Greetings to gun owners from someone who is not allowed to own guns....

[Doug1943]

That got your attention, didn't it?

But it's not so dramatic ... I'm an American living in England. Until 1920 over here, you could go to the hardware shop and buy a revolver and even carry it concealed. The Law didn't care.
Then came WWI, the Russian Revolution, and a lot of social unrest. The British ruling class got worried about guns in the hands of militant workers, so they passed a law requiring them to be licensed. Now, only farmers and wealthy businessmen who hunt can own guns. Handguns are absolutely forbidden. You can shoot at a range if you're a member. I'm on a waiting list. By the way, if you check the homicide rate for Britain in 1898, when guns were freely available, and in 1998, when they weren't ... you may be surprised. (Or you may not.) In any case, the homicide rate was a lot lower then than it is now.

(I shoot my nephew's AR15 when I go back to the US every summer, but I pretty much got satiated with shooting that model when I shot its granddaddy the M16, fifty years ago, thousands of rounds all paid for by Uncle Sam.)

Anyway, I'm here because I've gotten increasingly worried about the direction the US is taking. Politically, I'm probably closest to a JFK/FDR 1960 Democrat. (I grew up in Texas in the 1950s and we were all Democrats -- there was supposedly a Republican in Dallas but no one really believed it.) But that's long gone, and the Democrats, or a lot of them anyway, seem to be being pulled far to the Left ... or up into outer space .. by some really sinister forces. I've watched the latter slowly take over American academic life (I'm an academic myself), where they have spread a deep anti-Americanism, which now seems to be turning up everywhere.

So ... I want to talk to people who might also be concerned, get your ideas about what is happening, why it's happening, and what we can do about it. I've got some ideas of my own, as well, one of which I have already posted.

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[GOG]

Welcome from the great State of Jefferson.

 

[Muggs919]

Hello and welcome!

 

[Kruel J]

@tac and you should become friends.

 

[Xaevian]

Welcome!

 

[DB is Here]

Welcome to NWFA. (Home of the bitter clingers of Liberty)

 

[CRBMoA]

Welcome to The Resistance!

We have cookies!!

 

[Doug1943]

Welcome from the great State of Jefferson.

If the Great State of Jefferson includes the area around Reading, CA, as I seem to recall it does, then I hung out with the Tea Party there in 2010. A great part of the world, and well worth breaking loose from the rest of Kalifornia. (What a tragedy, California -- I lived there for several years in the 60's and 70s' ... it was paradise.)

 

[cigars]

Welcome to our community.

 

[Xaevian]

My advice to any brother or sister across the pond is: please presume good intent in regards to postings that may involve your current country of residence. Things differ, sometimes greatly, and misunderstandings can and do happen. That being said, rule #1 is be excellent to each other, and a reminder to us if something goes too far is fine.

Enjoy your stay!

 

[CountryGent]

Welcome aboard.

 

[OldBroad44]

Welcome from the gun-totin old broad contingent.

 

[Doug1943]

Welcome from the gun-totin old broad contingent.

Yikes ... the War Between the Sexes, carried to a higher level??? I hope not.

But maybe here is the right place to share with everyone one of my favorite poems, by an Englishman who would certainly be a gun-owner in America today. (I should say that he does slander the Choctaws, who were peaceful and one of what the whites called "the five civilized tribes" ... little good it did them -- my great-great-grandfather was Mosholatobe, chief of the Choctaws, forced by Andrew Jackson to sign the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Hill and give away all their land, and then be forced onto the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. That's what happens when you let the other side have all the guns. But the name rhymed, so there it is.)


The Female of the Species
--- by Rudyard Kipling

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail--
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws--
`Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale--
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man`s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn`t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other`s tale--
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations, worm and savage otherwise,
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise;
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger; Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue--to the scandal of the Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity--must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions--not in these her honour dwells--
She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else!

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate;
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions--in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children. Heaven help him, who denies!
He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges--even so the she-bear fights;
Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons--even so the cobra bites;
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw,
And the victim writhes in anguish--like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice--which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern; shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him and Her instincts never fail,
That the female of Her species is more deadly than the male!

 

[Xaevian]

True words . Happy wife, happy life and all that. He could've shortened that a bit.

 

[tac]

Hello Doug1943, tac here, who actually lives in England.

You wrote 'Now, only farmers and wealthy businessmen who hunt can own guns. Handguns are absolutely forbidden. You can shoot at a range if you're a member. I'm on a waiting list.'

There is just soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much 'wrong' here that I'm really loathe to start anything, in case you think I'm picking on you.

So, unless you let me let rip, set you right, you are going to have to remain ill-informed and bitter, and, of course, not shooting.

tac, owner of nineteen guns - no shotguns - rifles and handguns, in England, and neither a farmer nor a wealthy businessman.

 

[OldBroad44]

No war between the sexs here. Just pretty much the same wars as wars within the sexes. Glocks are great vs Glocks are ugly and their grip angle is wrong. Capacity, capacity, capacity vs, hey, get a real gun, like a SW 686 or 629, a fine old revolver. And there's always the good old ".45acp is outmoded vs. 9mm is wimpy and ineffective." And that's just handguns.

 

[Doug1943]

My advice to any brother or sister across the pond is: please presume good intent in regards to postings that may involve your current country of residence. Things differ, sometimes greatly, and misunderstandings can and do happen. That being said, rule #1 is be excellent to each other, and a reminder to us if something goes too far is fine.

Enjoy your stay!

The Americans and the English are cousins, and haven't shot at each other (on purpose) since 18

Hello Doug1943, tac here, who actually lives in England.

You wrote 'Now, only farmers and wealthy businessmen who hunt can own guns. Handguns are absolutely forbidden. You can shoot at a range if you're a member. I'm on a waiting list.'

There is just soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much 'wrong' here that I'm really loathe to start anything, in case you think I'm picking on you.

So, unless you let me let rip, set you right, you are going to have to remain ill-informed and bitter, and, of course, not shooting.

tac, owner of nineteen guns - no shotguns - rifles and handguns, in England, and neither a farmer nor a wealthy businessman.

Yeah, I was exaggerating a bit. But the reality is, you have to jump through hoops to own a gun here. My wife's son, who is a farmer, has one, for varmints, but I doubt if I could get a decent weapon. And I'm harmless.

 

[Doug1943]

No war between the sexs here. Just pretty much the same wars as wars within the sexes. Glocks are great vs Glocks are ugly and their grip angle is wrong. Capacity, capacity, capacity vs, hey, get a real gun, like a SW 686 or 629, a fine old revolver. And there's always the good old ".45acp is outmoded vs. 9mm is wimpy and ineffective." And that's just handguns.

Yes, I've seen those wars for years on all kinds of forums, not just firearms forums. I solicited information a few weeks ago on another site about the suitability of the AR15 as a standardized weapon for neighborhood defense groups, and set off a war about the ineffectiveness, or otherwise, of the 5.56 vs the 7.62 . (My own position is: you don't want to be hit by either of them.) But usually it's a manhood thing -- who knows the most obscure fact about ballistics and such like. I thought women were too sensible to waste their time arguing about such things.

Which allows me to post one of my favorite images (maybe it's been posted here before, but it's worth seeing again if it has):

 

[OldBroad44]

I think most stuff is equal opportunity, including

 

[Doug1943]

I think that's why they called the Colt .45 "the great equalizer".
Take away those equalizers, and we go back to the world where the biggest brute rules. I don't know why sensitive leftwingers, who believe in equality, can't understand this.