A blog about whatever with lots of digressions

Saturday, June 21, 2014

On Bicycle Violence in the Netherlands

Since I began my fierce Facebook campaign for gun regulation in the US, I have challenged, and been challenged by many gun aficionados with many different arguments. Here are some of the arguments that NRA members and "Second Amendment" people have responded with:

1) FUCK YOU

2) Here is one for you Kenneth shit head: Germany early 1900's ADOLPH HITLER disarms the Germans, takes over their country, then STARTS WORLD WAR1. Who was the country that stopped that bastard from doing that? The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Suck on that fact you NAZI PIG.

3)  We as Americans love our guns thank you!

4) Kenneth Lawrence Schroeder you make me sick!! Stay the fuck out of the US you weak ass pos!

5) The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. -Thomas Jefferson


I believe these are all very good arguments for going grocery shopping with semi-automatic rifles slung over one's shoulder, and I had a difficult time responding to them. 

However, when I recently posted my admiration for the state of Rhode Island, which apparently has the strictest gun regulation, the lowest gun rate death per capita, and has recently divested from the gun industry, I was challenged by an old friend and lover of liberty in a new and unparalleled way. 

When are they going to stop bicycle violence in The Netherlands????  he asked.

I immediately Googled bicycle violence in the Netherlands to see if there was some news about a man beating another man to death with a bicycle. When my search produced no results, I searched further-- maybe it wasn't a whole bike being used to commit acts of violence-- a whole bicycle would make an unwieldy weapon-- maybe it was bicycle parts-- maybe there have been a series of mass bludgeonings to death in schools with the perpetrators using handlebars or forks or deflated inner tubes. But I found nothing. 

Then it occured to me that my thinking was wrong. By 'violence', my friend must have meant 'death' or 'injury'. And it occured to me that there must be a relatively high rate of bicycle deaths and injuries in Holland, given that so many people ride bikes there. What I discovered was that, indeed, in 2008, nine out of a million people were killed in Holland while riding their bike, compared to only two per million in the UK.  I couldn't find the statistics for bike deaths in the USA. By comparison, when I checked the statistics for gun deaths in 2011, in Holland it was about 5 deaths per million, while in the USA it was about 100 deaths per million

So I considered my friend's argument, which seems to be:  Both guns and bicycles are mere objects, and the use of either of them can result in death. 

It also seems that my friend chose bicycles in Holland to make this point, rather than, say, jelly beans (which can also kill if you choke on them)  because bicyles in Holland are thought of as good things by peace freaks such as myself. 

Yet, I am not convinced by my friend. I believe that it is also important to consider the purpose of an object. While both guns and bicycles can be used for sport, a bicycle is ultimately made for transportation, hence the wheels, while a gun is ultimately made to kill something, hence the bullets. Furthermore, the bicycle is a relatively passive mode of transport. Most of the cyclists who are killed on the road, are killed by cars, which are objects used for transport in a less passive way. Walk down the highway sometime, and you will understand.  

In any case, a  person on a bike intends to go from point A to point B. A person with a gun intends, at some point,  to shoot something or someone. 

So, to answer the question: When are they going to stop bicycle violence (sic) in the Netherlands????

My answer is that I believe the Dutch are working on it. They have very good bike paths there, and I believe they are serious about bicycle safety. And if everyone decides to ride a bike there, then aside from the resulting quiet and reduced carbon emissions and better health of the population, I believe bicycle deaths will be reduced, as there will be fewer cars to kill cyclists. 

But my question remains: When are we going to stop gun violence in America?



 




 
   

Friday, June 6, 2014

Nothing like a Taco and a Glock 9 mm

I was in Stephanville, Texas the other day, and I'd gotten a nice Bacon Ranch Monster Taco and a Coke to wash it down, and I sat down to eat and enjoy the air conditioning, and I laid out my meal, and slapped my Glock 17 9 mm short-recoil-operated locked breech semi-automatic pistol on the table, and I thought I was in heaven, with that taco and my Glock there-- food for my belly and food for my soul-- and I praised the Lord and only when I glanced around did I notice that something was wrong.

I'd heard little whimpers and my peripheral vision had caught the movement all around but it had been stealthy movement, so only when I glanced around did I notice the abandoned burgers and whatnot on the tables, and the mom's running outside with their children in their arms, and dad's behind them, sheltering them, or ahead of them, already in the driver's seat of their cars. Then I saw employees of the very same Jack in the Box in which I had been savoring my good fortune sprinting out the doors. Why, I even saw that pleasant young lady who had served up my taco running with fear on her face and tears in her eyes.


Now, I am a veteran, the reader should understand, so I am prepared for these kinds of things at all times. And as a firearms owner, I mentally run it through my mind how I will react to situations like this. I drill myself constantly, asking myself questions like, "If they come in through the window, where is it best to place my Glock so that I can get it quickly and discharge the weapon?" or, "If they come in at night and I am sleeping, is it best to have my Glock loaded and under my pillow?" or even, "If I am having a monster taco at Jack in the Box, where is the best place to sit so I can see when they come in to rob the place or to do a mass shooting"? And having rehearsed that particular question in my mind a dozen times, and answered it, I was now seated in that very spot-- yet, I did not see the armed gunman who had come in to commit his foul deed, and who had caused everyone to run for their lives. 

I picked up my Glock and held it gently in my right hand while using my left palm to support the weapon from beneath its handle. I crouched and scanned the empty restaurant. Where was the bastard? I felt myself flush with... fear? No. Adrenalin. Adrenalin tempered by the knowledge that I had my weapon. I had trained with it for this very moment. It was up to me. It was all up to me. I stood just for a moment to wave to a few people in the parking lot, who were peering from behind cars. I wanted to let them know they were safe, that I had everything under control. I wondered how many of them were gun control liberals, and I wondered if they would change their minds now.

There was a noise on my right, movement, a door. I swung towards it and discharged my Glock, all 28 rounds from my G17 magazine. There was silence after the eight second barrage. I was sure I had got him. Then, a whimper.

"I surrender! I surrender!" a voice called out from behind the waste bins. I knew by the voice that the bastard was scared. I ejected my clip and inserted my smaller 10 round reserve clip. I chambered a round and I cautiously approached the waste bins, weapon extended, finger on the trigger.

"Please don't shoot me," said the coward.

"Slide your weapon out across the floor," I said evenly.

"I haven't got a weapon," he said with a trembling voice. Yeah, right, I thought.

"SLIDE YOUR FUCKING WEAPON ACROSS THE FLOOR NOW OR YOU'RE DEAD!" I said.

Then he began to sob like a baby.

"It's me, it's me..." he said.

What was that supposed to mean-- It's me. Who?

Then, the sirens. As always, the cops are way too late, I thought. This is why, I thought-- this is why we have our right to bear arms.

Then, two furry arms raised high above the waste bins.

"I surrender," said the sobbing voice. "It's me, Simeon, don't shoot."

"Simeon?" I asked.

And Simeon's chimp head appeared from behind the bins.

"It's me," he said.

"Simeon!" I shouted. "Get down! There's a gunman in this place! Get out! Get out now!"

"It's you," he said, almost crying. "You. You are the gunman."

"What? Are you deluded?" I asked.

Then the police barged in with their own drawn weapons. And they were pointing them at me.

Sigh.

What is the matter with these people?






Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Me an' My Gun

I was once a gun owner.

My dad bought me a .22 rifle when I was 12. It was a Marlin, with micro-grooved rifling, and it looked like an M1 carbine from World War 2. Though my dad was an engineer for companies doing projects for the space program, he had been raised as a farm boy in North Dakota, so he thought I should learn to shoot a gun. And I liked it. I loved my .22. I kept it oiled and I wanted to get lots more guns once I was older. I wished I could have lived in the Wild West so I could carry a gun around with me.

I also had a little .410 shotgun. I traded an old drum set for the shotgun and a broken Japanese sword someone's dad had picked up in the Pacific in World War 2. My mom sighed when she learned I had a shotgun now too.

We lived in the suburbs, in Florida. We weren't country people. We had a swimming pool. We were middle class. I didn't hunt. But I had a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun.

Just a year or so earlier, a kid I knew from school had been shot in his sleep by his dad. The kid's name was Buck. He lived on the same street that we did. His dad had recently come back from Viet Nam, and at 4 in the morning had shot his wife and kids and them himself. All this in a middle class suburban Florida beach town.

Buck being murdered in his sleep-- shot in his sleep by his dad, really scared me. I made my dad promise he wouldn't murder us in our sleep. I felt pretty safe at night with my .22 and .410 shotgun, though, even though there was no ammo for the shotgun. I ran it through my head how to get to the .22 on the desktop and load it through its tubular magazine and then shoot whoever was coming to murder us in the night, and it seemed like it would take too long, and I wished I could sleep with my .22, already loaded. Also, if someone came in through the window, they would be between me and the .22, and that would be a problem. And if they came in and I didn't wake up in time, that would also be a problem. Then I started thinking my .22 wouldn't be much help when someone came in the night to murder us.

But I had this .22 lying there, on my desktop in my bedrrom, and I wanted to do something more with it than shoot at targets at a gun range. I wanted to shoot something. When I was 16, I had my driver's license and I had a .22 and a friend and I went out to shoot something. We found a spot near the beach with some pine woods. There were houses beyond the woods, though. I decided I wasn't going to shoot at things, because of the nearby houses. My friend wanted to shoot something, though, so he shot at a bird on the branch of a tree. He missed, and the shot popped and hissed-- .22's don't go Bang!-- they pop and hiss-- and a flock of birds flew up making a racket, and he handed me the gun and ran back to the car, and we sped away. 

Not long afterwards, we moved to upstate New York. We lived out in the woods, by the Black River. My step brother took me deer hunting in a car. We drove around through the woods looking for deer. We had a 12 gauge shotgun he had borrowed from a friend, loaded with slugs for killing deer. It was illegal to hunt that way, but that was how it was done, he told me. When we couldn't find any deer we shot at trees in the woods.

When I left home to join the navy, my guns disappeared. My mom got rid of them. I shot guns every once in a while in the navy though. I qualified on the 1911 Colt semi-automatic pistol. I shot an M-14 a few times. I shot a 12 gauge once. I even fired a few bursts from a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the signal bridge of the USS Tattnall.

Then I got out of the navy and I had pretty much detached myself from guns until I got married and met my father-in-law. He really liked guns. He took me deer hunting and I liked it and I got a deer using his 30/30. I lived in the countryside now, so I decided I had to have guns again. My father-in-law gave his old 20 gauge shotgun to my wife. I borrowed his 30/30 every deer season, and he loaned it to me because he had a new .30-06, with a higher muzzle velocity, which made it more accurate at long range, and more deadly.

My father-in-law took me coon hunting a few times too. I came along as an observer because I wanted to stomp around the woods at night. We went on one coon hunt-- a competition coon hunt-- without any guns. It was a competition to see whose dog was the best coon dog, not to kill the raccoon. Our group was walking across a corn field when a big pickup with searchlights mounted on its roof came bouncing and roaring at us. It stopped, illuminating all of us in its lights. I turned and saw a silhouetted figure holding a gun.

"What the hell you doin' on my land!?" the silhouette shouted.

A little hillbilly in the group shouted back, "Fuck you!", and I cringed a little, waiting for a shotgun blast.

Then the judge of the competition called out to the man with the gun, and they knew each other, and everything was okay.

On another coon hunt, this time with guns, my father-in-law and his friend took us out onto someone else's farmland. The farmer cornered us in the woods, shining a high beam flashlight at us. He had a pistol in a holster, and warned us to get the hell off his land. We did, and continued the hunt, and the dogs got the scent of a raccoon, and it went up a tree, and my father-in-law and his friend got the raccoon in the beams of their headlamps, and you could see the big coon huddled on a limb, its eyes shining from the reflection, and they fired shot after shot at the coon with their .22's, and at that moment I thought about where those bullets that missed might be heading, because though it was countryside it wasn't all countryside, but mostly I marvelled that an animal could be so full of .22 caliber rifle slugs and still manage to stay up in the tree, and I thought also that that animal was going through a living hell, and it finally dropped to the ground, and the dogs ripped into its belly and pulled out its intestines, and it was still alive enough to fight, and I watched in horror until one of them finally put a bullet in its head. That was my last coon hunt.

I had a nice neighbor there, out in the countryside in Maryland, who had a 16 year old son who wasn't so nice. His son shot the other neighbor's dog from his bedroom window with his .22, and killed it. The kid told us he had gut shot it, and it had died slowly, and he had had to apologize to the family. I told him he had better not shoot Clyde, my beagle-- that I wouldn't just accept an apology-- and he told me not to worry-- he wouldn't shoot Clyde because he liked us. Later he told us about the people living in a trailer with stray cats everywhere, and how he had offered to shoot the cats, and they had agreed, and he had had a big day hunting and killing stray cats.

The next door neighbor whose dog had been shot also had a gun. We didn't know he had a gun, though, until he used it late one night. We'd been awakened by a loud argument between the man and his girlfriend. Then there was a gunshot and frantic sobbing from the woman. We peered out the window at their house, crouching down. It seemed to be quiet now.

"I'm calling the cops," I said, whispering for some reason. 

"Okay," said my wife, also whispering.

I called 911, the emergency number, and I told the lady a gunshot had been fired at the home next to ours. I also explained the circumstances. She said that state troopers would be sent out right away. Back in our bedroom, I crouched low to peer out the window again, where my wife was still peering.

"They've made up, they love each other again," she said, no longer whispering.

On their front lawn, the man and his girlfriend were hugging and sobbing. I called the highway patrol and reported the new development, telling them they needn't come.

Meanwhile, I was hoping to save enough money to buy a few more guns. A 20 gauge shotgun is kind of a wimpy gun, really. I wanted a 12 gauge shotgun, and a lever action .45 rifle using the same shell used in a .45 pistol. I killed all my deer at short range, so the rifle would be good for that, with a lot of short range knock down power. Also, I could later buy a .45 pistol for home defense, because of all the whackos around carrying guns.

When we lived there, in Cecil County, Maryland, everybody had a gun. You really had to be careful who you offended. Once, while driving my GMC pickup truck, I cut somebody off in traffic. They held down the horn behind me. I put my hand out of the window and gave them the finger. They gunned their engine and roared past me and cut me off and hit their brakes a little, forcing me to hit my brakes and slow down. The guy in the passenger seat held a pistol out of the window and waved it around. My wife was afraid I would stop to confront them, but I was as scared as she was, and I thought about how to get away from these guys when they roared away instead.

Dan Hanby also had a gun, a 12 gauge shotgun. He was a driver for Maryland Portable Concrete, where we both drove concrete mixers. He was a quiet guy-- polite. He was having some problems at home, though. He'd been caught driving drunk, so he couldn't work as a driver for a while. I saw him hitchhiking as I came home from work, and I gave him a lift, and he explained that he'd just bought the shotgun from K-Mart.

"Going hunting?" I'd asked, and he'd said no and then been quiet. He explained that he had had a vasectomy, but his wife had a little girl when the vasectomy should have prevented that from happening, and I had joked that he'd better sue that doctor. I hadn't understood where his mind was, telling me about that out of the blue. I had taken him to his house, not far from mine, and I'd wished him a Merry Christmas.

A couple of weeks later I drove my mixer into the lot after having done the final load of the day, and I heard the boss on the company radio say something about Dan, and hostages. When I went into the dispatch office all the drivers were there, listening to the boss talking to Dan on the telephone, telling him not to do anything crazy. As we all discovered later, though, it had been too late. Dan had used his new 12 gauge shotgun to shoot his wife and little girl. Apparently, he'd suspected the little girl wasn't his. After murdering his family he had gone out onto the front lawn and shot himself in the stomach, but he had botched it-- he was still alive. His wife's family lived next door and her brothers came over and tried to beat him to death as he lay on the grass but the police came and then the ambulance and he was taken away.

A few days later I was pouring concrete and the construction crew, who had known Dan and all the other drivers, was talking about what had happened.

"I kin see shootin yor wife, but not yor little girl," the foreman said. And the others all agreed very solemnly.

Dan eventually recovered from his wound, and he was sentenced to life in prison, and though he was considered a suicide risk, he managed to hang himself after only a few months in prison.

We had a baby-- a little girl-- not long afterwards. My wife had some roots in Portugal, so we moved there to live. We had a little girl we wanted to raise. I haven't had a gun since.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

On the Second Amendment, and Gun Freaks



More gunplay in the Old Country.  The gun freaks say the problem ain’t the guns, it’s the crazies. But if the USA is a country full of crazies, why do you want to arm them, gun freaks? And why do you want to arm them with assault weapons, weapons of mass destruction?

Sigh. 

Anyway, the Second Amendment:

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

‘A well regulated militia,’ is how this amendment begins.  

‘A…well…regulated…militia…’

Not, ‘An unregulated bunch of gun freaks…’, but, ‘A well regulated milita…’

Reading comprehension problems.
Like a redneck with the Bible. He just don’t get it.

Sigh.

Anyway, from Wikipedia (look up 'second amendment' to check references):

'Early English settlers in America viewed the right to arms and/or the right to bear arms and/or state militias as important for one or more of these purposes (in no particular order):

    enabling the people to organize a militia system.
    participating in law enforcement;
    deterring tyrannical government;
    repelling invasion;
    suppressing insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts;
    facilitating a natural right of self-defense.'


Some 230 years later, let us examine how things have changed since the settlers lived in log cabins in the wilderness of North America.

For starters, every state now has a militia in its National Guard. And I don't want a bunch of gun freakos drilling with their assault rifles in my neighborhood. I wouldn’t feel safe. The militia formed by gun freakos would make me feel very unsafe and surely that is contrary to the purpose of the amendment.

Second, law enforcement has enough participants. I would feel even more unsafe with a bunch of gun freak vigilantes patrolling the streets. The angst-filled teenagers would surely stop breaking beer bottles and spraying graffiti but I would rather have them lurking the streets than gun freakos with guns. No. The vigilante era is done. Enough cops already.

Third, we can deter tyrannical government with elections. Even if we have to wait a little. For example, if you believe Obama is the Antichrist, or that he is Hitler, or Stalin, or all of them at once, just have a little patience and he'll go away, in the same manner that that shit-for-brains, Bush, went away. The system still works, at least in that regard.

Next, regarding the repelling of invasions… please.  The Canadians are massing troops along our northern frontier! On the southern front, the Mexicans have advanced all the way to Colorado! Ay caramba! We have a huge military to repel invasion. In fact, our military is so big we can do the invading, so that the citizenry in other countries has to bear arms.  

As for suppressing insurrection, such as slave revolts, there are no more slaves to revolt. And if there were still slaves, I would want their revolt to be successful. Also, those militias formed by gun freakos to prevent tyrannical government? Well, their armed opposition would amount to insurrection. So then we would have gun freakos mounting an armed opposition to the tyrannical president, on the one hand, and other armed gun freakos putting down the insurrection. Or maybe not, as the gun freakos seem to be united against ole Antichrist-Hitler-Stalin Obama. 

As for self defense, don’t be such a wimp. Any wuss can pack an assault weapon. Learn an effective martial art, or keep a big dog in the house.  A big dog is a much better home defense system than a gun, which can be used against you. As for learning a martial art, become the Black Belt that has the wisdom to avoid and prevent confrontation, but in a pinch, can disarm and disable whoever is stupid enough to pose a real threat, such as a gun freak in a militia. Or better yet, learn the highest wisdom of non-violent resistance. Ghandi may have been murdered by a freako with a gun, but Ghandi won that contest. Ghandi’s ideas are still around. The freako with the gun is just another freako with a gun, gone, lost in obscurity. What was his name? What was his life all about? Who gives a shit. 

In the meantime, let us pry the assault weapons from the warm, living hands of every NRA member who owns one. The very ownership of an assault weapon or a pistol-- which are guns meant to kill people-- I take personally as a threat to humanity, which I tend to identify with, so I think it's okay to disarm them. It's being a good American to disarm them. It's being a good human being to disarm a person who is carrying weapons meant to murder, even if they claim they just want to murder other murderers. Then let's melt down the assault weapons and hanguns and find something useful to do with the steel. Make art with it. Use it in the construction of schools.

Then let's help these people develop their self esteem without having to find it in a weapon of mass destruction.