peacefuljeffrey

Letting "us" English speakers. (Drop the "English speakers" to see why. "This has the practical effect of letting US know that, thanks to our mother tongue, ...") Just tryin' to help. These grammar rules are difficult for you and I (er..., ME) to keep track of. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Once upon a time, it would have been illegal for you to help a slave who had run away get to freedom. With that in mind, are you prepared to say that anything that is "law" is right and good, and not only should be enforced, but should remain as law? I'm not. There are a lot of people that don't go looking for trouble but find some because of some other drunk idiot. Now, if you are under the influence when someone picks a fight you may make some bad choices. Now, if you have your firearm you *may* use that in your bad choice decisions. You weren't looking for trouble. Sounds again like you would have your desires met by a law that says you can't DRINK while in possession of your gun, or be DRUNK while in possession of your gun. Once again, that is different and distinct from BEING IN A BAR, UN-DRUNK with your gun. If mr. drunkard attacks me, and I haven't been drinking, I'm in my right mind to make whatever decisions I have to, just like if I was in a TGI Fridays having dinner while armed with a gun. There, it's no big thing. But you're saying that in a bar, it's different? Why's it different if I'm not drinking? And why must you make a law that says I can't bring the gun into the bar, when all you really want is to keep me from having the gun while DRUNK? The fact remains that I could get myself wasted in my living room at ten in the morning, have my gun on my lap, and "make bad decisions" when the mailman comes to the door! Nothing about the law against having a gun in a bar prevents that. But a law against handling a gun while drunk (which, note carefully, couldn't STOP me from doing it) would provide penalty if I was found to have done so. (Of course, as I said earlier, the bigger issue, which provides for all the prison or execution you would need, would be the fact that I killed a guy.) This has got to be one the most rediculous analogies you have ever made. laws against blinking? Why not laws against breathing? or Eating? WTF? It was ridiculous for a reason. You were trying to justify saying that a given action was "bad" just because a law said it was, without any rational thought behind whether the law actually punishes a truly bad act or an innocent one. If I were drunk in my living room and the gun was in my nightstand drawer, I have the possibility of shooting it. What is your point? The guy with the gun in the bar, if it's still concealed and he is not brandishing it, is not necessarily INTENDING to fire it. The guy in the car can definitely be said to intend to drive. Those are two very mismatched analogies, dude. Weren't you just arguing in favor of the laws that prohibit bringing a gun into a bar?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Because we live in a society which maintains the belief that no one is above the law... REALLY? Oh, I suppose we maintain the belief. But in practice???? Look at some of the ridiculous crap the "elite" in this country get away with. How bad is Ken Lay suffering right now for fucking up people's lives and futures? How about those Tyco scumbags? The Worldcom scumbags? The Adelphia scumbags? And that's just the fuckin' FINANCIAL scumbags. How was O.J. Simpson's round of golf yesterday? Did he check out to see if maybe the groundskeeper's hand fit in the glove? How long did Ted Kennedy serve for involuntary manslaughter for Mary Jo Kopechne's death? What was Clinton's fine and sentence for perjury? How long did NIXON go away for? Oliver North, did he do time, I forget, but either way he's not hurtin' for cash and lifestyle now. How about Lon Horiuchi, the piece of shit FBI "sniper" who could hit a quarter at 200 yards (his own boast) but couldn't avoid shooting an unarmed MOTHER as she HELD HER INFANT at Ruby Ridge? Yeah, no one's above the law. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

In America, it seems we very rarely hear American jokes, but we hear plenty of jokes about a host of other nationalities. I wonder if the situation is the same elsewhere. In Italy, do they hear lots of jokes about other nationalities, but few about Italians? In France, is there a dearth of French jokes? Are jokes about a given nationality typically rare in that country, or is it just that there are not many American jokes going around? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's not just him, I think that's all politicians nowadays. Yes, but he is their king. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I carry, but I have never had to use a gun in self defense. I'm grateful for that. If I ever have to use a gun in self defense, it will mean that I have already concluded that I am in mortal danger from another human being (or possibly an animal, but in West Palm Beach, the former is far more likely than the latter, unless you're talking about a drug dealer's pit bull terrier). In such a case, I recognize, there are no guarantees I will come out of the altercation unscathed. I would just as soon go about my life prepared with a handgun, and have it turn out to be superfluous as I lie on my deathbed and reflect that I never had to draw it on anyone. Did you think I walked around wishing I would be put in a position of having to shoot someone? That would mean that I was perilously close to being killed, myself. No, thanks. But I do not look at 11 years of carrying concealed handguns without incident and say, "Gee, that proves that it'll never be useful to me, so I'll stop carrying it." I also haven't had a serious car wreck, or a house fire. I don't stop wearing my seat belt, and I don't sell my smoke detectors and fire extinguisher, either. The position that a gun has to be used in order to prove its utility is specious. In the vast majority of defensive gun uses, according to numerous studies (most notably by Gary Kleck of Florida State University, or was it University of South Florida...one of those) the gun is presented but not fired, and that is sufficient to send an attacker running after breaking off the attack in fear of his own life. That's good enough by me. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is this a trick question? My concealed carry license is just a card made of plastic -- it can't protect me. Ohhhh, do you mean like when someone's bible stops a bullet in his breast pocket?! If something protected me, it would probably be the gun that I carry and know how to use. Let me ask you, when was the last time your kitchen fire extinguisher helped you prevent your house from burning down? If it never has, is that a valid reason not to own it and keep it handy? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Zero. Americans are too FAT to FIT in a lightbulb, so how can they get in there to screw?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I want to add that I don't think I have anything against jumping with you. I think skydiving with others is a great way to put differences aside, and I will strive for that to always be so with me. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

First of all, I haven't asked anyone to prove a negative. I have stated that laws cannot prevent things from happening, though. I stand by that. Secondly, you need not prove the negative in order to satisfy me. It might suffice if you could show that having the law got someone caught for having a gun when he was intending to kill someone with it in the bar. Surely someone has been caught with a gun in a bar before? That would do fine at proving the utility of these laws, right? We're not asking you to "count all the people who didn't get killed, thanks to this law." Our point is that the law did not put a physical barrier between a killer and a victim. If the law had any effect, regarding protecting victims from killers, it would have to be because the would-be killer consented voluntarily to leave the gun out of the bar. That is certainly not tantamount to being STOPPED from bringing the gun into the bar by the LAW, because the would-be killer could just as easily have decided NOT to leave the gun behind, and the law could do nothing but provide for punishing him after the fact. You might want to consider what happens often when women get orders of protection against estranged spouses. It happens a lot when the woman believes the spouse might harm her, maybe even kill her. Women DIE because they mistakenly put faith in the ability of a written order on a piece of paper to physically protect them, when such a notion is ludicrous. An estranged husband who shows up to pound in the door and murder his ex wife is, to put it mildly, past the point of caring that going near her is going to get him put into the pokey. Can we agree on that? Because if we do, you kinda have to admit that laws don't have the power to prevent behavior. You have that ability confused with the threat of punishment deterring behavior. There are those who will not be deterred, either because the punishment is overshadowed by their desire to do the crime, or because they (right or wrong) believe they will not get caught. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Part two being the "real" reason for the laws does not mitigate the harassment factor of part one, now does it. Is it a comfort to the people that the law harasses unjustifiably, to say that at least there's an additional penalty for law breakers that comes out of it? The whole "additional penalty" thing is just stupid. It's like adding a "commission of a felony while in possession of a firearm" charge to a murder charge. WTF?! Why is that even necessary? You're already putting him on trial for his life. In our example, if a guy takes a gun to a bar and kills someone with it, you get him for murder or manslaughter; you don't need to criminalize carrying a gun in a bar just to add a few months to the guy's sentence for murder, do you? Yeah, right, go on believing that. Drunk and pissed, you're going to stop trying to kill your wife because you're worried about the penalty for carrying a gun into the bar?? Or, if you're the type who WOULD ever kill his wife, you're the type to OBEY the law that says don't carry the gun into the bar?? You predicate an awful lot on the notion of the lawless in society abiding by the law, don't you? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I do my best to always keep present in mind the fact that on this forum, I see such a tiny sliver of what people actually are, and who they actually are, that judgments I may feel inclined to make about their character are precariously perched on a very limited knowledge of the people I am judging. How very many times I have seen people respond to comments like this one you made with, "How dare you judge me? You don't know me at all!" There is much validity to those protests. I can't say whether you'd like me or not in person. I'm not very interested in meeting people who find it so easy to make sweeping character judgments on such flimsy evidence, anyway. If you don't like me, fine. If you think I'm any less peaceful than the average person, fine. If you'd take your name off a load to avoid jumping near me, fine. I don't really care to what extreme you'd take your distaste for me, because it's not my cross to bear. But I have met numerous people from this board in person, and I venture to say that I made a good impression on them and they like me. And I'm not belligerent to them or anyone else when back in "the real world." This place is very different for me. I indulge my frustration with and distaste for some of the more screwball things I see going on in the real world, when they are under discussion here. And yes, I get emphatic, I get boisterous, I get agitated, I get passionate, I get profane. It's an adult-oriented forum and people know to expect that going in. I don't put on a very politically correct or necessarily friendly public face here -- at least, not in Speakers Corner, because I'm plenty friendly where it is appropriate in Bonfire. You might even find posts where I congratulate people on momentous skydives or newborn babies, or offer condolences or "vibes" when sad things happen. I'm not a cold heartless bastard, even though my hard-edged posts could lead you to think so. I certainly drive hard when it comes to gun control v. gun rights, which is my personal pet issue. Ironically, I don't feel I get any more acerbic, sarcastic or bombastic than PLENTY of other posters here -- I just get picked on for it more because I use "peacefuljeffrey" as a screen name. I've explained about that several times, and I'm not stating it all over again for you here. If you want to know what that's about, do a thread search. And judge me if you want. I don't really care. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[sarcasm] And WORLD DOMINATION IS OUR ONLY HOPE![/sarcasm] Not to turn this away from any subject in particular - has anyone heard about the chinese naval fleet? From what I understand - they have stopped making surface ships. They are concentrating their efforts on submarines. With all the tech and people over there - we are fucked if they decide they don't like us anymore. Conan O'Brien said that a study found that 85% of Chinese people have never brushed their teeth. They're thinking of renaming the country "England." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Hear fuckin' hear!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I recommend: Super Troopers -- crazily funny. A Man Apart -- this will tide you over until the really excellent Man on Fire comes out. Brain Candy -- a bizarro feature-film from The Kids In The Hall, so you know it's hilarious. Life is Beautiful -- watch the DVD with the original spoken Italian and the English subtitles (unless of course you speak Italian, then skip the subtitles altogether). That's one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Eurotrip -- also a very funny movie. I got dragged to see it, but ended up enjoying it a lot. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Congratulations on your newborn baby boy! Those pics are great -- he sure is cute! Look how tiny, next to you!! Teensy little head, little tuft of hair. I can't believe how gushy I'm being about it, but that really is a wonderful thing. Love him like crazy, okay? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Haven't you ever watched a scary movie on t.v. at home and turned the sound off? It took the scariness right out of the movie, didn't it? How much you wanna bet that when you saw E.T. at 3 years old, most of the fear you manifested about the tunnels was precipitated by the menacing music -- a much more universally scary thing is music, particularly deep tones, which impart much menace, as a booming adult voice can do to a child. I'd bet that if you had watched that same "scary" scene with no sound, you wouldn't have been scared at all. The discussion here is about whether that is INSTINCTIVE or not. It's easily argued that by 3 years old, the kid UNDERSTANDS the principle of GETTING HIT BY THINGS well enough that he knows to fear it, and the pain it can cause. First billvon says phobias are INSTINCT, now you say they're LEARNED... I say they're probably more likely a result of a misdevelopment, maybe even biochemically induced. I certainly do not believe that phobias arise from learning to fear things. If that were true, I suspect they would be MUCH less difficult to treat. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You're citing phobias and calling them "instincts"?? I think that's not valid. We do not, as a rule, have "instinctual fears" of heights and open spaces, or even of closed spaces. There are many people who do not suffer inordinately from such fears. These things are rightly called "phobias" because they are aberrent, and irrational. Besides, these things, even if they were true "instincts," are not "designed" into us because there is no program or goal to our evolution. Rather than "designed," they may have developed over time -- the common means for this is believed to be natural selection against those ill-suited to survive. That's not the same as being implanted with a trait, as "designed" implies. Again, you're implying that we all, as a rule start out with these fears and then "overcome" them in order to function normally. I believe this is not so. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It's impossible to increase the chance that we might die. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I want Brian Germaine to be around for a long time, so I'd stand in his way ifhe went trying something like that. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

As what, a 4H prize hog at a state fair? Between March 1 and April 6, airline agents tried to block Mr. Kennedy from boarding airplanes on five occasions It was probably a weight-and-balance issue with loading the plane with Kennedy's fat useless ass! I wonder, if we took away Kennedy's armed bodyguards, would he suddenly get upset at the gun-control laws he votes for that adversely affect the rights of us peons to protect ourselves? It seems that Kennedy can only realize a law is wrong when it fucks with his freedom to come and go, and do as he pleases. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Cut what out? Did I say anything attack-oriented after you said I was pushing it? For what it's worth, the thing you banned me for back a few months was saying "Fuck you" to someone who had just finished essentially indicting me as a LIAR, and I was pissed off about it. In particular, she had implied I was a liar after a post in which I explained myself about my meaning from a prior post. In essence, I had been asked "what did you mean by that" and then I posted what I had "meant by that," and was essentially told I was full of shit about my explanation. I maintain that while "fuck you" might be against the rules, it is hardly equivalent to a continued persecution and hounding of a single target by a given poster. That's what I'm being subject to right here. Mr2slkbi still isn't letting up. He's still at it with the bullshit rationalizations. He did research about posts pertaining to me, for christ's sake. I'm fed up with his either attacks, or attempts to pseudo-apologize for them, as above. An "apology" that continues on to justify is not an apology but a justification. And at this point, I think his continued pursuit of this stupid subject (am I the only one who is supposed to have his fuckin' screen name taken LITERALLY??) does cross the border into harassment and as such is outside the rules. I'm entreating a FAIR minded moderator (any of them may qualify if they desire) to step in and make good on the warnings that have been given to him. How many "last chances" do you get -- on one specific issue -- before you get banned? I didn't even GET a warning when it happened to me. And TWO WEEKS for a "fuck you"? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You know, for all the talk, I have NEVER -- EVER -- personally heard of such a thing happening. There is nothing like that going on where I work -- at a major newspaper in Palm Beach County, FL. If you get hired for a job, the POSITION pays a certain amount. Period. I think the claims that "women don't get paid the same for the same job" is bullshit. Companies know they can get the shit sued out of them if they pull that kind of thing. I remain unconvinced that they are doing it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And how is that different from say a speed limit law. I know many people who adhere to them, who otherwise may drive quite a bit faster. So, does that law not alter their behaviour? If the law were a physical barrier to people deciding to FLOUT the law and speed despite it, then you would never see speeders because speeding would have been rendered impossible to do by the law. But we know that a law has no physical power to stop a behavior. If you see people obeying the speed limit (good luck!), it is not because the law stopped them, but because they decided voluntarily to accede to the law because they are unwilling to suffer the penalty if caught speeding. The Second Amendment itself is no protection to anyone in a physical sense. It provides for the fact that we may outfit ourselves with physical objects that can be used to stop crimes in progress. Are you unable to see the difference between a paper law and an actual ability? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What if what if what if? What if a cop gets called to a decoy emergency call by a criminal, who clocks him on the head and steals his handgun, his handcuffs, his mace, baton, police radio and everything else he has on him? Maybe we should reconsider the wisdom of allowing cops to have guns when they go on patrol. (We already know what bad news it is that they take their guns home at night, from all the stories I've seen of their kids finding the guns and shooting themselves.) In your hypothetical scenario, are you saying that after sucker punchng the non-drunk gun carrier, the drunk has the presence of mind to pat-down the gun carrier for weapons? We also assume the gun carrier has been knocked utterly senseless? I guess I could stack a hypothetical question to utterly support having the sober gun carrier be allowed to carry his gun into the bar. What if a bunch of drunks in the bar barricade the door, and start viciously raping a woman at the bar, and the telephone is out of order (as though a call to the police would stop the crime in progress before any physical harm got done anyway)? Wouldn't it be best to have a sober person able to stop the vicious and potentially murderous attack? What if the gang rapists could be heard saying to each other stuff like, "I'm gonna enjoy slitting this little lady's throat after I come in her tight little pussy?!" What then? So come on, let's not get really stupid and outlandish with our examples, and pretend that they have so much relevance to real life. Fact is, I ... know... a friend... who has carried his gun into bars many times, in large part because he knew he would not be drinking -- and despite what has been suggested in this thread as some sort of likelihood[/], he never just broke down and started getting sloshed despite his original intentions. He simply enjoyed the band's music, and the company of his friends, and walked back to his car later on confident that he had the means to safeguard his life and, potentially, the lives of others. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"