September 11th came and went, but WTF is this about guns!

[_Schadenfreude_]

Personally I feel that this gun fetish where people collect weapons that they don't need and will never use to defend themselves is all due to a combination of latent homosexuality combined with extremely small noodle size.....much like those that drive around in sports cars.....

[Creamo]

I agree. Ted Nugent never got much poontang.

[Fatty]

I think the anti gun fetish where people worry about other people collecting weapons and worrying if they'll need or will need to defend themselves is all due to a combination of latent homosexuality combined with an extreme interest in our noodle size.

[Dowding]

Could this be part of the reason for your country’s seeming fascination in our firearms or is it from our western movies?

That's a broad brush stroke. Most of us couldn't give a rat's bellybutton about how many guns Americans have.

[Fatty]

Oh, and Beetle, should I gain weight and take up smoking to make the theory fit?

[Creamo]

Beetle, a hint on using the BBS, make your point short and sweet, before the audience dies of bordom. Smoking cigars seems less risky, geez.

You can own a gun to protect yourself from a small chance of a life threatening situation, you can smoke alot in the mean time too and ultimatley shorten your life, sure. Or you can not own a gun, not smoke at all and get killed in a home robbery tomarrow by an armed robber.

 How you pull this all together as relavent I don't know, I didn't risk death sifting through all your self entertaining BS BBS paragraphs.

[Dune]

Or you can own a gun because they are fun to collect.  Or fun to shoot at targets.  Or because you use them to hunt with.  Or because they make good doorstops.

Someday I'll figure out why you all think that if I own a gun, it must mean that I live every second waiting for the boogyman to jump out and get me.  

[Curval]

Originally posted by lazs2
plus... guns are fun to collect, work on and shoot.   Plus... we certainly don't want our government knowing that we are unarmed.  Not this adminestration or the last or the one that will follow... keep em a little honest.

lazs

lazs...your gun stance and drug stance are at polar opposites.

It is your "right" to own guns and government should stay out of the issue and allow you to do whatever you want (legally) with them.

Yet in the legalise drugs thread you advocate strict control over their usage, even suggesting that anyone who even had traces of weed in their systems should have their licences revoked.  Revoked by whom?  Government right?

Weird....and hypocritical in my opinion.

[Creamo]

Originally posted by Dune
Or you can own a gun because they are fun to collect.  Or fun to shoot at targets.  Or because you use them to hunt with.  Or because they make good doorstops.

Someday I'll figure out why you all think that if I own a gun, it must mean that I live every second waiting for the boogyman to jump out and get me.  

That too, good point.  I can't remember buying my 12 guage and choosing choke tubes for people. It was just nice to know if the bump in the night indeed was a threat, I'm not totally helpless.

[Dune]

Here, you want to compare the danger of guns to a real danger?  Try this:

In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children under the age of 10 drowned in the United States last year alone. Approximately 550 of those drownings – about 75 percent of the total – occurred in residential swimming pools. According to the most recent statistics, there are about six million residential pools, meaning that one young child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.

About 175 children under the age of 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200 million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one child killed by guns for every one million guns.

Thus, on average, if you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

by Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago

Ban swimming pools!!!!!

[DrDea]

The pools are overmodeled.Perk them.

[Scootter]

Cars kill a bunch more.... dont ya just love statistics:D

[DrDea]

Yea look at the Yahoo boards sometime.I swear theres people that have stats to prove Blacks are responsable for everything from the crusifixion of Christ to the global warming.Stats are a beautyfull thing I guess Sheesh.

[beet1e]

Concise version for Creamo: Many people arm themselves against perceived threats from outside in an attempt to prolong their lives. But millions more lives could be prolonged were some of those same people to guard against real dangers by discarding risky habits and by adopting healthier lifestyles. There. Now have another tumbler full of vodka, and when you've slept it off, post back to tell me what kind it was.

Scootter!  Thanks for your post. At least you went some way to explain it. I appreciate that. It's easy for me to forget that apart from the 1993 and 2001 attacks at WTC and also the Pentagon and the PA plane crash, there never had been any terrorist outrage on US soil. I guess people didn't know how to react to it. It's a whole different situation here after 30 years of IRA atrocities. I can't look at an isolated brown paper package in a public place without thinking the worst. I was once evacuated from a concert hall because of a bomb threat, and a pub I used to visit in Guildford was blown apart by a bomb shortly after my last visit. At train stations, left luggage lockers were withdrawn from use because of the posibility of being used for bombs. Even my local station, like many others, has no litter bins for the same reason.

Lazs! From which thread did you cut and paste your posts? Is that the real Lazs? Because I didn't see anything about "moving the fields closer together". Muhahaha! Only 32 more days to the WCMC - see you there.

Dune - just a reminder.  To give an example (and pre-empt ra) a thread about "travelling across Europe by car" would be about the journey, and would not be a thread about cars just because the word car was in the title. I realise the title of this thread contains the G word, but it's not about guns - same principle applies.

[Montezuma]

Originally posted by beet1e
. Folks buy guns to safeguard their lives from a perceived threat from outside.  

For me, the time to have a gun is when the government can't protect you from local threats, such as when you are out in the wilderness or in the midst of 'urban unrest'.