Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Its also the country with the highest number of people in jail,

Not necessarily. We count people in jail awaiting trial. Other countries don't.

> highest levels of drug use, 

Hard to measure, I'd think.

> the highest cases of teen pregnancies, the 
> highest rate of violent crime, the highest level of science denial, etc. 

That I'd believe.

> Somehow, I would hate to think that "longest continuous government" 
> requires any or all of these things, to survive this long. 

It doesn't. I'm thinking it's because of the flexibility of the constitution 
along with its inflexibility in some respects.

> And, its not 
> so clear why, "only modern country that has relatively weak gun laws", 
> is on the "good things" side of the line, instead of right up there with 
> the other list. ;) lol

True, but you also have to ask about the attitudes behind it. We're also one 
of the few countries where the soldiers don't swear to obey the leaders, for 
example, but rather the country's legal system.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Not what I am saying. The sane people already had them. You don't get
>> a lot of clear thinking people buying up guns, when people start making 
> 
> Fair enough. But when 150 million people already own guns, the 2 million
> crazies are less of a problem. :-)
> 

As one of the sane ones, I would have to go buy a gun now if I were to
keep one in the house. Apartment dwelling never lent itself to anything
with more reach than a baseball bat, and the practice ranges were quite
a distance away.

>> And if he bought it because he "needed" to have it close, 
> 
> Yeah. I'll have to ask my cop brother where he keeps his. I know he has
> a bunch, but I naturally never saw them.
> 
> His kid is *very* gun-safety aware. Like, if he sticks his finger in the
> dart-gun trigger before he's ready to shoot, he gets scolded. But
> they're all afraid of him at the paint-ball games.
> 

I hope that his kid didn't put up with the absurdity of junior high
school gun safety class. If I ever needed a reason to dislike the
stereo-typical southern, flannel-wearing, deer antlers in pickup truck
hunters, that was it.

Post a reply to this message

> I think you missed the whole point of it.  It's not like he's selling the 
> thing at Toy R Us (in fact, he's not selling it at all).

What's whether he's selling it or not got to do with it?  He's modified a 
lethal weapon deliberately to make it look like a child's toy, and what's 
worse he has advertised it to the world and seems to be encouraging others 
to do the same.  To assume that a child never gets sight of this gun, or any 
one of the number of copies he has influenced, seems a little naive. 
People, even gun owners, are only human, mistakes do get made, which is why 
we have thing in place to reduce the risks when mistakes get made - painting 
a gun like a child's toy just seems to be increasing the risk to me.

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:18:38 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>> Sorry when I googled the phrase that is what I got.
>
>I'm not sure what phrase you're referring to, but OK.

"longest continuous government" but as you say OK :)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> I hope that his kid didn't put up with the absurdity of junior high
> school gun safety class. 

He's not that old yet.

> If I ever needed a reason to dislike the
> stereo-typical southern, flannel-wearing, deer antlers in pickup truck
> hunters, that was it.

Sounds like a good idea to me. What's wrong with the idea of teaching gun 
safety in jr high?  They rarely taught us anything "practical" beyond shop 
class.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> If I ever needed a reason to dislike the
>> stereo-typical southern, flannel-wearing, deer antlers in pickup truck
>> hunters, that was it.
> 
> Sounds like a good idea to me. What's wrong with the idea of teaching
> gun safety in jr high?  They rarely taught us anything "practical"
> beyond shop class.
> 

Teaching it is a great idea. And in a county high school where lots of
the families hunt just to have enough food in the winter, it is a
necessity. Even at a younger age it would have been smart, since by 8th
grade most of these kids had been hunting with parents.

No, my reason was because these guys had no business teaching anything.
The lesson of "don't pull the trigger because the gun is always loaded"
involved the teaching handing a kid a gun, teaching them how to check if
it is loaded, and then when the kid refuses to pull the trigger the
teacher would continue to tell them the lesson says they need to pull
the trigger to demonstrate. After a few times of this "you need to" "but
you said not to" the kid inevitably gives in because the teacher says
they have to. Then the teacher gets to yell "I told you not to ever do
that!" Sure, it teaches them to not trust people in authority while
anyone is holding a gun. It also undermines the rest of the class,
because you realize these guys are idiots.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> No, my reason was because these guys had no business teaching anything.

Heh. Good story.

Reminds me of "physical education" classes.  Usually taught by geezers too 
old to actually demonstrate how to do a push-up, for example.

Plus, they never actually taught you anything. They'd decide that today 
you'll play football, and *assumed* everyone knew all the rules *and* how to 
play football, etc.  I didn't know how to catch a football, throw a 
football, or which way I was supposed to run when I got the football.

(Football being gridiron, for all you non-americans.)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> (Football being gridiron, for all you non-americans.)

  Aren't we Europeans fools for calling soccer "football"? Soccer is for
wimps, football is for Real Men. :)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Aren't we Europeans fools for calling soccer "football"? Soccer is for
> wimps, football is for Real Men. :)

Actually, "soccer" is the term for a particular set of rules for playing 
ball games with your feet.  "Football" is ball games with your feet. So, 
like, technically "hacky-sack" is football, but not soccer.

Granted, calling what americans do "football" is a stretch, if not downright 
wrong. But there's more to football than just soccer, just like there's more 
to poker than five-card hold'em and there's more to billiards than just pool.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Granted, calling what americans do "football" is a stretch

  I have always wondered why they call it football even though playing the
ball with the feet forms only a very small part of the sport. It would be
akin to calling volleyball "fistball" because you are allowed to hit the
ball with your first, and that's often used.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message