tw wrote:

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

Where the fuck did you get that bullshit from? The people in the west came from the east where every male adult had a gun.

Before the Civil war, all guns were only made in two locations.  Harpers Ferry VA and in MA (I think it was Springfield).  

Wrong, guns were made by hundreds of blacksmiths/gunsmiths, every one unique, no interchangeable parts so every time it was fired was serious business because it shortened the safe useful life of the gun
Factory made guns at Springfield, and Hartford were dominant Federal buys. The Springfield Armory (Federal) made and stockpiled guns. Harpers Ferry was a Federal Armory, but I'm not sure they made any there or just stockpiled. 

Lewis and Clark were attacked by Lakota indians.  Had those Indians stolen those guns and gun powder, then the Indians would have been the most powerful military force throughout the entire west.  Even along the Mississippi River.  Nobody had anywhere near the fire power that Lewis and Clark carried.  Because guns are quite expensive and rare back then. 

Oh sure, tell me about how Indians weren’t armed in King Philip’s War, King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, Father Rasle’s War, King George’s War, and the French and Indian War, in the northeast. These were all 50 years before Lewis & Clark. All these Indians were part of the Iroquois Nation so you think the rest of the tribes had no guns?
Granted Lewis & Clark were armed to the teeth with 1 or more guns per man but 20 men with 20 or more guns is not a match for hundreds with a few guns. Even picking up a gun from an occasional trapper they wouldn’t have powder supply. But to say Lewis & Clark were armed to the teeth is misleading, it doesn't make them a dominant force. Custer's men were armed to the teeth too.



Probate records are far from complete inventories. Probate? is that something they do in the city. By the time Grandpa died his gun(s) watch, and horse had been handed down to a son or grandson. So were the house, farm and livestock, no will, just handed down to the next generation automatically as they all lived there anyway. After the revolution they started with the deeds and surveying individual stuff.
When my grandfather bought his place preWW I, he was told the property line was the top of the mountain. The guy on the other side agreed. I don't think it's been surveyed even today, still in the same families on both sides of the mountain. There are official maps with a line drawns but I doubt an actual on the ground drive stakes survey.
The Civil war produced hundreds of thousands of guns including handguns. Many were worn out or destroyed and the South imported many more from Europeans not wanting their cotton and tobacco supply interrupted.
The big expansion west came after the war when surplus guns were plentiful.
I agree the wild west of the movies where every man wore a sixgun and a rifle scabbard on his horse is bullshit, but so is saying they weren't armed. Oh, and the ladies could pull a trigger too.

tw wrote:

An extremist must prove his manliness by insulting others.

Aww, he thinks I'm manly.
 

Quit tellin' 'em, and you won't hafta prove 'em.

TheNeverWas wrote:

Quit tellin' 'em, and you won't hafta prove 'em.

A perfect example.

I don't get the invasion of privacy reason for not showing the body cam footage of the two dead cops?
It's part of their job to wear those cameras so we can see what happened.

Another Gay bar shooting in Colorado over the weekend. Somebody needs to stop winding these mutherfuckers up.


Closer to home, Saratoga Springs police had to shoot a Vermont Sheriff's Deputy who used his weapon in a bar fight. Saratoga cops had gone 26 years without an officer involved shooting.

https://wnyt.com/top-stories/police-investigate-officer-involved-shooting/
 

I wonder if these Sheriff Departments ever enforce Red Flag laws?

tw wrote:

...One wonders why he even kept it...

Always keep the evidence.

True story: one of my uncles (who I never met) was murdered in his twenties. Several years later, the murderer got a retrial on some technicality, except by then the state had lost all their files in a flood or a fire or something. They had no record of evidence against him anymore. The only reason his retrial found him guilty again was because my other uncle had saved copies of everything in a box in his attic, even though everyone told him it was morbid and he should throw it all away.

Any evidence of anything, pre-crime or post-crime, you hang onto it forever.

 

I screen grabbed this from a video by those slo-mo guys. They have all the cool toys to capture most anything.
They had this fish tank full of water with a sandbank behind it. They were testing different .22 ammo at a very low angle to the surface and most skipped across the water then kicked up butt first and tumbled over the back into the sandbank.
When they tried this 9mm "handgun round" it didn't skip out but hit the glass end wall at 164 mph, hard enough to deform the full metal jacket, and didn't break the glass. 
Even after it bounced off the glass it was still cavitating as it sank. 
How is that possible? It's probably tempered glass but it's still glass, and not bulletproof.

They decided not to try a second 9mm round and went back to the .22s.
My guess is they did the 9mm at the end but showed it in the middle of the video.



 

It is difficult but only considered completely unworkable by gun advocates (binary thinkers?). There are things to be done around the edges to reduce the numbers. Red flag laws enforced, domestic abuse laws enforced, crimes while armed prosecuted fully, heavy prison terms for violent felons found armed, mandatory full background checks made available and mandatory for individual sales.Make gun ownership and use serious business by making examples of idiots like Alec Baldwin. Misuse a firearm get prosecuted.

Apparently, I am a Fudd now which is supposed to be derogatory but seems completely reasonable.

None of this would have stopped my shooter at the ACA. That would have required that society start thinking about armed citizens differently years ago. We have gotten ourselves in a bit of a death spiral where because of binary thinking(?) we oppose anything reasonable. We won't eliminate guns in this country so gun advocates need to stop with the paranoia which is only useful to pump gun sales to paranoids furthering the problem.

I think we can say now that more guns make us less safe. Unfortunately we already ran the more guns experiment.
 

DeSantis has a good chance of being our next president.

His recent stunt allowing concealed carry throughout Florida without a permit or any training is a transparent move to play to the rest of the country and divide us.  Wedge issues will be wedge issues.  He's much younger looking and more energetic than Biden, and the Republicans will all support him without hesitation like they always do with all their candidates after the primary.  Age will play a major factor and if Dems don't circle the wagon around the petrified fossil-in-chief I think DeSantis has a really good shot at it.

The gun issue seems hopeless.  There is zero common ground between the parties and they both prefer it that way because it wins them votes.

Maybe ChatGPT can give us a solution.

It is not about Democrats vs Republicans.  It has always been about moderates verses extremists.  Extremists rationalize from emotional biases - ie conservative or liberal.  Moderates learn facts long before even trying to make a conclusion.

Fox News calls itself "Fair and Balanced".  When we know its founder, Ailes, said its purpose is to promote a right wing agenda.  Also called lies and propaganda - as Pravada also did in the USSR.  Fox News newscasters promoted the goodness of 6 January while at the same time complaining directly to the White House that Trump was "undermining everything we have worked for". Somehow that is honest?  Somehow it is "Fair and Balanced"?  They can even lie there.

Many are not officier material.   Therefore cannot tell the difference between outright lies and propaganda verses facts, numbers, and knowledge.  Many (and I fear an increasing numbers of 20 year olds) cannot even read more than 140 characters.  Resorting to TL;DR.

Same techniques were used in 1920s Germany.  So that most Germans then knew Hitler was a great leader.  Since jack boots, street violence, and big weapons were proof of righteousness.  Therefore even Jews were vermin.  All others were inferior to Aryans.   And democracy was evil.  Hate works best on adults who are still children.  Therein lies the underlying problem.

How is it solved?  There will always be (I fear) a majority who even forget how to know something - as taught in junior high science.  Saddam's WMDs clearly demonstrated this problem.  Meaning that overt lies and propaganda are where to address this problem; where a solution is necessary.

Elon Musk clearly does not understand it.  He feels that all free speech is good.  Responsibility need not exist.  Anyone can say anything without justification.  Therein lies the popularity with Santis and one even worse: Representative George Santos.  He can intentionally lie; belligerently and with disdain.  And is praised for doing so because he never once apologizes. Another characteristic of an extremist. Unfortunately, for many, a his soundbyte is sufficient to be informed.

Should we cast blame, then blame the many who (even here) post insults rather than contribute,  A fundamental difference between one who is responsible (moderates) verses another who advocate hate and evil (extremists).

No coincidence that the most easily manipulated (White Supremacists, KKK, and Nazis) join together to praise Trump.  Who is popular because he posts hate and tweets.  Without any regard to honesty, civility, or responsibility.  All characteristic of an extremist.  That define the problem.