Sportsmen and women joining our side....

Link

Take a look at the above link and read some of the comments. GWB's policies have alienated a lot of heretofore die-hard Repubs.

must be registered.

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I have a feeling that might have something to do with it - a lot of sportsmen are strong conservationists, for obvious reasons.

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not that the rest of us didn't expect it

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I can assure you that they are!

Some quotes:

"Yea, when he hit office i really liked that go gettem attitude. Now i think he lost his mind. How on earth does he think we can afford all these stupid ideas of his? Going to the moon was the icing on the cake. As for Iraq, great idea, poorly executed. And if gotta hear him say "nuclear" one more time..."

"It's gotten pathetic Mike...Thank God the Bush ditto heads have the Democratic primary to rant on and on about, it sure beats defending Bush's record...

Hi, my name is Chumbucket, and I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. I won't do it again..."

And plenty more...shall I continue?

... does not mean that they are necessarily "joining our side." For the purposes of this exercise I would gladly accept their help in getting Bush out of office. But in the aftermath, I would not be surprised to find myself still at opposite ends of the political spectrum from many of the people whose quotes you have excerpted above.

With regards to sportsmen in general, they have always straddled the fence between Republicans (on gun issues) and Democrats (on the environment). It's the extreme anti-environmentalism of the Bush administration that has gotten them to turn against him.

Sportsmen are angered over the overtly anti-environment agenda of the current administration. This does NOT, however, mean that those among them who are Republicans are ready to become Democrats. Nor does it mean that they necessarily support other progressive positions.

It simply means that they are turning against Bush.

There are always going to be people with differing views. That's what makes the world a diverse and interesting place. The good news, is when these people recognize a dangerous man and do not just follow the flock. They want him out, too.

I could care less in the short term whose "side" they are on, if they are disgusted with the current administration and will be voting against them. I am simply talking about "sides" in the context of politics to illustrate that these voters will not necessarily be allies of progressives (or in some cases, even moderates) on a great majority of issues.

Diversity of opinion is a good thing, I completely agree. But in such matters there is difference over nuance and outright disagreement. On many issues, I see the latter with the group of which we are currently speaking.

Gawd, I gape at the naïveté ... or ... whatever ... of all this "welcome aboard!!"ing.

You happen to remember this one?

Class consciousness is knowing which side of the fence you're on.
Class analysis is knowing who's there with you.

Mutatis mutandis.

People who vote *against* Bush because they don't like that national debt (or whatever the reason du jour is) just are *not* voting *with* you.

The minute they smell a better deal, they'll be back out the flap of that tent -- unless they've managed to get you to shift the camping space a few kilometres to the right so that they're still inside it, even if you have left a bunch of the original campers out in the cold on the other side.

(And people who are maybe getting restless about body bags coming home from Iraq, as well as what it's all costing them out of pocket, just have not had a blinding and lasting revelation that it is unspeakably wrong to invade other people's countries and kill them ... and so they're going to be ripe for the picking next time somebody shows 'em a little country that really needs invading ...)

Damn. I thought this hokey nonsense about all the votes the Democrats can get just by not being Democrats anymore was supposed to stay in the gun dungeon. A few of us do do our DU duty and try to keep 'em busy down there when we have the time, but occasionally they escape our watchful eye. Sorry 'bout that.

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to keep the "better deal" on our side, now, wouldn't it?

Then the key would be
to keep the "better deal" on our side, now, wouldn't it?

The minute they smell a better deal, they'll be back out the flap of that tent -- unless they've managed to get you to shift the camping space a few kilometres to the right so that they're still inside it, even if you have left a bunch of the original campers out in the cold on the other side.

As with most deals, the question would have to be: "better" FOR WHOM?

Me, I'm happy with who's on my side right now. I'm confident that the rightness of my side, and the betterness of the deal it already offers, will prevail in the minds of those who are here but don't get it yet. Like Irate Citizen, I'd never look a gift voter in the mouth -- but I'd also never call them "on my side" unless there were a little stronger evidence than their disappointement with *how* Bush invaded and occupied Iraq, for dawg's sake.

.

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In post #1..

Yeah. Now there's somebody I'd want on MY side alright.

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I was discussing this after our last Town Democratic Committee meeting last night with the head of our committee. He's a pretty sharp guy, pretty liberal outlook -- is a practicing attorney in town and former mayor. He was yet another person who said that he's "glad we went in Iraq, but just didn't like the way in which it was done."

Of course, he says we should have gone in with more international support. The point I tried to get him to realize was that maybe the reason we couldn't get more international support was because WE SHOULDN'T HAVE GONE IN IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

Sadly, this kind of disconnect is not limited to the right side of the fence. There's plenty of misplaced justification by some rather reasonable and well-intentioned folks on our side as well.

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Democrats believe all kinds of things.
I do not hunt, but am a gun owner who believes in gun laws.
john kerry owns guns and partakes in pheasant hunting.

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Seriously, this seems like a rather outrageous statement. If you would have said that the right to own a firearm was covered by the US Constitution, I would have fully agreed with you. But to say that owning a gun is a "smart" thing to do is, to be quite honest, a rather suspect statement.

And for the record, I received my first BB gun at 5, and a .22 single shot rifle at 9, and hunted from age 12 to 17. I've also qualified as an expert (40 hits out of 40 targets) in the US Army. I also don't keep any guns in my house, nor do I have any desire to start. What's not "smart" about that?

"I've also qualified as an expert (40 hits out of 40 targets) in the US Army"

And, not to put too fine a point on it, expert is 36 or more hits...anywhere on the target...

I'm also well aware that firing expert is not all that difficult to do, so long as you concentrate on basic principles of marksmanship like breathing, trigger squeeze, sight picture, etc.

But as an Army Reservist, I can tell you that it's easy to get the impression that shooting IS hard just from the sheer numbers of people who, year after year, fail to qualify.

And FWIW, the only reason I included my marksmanship history in the previous post was to head off any inferences by the poster to whom I was replying that I didn't know anything about firearms -- because I was raised around them and I quite clearly do.

of Army shooting (do you mean "qualification standards"?), I wanted everybody else to know that it is not that hard to achieve a rating of "expert", and that your attempt to assert your authority on the matter may be a little inflated.

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... considering that either myself or my family is more likely to be hurt/killed in an automobile accident than to be physically attacked either in the home or outside of the home.

There is no way I would ever allow myself and my children to be vulnerable to a killer, rapist, etc.....

Do you also consider it a smart thing to live in such irrational fear of the world around you? Unless you live in Bedford-Stuyvesant or downtown Newark, I fail to see how such fears would be justified. I certainly don't live in daily fear of my home being broken into by robbers and rapists.

You can have your fear. I don't want any part of it, thank you very much.

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Crime is literally ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!

I must be living in some kind of bubble, because I'm certainly not seeing it "all over the place". I'm not denying its existence, but I can't say that I feel unsafe while walking through Harlem from my evening class to the train station two nights per week. Nor did I see a terrible amount of it while living on the edge of West Philadelphia for several years. I had friends who were mugged, but none whose lives were in mortal danger -- and most of them were victims of their own carelessness rather than random targets in broad daylight.

My initial challenge to you was to tell me how owning a gun was somehow "smart" -- and to not do so was, by default, not smart. You have done little more than explain to me that the world is a dangerous place infested with rampant crime, and that carrying a gun makes YOU feel safer.

This is not a factual argument. This is your personal point of view. And it does nothing to sway me into believing that carrying a gun will make ME feel safer. In fact, I would be much more afraid of mistakenly using my firearm and hurting someone who didn't pose a mortal threat to me or my family, as opposed to fearing for our safety.

But hey, that's just me, and it's not an argument -- just my point of view.

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If I make a mistake NOT having a gun, I don't put the lives of other people around me in jeopardy.

If YOU make a mistake with a firearm -- something entirely possible when put in a situation under stress -- then you DO put the lives of other people around you in jeopardy.

IMHO, that's a BIG difference -- and why it shouldn't matter to you what I do, but it still matters to me what YOU do in this instance.

BTW -- did you stumble out of the Justice/Public Safety forum? Your desire to turn the 21st century US into the Old West won't be so well received out here.

"Your desire to turn the 21st century US into the Old West won't be so well received out here."

Is that why more and more states are adopting "shall issue" concealed carry laws? Why, the blood must be flowing in the streets.

Furthermore, I also note that you offer no comment on the law of unintended consequences, and how it applies to firearm ownership.

If states want to allow concealed carry permits, then by all means they should go ahead and do that. I'll go back now to my original point, which was that I do not live in such fear of stepping outside of my door WITHOUT a handgun that I feel that I HAVE to own one to remain safe. If you and your pistol-packin' brothers and sisters feel our society is too lawless and brutal that your very lives cannot be reasonably protected without carrying a handgun, then by all means carry one. Just don't expect someone like me to sit by and buy into that load of bunk. I don't need to hold a cold steel killing mechanism in my hand in order to feel like a real man -- I am reminded of the legitimacy of my gender every time I use the toilet or take a shower.

BTW -- when citing some kind of chart or map, it's usually good courtesy to cite the source so that we can check it out for ourselves.

1st thing....put your little mouse cursor over the image, right click, and highlight "properties". The source is right there, just in case you wanted to know...

2nd thing....this is not a thread on the unintended consequences of choosing or not choosing to own firearms. But, since you brought it up, I would rather deal with the consequences of having and not needing a firearm, than needing and not having one.

3rd thing...are you going to invite me to head down to J/PS, too?

1. Thanks for the technical support. It's just common practice to attach a link for those of us of the lazy or technically incompetent variety. ;-)

2. I can cite only one instance in my life in which I MIGHT have needed a firearm -- almost being mugged on my university campus in Philadelphia on a Sunday afternoon. But when I look at it, simply being aware of my surroundings and running like hell served me a lot better than a firearm might have. Having lived in rural, suburban and inner city environments, I believe that the likelihood of actually NEEDING to use a firearm -- and being able to successfully use it to defend one's self -- is just about on par with being struck by lightning.

3. Not at all, because you discuss gun issues in that forum and discuss other issues in the other forums. My comment to the other poster OnceBlind was in reference to a single-issue mindset. Since you do not exhibit that kind of mindset, there would be no need to "invite" you to remain in J/PS -- as if my dictates carry any gravity around here anyway.

1) Check. I didn't know into which category you fit. (just kidding...just a friendly jab)

2) I can cite 2 instances where I may have needed a firearm. I have been the vicitim of both an attempted carjacking and B&E (while I was home). In both cases, I had a gun, but all I could think about was un-assing the area in the first instance, and getting the police to my home in the second. In both cases, I was physically and mentally ready to employ deadly force in my defense, but only as a last resort.

3) OK...I think.

How's it go?

Scissors, rock, paper ...

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
- Andrew Marshall, To His Coy Mistress

I think perhaps I have found my new sig line, not having had one since the big move.

Previous editions, here and elsewhere, were:

This way and that
Dividing the swift mind
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, of course

Here falling houses thunder on your head
And here a female atheist talks you dead.
- good old Dr. Johnson, one of god's natural feminists

And last but not least:

It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor wot gets the blame
It's the rich wot gets the pleasure
Ain't it all a bleedin' shame.

It's what I do when I haven't been to sleep since yesterday morning and still haven't finished the work due at noon. I also get snarky, so I should probably go work ...

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This thread has gone off-topic (discussion belongs in J/PS), become inflamed, and has been disrupted.

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