Reply
Thu 25 Aug, 2011 06:04 pm
NATIONAL POST [Canadian, maybe? David]
Lorne Gunter:
Getting gun safety completely backward
This is ridiculous, but oh so typical of gun banners — indeed of those
who would ban most pleasures or recreations in the name of public safety
or the “public good,” whatever that is. In the name of bettering us
despite ourselves, they take leave of common sense and typically
end up making the situation worse.
The City of London is giving 125,000 free tickets to school children
for next summer’s Olympics, but it is not giving any free passes
to shooting events, the rationale being that Mayor Boris Johnson —
usually a sensible man — has a push on to curb gun and knife
violence and handing out free passes to see target and skeet shooting
would send the wrong message.
Of course, letting school children see the world’s most disciplined
and skilled shooters would have the opposite effect. It would
demonstrate how responsible people use guns. It would show kids
thats guns aren’t just used casually or even wantonly for street
crimes — to rob a senior in an alley or enforce a drug territory.
Does visiting an art gallery encourage students to go out and commit
graffiti vandalism? Does watching surgery on TV provoke them to
slash passersby in a mall? Even if it did, would their criminal acts
be the fault of the artist or surgeon?
Would we ban painting and surgical operations?
This is how out-of-touch those with banning instincts have become.
They believe if kids are never exposed to potentially dangerous items
or practices, they will never be prompted to behave dangerously. What rot.
There will always be bad people doing bad things with otherwise
perfectly legitimate items — like people who drive cars drunk.
So if kids are prevented from seeing cars driven skillfully,
the only role models they will have are DUI drivers.
The same holds true with firearms. There is no way governments
can successfully ban all guns, so one of the ways to impress upon
young people the need to handle firearms safely and responsibly
is to let them see the effort, skill and training needed to become
a top sport shooter.
Of course, such logic escapes most public-safety fanatics, just as
the need to teach kids to consume alcohol in reasonable ways
and quantities once escaped the temperance prudes who banned
all alcohol (unsuccessfully) because a few were incapable of
handling it responsibly.
@OmSigDAVID,
There will always be bad people doing bad things with otherwise
perfectly legitimate items - like OmSig giving advice on English grammar.
@JTT,
JTT wrote:There will always be bad people doing bad things with otherwise
perfectly legitimate items - like OmSig giving advice on English grammar.
For the most part,
my use of English grammar (as distinct from spelling) is
paradigmatic.
I 've seldom mentioned the exceptions,
e.g., my refusal to recognize the rule against splitting infinitive verbs
on the ground that
IN LATIN, thay r one word.
I freely split them, on the ground that
I 'm not speaking Latin.
I reject the alleged logic that is offered to justify that rule.
It is a
non-sequitur, deserving no respect.
For the most part,
I admire the competent logic
of most of English grammar, and I merely repeat it,
e.g.,
numerical consistency within a sentence
and avoidance of multiple negatives.
David
I'm no gun nut and I completely agree with this article for several reasons.
I don't think shielding children from things they are almost certain to come in contact with is ever a good idea. They need to learn the potential that all things have, good and bad.
I think the government should trust parents to determine what is wrong and what is right for their own child.
I think children should be allowed to explore topics they are interested in.
I think making something taboo only serves to make it more attractive.
I can probably come up with a few other reasons, too.
Mo is really interested in guns and he has made a study of them despite the fact that he has never held a gun. Two of his favorite shows are about guns: one is a target shooting show and one is a gun smithing show (that I wish was a better show). He will most certainly be enrolled in a gun safety class as soon as he is old enough, and probably shooting classes after that, if he is still interested at that point in his life. I want him to be a person who knows how to be safe around guns and how to use one responsibly, whether he ever uses one or not.
Target and skeet shooting are pretty interesting sports, even to me, the non-gun nut.
My brother is an expert marksman who really isn't much interested in guns.
@boomerang,
I can only agree
with everything u said.
It is a horrible fact that too many children
have fallen victim to violent crime.
Did Mo like the book??
I hope that it was instructive; ( I kinda liked the historical pictures ).
I earnestly hope that he did something with the cash
that brought him
memorable joy, elation, beauty and delight.
That is what life is
FOR.
As Richard Bach puts it:
"we are the otters of the Universe."
(from the Reluctant Messiah)
David
@OmSigDAVID,
He liked the book very much. He still references it regularly.
He bought an (airsoft) gun. I thought you would approve.
@boomerang,
boomerang wrote:I'm no gun nut and I completely agree with this article for several reasons.
Me too, for the same reasons. The Olympics is the Olympics, and an Olympic sport is an Olympic sport. I don't see why the mayor of London should get to pick favorites. (Oddly enough, boxing and wrestling seem to be okay, even though they were the most common instruments of school violence in my day. Fencing is kosher, too!)
David, that Richard Bach quote may be the high point of your postings on a2k. It's just too bad that you seem to need to pack heat to not live in fear all the time. I do wonder at your continual harping on violence. Your chance of being terribly burned are probably considerably greater than of suffering a violent attakc, yet I doubt you carry a fire extingusher with you. Too many of you guys seem to get fixated on one low probability thing and it starts to rule your life. You lose your inner otterness.
Parenthetically, speaking of otterness, have you ever looked in on Roberta's Beautiful Animals thread? Thre's a daily otter there, and otters are really the otters of the universe, but we can be second if we try. I recommend it.
Thomas, I was a fencer in college. Poked people hard for five years, but I don't feel the need to walk down the street with a rapier on my right hip. Most lethal thing I carry is a small screwdriver on my key ring--best quarter I ever spent, thirty years ago. Gotten far more use out of it than I ever would have packing a gun. And it has never needed ammunition or even disassembly and cleaning.
Thomas, I was a fencer in college. Poked people hard for five years, but I don't feel the need to walk down the street with a rapier on my right hip. Most lethal thing I carry is a small screwdriver on my key ring--best quarter I ever spent, thirty years ago. Gotten far more use out of it than I ever would have packing a gun. And it has never needed ammunition or even disassembly and cleaning. Much better than a gun at opening bottles too.
@MontereyJack,
But this is a thread about the Olympics and the Londoner's decision that he won't give tickets to the sports requiring guns.
It is an interesting article and could be an interesting discussion.
What you think about David really doesn't matter here. Just because David posts a lot of topics about guns it doesn't mean that his topics aren't ever worth discussing and it shouldn't mean that people feel free to drop in and talk **** to him, about him.
Just my opinion.
@Thomas,
You're so right!
I find most sports too violent for my tastes. Actually I find most entertainment too violent for my tastes and sports, including the Olympics, are entertainment.
The fact that sports and other violent entertainment are so popular makes this whole thing doubly silly.
Boomer, David is probably the most monomaniacal person on a2k. Almost everything is either about guns or somehow in some unlikely stretch of David's imagination becomes about them. There are probably a couple thousand events in the London Olympics. I see no reason that they should have to give out tickets to all of them. Especially after the recent riots I see no reason to give out shooting tickets. Guns can be used for sport, certainly, but they were invented to kill and that's what they do. Target shooting, like fencing, or archery, is about very stylized killing. If they don't want to give out fencing tickets either, I'd be perfectly content with that decision, even though I did it myself. this seems to me just another invented tempest in a teapot.
@MontereyJack,
How dare you attempt to invalidate Boomer's viewpoint! Just you wait 'til Setanta and DrewDad get on the case!
@MontereyJack,
I understand that he posts a lot of things about the same topic and that a lot of people don't like his viewpoint but that doesn't mean that everything he posts deserves to be derailed by personal attacks.
I think this could be an interesting discussion. You just added some interesting thoughts. It's too bad that you couldn't do that without attacking David.
Seriously, I'm not sticking up for David here. I'm sticking up for the ability to have an interesting conversation.
@JTT,
What?
He hasn't invaded my "viewpoint", he derailed a conversation. So have you. I don't understand what you guys get out of it. It's weird.
@boomerang,
It was a joke, Boomer. "invalidate", not 'invade'.
http://able2know.org/topic/176187-18#post-4711750
@JTT,
Oh.... okay.... I apologize.
I wasn't participating in that thread so I totally didn't get the joke.
Boom, it's not like this was posted in a vacuum, or contextless. With David, it's guns, guns, guns, from every conceivable angle, and never any possibility that, for example, promoting the sale of massive quantities of guns to Mexican drug cartels might just have the teeniest thing wrong with it. This is another in an apparently endless series. If you'd posted it, for example, I'd be much less inclined to say there was an agenda behind it, which there obviously is in David's case.
There are a whole series of questions about the possible deleterious effects of sports, for example the question of whether mixed martial arts glorify brutality and should or should not be allowed, or whether the fact that most teenage football players are likely to suffer repeated concussions, and very likely to use performance-enhancing drugs, which can seriously screw them up decades from now, should lead to deemphasis on football, and those are valid questions. Stylized violence is still not that far removed from actual violence, and if the City of London doesn't want to give out tickets for it, then that decision is fine with me. Teenage boys are testosterone-crazed enough as it is.
@MontereyJack,
I know. I get that. Still, it doesn't mean that every topic he posts is without merit or worthy of discussion.
You can just move on by without responding or, better yet,you can debate your thoughts on the topic without the personal attacks. I'd love to hear that.
To me it just makes a person seem petty and pointless when all they can do is nag at someone. It's an anonymous internet forum. Take each post for what it's worth.
I was once attacked for daring to ask questions on A2K when I replied I thought that's what this place was for they said some truly nasty personal things about me.
Now I just avoid that person.... unless they ask something interesting.
Easy.
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