@ westslope  this reply has sat in an open window for 5 days wondering if I should post it because of the possible flack I might get from all the drive by's here that usually hurl their vitriol at me for once again mentioning personal experiences as reference for my thinking.  I've decided that I don't care and that you deserve an answer to your thoughtful question.

 westslope wrote: 
Q & A  ... absolutely correct.  Also a job screening question on the turnpike.  What do you do if you see a $5 bill on the ground in the parking lot ?  The most correct answer is that you pick it up and put it in your pocket and continue on your way doing what you were doing when you found it.

Really, I have been studying human nature since being a kid.  I am a people watcher, period.  While everyone else is shuffling along looking straight ahead (or now into their cell phone screen), and nowhere else, I'm still looking up and down and sideways.  Berkeley was very fertile ground in the 50's and 60's.  I'm not yet too feeble or proud to bend over and pick up a penny, still legal here.  I've lived in areas that are major tourist destinations my whole life.  I have seen people from around the world function in strange new places away from home, out of their safe space, in and out of personal control, vulnerable and deal with the unexpected.  Disneyland was in my backyard in the 60's.  Sea World of Ohio and Geauga Lake Amusement Park were in the same town in the 70' to the 90's and now the RRHOF most recently.  I watch(ed) people deal with these predicaments and challenges and either solve their problems themselves, ask for help or give up, raise their hands and walk off cussing and blaming someone else for their inability to follow simple directions out on the turnpike.  Things like the quarter are what you think about as you study people and have a large population sample to work with.  I also study how people park.  Do they back in or pull in, back out instead of just going straight ahead when the space in front of them is open.  In my 20's I fed people off of the coffee truck, in my 30's I served travelers and truckers (I know the difference between a Budd and a Dayton wheel and could fix a flat truck tire with hand tools) on the big road between NYC and ChiTown and rented cars to them in Cleveburg.  In my 40's I was burned out with people and took to truck driving so I could just be alone from the insanity.  Then came random testing so I went back to school at the end of my 40's and have been selling glasses since.  Got sick then in my 50's.  And here we are.  I can almost always find a way to get along with nearly anyone from anywhere.  Street person to billionaire.  We do have a couple that shop at our store.  And everything in between.  But I am getting real tired of doing it.  People are getting meaner and nicer at the same time.  The swing is getting wider and trying to thread that needle with nice dealing with the public is just plain getting nucking futzer.  If I wasn't sick, I would get back out on the road in a heartbeat.  A factoid, I learned back in the 70's while driving the old roach coach, of those driving over the road back in the day with a college degree in their pocket, 75% had a psychology degree ...

I like you until you until you mess with me and I still try to sit with my back to the wall facing the front door, whenever possible.  It's the street person in me.  But I no longer go to places where you leave your wedding ring at home.  And I don't mean going out trying to pick up women.

Wrapping up this ramble and getting back to the thread topic, I carried a loaded gun when I drove the roach coach.  It belonged to the guy whose route I took over after he was robbed and shot.  I've been robbed at gunpoint and shot at (in jest, sorta).  I have not pulled the trigger on any gun in over 30 years.  I don't keep a gun or want to live any kind of life that requires owning a gun.  I just want to be left alone to grow old.  But I am not willing to give up my options just because of a bunch of well meaning **** are willing to sacrifice my rights for a self destructive path to the impossible just so they can feel like they tried to do something good.

@ izzy  That was a very thoughtful piece you wrote and I will try and come up with an equally thoughtful response.  May take some time, but you raised some very worthy points and questions.

 westslope wrote: 
No. 

No it does not. 

I think that it does the opposite. 

I believe it intimidates those might want to try to initiate violence as a means to a political end. 

I believe that is the intent of the 2nd.

@Isabeau,  

You make excellent points.  

I would add from personal experience that I feel very comfortable around both active duty and retired rich western country soldiers.  They are smart, they are well trained, they are disciplined and above well they know how not to kill.  Americans, Canadians, Brits, Dutch, French.  Never hung with the Danish or Germans, Aussies or Kiwis but I imagine they are similar.  

Growing up I listened to stories of WW I on one side of the family.  And Nazi occupation on the other side.  My English-Canadian grandfather survived a German shell that sank into the mud only to fill the left side of his body with shrapnel.  He lived well despite the chronic pain but ultimately went back to the trenches of France screaming in his hospital bed when he died in Kimberley BC in the early 1970s.  

My grandfather became an 'anti-militarist'.  He did not want his sons going to war (WW II).  Nevertheless, he played a senior management role in the Sullivan mine complex that as lead, zinc, silver mine was absolutely strategic to the war effort.  

I would add that part of the larger problem is that many Americans simply do not understand the perspective of the people living under a conqueror's boot heels.   It means that expected costs are almost always under-estimated during any planning stage, assuming there is one. 

Wondering if some of the issues surrounding gun ownership and particularly semi-automatic weapons in 2019 is:

1. Because the draft ended just before similar aged friends had to go to war. (b: 1956 —) The lack of real war/military experience seems to have desensitized many to the gory reality.
Many  haven't been in conditions where they are facing others shooting at them or the guy next to him having his head blown off. From a military family, I've somewhat concluded that war can create those who become gun hobbyists (not violent shooters) and those who are wary of guns in the wrong hands. Then there are those forever changed and do have violent tendencies.
I've met more vets who are for reasonable regulation, as opposed to those without military experience, who feel almost personally threatened by regulations.
2. This same generation of men, seem to feel they were usurped of their somewhat dominate position 'over' women and people of color, like in 'Daddy's day.' They are angry that women no longer feel the need to marry or be married to have children, that people of color aren't as deferring as they were back in Dad's day, and they didn't get what they believed society entitled them to.
          2b: The resentment from this has resulted in a sense of the need to 'fight back' or intimidate to put those demographics back in 'their place.' They feel powerless, thus guns; ownership and rights to, particularly semi-automatics, is viewed as evening things up.
3. Yes, I am fully aware there are some badass women that feel the same about guns, but they don't seem to be as vocal and full of rage about it as the menfolk of that ilk.

Not married to these ideas, just curious to what some of you may think of these pseudo-conclusions. Definitely interested in hearing other perspectives regarding this line of thought.

PS: My father was a US Marine in Viet Nam, he was nearly blown apart by a bouncing betty mine in '67. He lost 13 men, the entire platoon in the blast. The VA stitched him back together, having lost his left eye, ear and arm. He manage to live another 40 years with those injuries. Despite his hard-ass persona, he did feel that training and respect for what these weapons were capable of were the keys to responsible gun ownership.
Healthy discussion desired here, not rage. 
Thnx peeps!

 aflanigan wrote: 

are you talking about semi-automatic bunions?

because if you are...

 miamizsun wrote: 
It's not the dance, it's the shoes the dancers are allowed to wear that seems to be a big part of the issue.

 westslope wrote: 

well there's the initiation of violence

and then there's the response

as i understand it, this is in case of the latter

 miamizsun wrote:
 

Does not the 2nd Amendment encourage political violence?

 Lazy8 wrote:
 
No surprises/shocks received or intended. Just amused at the use of the linked words.

R_P wrote:

The article is a jumbled mess; a company is dropping a product line that isn't selling. The AP writer/editors tried pretty hard to wedge this into a narrative about gun control but it really doesn't fit. Colt's rifle business is geared toward a government market—check their list prices if you doubt that. There are probably a hundred small, hungry companies selling AR-15 variants and Colt can't justify their price disadvantage against them.

When you tell a customer (as several retail outlets have) that you think they should be in prison for owning the product they came to buy yes, that will piss them off and they might not buy anything else from you either. Somehow this is...a surprise? A shocking revelation? A damning character flaw?

“If they think a company like Colt is disrespecting their identity or giving in to the other side, Colt’s likely going to see serious damage to its other firearms brands too.”

 Isabeau wrote:
 

"How can we be 'in'
When there is no 'outside.'
You don't look like we do
Talk like we do
You know how it is:
You're not one of us!"

 miamizsun wrote:
 

Indeed. When did Americans become willing to make each other the enemy? Defense is one thing, paranoia is quite another.

 haresfur wrote: 

random thoughts

i'm always open for conversation

we could crack down and criminalize the legality in a number of ways

go after legit owners who don't fit some sort of political criteria

i've often thought guns are like drugs in the sense that there's a huge black market for them

it's unlikely that this genie is going back into bottle

and why do we seem to neglect the root cause of why people want to harm others?

in fact we stoke bias and encourage confrontation as a solution

why aren't we aggressively teaching that human/property rights are good ideas along with peaceful negotiation/resolution to all?

i just think that this should be highly encouraged and maybe even required and incentivized in education

socially we should reject the initiation of violence and coercion

and when people are motivated to harm there's a number things we see them use (explosives, planes, vehicles, fire, etc.)

guns are just one of the current technologies being abused

i look at a lot of tech, both personally and professionally

there are things/technologies right around the corner that could be leveraged to harm a lot of innocent people on a mass scale

much larger than anything we've seen in recent history

a little existential doom porn to brighten your day

 Donar wrote: 
please relax

it's a joke/meme

 Steely_D wrote:
 

That sounds like something a very stupid human being would say.

 Antigone wrote:
 

Nice find!   We do not even have 50 dollar bills up here in Canada.

Congrats to old violin too for $20.

Keep up these anecdotes and I might end up hurting myself... as I walk around intently staring at the ground looking for money.  

 westslope wrote:
 

I found a fifty once.

 westslope wrote:
 

That was me a few days ago. Yeah I found it there in the grocery store parking lot. Never found a 20 before. 

 Can't say I saved it though. Had a hole in my pocket
somewhere. 

 It stands to reason...

 kurtster wrote:
 

There is a riddle popular with some economics instructors:     

Question:  Why can you never find a $20 bill on the ground?   Answer:  Somebody else picked it up before you got there.
 

I seemed to remember the riddle being used to introduce the concept of arbitrage.   I suppose it could be used to introduce the fleeting, temporary nature of windfalls.


I like to bend over and pick up copper pennies (no longer legal currency in Canada).  At first glance, that suggests I am the most irrational person you could imagine.  But I enjoy stretching my tendons and am very proud of the fact that I can actually quickly bend over and pick up something when most of my peers can no longer do that.  Silly pride and vanity.......

kurtster, if you had followed through on this prankish thought, I bet some people would have stubbornly picked away at that quarter piece until it came off the floor.  Not matter how time constrained they were.