dittybopper: Although, I must admit, it does provide some hilarity if I mentally read it using that horrid Cockney accent that Dick van Dyke used in "Mary Poppins".

Oh HELL no! That was not a Cockney accent, in the same way that Tommy Lee Jones' accent in Blown Away was not Irish! That was a terrible attempt at an accent but it wasn't even close! Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is proper Cockney.

Shatner's Bassoon: dr-shotgun:
See, that is the thing - carrying a firearm is not about being scared any more than keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen is about being scared.

Keeping a fire extinguisher next to an oven is fair enough. It's when you feel the need to carry a fire extinguisher with you every time you go out the front door that you look a bit paranoid.

FWIW, spontaneous combustion happens a lot less than armed robbery, rape, or murder.

The rate of knife crime and gun crime in the UK is out of control but the high risk group is teenagers. It's very rare for someone to break into a house armed, for example (the recent one was a neighbour feud). So not allowing one to buy a machete is fine by me.

Link (new window)

Not that it matters to the discussion in anyway, but the only time I've ever had a knofe pulled on me was in the UK.

Bonus:it was underneath a CCTV camera so even if the cops were watching the camera at the time they couldn't see it.

Oh. And binnster. The US is perfectly safe.Just like say..london you have certain places to be more warry in but over all its just fine.

Ummm SUBBY .. how is this FAIL?
Why in the name of common sense (any common sense) would a 15 year old need a machete???

Kids have near (if not completely) ZERO impulse control...AANNNDDD they should be able to have lethal weapons???? WTF

dagman: I went to a pistol range once and got into a friendly shooting competition with a local cop (during which I out-shot him in all but speed shooting). We had a nice conversation afterwords.

He was clearly not worried about me at all.

It is the people behind the objects that matter.

Should the cop be concerned if a kid is walking down the street with Machete in hand waving it about? Sure, I would be. Should a kid be able to buy one on-line at age 15 in England? I donno.

Would I be worried if my 15 year old son purchased a machete? No. He is a well balanced kid. We live in the country and own 6 acres of dense wouldlands with lots of brambles. Matter of fact, I think I will ask him to get one for me today. Mine is old and bent. (insert joke here)

A chance for irony, you say?

hardinparamedic: Illidan: ethics-gradient: We have no right to own guns here. It's a privilege the police might grant if they like the look of you.

Ahh. So it's like the jurisdictions that TECHNICALLY allow concealed weapons here in the US - you have to get the signature of a local policeman. Depending on the location, he's cool about it or he just automatically rejects everyone but his buddies and rich guys who can pull strings.

Um. What? Concealed Carry is a state licensure that is good in every other state that allows it in the nation.

That's not quite accurate.

at80eighty: abdul: We have cases of police going on rampages. We've even had postal workers just decide it's time to slaughter people.

I know , I've heard of those cases - but having lived in a few gun free societies I just guess it's a perspective thing and I try to wonder if the incidents in the larger perspective are worth the tradeoff of having the risk of arming everyone

Gen. Apathy: uthorities do break into innocent people's homes, or illegally search and seize property or detain people for no reasons and without charge or access to counsel.

So how does a firearm help in that case?

It probably will get you killed if the police decide to come into your home. So I agree with you. It won't help individuals that much, but as a society, it does impact the way that the gov't interacts with you.

I will refer you to a bit of Solzhenitsyn I love:

"At what exact point should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home?...

And how we burned in the camps thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during the periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of a half dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those Bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with its one lonely chauffeur - what if it had been driven of or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly had suffered a shortage of officers and transport and notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If....If.... We didn't love freedom enough.

transcribed from one of my favorite books:
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, pg 13


Not to say that the USA is like the USSR under Stalin but the awareness that the citizenry is armed can give an oppressive regime pause in its constant grab for power over its people. I don't imagine myself shooting anyone of authority that comes to my home and asks for me, but I do wish to retain the right to defend my home in the best way possible. I do not carry a gun anywhere, like I said they stay in a safe. But I do not have a concern for those who choose to legally carry one. Guns are part of our culture. They are just tools/objects. It's the person using it I'm concerned with.

dagman:
WOW.

Carry on.

(umm.. checks "Carry" 'cuz it consists of 5 letters)
/Paranoid now. Thanks. Where's my machete?

You missed the point. I was saying that I don't harp on the occasional spelling error because we all make mistakes.

I was harping on the "bloody 'ell guv'nah twattish car boot sh*t f*ck lemon curry? ole-biscuit barrel shav tuppeny hooer bobs your uncle¹ queen mum's bum chum c*nt bog-arsed" slang that seems to come from Her Majesty's subjects in what is an international forum.

1. He needed the money, I guess.

sorry went a little crazy with the italics tag

:)

This is a farking ridiculous argument to have in the first place.

No, the US is not all that dangerous. No, I'm not likely to be robbed walking down the street in the next week. But as somebody said earlier, extend the timeline to the next 10 years, and the probability goes up. The reason people carry isn't because they expect it every time they walk outside, it's because they acknowledge the possibility that someday, something might happen, and they just want to be prepared.

I live in PA in a city where people will hold the door if they see you coming, strangers say hello and talk about the weather, you can walk at night and not be afraid, and your neighbor will probably let you borrow his tools if you ask. But gun ownership, as well as concealed carry, is widespread. Not because of the imminent dangers of a Mad Max world (duh), but because around here, people understand that the world isn't cupcakes and cinnamon bun farts, and there will eventually come a time where you'll have to defend yourself. If not, that's great. But better to have and not need than need and not have.

And even in the bad parts of town, confrontations are rare. Nobody busts into a home where there's a high probability of a loaded firearm in the vicinity. Even though the area is mixed ethnicity, mixed classes, and mixed mindsets.

I carry when I'm biking in a remote area as defense against bears. I carry when I drive on long trips. I carry 75% of the time (when appropriate) because someday, I might need it.

Argue either side all you want. There are very few people, when given the choice between being raped/beaten or given the ability to defend themselves, would choose to go unarmed. Simple fact of life. Gun control proponents argue that it's not necessary to be armed, but constantly ignore the reality that bad things do happen sometimes.

Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were. Well, that's a sword you can pick up for
/what?

Gen. Apathy:
Not to say that the USA is like the USSR under Stalin but the awareness that the citizenry is armed can give an oppressive regime pause in its constant grab for power over its people. I don't imagine myself shooting anyone of authority that comes to my home and asks for me, but I do wish to retain the right to defend my home in the best way possible.

You don't have to be able to actually *WIN*, you just have to make it so expensive that they won't try it in the first place.

cmoreland: Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were.

Swords are *ALWAYS* cool. At least, real ones are.

When my dad passes, I'm going to snag the kopis he made.

cmoreland: Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were. Well, that's a sword you can pick up for...
/what?

oops, let's continue that:

...$20 at Wally World. He'll probably just hang it on his wall pretending he knows how to use it, swing it around a few time making that whipping noise, stare at himself in the mirror with it and end up getting bored or getting grounded for accidentally nicking a piece of furniture pretending to be some sort of cool sword wielding hero or knight and then quickly lose interest as girls begin to come into his life. *TAKES DEEP BREATH*

/what?

i also made a few errors in my transcription. sorry all. not a copy paste job but I actually own books and mark passages I find meaningful. Yes, I'm a geek...

Well, over here in the States there is this gang comprised mostly of illegal aliens called the MS-13. The machete is their traditional murder weapon. You can imagine what death by machete can be like.

Especially if the guy is really good. If the user is good, see, I mean if the blade is reeeally sharp, he can barrel that baby in so deep... oh you oughta see it sometime. It's a sight. A big knife like a machete... varrrooom! Its blood splatter... frying chickens in the barnyard!

The Envoy: dittybopper: Although, I must admit, it does provide some hilarity if I mentally read it using that horrid Cockney accent that Dick van Dyke used in "Mary Poppins".

Oh HELL no! That was not a Cockney accent, in the same way that Tommy Lee Jones' accent in Blown Away was not Irish! That was a terrible attempt at an accent but it wasn't even close! Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is proper Cockney.

That's why I prefaced it with the word "horrid".

Knives are a big problem in urban UK. A comedian did a routine a few years ago regarding giving everyone under 20 free tasers. Then they can have all the tasering fun they like without having to resort to knives.

Submitter has never been to Liverpool.

dittybopper: cmoreland: Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were.

Swords are *ALWAYS* cool. At least, real ones are.

When my dad passes, I'm going to snag the kopis he made.

/still has sword collection
//wife won't let me hang them on the wall :(
///something about our kids getting hold of them or something...pfft as if!

Kalashinator: Shatner's Bassoon: dr-shotgun:
See, that is the thing - carrying a firearm is not about being scared any more than keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen is about being scared.

Keeping a fire extinguisher next to an oven is fair enough. It's when you feel the need to carry a fire extinguisher with you every time you go out the front door that you look a bit paranoid.

FWIW, spontaneous combustion happens a lot less than armed robbery, rape, or murder.

Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

Why do the French get so much shiat when it's the British who have become such complete panty-waists? Did the French not join us in being the only other Western Nation to fight back against pirates whereas the British (rule, Britannia/ Britannia rule the waves) surrendered to Iranians in dingies?

abdul:
You will never find a state in this country where you can't get a concealed carry permit if you actually try to do it, and you don't have a criminal record. With the exception of New York City and parts of California, you will always succeed if you actually research and take the time to try.

I found two! Illinois and Wisconsin ban CCW entirely.

Do I get a prize?

dittybopper: Kalashinator: Shatner's Bassoon: dr-shotgun:
See, that is the thing - carrying a firearm is not about being scared any more than keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen is about being scared.

Keeping a fire extinguisher next to an oven is fair enough. It's when you feel the need to carry a fire extinguisher with you every time you go out the front door that you look a bit paranoid.

FWIW, spontaneous combustion happens a lot less than armed robbery, rape, or murder.

Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

I don't carry my fire extinguisher with me because I don't expect to put out an oven fire while I'm walking to the post office.

cmoreland: dittybopper: cmoreland: Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were.

Swords are *ALWAYS* cool. At least, real ones are.

When my dad passes, I'm going to snag the kopis he made.

/still has sword collection
//wife won't let me hang them on the wall :(
///something about our kids getting hold of them or something...pfft as if!

I have this hanging on my wall:



I don't have a wide shot of it, but here's a close-up of the lock area and one of the hangers:



We've got a kid at home. Not an issue. And yes, it's fully functional. Here I am shooting it at the Southern Vermont Primitive Biathlon back this last Winter:

Buy lots of guns and use them often

Mom gave me my own safety scissors just the other day! 15 more years and I can get my very own pocket knife! W00t!

Seriously though, I have no issue with having age restriction laws when it comes to large, sharp, potentially stabby objects.

If you've ever been to Central America, you'd know that most people mow their laws with really sharp machetes. Kinda cool to watch. (random interjection)

misuse of FAIL tag

its not like this kid lives in some central american jungle
baseball bats have a use

alpentalrules: Buy lots of guns and use them often

And start when you are really young:



/Weened on Black Powder, and I got patch lube runnin' through my veins

Kalashinator: abdul:
You will never find a state in this country where you can't get a concealed carry permit if you actually try to do it, and you don't have a criminal record. With the exception of New York City and parts of California, you will always succeed if you actually research and take the time to try.

I found two! Illinois and Wisconsin ban CCW entirely.

Do I get a prize?

You got me there, I did not know that. How about club sandwich membership as a prize? How do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm for 'em.

Gen. Apathy: "At what exact point should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home?...

And how we burned in the camps thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during the periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of a half dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those Bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with its one lonely chauffeur - what if it had been driven of or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly had suffered a shortage of officers and transport and notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
If....If.... We didn't love freedom enough.

transcribed from one of my favorite books:
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Harper & Row Publishers, 1973, pg 13

This is awesome. Thanks for posting it.

do Britons know how many cheap junky knives you can buy online for a song? the kind with plastic dragon hafts or maybe skulls? They can probably leave a bruise if you were to press hard enough with them.

Farkwaddle:
Seriously though, I have no issue with having age restriction laws when it comes to large, sharp, potentially stabby objects.


Why?



/Son trying out one of his birthday presents this year. He's five.

dittybopper: You don't have to be able to actually *WIN*, you just have to make it so expensive that they won't try it in the first place.

I was trying to talk about this with you, probably a couple of months back. I was mulling it over when I saw the Honduras thing kick off. I don't know if it is just an outside perspective but the military seemed to seize power pretty much over night, and the people of Honduras are pretty well armed.

It looks like the military had received tacit support from the judiciary.

Anyway does that change the dynamic of too expensive to try? If the military have seized the apparatus of government wouldn't the people need to win to seize it back? Or do the people just start burning the place to the ground? What is your take on it all?

dittybopper: That's why I prefaced it with the word "horrid".

Yeah, sorry about that. I re-read it and saw my mistake. On first reading I thought you were saying that the Cockney accent was generally horrid, as displayed by DvD, not that his rendition of it was horrid.

However, I think we need to clearly separate the two. Can we agree to call DvD's accent something more fitting like "dog flatulence" and leave Cockney out of it?

abdul:
This is awesome. Thanks for posting it.

Read the whole book.

dittybopper: Kalashinator: Shatner's Bassoon: dr-shotgun:
See, that is the thing - carrying a firearm is not about being scared any more than keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen is about being scared.

Keeping a fire extinguisher next to an oven is fair enough. It's when you feel the need to carry a fire extinguisher with you every time you go out the front door that you look a bit paranoid.

FWIW, spontaneous combustion happens a lot less than armed robbery, rape, or murder.

Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

DOZENS! Hope Obama's including personal-sized fire extinguishers in his national health care plan!

Thankfully I haven't randomly erupted into a nerdy fireball, but I have been robbed at knife- and gun-point. Happened twice, might happen again.

dittybopper: cmoreland: dittybopper: cmoreland: Remember when you were a teenage boy and how cool swords were.

Swords are *ALWAYS* cool. At least, real ones are.

When my dad passes, I'm going to snag the kopis he made.

/still has sword collection
//wife won't let me hang them on the wall :(
///something about our kids getting hold of them or something...pfft as if!

I have this hanging on my wall:



I don't have a wide shot of it, but here's a close-up of the lock area and one of the hangers:



We've got a kid at home. Not an issue. And yes, it's fully functional. Here I am shooting it at the Southern Vermont Primitive Biathlon back this last Winter:

I'm no gun expert, but that right there looks verra nice! Great condition too :)

dittybopper: dagman:
WOW.

Carry on.

(umm.. checks "Carry" 'cuz it consists of 5 letters)
/Paranoid now. Thanks. Where's my machete?

You missed the point. I was saying that I don't harp on the occasional spelling error because we all make mistakes.

I was harping on the "bloody 'ell guv'nah twattish car boot sh*t f*ck lemon curry? ole-biscuit barrel shav tuppeny hooer bobs your uncle1 queen mum's bum chum c*nt bog-arsed" slang that seems to come from Her Majesty's subjects in what is an international forum.

1. He needed the money, I guess.

Actually, I did get your point originally. I was just shocked that I didn't receive more of a deserved scewering from John Q Farker.

So thank you. I enjoyed your response this time as well.

/entertained

dittybopper: Farkwaddle:
Seriously though, I have no issue with having age restriction laws when it comes to large, sharp, potentially stabby objects.


Why?



/Son trying out one of his birthday presents this year. He's five.

I agree with Ditty. If you are old enough to pick something up and explore it you are old enough to learn how to use it properly and safely. Drawing arbitrary lines and pretending there are magical ages of compentency only engenders unhealthy attitudes, even fear, of useful tools.

dittybopper: abdul:
This is awesome. Thanks for posting it.

Read the whole book.

I definitely will.

I don't believe you can say it better than Solzhenitsyn, in that the right to bear arms comes to us as a defense against real-life tyranny, wherever we experience it.

What date can someone pin down where American government became completely stable and rational, where complete breakdown was not at some point a future consideration?

I stepped on a nail as a child. It went right through my foot. I want houses to be only glued together from now on.

abdul: Do I get a prize?

You got me there, I did not know that. How about club sandwich membership as a prize? How do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm for 'em.

Made me think of Homer out golfing with Mr. Burns.

Useful information (new window)

You'll think twice when you die from the fumes, smart guy.

Kalashinator: abdul: Do I get a prize?

You got me there, I did not know that. How about club sandwich membership as a prize? How do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm for 'em.

Made me think of Homer out golfing with Mr. Burns.

Useful information (new window)

D'oh! It's totally a Mitch Hedberg joke. I like the link, though.

gshepnyc:
I agree with Ditty. If you are old enough to pick something up and explore it you are old enough to learn how to use it properly and safely.

Which supports the idea of restricting purchase of certain things based on age. Let the child's parents decide when the kid is old enough to use something responsibly. If you think your 13 year old is mature enough to have a machete, buy one for him.

Haggis is scarier than a machete.

/Got a machete for Christmas

abdul: Our population is many times larger.

I originate from a country of a billion.
gun free society.
lower crime.
Which is why I dont buy the arguments

Ummm, I bought like 200 knives from the home shopping network without any hassle. And I'm not talking about kitchen knives. I'm talking swords, knives so big they were basically swords, combat knives, etc. It came in a big box, no ID required, nada. I still have most of the knives, gave some away as gifts but still have plenty if I ever wanted to go on a stabbing/slashing spree.

Crap.

/Has carried a pocket knife from age 5 on (Benchmade at the moment).
//Machete at 9
///evil I guess