Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Well okay then. I have no idea what you're on about right and left for. I'm on the side of common sense. Which ironically isn't actually so common.
 
Just because you believe you view of something is “common sense” does not make it the truth. Your common sense it based on your beliefs and may be support by others that believe the same as you but are not universal.

What I meant by left and right was to show that gun rights are supported across party lines here.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Yeah, there's more common ground than people think.

"And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. ... So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes. "

--Barack Obama, Democrat

"I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home."

--Ronald Reagan, Republican
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think it was Rachel Maddow, who did a bit on how when polled on each of the separate parts of Obama's gun control proposals, everyone, even Republicans supported every proposal (I think assault weapons ban may have been roughly equal support among Republicans), with some components having massively high approval ratings. But when they were asked if they support Obama's proposal in the aggregate, something like 70% said no.

How can you support every component, but not the aggregate?
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

American politics is like that. People get entrenched in the partisan nature of things. I have a beef with Feinstein's proposed plan and New York's AWB, but essentially all of Obama's executive orders have been eminently reasonable and prudent.

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities. 18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Likewise, ask American liberals if they approve of Medicare Part D (the Medicare prescription drug benefit) and almost all will say yes. Ask if they approve of what George W. Bush did to Medicare and they'll almost all say no, assuming it's bad because they don't like Dubya.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

We pretty much have no truly wild animals to hunt in the British Isles.

Apart from rabbits, we have managed deer herds and bred pheasants.

This makes it both easy and sensible to have strict hunting legislation.

I get the impression the US is different in this respect?
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

The exact same thing happened with medicare. You ask a Republican if they want to repeal Obamacare and they say yes, but if you go down a list of the provisions in the bill and ask them if it is a good or a bad thing, basically everything of substance in there is extremely popular.

Politics should never be treated like a sport where you root for your team.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Wolves were driven to near extinction in the 19th century by ranchers (who slaughtered them en masse to protect their open-range cattle). Bears and coyotes and mountain lions are still present but not as numerous as they used to be. Eagles and other birds of prey were cut down drastically by DDT use in the middle of the 20th century. What this has caused is a massive population explosion of prey animals. We have a severe overabundance of deer, elk, ducks, and other prey animals. In fact, without substantial hunting, deer become so numerous that they quickly exhaust their food resources and suffer mass starvation. As such, state governments often set goals for how many deer to hunt annually, and encourage hunting to meet those goals. Take the state of Wisconsin, whose deer population can hit nearly two million despite efforts by the State to keep it around 500,000.



http://www.wisconsinforestry.org/council-deerpop.php
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Are there no Dixiecrats left?

Despite that, the differences are really very slight. The team rooting is a game IMHO.

They're all just heads of the hydra, but Republicans don't lie so much.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

We learned from the best on this one You guys had Whigs and Tories, then Conservatives and Labour; we've had four two-party systems:

Federalists versus Democrats-Republicans
Democrats versus Whigs
Republicans versus Democrats (first version, where Republicans = north and Democrats = south)
Republicans versus Democrats (second version, where Republicans = rural and Democrats = urban)
 
Yea plenty of deer here and coyotes are become a problem. Black bears are on the rise and we have even had some gators seen near by.

The big thing is the pig problem and I’m looking to get into that as I don’t deer hunt as much as I once did. I would love to get a good pig to smoke and make a whole lot of pulled pork.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

This may help add some context for UK folks. I visited my parents in Boulder, a city of 100,000 (300,000 including its suburbs) last year. Even within city limits, deer eating people's plants are considered a "pest" and this is a continual problem if you have a garden or a planter box. During the one week I was there, I saw a black bear running through the middle of town; it was a young one so its mother was nearby. On a second evening that week, people coming over for a houseparty reported there was a black bear a block away. This past month, two Boulder Police Officers were discharged from their jobs for poaching a bull elk within city limits while they were on duty. And this is all inside a city.

Multiply this a hundred-fold and you've got rural areas. Two months after my first child was born, we were living in a house outside of Ashland, Oregon. My wife woke up in the middle of the night to breastfeed our baby and saw movement through the sliding glass doors of our bedroom. A mountain lion was chilling on our back porch. There was one flimsy sheet of glass between my wife and a 200-lb killing machine (mountain lions are bad news...way more aggressive than a bear). It eventually sauntered off. I don't even bother to count deer sightings in places like that; they're a daily occurrence.

At my father-in-laws house in eastern Oregon, wild turkey roam his land continually. During my last week-long visit, a visitor dropped by and casually commented that he'd shot a three-foot rattlesnake as he drove down the driveway. This was not an unusual occurrence; my wife had a run-in with another rattler two days later.

We've got a LOT of wild animals here in America.

Edit: and here's a politician riding a moose. Because that's how we roll.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

My only experience with bears is in Transylvania, and they have very strict rules and hefty fines for killing them.

What are the laws regarding killing bears and mountain lions in Colorado?
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No mountain lion hunting in Virginia even through there are some in different areas including around here (in the Dismal Swamp).

Lots of black bears and you are allowed 1 a year and it must be over 100 lbs and the biggest I have seen taken in this area was 600 lbs.
 
Bear hunting is allowed in some states but very restricted and not widely done. Mountain lions aren't hunted, but shooting them in self-defense is another matter...they will mess you up. I was mainly listing the bears, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes as examples of how common wild animals are here. Herbivores, not carnivores, are traditional objects of hunting.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

From the little I've seen, banning killing of large predators leads to more snaring, as livestock still need to be protected, but no-one wants to be caught in the act and face a hefty fine.

Bears never went away in Transylvania, but in places where they are now returning, like northern Italy, locals are very unhappy (especially the ones old enough to remember how much more dangerous life was before they were killed off the first time).
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

What makes a gun club the only safe place to store firearms? If anything, if this was the only place to store guns, criminals would be breaking in and getting a vast arsenal

I have known many people, and large families with guns. They do a fine job in securing their firearms.

Back in the day, many had openly displayed their guns. Nowadays, with higher crime and more troubled youth, no matter a club or in the home, there are safe methods (actual high security safes) to store a firearm.

More people are killed in vehicle crashes and stray bullets (or one-to-one shootings) then mass shootings combined
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Nobody really minds the black bears we have in Colorado. They're mellow animals that mainly eat fish and berries. I've never heard of someone being attacked by a black bear without doing something to really deserve it. Grizzlies and polar bears (in other parts of the US and Canada) are a different matter. Much more aggressive toward people and livestock alike.

Coyotes (a smaller sort of wild dog) are the main threat to livestock in Colorado, and they get shot quite a lot by ranchers. To bring this discussion around full-circle, 5.56mm semi-automatic rifles are popular weapons for killing coyotes.

In Colorado, the only big predator that really threatens people are mountain lions. Most only attack if they're startled, but about once a year you hear about one stalking a jogger or mountain biker. The main concern predator-wise are rattlesnakes.

Anyway, we're getting pretty far afield here, but yeah, hunting in America is not a hobby-of-the-rich-and-privileged, but a necessity for the animals given the out-of-control herbivore populations, and a source of cheap meat for rural families.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Actually, we're not that far "afield" (I saw what you did there), anyway I just had this discussion with one of my students, who is a hunter as well as I. As far as the cost of hunting, in NY a sportsman license is pushing $100 with all the bells and whistles, and now with the new gun law and periodic registration we can see an added cost of gun ownership as another financial burden for sportsmen. It won't be long until it becomes a rich mans sport at this rate.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Well 100% of people born in to the world end up dead. So I guess we just shouldn't bother at all. There was a time when we didn't need a licence to drive. But then the roads got busier. Pretty soon the application for a licence required a test and over time that test has gotten harder. Times change.

Similarly the increase in the use of medication has forced society to reconsider how medicines are store. Bottles of pills now have child safety caps.
 
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