is a separate, very much more complex issue.
As far as trusting people with your life, you'll pardon me if I prefer a society that trusts others with their lives and mine to myself. I work every day with a thousand items that I could use to perpetrate awful crimes- I shudder to think what Hannibal Lecter would make of my machine shop- and yet you wouldn't protest the ready availability of lathes, hacksaws, or, for that matter, an oxy rig. For that matter, 49% of the population has the ability to rape the other 51%- what to do about that?
Sporks and finger food for everyone.
Chuck
I believe the farmer should have the right to protect his equipment, especially since he lived far out from any cities.
I cant imagine what it must be like to be in America, where everyone has a gun and is ready to shout "nnnnnng, hes comin' right at usssssss" (Southpark refference)
---
A comment on slashdot declaring someone else has too much time on their hands.
You know, many people have time off every week, and often have longer "vacations" every year. Some people ("citiots" included) even use this time to, you know, GO OUT and DO THINGS. Not sit at home and snark.
That should mean a CV (Commercial Vehicle) license for anyone that wants to drive a big SUV.
Most SUV drivers stay within their lane most of the time. I rarely see a semi truck driver stay within their lane for very long. CV licenses can't be all that.
Ok, so these timid nerds decided it would be a good idea to uh, take a trip down to some random urban place -- so they can, er, hang around and talk about D&D and their shitty xkcd webcomic I guess? It's a shame nobody was hurt.
I'm guessing you're in the UK? In Scotland, in contrast to the usually prohibitative laws, it's quite normal to see folks wandering around the hills with shotguns and, during the deer stalking season, rifles. The law of trespass is also a little different here...you're not traspassing until the land owner asks you to leave and/or you damage something. And yet I don't recall anyone getting shot.
"The 78 year old man's condition was described as 'stable, but still shot in the face by Vice President Dick Cheney'." The Daily Show
See? There's the problem.
C'mon ... worst case scenario for the one is creating a illegal copy of a work.
Worst case scenario for the other is one or more people killed.
Please keep perspective.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Chief Wiggum: "... once a man is in your home anything you do to him is nice and legal."
Homer: "Is that so?" *Leans out window and calls to Ned.* "Oh Flanders, won't you join me in my kitchen?" *Homer waits to pounce Ned and pounds his fist into his hand.*
Wiggum: "Uh, it doesn't work if you invite them in."
Ned: "Hidely Hey!"
Homer: "Go home."
Ned: "Toodly Doo!"
Does any of this mean that it's not reasonable to not want to be around the more dangerous ones?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Yes.
I live in Japan. They see American crime statistics and think America is dangerous. Then I tell them that I grew up in a town where I didn't know anyone to lock their door, or those of their cars. I tell them that I've never, ever, known or even met someone who had been the victim of a violent crime, and I only know a handful of people who have fallen victim to any crime (CDs stolen from car, that kind of thing).
I feel safer in the US than I do here, what with the yakuza being able to do whatever the hell they want. Usually they just stay out of your way, but the lower-levels sometimes just like to cause trouble. And the cops don't do anything.
Then again, the cops are the ones I'm afraid of in the US...
Yeah, well Slashdot, like the United States, is full of a bunch of conflicted 'libertarian' loonies caught in the throes of cognitive dissonance over their government's trampling on the rule of law. They like to tell themselves how different they are from the Germans of the 1930's, but know deep down that things really are that bad.
This may be a revelation to you, but there is no "slashdot crowd," there is no hive mind that encompasses the "slashdot point-of-view." Slashdot is just a bunch of different people posting their comments. Those individuals have different thoughts and beliefs.
I would have thought your own post would be evidence of that. Is your post indicative of the slashdot crowd?
... and then they built the supercollider.
No, I think I have a quite rational fear of firearms - mainly, that some nutjob is going to decide to shoot, shovel and shut up. And the whole "why worry when people drive up to you loaded to the teeth?" argument is funny - you pull up on a road, with multiple firearms, and find a bunch of twenty somethings with GPSs. Shouldn't take too long to eliminate the wrongdoer hypothesis... And for all the farmers-with-guns types out there, here's a question - if you're OK with the landowners trucking around more firearms than they can carry, what's your opinion on the next geohashing party showing up armed to the teeth? Same logic should apply (self-protection, guns aren't dangerous, etc etc)
Define "average." If that includes farmers and ranchers, then I'd say your PoV is being affected by your Townhouse environment. If you mean the casual City dweller or Suburbanite, then I won't disagree.
Farmers and Ranchers have to deal with wild (sometimes rabid) animals that can kill/harm their herd or wreck their crops. For those situations a gun is sometimes essential.
People do what they have to in order to get by, and none of us are perfect. We can fall victim to poverty, addiction, depression, etc.... That doesn't fundamentally change who we are, or necessarily take away our ability to recover.
Did you miss the part where I was implying that if we were to legalize drugs, that the majority of this violence would go away? That this would be a good thing? Step 2 would be to take all the resources currently going towards fighting the drug war and put it to fixing other problems here in the states. Like actually offering effective counseling/treatment for mental disorders.
Do you really think the world is divided between "good people" and "bad people"?
No. There's extremely good people, there's extremely bad/evil people, but most are shades of grey. I'll tell you what - you don't go threatening people's lives and I won't kill you. It doesn't matter to me if you're on a bad trip, suffering from temporary insanity from a bad drug interaction. You're a threat to others, so I'll take you down. Lacking that, I'll leave you alone.
I don't read AC A human right
http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/idcu/health/zoonosis/Animal/Bites/Information/venom/snake/ It is also important to identify the kind of snake that bit the victim. Even taking a dead snake with you to the medical center is appropriate if it can be done without further risk or injury. Extreme caution should be used when bringing in a snake because even though the snake may be dead, its reflexes may still allow the snake to bite. http://www.smm.org/buzz/blog/that_really_bites_dead_snake_bits_man
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
once you're asked to leave, you can be arrested if you refuse (or return)
and if a sign is posted, you can be arrested right away
there is plenty of public land , parks and forests easily accessible for roaming
...lions are dangerous. If you get near one, they are way more dangerous than spiders. Which by your own arguments you won't get near one so they aren't dangerous. You should be disappearing in a poof of logic about right now.BTW I enjoyed all the made up statistics. I enjoy some good fiction.
Having said that, if I saw someone waving anything around (a lettuce leaf?) I'd wonder if he was a lunatic.
Yes, because anyone who has smoked weed, looked at porn when less than 18 years old, or played a (possibly pirated) ROM on an emulator is an idiot. Only a true idiot would do such stupid things.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
By the way, bittorrent is made for the sole purpose of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works.
If it was then they did a pretty lousy job. Using bittorrent means your ip address is publically associated with the content you are downloading.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I would be much more comfortable around gun toting ranchers than a bunch of geocaching crybabies anyday.
+4 Insightful my ass. You can't even read. No one said anything about drawing down on anyone. You know, there are ways to pick up a gun and show it to someone, even an aggressor, without pointing it at them or directly threatening them. The point is not to escalate, but to inform the aggressor that should they choose to initiate violence that you can and will defend yourself. If they then make the informed decision to attack you then they are the ones responsible for escalation.
Hey, I have a fear of cars you insensitive clod! Fast cars, anyways. Crowded, 120km/h highways (i.e. 400-series highways in Ontario)terrify me. I'm much more comfortable taking the quiet 80km/h side roads (i.e. regional highways).
I have as much a fear of fast-moving cars around me, as I do of fast-moving bullets around me.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Although this isn't exactly a refutation of the prevalence of violence in America, you can point out the rate of robberies in Spain is ~8.8 times higher than in America (Source). It is a really interesting statistic.
Every post I make begins with the assumption P=~P.
Not to mention most of the "funny" responses would provoke confrontation when used in real life.
Yeah, put up a disclaimer about not trespassing and then suggest a method for accessing private property.
Lie about why you are there and don't expect adverse results, an incredibly stupid idea for supposedly smart people.
So then waving around a bread knife (main purpose: cutting bread), a baseball bat (main purpose: hitting baseballs), a cast-iron pipe (main purpose: transmitting gases or fluids), or a crowbar (main purpose: demolition) isn't intimidating?
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
I own a gun......am I scary?
Everything on the North American continent is owned by someone. You can't go to a random point unless it happens to be on government-owned land which is open to you. The geohashers need to adjust their rules.
Let's not also forget, that this isn't just some hick trying to shoot some people, this is a guy who is trying to protect (from his point of view, he has no idea who these people are nor what these people are doing) his livelihood. This is what he does for a living, so it's more than just trying to shoo people away. Think of how you'd feel if someone randomly shows up in your cube. What's your first reaction? What about 20 people in your cube (imagine a bigger cube, for the sake of argument). Aren't you going to be suspicious? Even a little bit? Add that together with the knowledge that the sheriff and help is 30 minutes away, which basically equates them with being a cleanup rather than response. What would be your response?
That site is interesting...
.62, South Africa(.50), Russia(.20), and Mexico(.13) in running. USA at #24 at .043, Australia #43 at .015, Canada is #44 at .015, UK #46 at .014. USA has ~3X the murder rate of the other major english speaking countries, Mexico has 3X the murder rate of the USA. .77, Canada .73, USA .30, UK .14* .9% of UK, .8% Canada, .4% USA. New Zealand, unfortunate winner at 1.3%.
For example:
UK Burglary rate is ~2X USA (13.8 vs 7.1) Australia WTF: 21.7
Assault: US wins by a hair, 7.6 vs 7.5. Canada 7.1, Australia 7.0. On the other hand, South Africa is the winner at 12.1
Assault victims: UK 2.8%, Australia 2.4%, Canada 2.3%, USA 1.2%
Car Theft: UK 5.6, USA 3.9, Australia the leader at 6.9. Canada has more than the USA, at 4.9
Murder: Colombia 'wins' at
Rapes: South Africa, 1.2. Australia
Rape Victims: 1% of female Australians have been raped,
Total crime: UK, 86 per 1000, US 80, Canada 75, Australia not listed.
Now, looking at the victim % rates(what percent of the population has been victimized by a particular crime), I come to the conclusion that, in the USA at least, being the victim of a crime like assault or rape once is a very good indicator that you'll be a victim of it again. Not necessarily a good thing, but fits in with my theory that we have regions of high crime that tend to fubar our statistics a bit. Stay out of those areas and you're very unlikely to end up part of the statistics, stay in them and you're much more likely to be in there multiple times.
*Odd that UK has half the rapes per capita, but twice the population reports that they've been raped.
I don't read AC A human right
Girls don't readily talk to me, someone said it's because "you're a pussy" I don't know. I keep running into girls with massive emotional problems like "my boyfriend dumped me" etc and talk to them; a lot of times it's stuff like "I got raped after work" or like 2 months later "HOLY FUCK MY EX SHOWED UP TODAY AND RAPED ME *CRY*" and I'm back to square one.
It might just be the company I attract. Poor easily victimized girls. Then again, one of my friends jumped into an abortion issue to point out his first nephew came from some bastard raping his sister, so...
I live in baltimore...
Support my political activism on Patreon.
So if I go to the range and blow away paper targets all day, can I sue Glock for their gun not doing its job properly since nobody died?
.223-cal round that NATO uses. It's designed to wound, not kill, so it takes a wounded soldier and one or two of his buddies out of the fight instead of one dead one. Did NATO drop the ball?
What about the
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
I know a girl who's repelled someone trying to break into her house through a window with a shotgun, twice. The police said to stop shooting at them when they're halfway in the window, and just let them get into the house and THEN shoot them. So far they run; if they die and fall out of the window, though, the law charges you with murder because they were "retreating" somehow. They have to fall dead and land inside your house.
She never got on the news.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Unfortunately a nutcase waving a gun around because bunch of geeks showed up in a remote location somewhere is definitely not one of the "good guys".
I started a new obscure hobby called "Geocrashing" where I randomly pick a house, then break into it with some friends. Because of overzealous reactions like these ranchers with their guns in their trucks, I always carry a loaded AK-47 with me when out Geocrashing. If the public at large doesn't bother to educate themselves about my new hobby, I'm not responsible for the ensuing carnage.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
This whole thing was way overblown.
We went to the location, which was across the road from a park ranger station, walked about 500 feet into the nearby woods, and on the way out met the neighbors in their pickup truck (An about 70 year old retired fire chief and his wife). We explained the innocent reason for our presence, apologized profusely for the confusion, and asked if there was anyway that we could contact the owners and ask for their forgiveness. Any attempt we made at reconciliation was only rejected with anger.
We later talked with the park ranger about the situation who explained that this couple is very protective about the nearby properties, and frequently gets angry about little things like this. The park ranger directed us to the park entrance that was just up the road, and we went on our way.
One of the hashers later posted on the wiki about the situation in order to warn later hashers to stay away from now confirmed private property. Maybe posting about the gun was unnecessary, but then again maybe it was useful knowledge for later hashers to know about the potential dangers. Either way the gun was a minor feature of the event and certainly does not merit such a hyperbolic discussion about culture clashes.
We were not trying to harm anything or anyone. We did not intend to trespass on private property. We were not afraid of the guns, nor the people, nor the culture. We left simply because we realized that the neighbors didn't want us there, and we had made a mistake.
If you click on Baltimore for June 16th it puts you at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Good luck meeting up at a military base.
Also, it should be noted that the data specifically excludes homicides
Includes victimizations in which offenders were unarmed. Excludes homicides.But, hey, who ever heard of a gunshot causing death?
Really, just another Bush Administration attempt at creating data to suit political needs.
Well, there'd be no point in him having a gun rack if he didn't even own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack.
That's a pretty lame version of geohashing. Real Nerds meet at a location given only the MD5 hash of its co-ordinates.
I think perhaps the rape mentioned in "HOLY FUCK MY EX SHOWED UP TODAY AND RAPED ME *CRY*" might be them deciding after the fact that they feel used/stupid after they had sex with their ex hoping to get back with them after no avail.
"Real" rape is horrible. A girl dragged off the street by a total stranger. Horrific.
However, too many times now, it's a case of "I agreed to sex with this guy, but afterwards I wish I hadn't". To me, that's not rape.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Interestingly, many of these places also have the highest crime rates. Coincidence? I don't think so.
I would imagine the worst places for gun crime would be places where guns are outlawed or heavilly restricted but are easilly availible to those willing to break the law.
What if anything is there to stop someone buying a gun in arizona and taking it to one of the big anti-gun cities? not much I would imagine.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You don't know anybody that's gotten so much as *robbed*? I'll trade you neighborhoods.
sometimes guys decide that "they can make it work" and show up and force them into it. It happens.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
So typically the pathetic, childish gun nuts mod me down for stating the obvious truth on Slashdot, you really are as pathetic as I thought. Gun owner = dickless. I couldnt give a flying fuck about Slashdot karma, new accounts are real cheap.
See how easy it is to avoid butt fuck moderators whose microscopic dick makes them overcompensate by being gun nuts. Fuckwads, you are pathetic.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Pretty amazing coincidence, I'll actually be traveling through your area in a few weeks. Small world.
Want to take a beer or two? :)
You can find my contact info in my profile page if you want. Would be cool to meet a slashdotter. But leave your guns at home
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Shooting is just pulling the trigger, very easy.