Posted by: tehllama42
Posted by: Mic
Posted by: tehllama42
FWIW, this moved me towards purchasing stuff from them. A lot (staggering amounts of well heeled rednecks) of people will think similarly, but not many will go voice it on a Canadian biking forum.
So you think that it is ok for US primary school kids and teenagers to have to live in a country that is at times as dangerous when it comes to school shootings and/or rifle attacks as Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan?
Being in the extreme minority of people who have spent time in both US primary schools and Afghan primary schools, the comparison is laughable, and I'd charitably describe that comparison as just ignorant at best. The AO we worked and lived out of (we inherited it from a British/Canadian coalition - those dudes are awesome) had a major feature - a primary school for girls, and it was the best Taliban magnet we had, because even those retards do manage to comprehend that literate girls become thoughtful and difficult to oppress women, which shuts off their supply to illiterate and easy to radicalize teenagers willing to blow themselves up inside a group of children... Even a rudimentary understanding of statistics tells you how different an experience those two things are.
The notion that you would assume promptly that I'm a trogoldytic NRA shill is cute... People who own firearms are far more motivated than others to try and get this crap to stop happening (so that panic buys on materials, poorly crafted legislation, and other stupidity can stop affecting something we do predominately for fun). Even more so for individuals like me looking to find improvements to the education system at large (this is my dissertation topic), idiotic violence affecting schools will continue to force oversized and overfilled facilities for kids in order to amortize security and logistics costs instead of getting that focus onto delivering better educational content.
I'm here, happy to have intelligent discussion (I've been around NSMB since before the server migration, and I'm here because this is a nexus of useful and intelligent thought relating to how to set up and use mountain bikes that actually get ridden... If there isn't any hope of that then I'll spend my time elsewhere on the forum, or go back to refining giant tomes on how to apply modern model-based engineering methodologies to mountain bikes for fun.
That's all very interesting, but it doesn't really clarify your opinion on guns/gun control. The gun debate seems to be even worse than the eMTB-debate, with people yelling "libtard/2nd amendment/from my cold dead hands" or "Redneck/think of the kids" with hardly any nuance and often arguing with a concept of reality that has little to do with the real world. So, since you seem to be willing to have an open discussion and at least to some degrees open to rational tought (given my opinion of most of humanity, this is a compliment, not an insult), I'd like to hear your opinion and the rationale behind it. Just so you know where I stand, or as some talking points.
-The majority of studies show stricter gun control results in less gun deaths. There don't seem to be a lot of (confirmed) instances of guns being successfully used for self-defense.
-More guns mean more gun deaths, according to most studies (suicides, accidents, killings).
-Responsible gun owners: Have you been in rush hour traffic lately? The level of irresponsibility and aggression displayed is truly frightening. And they're not even inebriated. I'm sure those people are really nice in other circumstances, but I really wouldn't want to hand them a gun, seeing how they act conducting a 1.5ton killing machine. I'm sure there are a lot of responsible gun owners, but even responsible people have bad days/are in a hurry/forget to lock the gun safe etc.
-I'm all for hunters, farmers (if need be) and marksmen owning appropriate guns. By all means shoot guns for sport, but I can't see a reason why a civilian should be allowed to own a weapon of war (I can't even see a reason for most of law enforcement). Handguns for self-defense? I say more harm than good, see above.
-Generally, I think walking around with a gun on a daily basis (unless it's your job or you're out in the wilderness) is not a good idea and I can't understand it. I mean, every time I put on my helmet some small part of my brain considers having a bad crash. Would I really want to contemplate killing someone every day?
-As a teacher watching this from across the ocean, I'm horrified at the thought of armed guards and metal detectors in schools. And no, I don't live in a fairy tale. Just last year I taught a class where the local police would probably have known every single pupil by name. Not once did I feel threatened and not once did I even think about having a gun.
-No, guns don't kill people. But having easy access to guns makes killing people (or yourself) a lot easier and more efficient. I'd be a lot less worried about a pupil running amok with a knife than with a SIG550 (which would be the weapon of choice around here).
So, I hope you had as much fun riding your bike today as I did. Ground frozen solid and finally some sun, yay!