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Thoughts on Firearm Ownership
- Thread Starter Andy54Hawken
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Addressing the meat of the original post; there is no substitute for caring and responsible parents with children who respect them.
Some without, persevere and are able to walk a righteous path.
Usually because they found a decent mentor.
The rest flounder and follow like sheep.
Let us hope they find a righteous Ram to follow.
Some without, persevere and are able to walk a righteous path.
Usually because they found a decent mentor.
The rest flounder and follow like sheep.
Let us hope they find a righteous Ram to follow.
All you have to do is ask @Joe Link, you meet the requirements to have access to the T. Anyone who meets the requirements can be granted access, but it's not automatic, you have to ask.
Many, many valid and critical truths in this thread. I'm a believer in early firearms education for kids.
As I read the comments here it's easy to see the quality in the character of responsible gun owners in this forum. With most of you, this goes back to an early age or can be tied to the appreciation and respect for you have for guns. We teach so many things to youngsters these days in school. They are taught about things like tolerance and acceptance and and whole slew of other feel good topics but not about guns safety and respect for guns. Instead, the topic of gun safety is left up to kids to discover at some other date and time. Usually that time is too late. The result is obvious and apparent especially in urban environments where kids learn all they want to know about guns from TV and music videos.
As I read the comments here it's easy to see the quality in the character of responsible gun owners in this forum. With most of you, this goes back to an early age or can be tied to the appreciation and respect for you have for guns. We teach so many things to youngsters these days in school. They are taught about things like tolerance and acceptance and and whole slew of other feel good topics but not about guns safety and respect for guns. Instead, the topic of gun safety is left up to kids to discover at some other date and time. Usually that time is too late. The result is obvious and apparent especially in urban environments where kids learn all they want to know about guns from TV and music videos.
Lol, I'm good. Thx.
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I personally would love to see a gun safety course offered in schools at least as an after hour's class for those who want it. I just disagree with mandatory classes because that becomes control again. The bad part is unless it's mandatory a lot of parents would not allow their children to attend for political reasons, safety be dammed.
In the shop I would get swept 200 times a day by new folks to the gun world or the older I have been around guns all my life folks not sure who was worst. The new shooter would at least listen to basic training instructions the old guys would just get pissed off.
Even though this upsets me how is this different from setting at a table outside a restraint while cars are pulling in directly at you with only 5 feet between you and them? One slip on the gas and you're a splat on the wall between the car and the restraint yet folks eat out side all the time and even though it does happen more than you think nobody panics and most folks do not even notice.
I feel it's because we as gun owners do care and respect the power we have in that tool to do good or evil. We want to be honest and safe and we want to have the people around us with guns to be honest and safe as well.
So I do in courage safety and promote it every chance I can but because I also feel so strongly that it is a right I do not want restrictions placed on it like mandatory background checks, mandatory training or mandatory anything because then it is a privilege and not a right. A privilege can be regulated and anything regulated can be taken away.
In the shop I would get swept 200 times a day by new folks to the gun world or the older I have been around guns all my life folks not sure who was worst. The new shooter would at least listen to basic training instructions the old guys would just get pissed off.
Even though this upsets me how is this different from setting at a table outside a restraint while cars are pulling in directly at you with only 5 feet between you and them? One slip on the gas and you're a splat on the wall between the car and the restraint yet folks eat out side all the time and even though it does happen more than you think nobody panics and most folks do not even notice.
I feel it's because we as gun owners do care and respect the power we have in that tool to do good or evil. We want to be honest and safe and we want to have the people around us with guns to be honest and safe as well.
So I do in courage safety and promote it every chance I can but because I also feel so strongly that it is a right I do not want restrictions placed on it like mandatory background checks, mandatory training or mandatory anything because then it is a privilege and not a right. A privilege can be regulated and anything regulated can be taken away.
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A caring & knowledgable family member teaching anything is almost always best. That being said I believe the vast majority aren't careless with dangerous tools of any kind. You find the occasional knuckle head but changing law or requirements based on the actions of the very few is always a slippery slope. My two cents.
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I am responsible only for my own actions .. Holding me or any other law abiding gun owner accountable for the actions of criminals is almost criminal itself.
Too bad that this what happens almost daily.
Andy
Too bad that this what happens almost daily.
Andy
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Agreed, We as a society don't hold every driver responsible for the few that drink & drive and kill someone but it seems we are punished by legislation when a criminal kills someone with a gun.
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That is exactly what happened here in yUK in the aftermath of two massacres, occasioned by people who should NEVER have been allowed to have any kind of gun. Remember the names - Michael Ryan, the Hungerford mass-murderer, and Thomas Hamilton of Dunblane, Scotland.The police authorities in both cases are partly to blame for the appalling outcomes - in both cases other police officers had recommened that their gun licences be taken away. Both were loners and sociopaths, the later one was a pedophile whose activities had made him the subject of much police scrutiny, and yet he STILL had guns.
Ryan lost the plot in 1986, shot his mother dead, set fire to their home, drove to a local forest and murdered a mother of two in front of her children, tried to kill the clerk in a gas station and then walked around the pretty market town of Hungerford, shooting at anybody he wanted to. He killed sixteen, wounded thirty or more, and finally shot himself in a local school. He shot people with an AK-style semi-auto, handgun as well as a shotgun.
As a result of that, ALL semi-auto centre-fire guns were banned in the entire yUK. You could turn them in for £150 each, but since I had around £8000-worth, I sold mine over in Europe, and one to the National Collection for its then-current value.
In 1996, Hamilton, aggrieved at not getting the recognition he felt he deserved, walked into Dunblane Primary School and shot dead sixteen 1st grade children and their teacher, and injured many more, before allegedly killing himself. There is just so much 'fog' over the events of that day, and quite what he used to commit the crimes with, that a High Court decision was made to 'seal' the findings for 100 years The rumour mill has it that Hamilton was procuring children for the Chief of Police, who resigned the day after the event took place.
The result of that was the banning of all regular-looking cartridge-firing handguns in the yUK, except that Northern Ireland told Westminster to go p*ss up a rope, as THEIR level of illegal use of legally-held handguns was just about zero. The end result was a ban that cost the tax-payer almost $200 Million, with about 500 businesses put out of business, and no discernible effect on the lowering of handgun crime among criminals, who didn't take any notice of gun laws in any case. In fact, for almost eight years after the event, gun crime in mainland yUK rose by almost 10% per annum, but is now going down almost as quickly.
In case one, I lost eight semi-autos, and in case two I lost all but two of 118 handguns, collected over many years - ALL at great expense.
All that for just over a hundred thousand handguns, and twenty-six thousand semi-auto centre-fires. As a friend in Texas told me once - add those totals up and that's still less than the gun-population of his own rural Texas country.
tac
Ryan lost the plot in 1986, shot his mother dead, set fire to their home, drove to a local forest and murdered a mother of two in front of her children, tried to kill the clerk in a gas station and then walked around the pretty market town of Hungerford, shooting at anybody he wanted to. He killed sixteen, wounded thirty or more, and finally shot himself in a local school. He shot people with an AK-style semi-auto, handgun as well as a shotgun.
As a result of that, ALL semi-auto centre-fire guns were banned in the entire yUK. You could turn them in for £150 each, but since I had around £8000-worth, I sold mine over in Europe, and one to the National Collection for its then-current value.
In 1996, Hamilton, aggrieved at not getting the recognition he felt he deserved, walked into Dunblane Primary School and shot dead sixteen 1st grade children and their teacher, and injured many more, before allegedly killing himself. There is just so much 'fog' over the events of that day, and quite what he used to commit the crimes with, that a High Court decision was made to 'seal' the findings for 100 years The rumour mill has it that Hamilton was procuring children for the Chief of Police, who resigned the day after the event took place.
The result of that was the banning of all regular-looking cartridge-firing handguns in the yUK, except that Northern Ireland told Westminster to go p*ss up a rope, as THEIR level of illegal use of legally-held handguns was just about zero. The end result was a ban that cost the tax-payer almost $200 Million, with about 500 businesses put out of business, and no discernible effect on the lowering of handgun crime among criminals, who didn't take any notice of gun laws in any case. In fact, for almost eight years after the event, gun crime in mainland yUK rose by almost 10% per annum, but is now going down almost as quickly.
In case one, I lost eight semi-autos, and in case two I lost all but two of 118 handguns, collected over many years - ALL at great expense.
All that for just over a hundred thousand handguns, and twenty-six thousand semi-auto centre-fires. As a friend in Texas told me once - add those totals up and that's still less than the gun-population of his own rural Texas country.
tac
Eh, I wouldn't worry about it. People will dive in and learn the historical and other aspects as they feel the need or interest to do so.
In homeschooling there is a sub-culture called "unschooling"; the idea is to let children follow their own interests, aiding them if they want but not choosing those interests for them. In the end, the unschoolers end up just as acceptable to colleges as the more structured homeschoolers, not to mention being way above what the vast majority of kids that went through government schools ended up like.
The point is, if you leave people alone, they will do just fine. You don't have to worry about them, or hector them, or advise them (unless they ask for it), or any thing else of that nature.
Worrying about others is a tendency with roots in the old Puritan colonial culture. That is the same place government schooling was introduced, adopted from socialist Prussia. That is where the Temperance movement got its start, leading to alcohol prohibition. It's a tendency that is driven by good intentions, but as the old saying goes, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
That's certainly the attempt, but it usually fails. Or if the legislation goes through, it is often ignored. Americans are fairly immune to the Dunblane ploy. Most of us realize a bystander with a gun would have stopped the attack.
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@tac Gun owners in the UK are on one list, and your government is looking at creating another...
The government could build a personalised database of every person's porn viewing habits
Sorry for the tangent from the original topic.
The government could build a personalised database of every person's porn viewing habits
Sorry for the tangent from the original topic.
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Maybe I am the weird one but I enjoy every aspect of firearms including cleaning.
I think like many I grew up around then, and had Law enforcement and Boy-scouts early as well as family
teach me the respect for them. There is another active thread by Joe Link covering the interactions with others and I think this thread shares allot of what is being said over there when it comes to sharing firearms and the lives of an owner with others.
I am really a mechanical, down and lets get dirty kinda guy. I love to work on trucks, and owned a landscape company for years. I love getting into the mechanical parts of things, my brain just clicks. Its why many in this group know I love the SKS, its pure raw perfection and self containment just makes it a favorite for me. Id rather drive my 67 Ford Truck then drive a New truck any day and I have a newer truck and its not the same.
We owe it to the future to teach the love of firearms, not just cause they go bang and shoot stuff, but the culture and raw power behind it has to be communicated. My family passed along to me a culture and I passed it along thats how it works.
I think the sooner in life you are exposed the more you get the true gun culture is not what you see on TV, its real men and women the same who watch football and Fish or love
bacon Love guns, ok I made that last part up.
But no matter where you come from you can tell people who just get the gun culture and these are the ones that want to share with everyone why they enjoy them so much.
I think like many I grew up around then, and had Law enforcement and Boy-scouts early as well as family
teach me the respect for them. There is another active thread by Joe Link covering the interactions with others and I think this thread shares allot of what is being said over there when it comes to sharing firearms and the lives of an owner with others.
I am really a mechanical, down and lets get dirty kinda guy. I love to work on trucks, and owned a landscape company for years. I love getting into the mechanical parts of things, my brain just clicks. Its why many in this group know I love the SKS, its pure raw perfection and self containment just makes it a favorite for me. Id rather drive my 67 Ford Truck then drive a New truck any day and I have a newer truck and its not the same.
We owe it to the future to teach the love of firearms, not just cause they go bang and shoot stuff, but the culture and raw power behind it has to be communicated. My family passed along to me a culture and I passed it along thats how it works.
I think the sooner in life you are exposed the more you get the true gun culture is not what you see on TV, its real men and women the same who watch football and Fish or love
bacon Love guns, ok I made that last part up.But no matter where you come from you can tell people who just get the gun culture and these are the ones that want to share with everyone why they enjoy them so much.
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Great thread, thanks Andy for starting it off and all the rest of you for contributing. Just a very nice read, good stuff.
Guns for me have always come with a historical figure, or event in mind. Barely shot anything that wasn't "this is what they used to get marksmanship when ammo reserves were running low"... aka .22lr training models of standard issue... I have shot a few others since then tho. We never shot often, my father and I, but we did study the history and mechanics of certain guns regularly. Watching old movies and trying to point out the guns was always fun. I've really only gotten into shooting all those guns recently. Safety and responsibility was always the biggest focus on handling firearms, and I'm glad I had it instilled earlier than later.
I took a newer approach to what I acquire... mostly because I can get a new rifle for the cost of the old one. I'll work my way into getting some Astra C-96's and Webley MKIV's. For now, I'm just happy with double stack and sporting long guns.
I relate Andy, and appreciate your posts greatly.
I took a newer approach to what I acquire... mostly because I can get a new rifle for the cost of the old one. I'll work my way into getting some Astra C-96's and Webley MKIV's. For now, I'm just happy with double stack and sporting long guns.
I relate Andy, and appreciate your posts greatly.
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ikemay and Flymph ,
Thank you both for the kind words.
Andy
Thank you both for the kind words.
Andy
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Andy, great thread. Thanks for starting it.
I had a neighbor who bought hundreds of gun magazines and read them like he did Playboy as a kid.
I think firearms require a level of maturity - and if you don't have it, it makes you feel "powerful", which can lead to very distorted thinking. When I see guys completely decked out with tacticool, I wonder about that.
I had a neighbor who bought hundreds of gun magazines and read them like he did Playboy as a kid.
I think firearms require a level of maturity - and if you don't have it, it makes you feel "powerful", which can lead to very distorted thinking. When I see guys completely decked out with tacticool, I wonder about that.
Amen to that....
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I pray to the Jesus too.. and vote.
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