How many of you carry a gun as part of your cycling equipment?

stevebaby

His opinion was shared by the combat-hardened veterans of the AIF.
Take a look at a map of Asia....it seems to me that Burma,Vietnam, China,Indonesia,Malaysia,Borneo etc are rather larger areas of land than the Philippines and a few atolls.

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ProfTournesol

so are you suggesting that everyone carrying guns makes it safer? It sure doesn't sound like it from this example.

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Regards Michael

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

cbjesseeNH

1. I didn't read they had announced their intention to cause only minor injuries prior to swinging bats and machettes.
2. Do you trust such thugs implicitly to only cause less than grave injury or death if they profess such intentions?
3. The age of an attacker makes no difference in the harm they might cause or how you defend yourself - it only matters when the gov't chooses to punish them lightly and let them go at it again

cbjesseeNH

About guns and government control

By Chuck Brooks

Courier Mail http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23515915-5007146,00.html#

April 10, 2008 09:50am

JUST as the sign of the cross tends to discombobulate vampires, stopping them in their tracks, equivalent creatures – such as the hysterically paranoid, anti-personal-responsibility fraternity – go completely apoplectic and phobic at the sight of an autonomous citizen armed with the "great equaliser"of a firearm.

This hysteria has been reawakened in many with the recent death of Charlton Heston. Much has been made of his affiliation with the National Rifle Association, muddying the memory of a man who was a great actor and activist.

"Kill the gun culture", scream the historically ignorant. Our political betters have signed on for the responsibility of "taking care " of us and all they ask in return is that we surrender the devices they seek to employ unilaterally – and that we are loyal to whatever they want to do with our lives, fortunes and sacred honour. But have you observed, that when danger threatens you and your family, the police are always someplace else?

The Gauleiters of the superstate may not like it, but the absolute right of the individual citizen to protect himself, his family and the wider community is not obviated by the absence of the constabulary.

In Shane, arguably the greatest western film, Alan Ladd pointed out to Jean Arthur that: "A gun is a tool, no better and no worse than an axe or any other tool; a gun is as good as the man using it."


Today it is considered too dangerous for most citizens to own a gun, but it is apparently viewed as not too dangerous to release child molesters, rapists and murderers into the community.


After a recent child murder in California, we were informed 400,000 perverts are listed on a government "sex register" in that state alone.


Closer to home, much has been made recently of the release of sex offenders into the community. It is not too difficult to imagine state governments releasing funnel-web spiders and crocodiles into cities, while whispering sweet nothings into our ears that there is nothing to worry about – because each creature is on a register somewhere.


People acquire firearms for the same reason they have created a growing industry of private security and alarm systems. Government is quite simply not performing its primary function of protecting life, liberty and property.


Some examples here in Australia:


An elderly woman is murdered by an illegal immigrant – smothered to death with a pillow. An old Digger is murdered by a 14-year-old youth recently escaped from a government "secure" facility. The murder weapon: a knife. A baby is snatched from the bedroom of her deaf parents by a man with a bus ticket in his hand provided by a government department. That ticket was to allow the disadvantaged youth to visit his family and was given to him by the same type of bureaucrats who have been given responsibility for "controlling" firearms – which are permitted to farmers to control pests, but absolutely denied for personal protection in Australia.


So we must consider the manifest failure of government departments and the prison system to protect victims.


Governments and police regulate those who might legally possess firearms more than they act to prevent guns ending up in the hands of violent criminals. It's easier. Governments can't stop violence, so they go after those who can. To be seen to be doing something they have decided to beat up on inanimate objects; disarming the honest and the brave while doing little against the criminals and crazies. What a primitive mindset; a bit like blaming the pot for burning the beans.

ProfTournesol

but none of that justifies allowing arming school children and teachers 'just in case the school is invaded one day' so that they can gun them down. They were apprehended by the Police, they'll get a trial and hopefully some treatment.

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Regards Michael

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

garage sale GT

Why do we give the criminals with deadly weapons the benefit of the doubt but not responsible citizens?

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garage sale GT

I never argue with an idiot. However, I do want to make a statement that no one I know of has so far suggested arming schoolchildren. If you cannot accept that remark, be advised I intend to ignore you rather than argue.

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cbjesseeNH

NOBODY, ANYWHERE has advocated arming school children, but arming staff, whether specially trained teachers or security, is not out of bounds.

Has any school ever issued a memo saying that while they cannot prevent, and do not intend to prevent, the molesting, beating, stabbing, shooting or killing of students, they have adequate security systems in place to thereafter identify and apprehend the prepetrators? NO! But that is essentially what you suggest. That catching the thugs is sufficient. That it would be "excessive" to preempt violence with violence.

After several generations of cross-breeding between sheep and people in your world, I don't expect you to understand the US perspective. If it is more civilized and socially advanced to accept that the wolves will cull some sheep from the flock, that the sharks will trim some fish from the school, then I'm very happy to remain in a primative society.

garage sale GT

Explain something to me. Given that we had a very limited ability to evacuate, but not NO ability to evacuate, why would it be desirable to leave one of our most experienced generals behind, to be captured by the enemy?

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garage sale GT

British and Japanese soldiers used bicycles from time to time in WWII.

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ProfTournesol

good point, but lets extend it: why give anyone with deadly weapons the benefit of the doubt?

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Regards Michael

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

garage sale GT

I still won't argue with you but I want to remind you that nowhere did anyone advocate giving law abiding citizens the right to run rampage with their guns, restrained only by their conscience. In addition to the fact that a law abiding citizen is by definition more responsible and law abiding than a criminal, there are civil and criminal penalties for the use of excessive force.

I'd just like to know why some of you seem to want to protect the criminals to the point of criminalizing self-defense, while assuming that a non-criminal would, in the words of Stevebaby, kill someone for breaking a few windows. That a gun owner would go to jail for doing so is beside the point at hand.

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stevebaby

Experienced? Maybe at public relations, lying and relentless self promotion. Wainright was left behind and he was very much the better soldier.

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bastard

garage sale GT

Wainwright had some work to do.

Maybe Eisenhower should have gone in with the paratroopers?

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