The right to bear arms
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How about do the neighborly thing, and CALL the owners? Or go over there, rather than taking a shot out the window? All the dog was doing was barking.
Three sides to every story. One of those sides said that the dog was all up on the cages and such. And like rtalencar85 said, if a warning shot doesn't scare it away....well, sorry dog lovers, but **** that. I'd shoot it, too. Just like I'd shoot any animal coming at me/my pets like that.
exactly. you have the right to protect your home, family and property.0 -
How about do the neighborly thing, and CALL the owners? Or go over there, rather than taking a shot out the window? All the dog was doing was barking.
Three sides to every story. One of those sides said that the dog was all up on the cages and such. And like rtalencar85 said, if a warning shot doesn't scare it away....well, sorry dog lovers, but **** that. I'd shoot it, too. Just like I'd shoot any animal coming at me/my pets like that.
exactly. you have the right to protect your home, family and property.
Yep. I'm trying my best not to generalize, but I have to wonder if people who are so very anti-gun have never been in a situation before where a gun would have been really handy. I've been in several where I wish I did have a gun (thankfully I had other options, but what if those options weren't readily available?), and in a couple of them where once someone saw I had the gun, they left. So I can definitely say for a fact I'm glad I have them.0 -
I've never been in a situation where I wished I had a gun. I have had someone brandish a gun at the group of people I was with. I can definitely say that I wish that idiot hadn't had it.0
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This is taking fetish-rationalizing to a whole new level.0
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This is taking fetish-rationalizing to a whole new level.
I don't understand.0 -
This is taking fetish-rationalizing to a whole new level.
I don't understand.
The reflexive and increasingly tortured logic applied to rationalize any act of gun violence and the histrionic reaction to any suggestion or hint of any action to try to reduce the gun violence in any way.0 -
Anyone who shoot's a neighbor's dog that accidentally got loose was looking for any excuse to shoot that dog.
Let's not pretend it was anything else.0 -
Thanks for explaining.0
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Anyone who shoot's a neighbor's dog that accidentally got loose was looking for any excuse to shoot that dog.
Let's not pretend it was anything else.
if you say so.
of course, he could have been trying to protect his pets from another animal attacking them. better that he just got in the middle and got bitten himself, I guess, yeah?0 -
Right. Because that is the only other possibility.0
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of course it isn't. but we don't live in a world of absolutes.
does it suck? yeah. I'd be pissed if I had a dog and it was shot. of course I would. but if it was in another person's yard, harassing their animals? maybe a better neighbor finds some other way to try to get the thing to leave. maybe a BB gun would be a better option, even. but there's nothing wrong with defending your home, family and property.0 -
I don't know these people or the facts beyond what was reported above. But it sure sounds like you are agreeing that this guy had lots of better ways to resolve this situation than shooting the dog. It's definitely not a case of "shoot the dog" or "get in the middle and get bitten himself."0
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I'm saying that, yes, there may have been other options. we don't really know. but I'm also saying that if he truly felt his animals were at risk, what he did was a perfectly acceptable option.0
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I've never been in a situation where I wished I had a gun. I have had someone brandish a gun at the group of people I was with. I can definitely say that I wish that idiot hadn't had it.
That's a given. I hope to never, ever have to fire a shot at someone. Do I practice? Yes. Do I like to shoot? Nope.0 -
The most effective way to institute new gun control legislation would be for a group of armed black men to demonstrate in front of the Capitol in favor of gun rights.0
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The most effective way to institute new gun control legislation would be for a group of armed black men to demonstrate in front of the Capitol in favor of gun rights.
I saw something the other day that was encouraging gang members to join the NRA, and see how fast things change.0 -
Anyone who shoot's a neighbor's dog that accidentally got loose was looking for any excuse to shoot that dog.
Let's not pretend it was anything else.
Exactly. And it makes me so worried for my dog. I live very close to where this happened. And my dog has gotten loose before, actually, just recently.
I have a 6' high stockade fenced in, bricked patio that is all hers. Some neighborhood kids decided it would be funny to let all the dogs on the street loose, so there were 4-5 dogs running around. I would have been devastated if some *kitten* took it upon himself to murder my dog because she was loose.
And while she's always been great with people, she is a Siberian husky. She would eat a bunny if given the opportunity. She's eaten squirrels, mice, and even an otter that have wandered into her yard. And she's 13, and old and deaf. She'd never hear a warning shot. But if someone went out to her to take her away from the rabbits, she'd walk away nicely.0 -
Some recent statements by gun fetishists:
'Hitler used gun control to take power" -- have seen numerous times on various sites.
"There will come a time when the gun owners of America, the law-abiding gun owners of America, will be the Rosa Parks and we will sit down on the front seat of the bus, case closed,"---Ted Nugent, crazy white male and professed pedophile.
"I think Martin Luther King would agree with me, if he were alive today, that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history"--Larry Ward, crazy white male and chairman of Gun Appreciation Day.
"Don't take my guns or I'm gonna start killing people."--James Yaeger, crazy white male and CEO of Tactical Response, a weapons training facility and gun-fetish frat house in Tennessee.
And then there is, of course, Mr Gibbons, who insists on target practice shooting in his back yard and shooting neighbor's pets (oh, I'm sorry..."Defending his Property").
And that's just this week's crazy, ladies and gentlemen. One week in the well-ordered and rational minds of America's gun owners.
The irony, of course, is that the NRA and other gun-fetish groups are trying to deflect attention from themselves by promoting enhanced mental health screening and treatment as the first-line defense in reducing gun violence. And yet, the fact is that if we increase efforts to make sure that mentally-ill people cannot own firearms, the NRA executive board, Ted Nugent, Larry Ward, and a huge majority of current gun owners will be the first ones they come after.
I understand the whole "guns don't kill people--people kill people" rationale. However, what that ignores is that there are some potentially huge psychological issues that drive many people to possess guns---like insecurity and paranoia. It is no accident that the most vociferous gun-fetishists are white males--many of whom feel they have been victimized by their loss of privileged status over the past 50 years. Guns make small, weak men feel strong, which is why weak, small-minded men hold on to them with such desperation. And why the election of an African-American President has driven them into such a frenzy. (A strong woman like Hillary Clinton would likely have had the same effect).
So, while "guns may not kill people" when you have as many unbalanced people running around as we do in the US, to me it just makes rational sense to reduce the availability of the most lethal weaponry. Without his phallic AR-15 at hand, perhaps Mr Gibbon would have made more of an effort to get along with his neighbors so that he did not feel so threatened by their pets.0 -
While we are talking about guns in the news this week, I think it cannot go unmentioned about the hero teacher who talked down the shooter at a California school. (Ironically, news broke while Joe Biden was meeting with the NRA to discuss gun control policies).
Taft Union High School Teacher, Campus Supervisor 'Talked Down' Shooter, Deputy Says
TAFT, Calif. — A 16-year-old student armed with a shotgun walked into a rural California high school on Thursday, shot one student and fired at others and missed before a teacher and another staff member talked him into surrendering, officials said.
The teen victim was in critical but stable condition, and the suspect, whose pockets were stuffed with ammunition, was still being interrogated, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said at a news conference Thursday evening.
The suspect used a shotgun that belonged to his brother and went to bed Wednesday night with a plan to shoot two fellow students, Youngblood said.
Surveillance video shows the alleged shooter trying to conceal the gun as he nervously entered Taft Union High School through a side entrance after school had started Thursday morning.
When the shots were fired, teacher Ryan Heber tried to get the more than two dozen students out a back door and engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said. Campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields responded to a call of shots fired and also began talking to the teen.
"They talked him into putting that shotgun down. He in fact told the teacher, `I don't want to shoot you,' and named the person that he wanted to shoot," Youngblood said.
"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."
The shooter didn't show up for first period, then interrupted the class of 28 students.
Youngblood said the suspect alleges the two students he targeted had bullied him for more than a year, but the sheriff couldn't confirm the allegations.
"Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don't know yet," Youngblood said.
Youngblood did not release the student's disciplinary record, saying he didn't have it.
The shotgun is believed to belong to the boy's brother and was in the boy's home, Youngblood said.
The Sheriff's Department did not release the boy's name because he was a juvenile and had yet to be charged. But many students and community members said they knew the boy and said he was often teased, including Alex Patterson, 18, who went to Taft with the suspect before graduating last year.
"He comes off as the kind of kid who would do something like this," Patterson said. "He talked about it a lot, but nobody thought he would."
Trish Montes, who lived next door to the suspect, said he was "a short guy" and "small" who was teased about his stature by many, including the victim.
"Maybe people will learn not to bully people," Montes said. "I hate to be crappy about it, but that kid was bullying him."
Montes said her son had worked at the school and tutored the boy last year, sometimes walking with him between classes because he felt sorry for him.
"All I ever heard about him was good things from my son," Montes said. "He wasn't Mr. Popularity, but he was a smart kid. It's a shame. My kid said he was like a genius. It's a shame because he could have made something of himself."
The wounded student was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield and was listed in stable but critical condition Thursday evening. Officials said a female student was hospitalized with possible hearing damage because the shotgun was fired close to her ear, and another girl suffered minor injuries during the scramble to flee when she fell over a table.
Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus, but the person wasn't there because he was snowed in. Taft police officers arrived within 60 seconds of first reports.
Bakersfield television station KERO reported receiving phone calls from people inside the school who hid in closets. About 900 students are enrolled at the high school, which includes ninth through 12th grades.
Wilhelmina Reum, whose daughter Alexis Singleton is a fourth-grader at a nearby elementary school, got word of the attack while she was about 35 miles away in Bakersfield and immediately sped back to Taft.
"I just kept thinking this can't be happening in my little town," she told The Associated Press.
"I was afraid I was going to get hurt," Alexis said. "I just wanted my mom to get here so I could go home."
Taft is a community of fewer than 10,000 people amid oil and natural gas production fields about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The attack there came less than a month after a gunman massacred 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., then killed himself.
That shooting prompted President Barack Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement that her father had attended Taft Union and she has visited the school over the years.
"At this moment my thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and I wish them a speedy recovery," Feinstein said. "But how many more shootings must there be in America before we come to the realization that guns and grievances do not belong together?"0 -
Yup. We mentioned this, what, a page ago?
Time to ban shotguns, too, I guess.0
