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Interestingly there was a study released last week that appears to show this is exactly what's happening. Things like the pictures of the ice melt up north or Sandy have convinced a pretty fair number of people -- and the people most responsive to this appear to be those who were not convinced by the scientific evidence.
Why are you surprised? Andy believes in strict government controls on speech and expression that he doesn't personally approve of. All he's missing is a cool nickname like "Tail-Gunner Joe."
You have to wonder the logic people are using to conclude that this is a "gotcha!" in favor of stricter gun control laws. Here, the laws in place worked exactly as intended: they prevented the madman from buying a weapon right away.
And yet, he gained fast access to a weaponry anyway, thereby shattering the gun control argument. He was intent on doing harm, and he did it.
I did not intend it as a gotcha. The gun control law worked, but the shooter's mother did not secure her weapons. She trained and armed the shooter, despite knowing better. She is partly to blame here.
I'm in favor of restrictive gun control, which must preclude any BS "grandfathered" exceptions. The fact that you owned something before a law banned it should not give you some sort of magical exemption. I know a lot of people are not going to like that, but tough - its evident to me that too many Americans can't handle the personal responsibility of owning guns.
The gun control argument includes the thought (backed up by actual statistical data) that fewer guns in circulation would result in fewer gun deaths. If there were fewer guns in circulation then it might not have been so easy for him to gain such fast access once he was denied a gun.
Just because gun control laws don't magically remove guns does not mean it is not worthwhile, it just means it does not do magic. If magic is what you insist on from gun control then yes it will be a failure. If you want to treat it like a public health issue (which was your analogy, btw) and work on it over time by doing things like (for example) reducing the pool of available guns in our society then you will see a statistical decrease in gun violence.
Even once that happens though I am positive gundeaths will occur and you will ignore the statistics and point out how useless it all is.
The mom is a prepper, the boy bought into it, spared his mother the anguish of the coming days and decided to do the same for some kids.
The issue is not whether fewer guns would result in fewer gun deaths; it's whether fewer guns would result in fewer deaths. Who cares what the weapon of choice was, if the result is the same? And you first need to establish that gun laws do an adequate job of preventing maniacs from getting guns.
The issue is not whether fewer guns would result in fewer gun deaths; it's whether fewer guns would result in fewer deaths. Who cares what the weapon of choice was, if the result is the same?
We're back to you relying on the outliers of steak knives, cars, and home-made bombs. I still don't understand why you are doing that.
I'm starting to wonder how much access he did have. Why go to Dick's to purchase a rifle, when there is an arsenal at your disposal in your house?
I'm very confused because this is the argument that liberals railed against about voter ID laws.
So, as a fig leaf, I'll fully agree with liberals on that point, that to be a legitimate gun control law, a gun control law must be applicable to every type of gun crime possible, absolutely prevent a gun crime from happening any other way, and not pose the slightest inconvenience, impose the most minimal effort or the slightest whiff of even a penny of cost, on any person whatsoever not intending to commit a gun crime.
Right. The issue is whether the armed forces are willing to kill to keep the regime in charge. Iran's another good example of a case where the armed forces had the power but not the will to keep the status quo.
i screen people who try and buy beagle pups from me. i get gripes about that all the time. my pups, my rules.
And I don't think it's impossible that events were like this:
The kid's brain was not wired correctly and unfortunately it mis-fired at just the wrong time. End of story.
Voter fraud only affect one vote, and can only be effective on one day, and there's little evidence that the United States suffers from widespread voter fraud. Gun control aims at getting rid of weapons that just this year alone we have documented cases of weapons being used on a mass scale against innocent parties.
Iran? They curbed stomped the opposition in 2009. Zimbabwe's another example of the people in power willing to kill and murder its own citizens to rig an election.
Except there were no cases of fraud the voter id laws were attempting to fix in some of the places the laws were enacted. It was a purely hypothetical situation which oh-by-the-way may limit some of the other party's voters.
18,000?
So, why have any laws, Ray?
Property rights; recourse against people harming you in various ways (assault; fraud; breach of contract); etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
I presume the question was non-serious.
No, it's quite serious. (And I'm not just ragging you.)
You seem to be arguing against those who favor laws restricting the ownership, possession, nad use of guns by claiming that if someone is really intent on doing harm, they can't be stopped. Is that right? If so, that can be said about a lot of laws. Many jurisdicitions have laws against carrying in saloons and bars, yet it's probably fairly easy to do so. So, does that make athe laws futile? Don't you think some people are deterred?
Just because some people won't be deterred doesn't mean others can't be. And you don't know which is which, so why should the assumption be that you can't thwart or frustrate some possible would-be killers?
But gun control can't be a bad thing even when applied to the rare lunatic. Let's say some troubled person attracts the attention of the law for some non-lethal aberrant behavior: sorry, fellow, we are going to seize your weapons, because you're not responsible. Of course this would not deter law-abiding madmen whose massacre is their first offense. But let's say (along the lines of Mouse's #3305) it reduces the rolls of school shootings by one every five years or so. I'll take that as a tradeoff against the putative right of some deranged person to have lots of guns around.
I'll put it this way. Americans in general are not interested in committing voter fraud. A large subset of Americans however are interested in owning guns. And guns are an efficient weapon in committing harm against another person. That's why they should be 'well regulated'.
Its putting your resources against the issues of your time.
The culture argument is much simpler. American culture is one of fierce individuality that simply doesn't exist in other nations. No other culture places as much emphasis on individual autonomy and freedom from government. It is not only the source of our gun laws, but our speech laws and our privacy laws. Things that are normal and expected in other countries (your papers please, for example), are outright rejected here. While it is my opinion that this is a very good thing, it carries with it consequences that do not exist in other cultures, and that's why gun control isn't the right answer even if it would, with certainty, reduce gun-related fatalities.
The same rationale, applied to the First Amendment, would suggest you have a Constitutional right to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater when no danger exists. And if you do, that suggests the Constitution, as currently written, is in need of improvement.
Putting aside that this is a terrible analogy:
You should have the right to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. You may have to pay the price for the damage you cause while doing so, but the speech itself should be perfectly legal. We can criminalize acts of reckless endangerment without infringing on speech. This is not a matter of a problem with the text of the Constitution as the interpretation of that text. (Not to mention the specifics of that phrase, used to quash political speech as "too dangerous." "Fire in a crowded theater" was a vast overreach of government power to restrict speech, and frankly, the very sort of abuse of power that the First Amendment was clearly intended to prevent.)
I fully support this plan.
It's all in the first point - does gun control result in fewer deaths, or not? Whether it results in fewer gundeaths is double plus immaterial. How it does is probably also not the point, whether it's preventing people who're inclined to go on killing sprees away from guns, or weakening the cultural fascination with guns, or .... whatever else.
Pretty close to irrelevant I'd say. The key is getting the armed forces either onside or willing to stand aside (Egypt for instance).
I guess Rhodesia would be a counter-example. They were in fact willing to kill to keep the regime in charge and eventually (after about 2 decades) it became clear that the rebel forces were growing faster than the Rhodesian armed forces could kill them.
If there is a type of gun control relevant to this part of the discussion it is more strict rules related to storage of weapons. If she had her weapons in a safe or something similar there is a chance he never gets these weapons. Maybe it wouldn't have stopped this particular instance, but there are plenty of other incidents where it would prevent people getting harmed.
This makes it sound like he almost certainly had something more going on than Asperger's, I've also seen reports (don't know if they are true are like half this story) that he was involved in self destructive behavior like burning himself. He also may or may not have been on medication, many of which often have side effects related to violent behavior. Many other countries include psychological screening as part of buying weapons and depending what was actually going on with him, this may have relevant to him or someone like James Holmes, but probably not his mother, so it would still her responsibility to keep the weapons away from him. Perhaps even more strict storage guidelines could be recommended to anyone living with someone with disqualifying mental conditions.
Magazine size is definitely more related to many of these recent mass shooting than the types of guns themselves. In other countries where .223 semi-automatics are legal as hunting weapons, they usually have much more restrictive magazine sizes. These guns are good hunting weapons, the bigger magazines aren't really needed for that or target shooting. Individual states have already passed laws related to this and so it's likely more reasonable to pass laws related to this than to ban a few very popular types of guns.
I'm a page late or so, but the response of "What about the Sarin attacks, or the Oklahoma City Boming!!!!" are absolutely ridiculous. We can't stop every attack, but I like our chances a lot better when the attacks we're trying to stop take a great dealing of planning and fairly flawless execution. Timothy McVeigh didn't just get pissed off one day and drive to OKC to kill a bunch of people. The longer the planning stage, the more people involved, the more moving parts, the better chance we have to stop it. There's no indication (yet, obviously) that Newtown was a coordinated and planned attack so much as it was a kid who snapped, and who had easy access to a tool with no useful purpose outside of the killing of a lot of people very quickly.
Except, of course, for the fact that there has been pretty much NO evidence to support any need for voter ID laws, but tons of evidence that the easy availability of guns leads to incidents like this.
But don't let the facts get in the way of your ideological world-view. If you believe something, Dan, it must be true, so why bother with facts.
He's always had a problem with empathy, and had NO sense of 'tribe' as a baby/toddler. Meaning whenever we went to the park, I had to stay 2 feet behind him at all times because he would have just wandered off and never looked back. You know those women you see at stores whose kids know to follow like baby ducks? Yeah, that wasn't my kid. If we lived in caveman times, he wouldn't have lived more than two weeks after he could walk.
So let's just say the events of the last week are very interesting to me.
*I suspect he meant he was interested by the events, but made sure to let him know, that's not something he should be saying. Especially at school. On the flip side, he will leave the room if a show has blood in it. So I'm not REAL worried about him.
And how exactly do we legislate this? Last I checked worldviews are not included in background checks when guns are purchased.
Serious question: Why not?
I'm not talking about Climate change deniers or Flat Earthers or Marxists or Randians. But when you've got a person who thinks that the world is coming to an end, and that therefore she needs to arm herself to the teeth (with semiautomatic weapons) to "protect" herself, are you really trying to say that it should be nobody's business but hers if she wants to buy a Bushmaster or a Glock? Is the second amendment compelled to lead us to this stage of denial?
Nor is the presence of other persons in the household, mentally stable or otherwise. What alarms would have been set off? Should the neighbors have barged in and seized her guns?
No.
Reported her to the police?
Absolutely. And it speaks to the prevailing culture of Newtown that such a thought wasn't even considered. IMO it's a variation, however relatively mild, of the Kitty Genovese syndrome. Many neighbors knew that something serious was up with this woman, and yet nobody wanted to get involved, and nobody questioned the wisdom of her little arsenal.
And so this clearly disturbed woman was just allowed to go her merry way. Well, inactions can have consequences, too.
Maybe move beyond some of your hyperbolic statements and make a suggestion of how to actually prevent a situation like this.
First, outlaw weapons of "mass destruction" for civilian use. Second, institute much more stringent background checks for gun ownership. Third, learn to recognize signs of mental instability, and be triple careful about letting people like that obtain weapons that were clearly meant for serious, non-civilian use.
None of the above is foolproof. All of that will find cracks in implementation. And what's really needed is a seismic shift in our entire attitude towards guns. Other countries can tell the difference between gun sports and gun fetishists, and though we'll never get to that point, we might at least begin to recognize the importance of the question.
-----------------------------------------------------------
And to me that simply shows what we're up against. And trust me, I realize that separating the Nancy Lanzas from those with more balanced mental states isn't always easy. But when it comes to the sort of weapons that can be used to kill en masse within a matter of seconds, I can't see why we shouldn't be erring on the side of caution. To narrowcast the often quoted phrase, the Second Amendment is not a suicide pact.
*shrug*
Some people like guns... again, not my cup of tea -- but I have multiple family members who have collections that are 5+. Just off the top of my head, I can think of 6 cousins/uncles who do.
But do those 6 cousins/uncles collect the sort of weapons that are capable of staging massacres of elementary school children?
Of course, that would first mean taking military-grade weapons away from the police ...
(not that that would be a bad thing at all)
What's the point of this silly pedantry? My original comment was:
"In Chicago, only 36 percent of the ~18,000 homicides from 1980 to 2008 were cleared, and the clearance rates for other felonies are often worse."
The key part of that was the rate, not the number. Without going back to the article, I said "~18,000" from memory, and it turns out the exact number was 20,854. That doesn't change the rate at all, and I don't see how a higher number of homicides makes the situation in Chicago look better than I had represented it.
Along these lines this might be the most meaningful and relevant piece that I've read so far.
The whole thing is absolutely worth a read.
You make it sound like there should be a DHS for guns. And while I can see a lot of people saying, "Why not??"...how far is 'judging prepper mentality as instability' from determining gun ownership based on political beliefs? Take it even further: "Tea Partiers are crazy. Their beliefs are crazy and they shouldn't be allowed to own guns."
I, for one, could live with that.
Yeah, which is why DC and Chicago are such meccas of gun safety.
I'm also confused. So, after gun massacres is the proper time to talk about gun control and who to blame. But talking about Benghazi right after Benghazi isn't? And apparently, when adding new debt is also the exact wrong time to talk about adding debt.
Regressives really need to give us an Appropriate Discussion Window chart, for future reference.
Amen.
Andy, I'm not saying I think the world is going to end, but please don't confuse being prepared for a societal collapes with being crazy. We live in a society which is almost totally reliant on "just in time" deliveries to keep grocery stores and gas stations supplied. Have you ever heard of the Carrington Event? It was a massive solar storm in 1859 that took out most of the very limited electrical infrastructure of the day.
If that were to happen again, and there is no reason to think it could not, you will be absolutley ###### if you are in a city. This has nothing to do with politics or worldviews or conspiracies. If the electrical grid were to go down for an extended period of time in any region, the stores would be empty in 2 days, and then people would start getting hungry, and thirsty. When people get hungry and thirsty, they become a little unpredictable, and I wouldn't want to be sitting on any kind of food supply or even a vegetable garden without some form of defense.
Edited for clarity
* All the normal stuff (closing loopholes, background checks, magazine size)
* Ammunition tax
* Regulations modeled after automobile usage:
* Insurance
* Liscensing/mandatory training/education
* Laws which make not following two points above expensive when ignored
You can have a gun, but it is going to be a bit more expensive and regulated which will cost some time and money.
So the money you raise you do educational efforts (similar to what has been done the last 30+ years around drunk driving) to inform folks what the cost is of promiscuous gun usage in the US.
Andy, would you like me to go into the archives and find the copious quotes from the leftists here saying that extremely progressive taxation is fair because it keeps the poor from rising up and killing the wealthy? Seems to me that if even the elitist white liberals here see it as a possibility to the extent that they argue it as a justification for policy, someone who has money is simply being smart by preparing for that possible day.
I missed the part about no talking about Benghazi or debt. Of sure there were people wanted actual concrete information and wanting people to stop talking out the rear ends, but that had nothing to do with sensitivity it has to do with get your facts right.
So now is a fine time to talk about generic gun control, mental health or whatever. Talking about how that woman must have been a terrible parent is (I think) not so good because the writer has no idea one way or another orther than speculation and speculation on other peoples speculation.
I would love you to so that research. My memory is terrible, I would have thought I would have remembered using potention actual class war as a justification for progressive taxation.
1) They are already. This guy didn't use an RPG or an M16
2) That seemed to have worked. The shooter was denied purchase of a rifle 3 days before the shooting.
3) I have yet to see any evidence that this women was mentally unstable, other than your assertions that because she stockpiled food, ammo, guns, etc in the event something catastrophic happens, she's crazy.
Pretty much all firearms, in the hands of a sociopath, are cable of that. Some are more efficient than others. All firearms are potentially dangerous.
Heh...
Just want to note of the irony record, it's the libertarian who makes the leap from 'societal collapse' to 'government collapse' and implies that the two are one in the same!
I agree with most of this. Mag size could potentially limited the death % in incidents like these, though I'd imagine it would do little to nothing on the overall gun death and gun crime rate. Again, the only reason for large mags is just for less reloading during target shooting. It's a small inconvenience for the law abiding citizen, but going from a 30 round mag to a 10,12,15 will not prevent a shooter from being able to hunt or defend themselves from an aggressor.
Other similar measures I have seen floating around about more safety in transporting and storage of firearms are probably good ideas, and could easily cut down on a lot of accidental fire arm deaths. Again as long as they can be done reasonably to where a person can still defend themselves, I don't have a problem with them.
Sure -- the only word that fully sums up the mother's role in this is "victim." She's a "victim" in precisely the way the 6-year-olds are, and there are no other salient facts or contexts.
Now, let's get to the real issue -- inner-city schools and teacher salaries. That makes perfect sense on a day when we learn about the unadultrated heroism of many of the Sandy Hook teachers and administrators, who ran into a hail of bullets from the son of the "victim" to try to save the lives of 6-year-olds.
1) They are already. This guy didn't use an RPG or an M16
The Bushwacker is the civilian equivalent of the M-16, and unfortunately it's perfectly legal.
2) That seemed to have worked. The shooter was denied purchase of a rifle 3 days before the shooting.
True, and while it didn't prevent this particular tragedy, it might well have prevented others that didn't happen.
3) I have yet to see any evidence that this women was mentally unstable, other than your assertions that because she stockpiled food, ammo, guns, etc in the event something catastrophic happens, she's crazy.
Not crazy in that I'd want her committed, but crazy enough that I wouldn't want to have her stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and ammo. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Its also not hard to find cases of trained professionals doing stupid things with guns. Not sure why he felt the need to show off his gun unless he was worried that it would make up for the size of the gun in his pants.
Only in your fantasy world where killing with other weapons is as equally easy and effective as killing with guns. You continue to look foolish on this point.
Your confusion comes from misapprehending the question at hand. Liberals railed against voter ID laws because they were a "solution" desperately looking for a problem. If you are willing to argue that mass murders with guns are not a problem, then you can have that analogy back. Otherwise, read more better.
Apparently.
Andy, I'm not saying I think the world is going to end, but please don't confuse being prepared for a societal collapse with being crazy.
Societies do collapse, and even in the case of containable disasters, it's probably foresightful to stock up on basic provisions.
But automatic weapons and ammo? What good is that going to do anyone once existing supplies of food run out? Do these people plan on invading neighboring fortresses and playing "Up against the wall, mother#######, this is a stickup!"?
And yes, Dan, there are mentally unbalanced leftists, too. For all I know, Nancy Lanza was a member of the Green Party, and gun-toting hippies were a staple of the crazy phase of the New Left.
And then there's this, for snapper's consideration. (smile)
You're still basing your crazy diagnosis on the fact that she "stockpiled" weapons and ammo. So basically anyone who has more than 2-3 guns is "stockpiling", which in your few makes them crazy, therefore their weapons should be seized?
I don't know anything about this woman, but if she was stockpiling weapons for a catastrophic collapse scenario, she was probably stockpiling food and water too. Are you telling me you wouldn't resort to theft if you were starving? I know your liberal heart believes she should just share all of her food to keep the neighbourhood alive for another 48 hours, but that's not the typical mindset of a prepper. The guns are to defend a person and their family from looters.
Why not? This is not some third world country where regime change and roving armies are just around the corner every second.
If you are positing that the collapse of society in America is something that is so likely that we should be preparing for by stocking up on guns & ammo, then yes, I think you are a loon.
I mentioned this last time this came up here, but in this debate on this board, I do not remember this ever coming up as something people on the left were crying about. I could be wrong, I suppose.
Examples, please. Give me an advanced society - say top 5 cultures of its era - that has collapsed so quickly and completely that "preppers" were the smart play?
I see you're in a "make myself look stupid in public phase." No one outside of Kehoskie's fever dreams made that argument.
But the problem isn't that the aftermath, its that the actual collapse is likely to kill you.
Please read the link provided in #3345. As I said, that has nothing to do with conspiracies or unstable governments. I have no idea what the likelihood of it happening would be, but being prepared for something like that does not make one crazy.
You don't remember the shitstorm about Romney "being so insensitive as to blame Obama for purely political reasons, when PEOPLE DIED!!"
Statements like this do nothing to further the discussion. Blatant hyperbole and a judgemental attitude just get people frustrated and side tracked.
EDITED FOR CLARITY
So, are we currently engaged in any sort of WWII type scenario wherein the United States is likely to be obliterated back to, um, the 1970s or something? Are we stockpiling weapons on the off chance that the bird flu goes all Jaws IV: The Revenge on us?
I'm pretty sure society would collapse justlikethat.
So Huckabee is on the same side of the Westboro church.
This reference lessens you.
As you should, because someone who might be denied the ability to buy a gun through tougher gun laws might resort to other methods (deadly beagles) to go on a killing rampage, just like Ray suggests.
The Minoans?
So nobody remembers when lefties were outraged by using FOUR DEAD AMERICANS as a reason to review the administration's role in the Benghazi situation, but suddenly it's, like, totally cool to use 20 dead children and 6 dead adults to revisit silly gun control arguments.
On this board in this Benghazi debate, no. My memory isn't photographic, and I'll freely walk back if someone wants to provide.
And as I also said the last time this came up, I don't personally think it's ever wrong to talk about such things in the wake of tragedy. I know why people get upset, and if in a personal IRL discussion someone didn't care to talk about it for that reason, I'd quickly comply. But humans believe things, and discuss them - especially online - in relation to the world around them. I never, like that "exploitive/insensitive/how dare you" argument from either side.
Sensitivity is probably the last thing you can attribute to people posting in this thread.
Eh. It was in decline after Manzikert (1171), much more so after the Sack in 1204. It held on but never really recovered after that. From 1204 to 1453, it was a pretty gradual decline.
It's like you have some prism in your brain that takes pretty straightforward situations and spreads them out into these colorful arrrays of complete B.S.
Now, now... I can drink a lot - and PLAN to do so in that event, but I feel pretty certain the collapse would be confined to a few block radius.
This is why I was poking Dan in 3522 --
Imperial Russia collapsed, but -- setting aside the fate of those actively taking part in its defense/fomenting its demise, I think it's fair to say based on the literature and recorded history of the period -- 'society' didn't really change for the work-a-day peasant. It was a different sort of agitator that got repressed and a different set of views that would target you for repression... If you didn't really care whether the leadership was called 'comrade' or 'czar' - and we always seem to forget that most people fall into this category - you were still pretty much scratching out a living.
It's the difference between the accouterments of society -- government -- collapsing, and some event (Carrington writ large in the form say... a total grid and electronics destroying EMP; a massive asteroid bringing years of nuclear winter; or actual full scale superpower nuclear exchange that pretty much ensure the 'governments' falling to ash are just a byproduct of a whole lot of #### falling to ash) that actually collapses society
When governments collapse, society tends to survive -- people still need necessities and will still want luxuries... When/if 'society' collapses, all bets are off.
If society collapses -- I'm going to be a lot less concerned than protecting "what's mine"... ultimately, as I don't and have no desire to bunker up with years worth of provisions - my more immediate concern would be forming some sort of civil cooperative for purposes of defense and meeting basic needs.
Living in an urban area - my first course of action would be engaging with my neighbors, suggesting we start thinking about collectively defending our turf, marshaling resources, etc.
If the world turns to crap, I like my chances of surviving a lot better if I've got a 'tribe' than I do on my own... that's not a statement of my own value or preparedness post-collapse -- it's a simple recognition of the numbers game. Mad Max might work in the movies, but in reality -- it's the roving gang that has the upper hand.
The trick would be that I don't think I could ever be the sort of to be a part of a roving an pillaging gang, so it would be a matter of finding the collective that would be willing to maintain some degree of humanity, interested less in hoarding and pillaging and more in stabilizing and rebuilding.
EDIT: In short, I'm more of an Earth Abides guy than I am a Mad Max guy
Nice.
Atlantis can be added to the list as well.
Jesus hippie, go hug a tree or something.
In all seriousness, I don't think anything apocalyptic is going to happen any time soon, and I would probably look down on hardcore 'preppers', but I would never judge them crazy like Andy is doing. I mean, they are way above tea partiers.
..as Gold says, some of them focus on his half-assed accusations before he learned people had died, but more than a couple also focus on the "How dare you!" aspect.
Fixed.
Being a 'prepper' (never heard that term till this thread today, but maybe I've just not been paying attention) is pretty much part & parcel of Mormonism, at least to a certain extent, no? How are Mormons on gun ownership?
Not trying to bait anyone or anything; I'm genuinely curious.
My first course of action if on a clear day all the power goes out and my car (and everyone elses) won't start? Get some cash, walk to the grocery store and bribe a manager to let me walk off with as much as me and my family can carry in shopping carts.
Well, first thing I'd do is hope my Visa balance was enormous... but that - and the happy dance if it was - wouldn't take long.
Heh... hardly - it's a numbers game. I suppose part of it is wrapped up in the idea that I see more good in humanity than I do evil (not that I deny our species has enormous capabilities for the latter), but ultimately -- in a large urban area where I currently prefer t live -- it's simple logic that bunkering in a solitary or semi-solitary way is pointless.
What I'd probably do is try to gather a like-minded group and set up shop somewhere easily defensible... maybe with a patch of green space... there's a ballpark in my neighborhood that I would have in mind for such an endeavor!
Not to paint with broad strokes, but Utah has a firearm ownership rate of 43.9% in 2007.
Honest question, in terms of actual actions not beliefs of the coming end of times, what's different in the preparations of an average Midwest/Southern/Appalachian/country farmer/rancher and a "prepper"?
The Byzantine Empire didn't collapse, so much as migrate. Baghdad is to Constantinople as Constantinople is to Rome.
Don't be silly. You'd stay in your mom's basement, just like the rest of us. And with any luck, you'd have enough food & water & such to stay down there for a loooooong time; remember what happened when the last survivor in the house in Night of the Living Dead stuck his head up to see what was going on ...
This is my first time seeing the term 'prepper' as well, and I instantly (with little background info) equate it to someone who stockpiles #### based on sensationalistic media reports without stockpiling the correct ####, as those experienced with power outages or isolating storms would do.
I think it's probably whether you have a basement full of preserves -- as my grandparents did/still do simply because when you harvest a lot of ####, if you don't make preserves, you're wasting an awful lot of labor... or a basement full of dried, condensed foods.
I grew up in a rural area - so I'm not at all equating the two... you smoked, preserved, canned, etc an awful lot of meat, fruits, and vegetables for a couple of simple reasons: First, as noted above - if you don't, you really shouldn't be farming/etc. You're just wasting tons of stuff (and the effort that went into growing/raising that stuff). Might as well sell the farm/not hunt/etc. Second, you DO have to be prepared for an inability to get to the store for an extended period of time. It wasn't at all unusual for really bad snowstorms to keep us from getting to the grocery store for a week or more. I can remember occasions where the power lines were down (and thus, so was our heat off) for more than a week.
You keep a relatively decent store of 'provisions' -- food, firewood, etc -- on hand because occasions generally happened as often as annually where this would be pretty necessary.
Preppers are more like the supposedly very popular Doomsday Preppers show on NatGeo...
Figures that of the 4 states I've lived in, 3 -- Arkansas, Louisiana & Alabama -- rank higher than that. The fact that people there/here are probably more likely to own guns than to have 10 or more teeth probably means something.
(Never owned or fired a gun in my life, FWIW, assuming a BB gun doesn't count.)
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