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Some people, from England, feel that I've lived in Texas for too long and have lost touch with reality.
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| some kind of hat |
That's absurd. You can't live too long in Texas.
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| put the guns in the truck, LSP |
It has trucks.
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| defend that laptop! |
It has guns.
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| just taking it easy in the arena |
It has horses.
Sounds pretty real to me.
In nanny state England you can't even own a pistol.
Just sayin',
LSP
18 comments:
As a "half" Texan, allow me to say you are spot on!
Thanks Adrienne -- I'm a "halfer" too. God bless Texas.
LSP home is where you hang your hat and from the looks of it you've hung your hat in a place which suits your life and you're enjoying your lifestyle, nothing on God's green earth wrong with that. BTW I love the shot of your hat, very nice!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Exactly, Darlin!
Glad you like the large hat.
God bless.
Amen.
I keep hearing stories from England about some homeowner being jailed for shooting a perp who had entered his house and was stealing things.
Some nonsense about "proportional force," that the perp only had a knife of screwdriver, as if a homeowner must first ascertain what weapons the intruder has and then arm up accordingly.
Does a cricket bat beat a knife?
It's absurd.
It is absurd, Silverfiddle.
At some point it'll change -- sooner than later, please.
But you can own a rifle &/or a shotgun!
What do you want pistols for?
[ Counting a hand-held automatic as a pistol ... ]
No use for game shooting at all.
But Tingey, you need a pistol to get to your rifle.
UK law does not give a blanket allowance for the use of lethal force against burglars (to be fair not so many of them are armed as in the USA), and most Brits feel that is not unreasonable.
If the circumstances warrant it then it can be considered legal to issue deadly force. Indeed this was decided by the courts only 2 weeks ago in a burglary case.
Not even our police openly carry armaments (usually) - and are happy with it that way. We do have different values to yo - but that is good to our yes. Or country is a lot less violent than the USA.
Interesting point, Lukeya, but didn't the U.K. record an increase in violent crime from some 650,000 to 1.5 million incidents over the period 1998-2007? Appx 2000 violent crimes per 100k population -- three times that of the U.S., oddly.
During the same time, a little before, pistols were banned. Shouldn't the U.K. have become less violent?
Of course here in the U.S. we have a strangely high prison population, but that's another story again...
Intersting point LSP - although as I remember the UK has a murder rate of something of the order of 600-800 persons per year for a country of 60 million. or about 15 per million. What is the murder rate in the US? Ah yes - about 50 people per million. Which is the more violent country? (Of course other countries like Norway do even better with 5 and the Dutch with 10). But true - the Brits do enjoy a drunken punch up at soccer matches more than you Americans and that does count as violent crime.
US Prison poulation seems to largely consist of people on drug busts. Whether that's really a worthwhile way to spend tax dollars you can decide.
To be fair I should also add that the murder rate has been dropping in both the UK and the US to quite historically low levels. Make of that what you will!!
The reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault, whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm).[32][33] A government study concluded that direct comparison of the 2 countries' violent crime totals or rates was "inappropriate". Same true in the UK where violent crime includes all forms of personal assault including verbal assault (shouting at people).
Crime rates vary greatly across the states. Overall, New England had the lowest crime rates, for both violent and property crimes. New England states also had the lowest homicide rates in the country.
A closer look at per capita homicide rates for each state from FBI Uniform Crime Reports Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that Louisiana's per capita homicide rate has ranked 1st every single year from 1989 to 2010, which is 22 consecutive years.
Southern states had the highest overall crime rates. Crime can also be isolated to one particular part of a state. Lafayette, Louisiana, for instance had 6 murders per 100,000 people in 2004, while New Orleans, Louisiana, had 56 murders per 100,000 people according to Bureau of Justice Statistics for the same year.[51]
Almost all of the nation's wealthiest twenty states, which included northern mid-western and western states such as Minnesota and California, had crime rates below the national average. In addition to having the country's lowest crime rates, New England states also had the country's highest median household income, while the Southern states have the lowest.
This contrasts starkly to some of the nation's poorer states such as Florida or Louisiana. Louisiana had a crime rate 27% and a homicide rate 130.9% above the national average and ranked as the nation's fourth poorest state with a median household income 20% below the national median. While poorer states generally have higher crime rates, several states who fell below the national median for household income such as Maine and Kentucky also had crime rates below the national average, while some wealthier states such as Maryland had crime rates above the national average.
Nice stats comeback, lukeya!
I wasn't aware that shouting at people constituted "violent crime" in the U.K. But I have read, somewhere, that the murder rate had fallen.
But regardless, the debate's pretty hypothetical for me because I'm not allowed to shoot people -- being a padre.
Still, I'd defend a person's right to bear arms for self defense rather than having to rely on Nanny to, er, not get there in time.
For a somewhat gunnish take on things checkout:
http://reason.com/archives/2002/11/01/gun-controls-twisted-outcome
Viz. prison population... some argue that the U.S. is busy creating a new slave class. I'm afraid there's there's truth in that and the trajectory isn't very encouraging. prison slave labor takes jobs away from communities whose members then steal to get by, who get locked up to produce more kevlar helmets for the war effort...
Must do a post on that; I find it iniquitous and predicted by Belloc, strangely enough, in The Servile State.
More guns, please.
And another thing, lukeya, as your last stats comment indicated -- U.S. cities have, in many cases, become bad dystopias, far more so than in the U.K., where thus far, somewhere like Detriot or Gary IN would be pretty unimaginable.
Not helpful to the crime rate and I fail to see anyone, much, working to address the issue. Not that I'm an armchair urban planner or anything, just a simple gun priest.
Agree on urban decay - its staggering. I went to Buffalo recently (my cousin lives there) and although there's a lot to like the devastation is really mad.
Agree with you on prisons, and actually I'm not really a huge gun opponent personally, although I do question whether a very heavily armed society is really ever going to be very peaceful. Still - the Swiss manage it - but who wants to live there?
Keep shootin' padre. Also - finish the Sporter!
I always forget about the Swiss, who're compelled by law to have firearms. Funny little country -- I drove through it several times on the way to Como and Milan, years ago.
Ah, Buffalo. What a disaster. For me, though, Detroit wins the prize. I like it for its post-apocalyptic awesomeness.
Sporter No. 1 is ready to shoot tomorrow!! Mag + optics mount arrived yesterday, so I'm heading off to the friend's range with some .303 to see how it shoots.
Will post pics -- I think it looks pretty tidy for a budget experiment gun. A lot of work, but satisfying.
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