Austrailian View on USA and our love of Guns

[rdb241]

Thanx Tac. I had a feeling you would chime in and clarify things. I never researched it. It was something I had always heard growing up. I don't know if I ever told you this but my heritage is Scottish. I get the chills when I hear Amazing Grace done with bagpipes.

 

[tac]

Thanx Tac. I had a feeling you would chime in and clarify things. I never researched it. It was something I had always heard growing up. I don't know if I ever told you this but my heritage is Scottish. I get the chills when I hear Amazing Grace done with bagpipes.

Never you mind. I find that good set of close-in ear plugs and a further set of over-ear muffs will stop your chills.

One wag - a Scot, BTW - remarked of the pipes- 'Thank G*d there's nae smell.'

Yet another opined that 'they are best heard at a distance...'

For me, hearing 'Amazing Grace played on the pipes is like listening to the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' played on a kazoo.

As you may have gathered, I'm not a fan of the Scottish pipes, but the Irish [uillean] pipes, now that's different. My dad played the Irish pipes, but back then, as a young fully left-handed child, there was no way that I could learn to play them. Now I'm a fully ambidextrous old f**t it might be possible to learn to play on a right-hand set, but I won't be alive long enough to gain any proficiency.

tac

 

[partsed]

And of course, the comment from my friend in Vancouver BC "What is the difference between and bagpipe and a onion?? No one cries when cut up a bagpipe"
I do love hearing Amazing Grace performed on a bagpipe-gives me chills.

 

[Sstrand]

Giving chills to the enemy from the sound of the bagpipes was exactly the original intention of their use!?!?!?!?

Sheldon

 

[Brutus57]

Fixed.

tac

Play a computer simulation of how long WWII Australia lasts without the US Navy from the Battle of the Coral Sea on. And whose ships put the Aussie tropps on Papua New Guinea.



Brutus Out

 

[Brutus57]

Never you mind. I find that good set of close-in ear plugs and a further set of over-ear muffs will stop your chills.

One wag - a Scot, BTW - remarked of the pipes- 'Thank G*d there's nae smell.'

Yet another opined that 'they are best heard at a distance...'

For me, hearing 'Amazing Grace played on the pipes is like listening to the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' played on a kazoo.

As you may have gathered, I'm not a fan of the Scottish pipes, but the Irish [uillean] pipes, now that's different. My dad played the Irish pipes, but back then, as a young fully left-handed child, there was no way that I could learn to play them. Now I'm a fully ambidextrous old f**t it might be possible to learn to play on a right-hand set, but I won't be alive long enough to gain any proficiency.

tac

Uillean pipes are amazing. We enjoyed a wonderful live show called a Celtic Christmas where a young man played Irish pipes. he was an amazing dancer as wel.

Brutus Out

 

[Stomper]

He wasn't "river" dancing, was he?

 

[Brutus57]

He wasn't "river" dancing, was he?

Actually, no. Although a couple of other dancers did a short version earlier in the program. The fiddler was pretty amazing. Looked like he could have been co-starring on Duck Dynasty but played traditional Irish to classical concert violin with another Grammy winning acoustic guitarist in the group.

Brutus Out

 

[Capn Jack]

Mashing a pig in a sack.
I always figured the pipers should be behind the troops, driving them into battle.

TAC is right though. The further away they are, the better they sound.

 

[Xaevian]

Wars happen anywhere, and it is always the same. The privileged give the orders, the poor give their lives. Just nice to have the means to tell the privileged to stuff it if push comes to shove.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

Let's get real....automation and innovation did more to end slavery than kings or politicians. Just like it will end most minimum wage jobs in the fast food industry, like robots making cars, like it did in the grain harvest...etc.
View attachment 332272

View attachment 332273

Slavery in the US was on its way out until the original automation guru(Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin who was by the way the original master of mass production)made it immensely more profitable to have slaves working the cotton fields. Productivity shot up making slaves worth more and more desirable. Sam Colt went to Eli to produce his Walker because he was the only one who had the facilities to produce it the quantities needed and at a reasonable cost. In the short run automation and innovation did more to promote slavery in a 60 years period than suppress it in US history.

 

[Brutus57]

Oh, and -

Korea.

Vietnam.

Afghanistan.

tac

No one should be denigrating Aussie martial skill nor bravery on the battlefield. My point is, the US is a gun culture, born of the blood of patriots and continually restocked to this day. For Europeans, or Aussies, or Canadians for that matter to lecture us about our 2nd Amendment has as much relevance as the actual taste of whip cream depends on the tiny bubbles per cubic milliliter. Their "brand" of civilization has a lot less personal freedoms.

Murderers will murder....heck in the San Juans where I used to live a guy offed his wife by bludgeoning her to death with the barrel of an air rifle. Killers gonna kill, with hands, feet, firearms, knives, baseball bats or whatever. In the US many of us prefer to look to our own personal safety without trusting the gubmint to keep us safe 24 7 in our own beds.


Brutus Out

 

[BillGabby1]

The greatest export from Oz is horse trainer teacher Clinton Anderson.
True story. LOL

Our 2nd amendment right is a fail safe against tyranny. (In the event the government usurps our god given rights we can become the largest army in the world). Most of the world's population has never known, freedom as we have, and don't know how to respond to it. I think many feel threatened by the power of the freedom we enjoy, having never known it! They are unaware of the checks and balances that at least punish those who abuse that freedom, such as the shooter in the terminal in FLA. Those who want to remove those rights use just such emotional incidents to stir up the population and get them to agree to more and more laws that only remove the freedom from law abiding citizens and do nothing to curtail abuses such as was just seen.
Australians and people from the rest of the world just can't get their heads around this mainly I believe because of the misinformation put out by the press worldwide.
My $.02 worth.
Gabby