Mass Killings at Virginia Walmart

Yes I do! It probably matters they are all different weights, sizes, and shapes….

 

Absolutely. Households with guns present has been stable. Society has changed. Propensity to do violence with firearms changed for the worse with the societal changes. And yes, those societal changes are political and social third rails nobody can touch. Excellent points.

 

That just makes it easier.Video it and I'll give you tips.

 

Guns per household must have gone up.

 

Yes. Guns per gun owning household has doubled on average. But that’s average. Actually, 2% of gun owners own 50% of the guns in the US.

This brings up a question I don’t have the answer to but would like to know. Does the number of firearms owned correlate positively or negatively with propensity to commit crime?

I would guess the collector of firearms would be greatly disincentivized from committing a felony as they would stand to lose thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments. I’ll see what I can find on that. We do know about 90% of guns used in crimes are not obtained legally. Most people I know who have a lot of guns either possess NFA items requiring a tax stamp or have an Federal Firearms License or Curio and Relics License or a combination of the three. All these scenarios result in vetting and documentation through the ATF. Such people are unlikely to possess illegal firearms.

 

No! You video a demo and I’ll watch it before my first attempt!

 

There's an argument to be made that owning a lot of expensive firearms makes it more likely for you to suffer a home invasion.
Lots of NRA stickers on your house and vehicles might attract some dangerous people rather than scare them off.
There's a great meme of a pick up truck with a ''come and take it off me'' bumper sticker, a smashed rear window and an empty gun rack.

 

I can juggle swords and fire clubs.
I've even juggled my razor sharp kitchen knives in the past but that is dangerous. Juggling swords will hurt and can even cut but they don't have a sharp edge. The chainsaws don't have teeth on the chains and they stop turning if you grab them.

One of my mates went on a TV talent show and stood on a roller boller (mini seesaw) balanced a lit barbeque on his chin and juggled three fire clubs.

 

Probably similar to having expensive jewelry or bicycles or jet skis. Kind of like saying a woman in a short skirt was asking to be raped.

That said, anyone showing off their jewelry or firearms as status symbols etc. are creating unnecessary risk for themselves. I would guess theft may increase but probably not home invasions. Criminals aren’t that stupid.

I believe there are internet surveys that conclude those with more firearms may be more likely to be victims of theft. But the subjects are self selected, not random, not representative of gun owning demographics, and there is of course no verification of whether the self reported information is true or not.

Anyway, being the victim of a crime is kind of the opposite of being the perpetrator of a crime.

As far as the NRA, that organization is hyped by media more than mass shooters/shootings. The media has convinced the world the NRA is some monolithic organization supported by massive numbers US firearm owners. In reality, there are over 69,000,000 US firearm owners and less than 5,000,000 NRA members. And that membership number is currently shrinking.

The NRA is essentially dead. They were already dying and then the financial scandals and internal board scandals and board voting scandals were the final nail in the coffin. This is pretty well known fact to people close to the firearm industry.

The following is my opinion based on numerous individuals and small organizations/businesses I know or know quite a bit about. What is left of the NRA at the grassroots level is mostly a bunch of old fudds that joined the NRA back in the old days and have ignored or are unaware of the corruption in the organization. There is also limited support from educators and trainers that use NRA training and safety materials in their jobs. Most states etc. that have concealed carry training mandate NRA sanctioning of educators. Youth programs like 4-H also rely heavily on NRA safety and training materials and protocols. This is all that is keeping the NRA afloat.

Support for the NRA from responsible firearm owners and small firearms related businesses is virtually non existent. The grassroots membership has tried to reconstruct the board democratically, but internal rules on voting and gross malfeasance by current leadership has foiled those attempts. The vast majority of firearms owners who wish to protect the 2A and the industry have moved on to support other rights organizations NRA revenue is down and it’s spending on lobbying has been decreasing.

Essentially the NRA has become a paper tiger with an internal loudspeaker controlled by media producing a menacing growl. Don’t believe most of what you hear about the NRA.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone I know personally that isn’t a firearm owner. Not one has an NRA sticker on a vehicle or their house. Maybe it’s different down south, but around here those that are NRA members don’t advertise it. And a criminal wouldn’t need to look for stickers to find a target. It would be statistically improbable that any house broken into wouldn’t have firearms. If a thief needed confirmation they could easily identify places with firearms.

Any place with a set of corrals or farm machinery is going to have firearms. Any place with a deer blind or waterfowl blind sitting out back on a trailer is going to have firearms. Any place with a pickup in the yard with traps or snares in the bed is going to have firearms. Any place with a vehicle with a hunter orange cap on the dashboard is going to have firearms. Any place with a clay thrower on the property is going to have firearms. Any place with greyhounds or coon hounds or retriever dog breeds is going to have firearms. And just about every place is going to have one of those markers.

 

The fire bits fascinate me. I’ve always liked fire. LOL. If I ever feel the urge to see Europe I’ll come see your juggling convention. I’ll bet you get all kinds of unique talent there.

 

Fire is fun but you get filthy hands from the soot. If you catch the wrong end you always let go quick enough that it doesn't burn you, it actually feels wet. The hardest bit about it is the fact the torches spin slower than normal clubs because of the extra drag from the flames, The biggest risk is setting your hair on fire or the grass when you drop.
The biggest conventions will have tricks more unique that you can even imagine.
Some people specialise in doing things that nobody else does.
It's not particularly whacky like some tricks others do but I've never seen anyone else do this or even try. It took me 10 years to learn and I still can't do it reliably enough to do it on stage. I might practise for half an hour and still only get it once or twice. That's not to say I'm the only person who can or could if they tried but I've never seen it.

 

The ladder behind me is for a trick I'd love to do but never had the nerve.
You hold it upright then climb up it. You have to rock it side to side a bit like stilt walkers have to rock back and forth to stay balanced.
When you get to the top you can stand there juggling clubs (if someone passes them to you).
How cool is that?
I'm far too old and fragile to learn it now but if I was 16 again...

 

Apologies to everyone for going a little off topic...

 

Back to guns.
Back in the old days (late Victorian to early 20th century) there used to be a trick where a guy would juggle three muskets complete with bayonets and the finale would be to fire them (presumably with no ball!) as he did a round of juggling.

 

If all rights are subjective, then the right of the state to exist is also subjective.

 

I was looking up some information recently on the longbow and came across this line in Wikipedia.

"This [longbow practice laws] made it easier for the King to raise an army, but also meant that the bow was a weapon commonly used by rebels during the Peasants' Revolt. From the time that the yeoman class of England became proficient with the longbow, the nobility in England had to be careful not to push them into open rebellion."

An armed populace is an ever present threat to the ruling classes.

 

Although it was a pandemic which caused the end of the feudal system and led to improved workers rights.
No peasants' revolt ever succeeded in England.

 

Yes. It’s just “might makes right” and survival of the fittest at that point.

 

Indeed, and the original gun grabbers in our country were slaveholders and the British. How did that work out for them?

 

I disagree, regarding improved workers rights. The pandemic created a class of entitled 'workers' that in turn created a massive work shortage. That same entitle class has put a major burden on the actual working class as the true working class now has to cover the shortfall of effort for the new entitled class.

The only thing the new entitled class has done is created a massive vacuum in business innovation that will no longer need the entitle class as part of their labor pool.

Maybe not in England, but the peasant revolt in the US surely was a victory of epic proportions.

 

They are part of the 1st world countries. The matter how wealthy / developed they are matters. Not if they are populated by a certain race.

 

The plague ended the feudal system and led to better workers rights.
There was no peasants' revolt in the US it was the landholder class who revolted and they needed French backing to win.

 

Latin America is simply not as well developed as the US, EU, Canada, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Hence I compare the US with where it belongs. And the US is simply at the absolute bottom of the list AND MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS IS..... where the US doesn't want to be. And it seems you gun lovers are keen to ignore where the US stands and that it aint 1# by a long shot. Where are your ambitions, ey?

 

Then do not refer to them by a compass point.

Additionally: Are you trying to claim China and Russia are not part of the developed world? Lol ok.

 

There are a lot of differences and similarities between your Peasant's Revolt and our Revolution, although one should be careful about comparing events that took place almost 400 years apart.

For example, one of the differences was that 75% of Americans owned land at the onset of the Revolution, and most of them were small farmers who were much like the lower and middle class artisans, craftsmen, mechanics, etc., who fought alongside them in our War for Independence. In that respect, it was similar to the Peasants Revolt in that it was very much a rebellion against the ruling monarchial aristocracy that treated "commoners" as inferiors in every way imaginable. What's important to understand in our case is that our revolution didn't end with the overthrow of the British aristocracy in the late 18th Century - it ended in the early to mid 19th Century with the overthrow of the American aristocracy that emerged alongside the British aristocracy during our Colonial Era.

If you're ever interested, check out Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution - it explores all of this in the time and detail we don't have here.