"In what situation do you think you would need a 30 bullet magazine clip?"Oh, I don't know... You tell me.
The picture of the three young Egyptian men standing watch in front of their block while armed with nowt but rakes and broom handles is especially significant to me since, being a slightly-gimpy, middle-aged woman, I'm just not really Bruce Lee with a stick, you know? It would certainly not be my preferred instrument for keeping a mob off my lawn.
Of course, there hasn't been a riot involving water cannons and dogs and armored vehicles and tear gas within fifteen blocks of this house since 1995, so obviously it can't happen here...
Don't worry, Metro Police will protect you and your property.
ReplyDeleteBroad Ripple has a bevy of watering holes, so I'm sure there will be plenty of on-duty, sworn-to-protect types around. (for your own safety, however, I recommend that you not be on your motorcycle as they pilot their cruisers toward your bank of the creek.)
The maximum speed limit in the US is 75 mph on the highway.
ReplyDeleteWhy does anyone need a car that goes faster than 76?
Because you don't need it until you need it.
ReplyDeleteJoe Allen,
ReplyDeleteA more fundamental question would be: "Where does some jackhole get off telling me what I can and can't own? So long as I'm not actually harming someone with is, what makes him think he has any right to get all up in my business like that?"
Damn, I thought the guns themselves were evil, I had no idea the horror of those magazine clips. Mine are just little pieces of metal that hold two magazines together. No idea that they were that insidious.
ReplyDeleteFjying unicorns dropping gumdrops will save the day.
ReplyDeleteI can't explain why they think that way. They just do.
I want to buy a clip that holds 30 magazines together.
ReplyDeleteI fear zombies.
What Tam said +'leventy.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to the question is: "Utility varies. Morality, which says I have the right to life and to own property, doesn't. Morality wins.
"In order to exercise my rights, I don't have to aggress against anyone. In order to prevent my exercise of my moral rights, you, or more likely your agents, have to aggress against me. Which of us is in the wrong?"
Lets answer using bradyspeak..
ReplyDelete"I have no idea what your point is."
"Ask me some reasonable questions. Perhaps I will answer them."
And my favorite:
"We've been over this before. Why keep bringing it up? It's a stupid question."
I say choke them with their own words!
Eck!
It's for the children.
ReplyDeleteThe little brats keep trying to swallow my 15 rounders and they get stuck in their throats.
The 33 rounders are too big for that to happen.
Gerry
In cases of civil disorder, when the Police, having no duty to protect individuals from marauding gangs, retreat to the station house for their own safety, like they did during the Los Angeles riots.
ReplyDeleteYou'd best be ready. When the bad stuff hits the fan, the cavalry ain't coming.
What happened to those Korean shop owners who shot at looters? Are they still free or are they in the slammer?
ReplyDeleteGoing out on a limb, I don't think there was much police presence to take umbrage at them shooting looters in the first place, let alone run them in for it. Almost like there was some connection...
ReplyDeleteSad to say even if you have a gun for defense it doesn't mean the police want try to take them from you and leave you defenseless.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4
:-(
Josh
Only ONE 30 round magazine? I can think of several situations, including a couple I lived through where several 30 round magazines available to several guns would not be too many. Tell you what: when Big Army goes back to the Krag-Jorgensen and they have to load one round at a time, and the PoPo follow along ('cause that would be Tacticool and Cutting Edge), then I'll THINK about downsizing my magazine size.
ReplyDeleteThe reverse question is also illuminating.
ReplyDeleteJust what is it about the eleventh round in a gun that is so much more evil than the ten that preceded it?
Makes me wonder what my Baby Browning would look like with a 30 round mag...
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, as someone in a similar age bracket I consider myself in my prime, not "middle-aged".
ReplyDeleteTo support that belief I plan to live to be 120 or so. =)
I remember being 11 years old and not allowed out to play. We sat in the TV room watching a building burn. I asked my older sister where 'Watts' was. She took me to the side window and pointed to a black pillar of smoke and said "there's Watts"
ReplyDeleteYes, all my magazines are loaded.
Tom O'B
On the lines of what Bubblehead Les said--
ReplyDeleteIf you're in a situation in which you need all 30 rounds, then you're probably in a situation in which you need a lot more than 30 rounds.
"Why do/would you need?"
ReplyDelete"None of your damned business" is my usual answer now.
As a guy with probably worse knees than Tams' and elbows giving me trouble, the idea of playing hand-to-hand or stick-against-knife games fills me with a sense of "In a pigs ass I will; that's what the gun is for." Especially after listening to a acquaintance who says she has a bo-ken by the bed and if someone breaks in she'll whack them in the knee, then the neck, and that's all anybody needs; noting "If you're that close, they can reach you with something too" and "What happens if something blocks your swing?" produced no results, 'that won't happen', etc. Screw that, somebody comes after me I'll use whatever's available.
I'll note that she also announced that the big reason people buy guns is "They're afraid of black people." Never did find out if that included all the black/yellow/red/mixed gun owners, and all the females...
And anyway, Bruce Lee is not your go-to guy for fighting with broomsticks.
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking of Jackie Chan. But you're still not him.
My standard response to the "Why would you need..." question is another question:
"Why do you think that's relevant?"
My mother used to say the same thing when I was a teenager and wanted a rifle to go deer hunting. "Why do you need a gun? No one needs a gun."
ReplyDeleteShe was a democrat. I finally got tired of it and told her, "It's the Bill of RIGHTS, not the Bill of NEEDS." She never brought the subject up again. Not even when I came home with my first rifle. A beautiful Marlin .22 bolt action that I put several thousand rounds through. It was several years later before I got the deer rifle.
For those who forgot...
ReplyDeleteDuring the Los Angeles Riots after the first verdict that found the officers not-guilty for beating Rodney King while he resisted arrest, The Chief of Police ordered the police officers to return to the precinct houses "for their own safety" and "to avoid inciting violence by their presence."
Many armed Korean shop owners defended themselves and their businesses from the mobs. Later, the police returned to the neighborhoods. They told the shop owners they would patrol and the shop owners could go home. Most of the shop owners who DID go home, were then looted and many shops were burned.
Some members of Neighborhood Watch groups called the Police station concerned about their safety. They were told they were on their own because the police weren't leaving the station for any reason.
When the riots start, the Police WON'T BE THERE! You WILL be on your own.
Be prepared or be a victim; it's your choice.
let me see..need...my 67 year old dad needed a 30 round mag when he lived through katrina in long beach mississippi...funny though all he had to do was take a ready position when the looters started...they left him, and everyone on his street alone
ReplyDeleteIn Egypt we see the Police taking off their uniforms and joining the looters. In Katrina, a less civilized place, the police kept their uniforms on and joined the looters.
ReplyDeleteGood idea to have many full magazines, and a safe place in your house where stray rounds will not penetrate. One way to do that is to arrange the gun safes into a square on the lowest floor, and bridge the top, stacking sandbags at the corners and over the top.
I know Tam, "Only 4 gun safes?"
The one problem with the real safes is a lot of older houses would have to have the floor reinforced to take the weight. Especially of more than one in one room.
ReplyDeleteI was stationed at MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) El Toro during the Rodney King mess, and living in base housing just outside of the base fence. The base was just far enough away from LA that we didn't see any rioting, but we did have one carload of rioter wanabees drive through the neighborhood. They quickly realized their mistake and made for the exit. Did I NEED a 30 round magazine? Not that time, but I sure would have felt much better if I had had one (or a few dozen). The base commander had, as we expected, refused to allow us to check out our service rifles so we were forced to make due with whatever privately owned ordinance that we had on hand. It surprised me how little that was. I had expected Marines to be better armed than that. Had the base been much closer to the riots, I expect our little cache of weapons would have seemed quite thin.
ReplyDeleteWhat I learned from that experience was to make sure to keep a weapon or two along with some ammo around, just in case. Now, I still don't have enough, but that is mostly because there is always a little more that can be done to be just a little better prepared.
s
Firehand --
ReplyDeleteI managed to convert my antigun roommate to "gun acceptance" if not into a gun owner.
He was telling me how brutal and inhumane my .45 was, even if used on anintruder. I pointed out he had a meter long steel blade that cost what I paid for my (then) car, years of training in how to use it, and a startle reflex on being awakened in anurgent tone that had hand on hilt before eyes opened -- did he really think it was going to be all that fluffy and cuddly when he went all Miyamoto Musashi on the next Charles Manson wannabe?
He never bugged meabout my pistols. A couple of weeks later, he had to get to work and his girlfriend needed a ride in the opposite direction to a less palatable part of town.
The first question he asked me as I came down from grabbing my keys was, "You packing?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm dressed, I'm not going on base, and I'm not going to a restaurant, right?"
"No, not 'The Warmth'*, are you carrying the .45?"
So I went back upstairs and swapped the little FEG PA65 (AKA SMC-918) for the Commander, because even though it wasn't the little .25 I had on, Larry seemed pretty adamant about the .45. . .
*(Earlier he had kidded me about my Baby Browning, saying, "That's not packing heat -- that's only packing warmth!")