h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Baron Grim



Yes, he pretty much puts pay to the 'if he had brains he'd be dangerous' quote...looks like you can be dangerous without them...

Re: Pistorius - here is my Facebook status from just after I found out...


"Have you ever retired a human by mistake?"

test

chink, slides back bolt
chambers round
Sights target down range.
pulls trigger
prints centre ring near 2o'clock.

All appears to functioning here

FS

They're taking the guns out of Victory Lane at Texas Motor Speedway.

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/05/post-race-gun-celebration-at-texas-may-be-changed/


~jwf~

While democrats in Congress don't seem to understand that their gun bans won't pass. In Georgia, our House has passed a bill that will allow people with Weapons Carry Licenses to carry guns on college campuses, bars, and churches. It may have a rockier time in the state senate though.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/house-says-yes-to-expanded-gun-rights/nWkhT/

It seems like some of the detractors think college students are a bunch of drunk, sex crazed, idiots. That seems kind of incomplete to me. Amoung other things, Weapons Carry Licenses are limited to people over the age of 21 (and service members if this bill passes). Licensees are probably not going to be traditional students.

A note on the servce member restriction. That strikes me as a bit odd, since military service members enjoy the same right to carry under Georgia law that I have as a law enforcement officer. They can already carry a gun on campus.

South Dakota give teachers new powers to persuade students to learn:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377

>> since military service members enjoy the same right to carry under Georgia law that I have as a law enforcement officer. They can already carry a gun on campus. <<

So military service members on training at a university campus are allowed to take their registered weapons with them into class. Similarly military service members teaching at a university campus, or visiting a school to give a seminar, are also able to take their registered weapons with them?

What happens if, (and I pray, pray, it doesn't) a teacher shoots a student - would the NRA suggest arming students? So far they seem to just espouse that the greater the level of armed citizens, the lower the level of crime (or at least murders/"hot" robberies etc)

Or, an alternative, what happens if an armed teacher fails to stop a shooting - would the NRA say the teacher wasn't sufficently armed?

Interesting how in Britain when there was a mass-shooting our knee-jerk reaction was very strict gun control laws and in America it was to relax them even further - just one more sign of a difference in base personalities between (at least much of) our countries

I find it surprising that republicans want to arm the same people whose jobs and pay they keep cutting.

I think it makes "sense" if they are not going to introduce laws to make school shootings less likely. The alternative to armed school staff would be to have residential police officers assigned to each school. The teacher / school staff would go through a training process to get registered / licensed as a "school sentinel". The issue would be ensuring that students, unauthorised folk don't get hold of these "school guns". A crazed teacher or school staff would probably already own guns at home which they could use if for some reason they wanted to start killing their school children.

>> In Georgia, our House has passed a bill that will allow people with Weapons Carry Licenses to carry guns on college campuses, bars, and churches. <<

Weapons carrying licenses in bars ... that worries me. Alcohol and guns.

We don't register guns in Georgia.

Service members don't need to be there for training. OCGA 16-11-130 exempts law enforcement and many other pubic officials from concealed carry, prohibit locations, and school safety zone laws. Service members were included in that list. I think the idea for including them was for marksmanship training in ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps). However, the Attorneys General of Georgia published an opinion stating that they're not limitd to carrying for training.

>>A crazed teacher or school staff would probably already own guns at home which they could use if for some reason they wanted to start killing their school children.<<

I don't think that's necessarily the case, SA. However, someone who arrived at work and was given notice or had a bad day, or was bad mouthed once too often by a group of kids will now find it a lot easier to "go postal" if they have a weapon *right there*.

Ultimately it is up to the individual communities to decide. Of course I personally abhor private gun ownership for protection purposes and prefer to live in a society that doesn't have it, and actively engages to promote community cohesion and trust etc. However, I try to avoid tendencies for imperial thinking and imposing my set of values on others in different communities and with different traditions. But certainly you raise a valid point which must be taken into account.

Buying automatic weapons in Texas, no problem & with private sellers no checks... e.g. a AR15 assault rifle, identical to the one used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December, boiught with zero background checks:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21712820

SEMI-automatic. You can't legally buy a fully automatic weapon without a federal permit even here in Texas.

This may or may not prove enlightening: http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=032813

Very enlightening!

The stats on suicide reductions after the gas ovens
were rendered obsolete are mind boggling.

Overall, the article reinforces what I've always believed,
that murder, suicide, assault, burglary and rape are all
crimes that frequently occur simply because of an opportunity.

If acting upon an impulse can be rendered inconvenient then
fewer people will act upon an impulse.

A campaign a few years ago suggested - "Don't give crime
a place to start!" It recommended locking your car/house
and putting valuable items out of sight. This struck me
at the time as being a bit paranoid and anti-social but
it does work.

Like the old folk song 'If I hadda hammer' which lamented
the lack of tools to provoke further activities...

Or the later folky tune by Bruce Cockburn 'If I hadda
rocking lawn chair...'

(Note to mobile device users paying by the byte:
This Utoob video opens and plays automatically.)

http://youtu.be/N7vCww3j2-w


~jwf~

The suicide stat is shocking and a really powerful argument. Stuff like that is why I'm such a big fan of Cracked.com.