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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."
In free countries you can. It's one of the fundamental rights, like privacy, free speech and water. The right to roam.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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There's a difference between carrying a firearm and having one available in the truck. It doesn't even have to be visible, it might be in a gun case or sleeve for protection behind the seats. My grandfather, who traps, keeps a .22 revolver under his seat most of the time. For a rancher or farmer, a firearm is a tool, and often thought of about as much as a cordless drill.
There's enough gun weenies out there that it's often not worth the hassle if somebody panics when you're in town.
All this discounts concealed carry. Not to mention that they might have been carrying and you simply didn't realize it. I'm part of the firearms community that concerns itself with self defense. This includes both concealed and unconcealed carry. People who carry unconcealed have reported that an amazing amount of people never realize that they're carrying.
We're not normally talking about a chrome plated six shooter in a tooled leather harness with silver highlights, here. We're talking a flat black firearm in a black leather or synthetic holster. If they're carrying one of the smaller ones, perhaps with a shirt bloused a bit over the top, it can easily be mistaken for a blackberry or other such device.
I don't read AC A human right
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
I was raised on a farm, and although I've been living in some of the most modern urban locations on Earth for 15 years, there's a cultural gap between me and most people.
I remember when I was young, maybe ten years old, and I went in to town to play with some friends. They were playing some kind of neighborhood-wide hide and seek, tear-assing through everyone's backyards. I felt unable to play because the wholesale trespassing going on made me intensely uncomfortable. It still does.
Of course I was trained to shoot at age 8 and operate heavy machinery at 12, so there were other benefits as well.
Had these ordinary folks with an arcane hobby shown up on my father's farm he would have shot a warning shot across thier bow (12 gauge bird shot). He, however would have told them to stay where they were and to not move until the County Sheriff arrived to deal with them. At which point they'd get a free meal and room for the night in the pokey. You see my father, and every landowner in the county who had an ounce of smarts, knew the sheriff and his deputies pretty well and would be happy to do a favor for him (particularly if there would be a good story in it) and would always take his word against someone from out of the area. So even if these guys had called the law, it would have done them no good.
Had they gone up and rung the doorbell and asked, it may have been a no problem. But then again it might have. Depends on the season and where they wanted to go. If they wanted to go in the middle of a field and there were still crops in, there's no chance in hell, they could easily cause hundreds of dollars of crop damage. And likewise in a pasture where there are animals. Just because they are farmed animals does not mean they are domesticated. Getting run over by a cow isn't fun, and a sow can and will kill you if she senses a threat to her young.
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.
It should be noted that in every mass school shooting that has occurred in the US, it has either been school policy or state law that no guns are allowed.
Hmm. Maybe the laws only prevent the law abiding from having guns. Perhaps that gives the person about to commit a crime the monopoly on force?
I'm not arguing against you, but this long discussion about trespassing made me want to post about Allemansrätten (Swedish, lit. transl: everyman's right). It is pretty much legal to enter private property as long as you stay out of gardens and the absolute vicinity of houses (just a clarification, as English is not my native language; when I say "property" here I speak about land, not houses). Essentially the law (which is a part of the Swedish constitution) exists in order to ensure that people will always have access to the country's forests, fields and lakes.
In short, barring special circumstances or special permits, it is illegal for the owner to drive anybody off their property.
I'm certainly not saying you're wrong - I just thought that people may want to know that alternative views on the concept of private property exists, and just picked one of the first posts in the discussion about it to reply to.
Oh, and Sweden is not the only country that has this practice. The law exists in other Nordic countries, and to a lesser extent some other European countries.
May we live long and die out
actually states like Texas have "right to roam" quite extensively for livestock... if cattle roams into your private yard, you wouldn't be allowed to stop or hurt it, even if it starts smashing your stuff. Land owners have the "right" to "try" to put up fences and that's about it. In fact in many states if the cattle roams into a public road and you hit it, you are responsible for paying for the animal the owner didn't keep out of the road!
Why would the reverse not be true? Why would a person not have the right to go where the cattle could go? Ranchers can't claim their property rights are "violated" when they don't respect others' in the same manor and keep their cattle on their property.