Trail Security

[Dilldog]

I have a lot of respect for the fire and stances of you two, I really do. But I think my points are being missed. I was hoping to galnavanize people to look into how they debate things, and realize we all play a role, we all bear some responsibility, and to actually further a cause we must at times temper ourselves and tolerate things we do not like or that challenge deep seated beliefs. I was simply seeing what in my opinion is some of the same old stuff that tends to stall out legitimate debate and decided to call it out in hopes of keeping a very important debate moving forward.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

I have a lot of respect for the fire and stances of you two, I really do. But I think my points are being missed. I was hoping to galnavanize people to look into how they debate things, and realize we all play a role, we all bear some responsibility, and to actually further a cause we must at times temper ourselves and tolerate things we do not like or that challenge deep seated beliefs. I was simply seeing what in my opinion is some of the same old stuff that tends to stall out legitimate debate and decided to call it out in hopes of keeping a very important debate moving forward.

There is no room for debate when it comes to a constitutional right. That was debated and adopter over 200 years ago. Time does not change the necessity for freedom.

 

[bgenlvtex]

I have a lot of respect for the fire and stances of you two, I really do. But I think my points are being missed. I was hoping to galnavanize people to look into how they debate things, and realize we all play a role, we all bear some responsibility, and to actually further a cause we must at times temper ourselves and tolerate things we do not like or that challenge deep seated beliefs. I was simply seeing what in my opinion is some of the same old stuff that tends to stall out legitimate debate and decided to call it out in hopes of keeping a very important debate moving forward.

I'm not missing your point at all, I'm rejecting it.

Debate isn't on the table, "Shall not be infringed" means exactly that, and there is absolutely no room for debate.

 

[Dilldog]

We can't just go around yelling about God given rights when many people don't believe. Just like we can't go around saying that we cannot debate the constitution because it's been debated time and time again through the amendment process. It's uncomfortable I know, but the fact is the second amendment is debatable, and in order to win that debate tactics must be changed.
To Add: Anyway, I have said my peace, I just hope you will consider it and at the very least it makes you think.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

We can't just go around yelling about God given rights when many people don't believe. Just like we can't go around saying that we cannot debate the constitution because it's been debated time and time again through the amendment process. It's uncomfortable I know, but the fact is the second amendment is debatable, and in order to win that debate tactics must be changed.
To Add: Anyway, I have said my peace, I just hope you will consider it and at the very least it makes you think.

We know your tactics already, It is over and you cannot reverse the facts as much as you would like. It is you who should rethink your position IMO ! I am not uncomfortable, I know where the debate will end because it was decided over 200 years ago.

 

[Bama_Kiwi]

So way back in the beginning of this thread I bit my tongue. I said I agreed with something but to keep the politics from arising from within the fold I felt it better to hold it all in. And now look at this thread littered with politics.

It doesn’t matter. The 2A says I have the right to bear arms!!! It’s not open to debate. It’s there black and white, just as clear now as it was 239 years ago.What is open for debate is the acts in the past century which have been taking away my 2A right.

I lost a valued customer over this debate a couple of years ago. She knew my family really well. Her boys and I were close in age and ran around the town raising hell like all the rest of the kids. We went to the same church, broke bread in each other’s homes, and a whole lot more.
I joined the Army and shortly afterwords this lady and her husband moved down to California where they were from. 15 years later a chain of events brought both of us back to Oregon. When she got here she was broke, and her car barely limped over the mountains into town. Having a generous heart I felt bad for her so I worked on her car for free, using my money and time to fix her car. While working on it, she started the gun debate with me. At the end of the debate she said she would never willingly be around guns she hated them so. I told her she was in 10 feet of several guns, and that I never walk out my door without one. She thought I was joking, so I opened the top of my tool box where I kept my Witness .45ACP. While opening my box up I let my overshirt ride up to see the grip of my ever so places 9 on my hip.
The lady stormed out of my shop screaming cuss words at me, then called a tow truck... the driver showed up, and she warned him that I had “guns” in there.. he laughed and said “yup, he sure does, one of the best collections I ever seen to boot”. She-then made a huge stink and her brother ended up dragging the car to his place, where it still sits without a radiator.

My point in this rambled on story... you never know who you’re talking to. We all have our opinions. And we as a Americans have a duty to our country. And right here, right now our country needs us more than ever.

So, just to be clear, this woman, who you valued as a customer and with whom you shared a familiar family connection, confided in you her dislike for firearms, and your response was to demonstrate to her that you not only kept several firearms nearby, but also had one on your person?

But, she acted irrationally by becoming angry and leaving?

In your own words, "You never know who you're talking to." If you knew the presence of firearms made this person uncomfortable, especially considering she was not a stranger to you, would it not have been more professional of you to, in that moment, keep the whereabouts of your personal property and opinions to yourself, for the sake of continuing to retain her as a valued customer and to fulfill the nature of your generous heart?

 

[Christiaan]

Phew! Let's just say forums never disappoint... :-)

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to carry a gun, but I am most definitely trying to get you to think twice about 1) whether it really is going to make you safer, and 2) whether your life really is in so much danger out there. My point about bringing up the personal example was that no matter the level of training, in that situation a gun would have not helped at all. In fact, it would have escalated the situation. Happy to share all the details with you all over a campfire one day.

Some of you have called out that my situational awareness is crappy, fair enough. Let me just say that real life is not like the movies, these were professional robbers, not deluded crazy people - very different modus operandi. If your profession is to rob and kill people, and a gun is your tool - do you think you won't also go to the range and practice more than most? This is their day-job and their lives depend on being expert marksmen - you can be sure they wouldn't have missed.

Also, I don't think anything is ever "undebatable". Knowledge advances, humans hopefully become smarter (now THAT's debatable), new problems arise requiring new solutions. Sometimes what was a very wise decision a long time ago may not have it's intended effect today. I like to think that having the discussion/debate is a way of reminding ourselves why the decision was made the way it was in the first place, and so becoming more informed of that context ourselves. Simply saying something is undebatable deprives us all from gaining a better and deeper understanding. I don't know about you all, but I don't just like to follow rules just because they are there.

Lastly, happy to be friends with anyone who owns and carry guns, just not for me.

@grubworm, you raise an excellent point about needing to practice my negotiation skills while being tied up - I definitely think I need to put in a couple more years of training... just in case... :-)

 

[MidOH]

This is why I pretty much why I put westcoast states on ignore.

Writing laws to turn good honest people into felons and outlaws, ain't going to work out the way some of ya'll want it to. For many people, with the lack of religion, the only thing keeping them honest is that they don't want to be labeled a felon by society. Slap that label on them, and things change.

Virginia might by an interesting little warning post. Governor threatening military force on innocent civilians. Militias being formed in response. This generation has a lot of WTF.

 

[bgenlvtex]

We can't just go around yelling about God given rights when many people don't believe. Just like we can't go around saying that we cannot debate the constitution because it's been debated time and time again through the amendment process. It's uncomfortable I know, but the fact is the second amendment is debatable, and in order to win that debate tactics must be changed.
To Add: Anyway, I have said my peace, I just hope you will consider it and at the very least it makes you think.

The irony in this post is truly industrial grade.

It has long been told that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to defend against the usurpation of the First Amendment, and that in fact when one is lost the other will soon follow.

In this post by Mr. Dilldog, we see the clearest, most simplistic illustration of that short slippery slope imaginable.

Since it is apparent that some of you are completely unfamiliar with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, our first amendment affirms our freedom of speech (and someone else not believing is not an exclusion there) and our second amendment affirms our right to keep and bear arms in the protection of our person and in fact our rights (which has been upheld by SCOTUS to include all modern weaponry)In this thread we have one guy inventing hyperbolic and completely untrue statistics to support his position, another promoting the safety and security of the world at large while simultaneously invoking his personal experience (with the same crime Mr. Hyperbole claims is a black swan event) as evidence of said security. One who is regurgitating the age old story about "nobody wants to.....blah,blah,blah", and copious amounts of video of individuals who would like to be POTUS telling you exactly the opposite.

Then in what can only be described as a prodigious example of accidental honesty, we have a guy saying "YOU CANT SAY THAT".

Yes, yes I can Mr. Dilldog my right to do so is affirmed in our Constitution, and now you have illustrated for everyone involved why there will be no usurpation of my Second Amendment rights.

My rights are natural, bestowed upon birth by God and affirmed by the Constitution of the greatest nation to have ever existed on the face of this planet. There will be no "discussion" or "negotiation" with regards to those rights and I will keep them irrespective of your or anyone else concerns regarding them.

 

[CurrentlyRockhoundin]

What all of these conversations boil down to is that you have two groups of people.

Those who recognizes that evil people exist in this world and that you as an individual can or already have the skills and tools to protect yourself, loved ones and those around you.

Then you have those that live in the subjective world of how things feel, how things should be, they believe that if something bad is going to happen big daddy government will be there to help you, they have no ability to grasp the concept that there are good people who responsibly own firearms, they can't grasp this because if given a firearm they likely wouldn't be responsible with it.

For those not clear on the coded language being used in the 'gun debate' ill break it down.

Gun Control = Gun confiscation
Universal background checks = Gun confiscation
Assault weapon ban = Gun confiscation
Weapon of war = Gun confiscation

Well you see where I'm going with this, the push is slow and steady to strip me and my fellow patriots of our ability to defend our other rights.

It's not a coincidence that all off the tyrannical oppression we see across the world is taking place in country's that removed guns from the general population.

 

[CurrentlyRockhoundin]

Also I would like to add that a tightening of gun laws disproportional effects minority groups since gun laws often come with added fees that effects the lowest income earns in this country. Minority groups are more likely to experience violence then any other group so if you support gun laws your supporting a system of top down oppression that disproportionate effects African Americans, Hispanics, women, and people in the LGBT community's.

If you support gun control your kind of a low key racist, sexist, homophobe.

As a person who isn't those things I want those people to be able to protect themselves.

 

[grubworm]

Phew! Let's just say forums never disappoint... :-)
@grubworm, you raise an excellent point about needing to practice my negotiation skills while being tied up - I definitely think I need to put in a couple more years of training... just in case... :-)

Ha! Glad to see you have a working sense of humor...generally shows a good sign of intelligence.

I've spent nearly half of my life underwater, either on submarines or hard hat diving where any moment can be a life threatening situation. I've had numerous near-death experiences where I'm trapped and running out of air and knowing that I just have a few minutes of life left. Surprising what goes thru a person's head at times like that. Those experiences have done a few things for me:
1) made me develop a bizarre sense of humor
2) shown me there is really isn't much in life any of us have total control over
3) shown me that life is precious and very unpredictable

So with that, my bizarre sense of humor kicked in and I did find it a bit humorous hearing you talk about having control, especially while being tied up. I do not doubt that you possess the intelligence and discipline to remain calm during a horrible event like that and I'm sure your demeanor at the time did help and deescalate the situation. HOWEVER...you are dealing with people, which are the most dangerous animal of all because they are so unpredictable and not always responsive to logic and reason. You do not have control over people like that, you can only hope to put them in a situation where they are now the one with something to lose...
Obviously I made it thru my life threatening experiences as did you. What worked for us during those times are definitely not a guarantee to work for others in similar situations. I certainly would not advocate "logic and reason" as a fail safe method of dealing with people, especially people who have no regard for you or your life. And the illusion of having "control" in a situation like that is more of an illusion than a reality. If the life of my wife or kids is involved, I am certainly going with the option that will yield the greatest success...and that is not my eloquent use of speech.

I appreciate your position and see where it does indeed have merit, but having a military background, I have seen first hand that some people only respond to violence. As sad as that may be it, it is the way of the world. There are quite a few people capable of coming up to you and killing you for the contents of your wallet. The only way to stop them is by showing them that they might die. They obviously do not mind taking your life for $100, but they are not willing to risk THEIR life for it. Most times just showing a gun is enough to convey that message. Also, it not always about people wanting to steal from you, I see a lot of road rage and quite a few instances where extreme violence is being deployed merely because someone was cut off in traffic.

So...when I carry a gun, it is not for the desire to hurt, but rather to send the message of: "I value my life. Do you value yours?"

Again, I appreciate your position as well as I do your understanding my sense of humor. Quite a few people get me and some find me to be offensive...which is great because that is how I weed out non-hackers.

Peace to you and your family and safe travels!

 

[Dilldog]

Again you all miss the point. I'm not advocating the removal or even restriction of any rights. I'm simply presenting ideas that many fail to consider. Arguing that something is God given is your right, I never said that should be taken away. What I said is it's a weak place to debate from to a non believer. Just like I never said I wanted to limit in any way the second amendment and gun rights, just the constitution has been changed over time. I find it disappointing that some are so willing to go off so much against a person that never spoke of the limiting of any right, simply the fact that we must all be more respectful and realize that some of the language used to argue these points can be ineffective. Finally I will say this, if you believe this way of treating people is how you gain favor it is not. I'm not your enemy, but if you treat me like this I can be. I'm just trying to get you to think outside of your box. I am truly disappointed that it degenerated into this.

 

[Dilldog]

Also I would like to add that a tightening of gun laws disproportional effects minority groups since gun laws often come with added fees that effects the lowest income earns in this country. Minority groups are more likely to experience violence then any other group so if you support gun laws your supporting a system of top down oppression that disproportionate effects African Americans, Hispanics, women, and people in the LGBT community's.

If you support gun control your kind of a low key racist, sexist, homophobe.

As a person who isn't those things I want those people to be able to protect themselves.

Interesting, I've never heard it approached that way. This is the type of thing we should talk about more.

 

[CurrentlyRockhoundin]

Interesting, I've never heard it approached that way. This is the type of thing we should talk about more.

It's a data driven approach to the subject is all.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of people in the gun community are well prepared, able bodied, middle aged, white men, with at least a small to medium amount of disposable income, who generally live in safe areas. So who is most likely to need a gun and have the means to jump through the ever growing red tape, the person I just described or a middle aged African American women who takes public transit in Chicago to get home at night?

The anti-gunners out there are low key racist, sexist, homophobes. They want that woman to be defenseless. I want her to be confident, safe, and able to defend herself.

If you value the most vulnerable people in a community then you should be pro-gun. End of story.

 

[Dilldog]

It's a data driven approach to the subject is all.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of people in the gun community are well prepared, able bodied, middle aged, white men, with at least a small to medium amount of disposable income, who generally live in safe areas. So who is most likely to need a gun and have the means to jump through the ever growing red tape, the person I just described or a middle aged African American women who takes public transit in Chicago to get home at night?

The anti-gunners out there are low key racist, sexist, homophobes. They want that woman to be defenseless. I want her to be confident, safe, and able to defend herself.

If you value the most vulnerable people in a community then you should be pro-gun. End of story.

It makes sense to me, I have just never heard this idea before. I guess at the very least it's a perfect illustration of the fact that when you swing too far politically you can end up holding yourself, or at least those you say you represent, back.

 

[bgenlvtex]

Again you all miss the point. I'm not advocating the removal or even restriction of any rights. I'm simply presenting ideas that many fail to consider. Arguing that something is God given is your right, I never said that should be taken away. What I said is it's a weak place to debate from to a non believer. Just like I never said I wanted to limit in any way the second amendment and gun rights, just the constitution has been changed over time. I find it disappointing that some are so willing to go off so much against a person that never spoke of the limiting of any right, simply the fact that we must all be more respectful and realize that some of the language used to argue these points can be ineffective. Finally I will say this, if you believe this way of treating people is how you gain favor it is not. I'm not your enemy, but if you treat me like this I can be. I'm just trying to get you to think outside of your box. I am truly disappointed that it degenerated into this.

Clearly you are addressing me, although there is no quote.

Again, I'm not missing your point.

Opening debate into my rights is inviting a restriction of my rights. I do not care what anyone believes or does not believe, it is quite that simple.

If they are interested in discussing the restriction of my rights, I will treat them exactly as I already have you, I will reject their opinions, feelings and concerns unilaterally.

I am absolutely not afraid of being honest, straightforward or accurate with my speech. I am not averse to adding enemies or friends either one.

My rights trump your feelings. Your rights end where mine begin.

I get it, you are just encouraging civil conversation.

I'm not interested in conversation regarding the restriction of any of my rights. None.

 

[Dilldog]

Clearly you are addressing me, although there is no quote.

Again, I'm not missing your point.

Opening debate into my rights is inviting a restriction of my rights. I do not care what anyone believes or does not believe, it is quite that simple.

If they are interested in discussing the restriction of my rights, I will treat them exactly as I already have you, I will reject their opinions, feelings and concerns unilaterally.

I am absolutely not afraid of being honest, straightforward or accurate with my speech. I am not averse to adding enemies or friends either one.

My rights trump your feelings. Your rights end where mine begin.

I get it, you are just encouraging civil conversation.

I'm not interested in conversation regarding the restriction of any of my rights. None.

Yeah it was directed at you though I didn't quote your previous post. I appreciate that you can at least see I'm trying to encourage civil discourse. I can see we aren't really getting any where otherwise. Just know I'm not advocating removal of rights, just trying to get people to think outside of their comfort zone.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

Again you all miss the point. I'm not advocating the removal or even restriction of any rights. I'm simply presenting ideas that many fail to consider. Arguing that something is God given is your right, I never said that should be taken away. What I said is it's a weak place to debate from to a non believer. Just like I never said I wanted to limit in any way the second amendment and gun rights, just the constitution has been changed over time. I find it disappointing that some are so willing to go off so much against a person that never spoke of the limiting of any right, simply the fact that we must all be more respectful and realize that some of the language used to argue these points can be ineffective. Finally I will say this, if you believe this way of treating people is how you gain favor it is not. I'm not your enemy, but if you treat me like this I can be. I'm just trying to get you to think outside of your box. I am truly disappointed that it degenerated into this.

Think outside your own box. Why should I change my mind about something I believe in any more than you. I'm not looking for your favor, I can live nicely without people who think like you. I don't believe in compromising my beliefs. I've seen as many atheist who own firearms as I have Christians, possibly more. So don't bring religion into the factor. You should be disappointed, I'll give you that, can you honestly believe there are that many people with your view on this subject ? You can dig your own grave, don't be trying to dig mine. If our friendship is dependent on my believing as you do we will never be friends.

You have the constitution, which shall not change, to thank for your ability to speak your piece. I have the constitution, which shall not change, to defend your constitutional right to speak.

 

[Ichibahn]

The worst thing now is road rage. I see a lot of it and even out on the interstates going 80+ mph, people are cutting each other off and brake checking and just losing their minds. Some are even pulling out guns.
Its funny, a while back a guy was on the phone and coming into my lane and was about to clip me so I honked. Instead of being grateful I alerted him, he got pissed and forced me to the shoulder of the road. He got out and was walking back to me cussing because I dare honk at him and I noticed his truck was rolling down the shoulder...guess in all his rage, he got out and left it in gear. I got out and started laughing and he stopped and looked at me funny. I pointed to his truck rolling down the road without him and he he turned and took off after it. That was the end of his rage, but it just goes to show that even being a nice careful driver and minding your own business isn't always going to keep you from dealing with crazy. I do a LOT of traveling and see road rage all the time. I'm probably more concerned about GETTING to my destination than I am worried about something happening once I'm there.

Ha! That was pretty funny...to this day I still laugh at his dumb ass

I'm probably more concerned about GETTING to my destination than I am worried about something happening once I'm there.

I lived in Atlanta and feel the same way.