In this part of the world, giving a teenager a rifle is fairly common
Can you please explain to a non-American the difference between giving a teenager a rifle or a gun?
As others have said, in rural areas, hunting is important. I've known people whose food budget depended on getting a deer each year. Also, since we killed off all the predators, someone has to kill the damn deer. My gardens have fed enough of them.
Fewer than 5 percent of gun deaths are from rifles. The vast majority are from handguns, which are a terrible blight on our nation. When the founders wrote the second amendment, they were thinking of the hunting rifles that colonists took into battle and in the hardships wreaked by the British in confiscating rifles necessary for hunting. They weren't thinking about vigilantes on every corner. A "well-regulated militia" would not be defending the country with Saturday night specials.
A few weeks ago, someone near here running across the street in the Walmart parking lot, and the gun that had been in his waistband fell onto the ground. He tried to pick it up, and somehow managed to shoot himself in the hand in the process.
"You have my sympathies. I've had days like that too."
ETA This was meant to be in response to the poopy time stuff, not a disgustingly flippant addition to the gun/rifle discussion.
I have no sympathy for the idiots who shoot themselves when their gangsta lifestyle backfires on them. Rather, I tend to point and laugh, once I make sure nobody nearby was affected.
We had an idiot who was wearing his gun in his waistband destroy a toilet when it fell out of his pants in a restaurant bathroom. Also, the inevitable self-gelding.
I'm feeling lonely tonight. Don't know why.
If someone in the recent past week or so wrote them, they might reappear in certain climate conditions. It happened to me before.
Except noone has been in my apartment that I know of. I shudder to think anyone has seen it, it's a mess!
As for guns, I was a Military Police-person in the US Army. I learned how to fire and qualify as a marks-person on the M-16. I learned not only how to field strip and clean it, but also an M-60 (I think) machine gun, a .45 and a .38 revolver. I also learned to fire a shotgun.
I had to carry the .38 and brandish it every time I was called to an alarm. I was at Ft Gordon in GA home of the Signal Corps so there were a lot of alarms.
I also guarded a building in Heidelberg, Germany with 5 bullets in my pistol and skeet shot in my shotgun at a time in the '70s when the Red Brigade was a very active terrorist group.
I think people who think they need to carry guns, unless they are cops, soldiers or actively hunting game are potentially stupid and/or dangerous. This includes my active duty nephew who has an 18-month-old daughter and a new baby on the way who never goes anywhere with out his loaded .45.
Sorry if I offended anyone.
I would love to have you give that speech to the moron at the buffet restaurant with the Glock on his hip.
Warning, vent ahead. Blah, my brother and I are butting heads because I'm so "politically correct." Boy do I wish that phrase would die in a fire. At issue is the Imagine Dragons video where a bunch of Latino men are watching and betting as stuffed animals fight (instead of roosters) while the poor indie rockers are trapped in the cellar. A white girl rescues them with a pink teddy bear that shoots lasers. My sister and I both failed to appreciate it - her more for the echoes of cock fighting, me for racial stereotyping. He looks up where cock fighting is prevalent. Then he brought up Godfather. Because Italian Americans were othered too.
I am, apparently, humorless and overly sensitive. I think he feels attacked as a white dude, IDEK.
I'm not denying that some Latino cultures practice cock fighting. But why that story? Why not Mixed Muppet Martial Arts in the Octagon? I guess I should be grateful it wasn't black dudes and a metaphor for dog fighting?
Uggh. This is frustrating because I love my brother so much and he's so smart. I hate butting heads with him. But he questions my shit and then when I back it up with facts he says he feels like I'm lecturing him.
he feels like I'm lecturing him.
Not to side with him or defend him, but you are lecturing him. You're taking the high moral stance and trying to correct him.
