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Can someone explain...
- Thread starter Little-e
- Start date
It's not all doom and gloom, folks.
Last week I went to the grocery store and the bagboy (about 18 yrs old) recognized me, held up the gun magazine he was bagging and said "You bought one of these last week, are you buying these for your husband?"
A: Nope
Q: Do you like guns?
A: Not as objects, but I love shooting.
Q: You're kidding, right?
A: Nope
Q: You really own a gun?
A: Yep
BB: Cool!
(discussion about power factor on the way to the parking lot, BB refused his usual tip)
And today at a different store, the BB was about younger and saw me reading the gun mag while the checker was totting up the total. Discussion on the way to the parking lot...
Q: Are you interested in that gun?
A: Yep, just ordered one...
Q: Why?
A: Because I want one, and this one is supposed to be very accurate.
Q: Do I really have to wait till I'm 21 to shoot a handgun?
A: Probably, if you're still allowed to buy a gun by then.
BB: That sucks! I'm sixteen and can drive a two a ton truck more dangerous than any AK47, or some idiot can send me to a foreign country when I'm 18 and order me to wipe out people...but I can't shoot a jackrabbit or punch holes in paper. That really sucks!
A: Cheer up, in two years you'll be able to vote.
BB: I'm going to vote for Ron Paul, he's cool!
They're out there folks, the upcoming generations are not as stupid as the current ones seem to be, and a little visibility goes a long, long way.
Last week I went to the grocery store and the bagboy (about 18 yrs old) recognized me, held up the gun magazine he was bagging and said "You bought one of these last week, are you buying these for your husband?"
A: Nope
Q: Do you like guns?
A: Not as objects, but I love shooting.
Q: You're kidding, right?
A: Nope
Q: You really own a gun?
A: Yep
BB: Cool!
(discussion about power factor on the way to the parking lot, BB refused his usual tip)
And today at a different store, the BB was about younger and saw me reading the gun mag while the checker was totting up the total. Discussion on the way to the parking lot...
Q: Are you interested in that gun?
A: Yep, just ordered one...
Q: Why?
A: Because I want one, and this one is supposed to be very accurate.
Q: Do I really have to wait till I'm 21 to shoot a handgun?
A: Probably, if you're still allowed to buy a gun by then.
BB: That sucks! I'm sixteen and can drive a two a ton truck more dangerous than any AK47, or some idiot can send me to a foreign country when I'm 18 and order me to wipe out people...but I can't shoot a jackrabbit or punch holes in paper. That really sucks!
A: Cheer up, in two years you'll be able to vote.
BB: I'm going to vote for Ron Paul, he's cool!
They're out there folks, the upcoming generations are not as stupid as the current ones seem to be, and a little visibility goes a long, long way.
You want to see a decrease in the violence?
Push your legislatures for PUBLIC HANGINGS. Thats right! String up murderes, rapist, other wacko terrorist, and especially those who comit felonies with firearms.
String them all up on main street in a small town near you with signs around their necks. "This guy was a car jacker"
"This sick bastard raped and killed Jane Doe."
"Armed Robber"
"Etc Etc"
Let everybody see em get strung up. Leave them up there for a day or so and broadcast it on the evening news. Violent crimes will fall real quick.
Push your legislatures for PUBLIC HANGINGS. Thats right! String up murderes, rapist, other wacko terrorist, and especially those who comit felonies with firearms.
String them all up on main street in a small town near you with signs around their necks. "This guy was a car jacker"
"This sick bastard raped and killed Jane Doe."
"Armed Robber"
"Etc Etc"
Let everybody see em get strung up. Leave them up there for a day or so and broadcast it on the evening news. Violent crimes will fall real quick.
My half cent view.
1.)There are far too many phycologists telling far too many f*-up people that they are OK, then pumping them full of drugs to make them feel good.
2.)Self indulgence, self gratification, selfish behavior have replaced self reliance. The pursuit of happiness is now the chase for "things", not the moral pursuit of ideals it was intended to be.
3.) Decay from within. It's what killed Rome, and it's killin the US.
orsogato:
Public hanging is a bit too easy IMHO. I would prefer public impalement. It's pretty tough to be "Da man" while squirming with a pole up your a$$.
------------------
Want to feel your age?Check it out. http://web.superb.net/boy/age1.html
[This message has been edited by Hal (edited August 07, 1999).]
1.)There are far too many phycologists telling far too many f*-up people that they are OK, then pumping them full of drugs to make them feel good.
2.)Self indulgence, self gratification, selfish behavior have replaced self reliance. The pursuit of happiness is now the chase for "things", not the moral pursuit of ideals it was intended to be.
3.) Decay from within. It's what killed Rome, and it's killin the US.
orsogato:
Public hanging is a bit too easy IMHO. I would prefer public impalement. It's pretty tough to be "Da man" while squirming with a pole up your a$$.
------------------
Want to feel your age?Check it out. http://web.superb.net/boy/age1.html
[This message has been edited by Hal (edited August 07, 1999).]
Regarding the rats:
There were a couple of references in the post about things returning to “normal” after a certain amount of anti-social behavior. How was “normal” determined? Sounds like things cycled between conditions existing when the test began, and severe anti-social behavior.
How do we know that the conditions which existed at the beginning of the test are “normal?”
------------------
“The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. ... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.” -Alexander Addison, 1789
There were a couple of references in the post about things returning to “normal” after a certain amount of anti-social behavior. How was “normal” determined? Sounds like things cycled between conditions existing when the test began, and severe anti-social behavior.
How do we know that the conditions which existed at the beginning of the test are “normal?”
------------------
“The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. ... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.” -Alexander Addison, 1789
A few random, gentle thoughts...
Some years back I read the thriller The Irving Solution by Leonard Simon ( NY Avon Books 1978).
It involved the use of a Rat Ecology experiment to decipher the actions of a serial poisoner and track the criminal down. The population issue was a big issue in the story. Thankfully, the fictional poisoner would not be around for any potential sequel.
Ben Bova, who among his many achievements is associated with our stop and start space program, addressed population control issues in The High Road, a text about the value of space exploration and commercialization. He regarded the natural resources of our world as a shrinking pie which the increased global population was forcing us to slice up into smaller and smaller pieces. As it is, we are dirtying up what remains of that pie with the industrial and natural wastes of too many humans, insuring that our children and their progeny will live a radically altered world.
Bova views near space missions as a way of supplementing that pie with the unlimited resources almost within touching distance of our world. The current weakessess of the space program
began during the seventies with cutbacks and Luddite style cries about the dangers of advancing technolgy, or so Bova claims.
I am not trying to state that global overpopulation is the sole excuse for today's crime but it certainly is making life more strenuous for the rest of us with shortages, higher prices, more competition for better paying positions, etc. Criminals were once human beings, with the ability to make choices like the majority of our species. They decided to, tragically, invest in wrong choices. Factors in their lives may have contributed to a career of crime but ultimately, just about every thug made a bad choice on their own free will.
However,our culture and courts insist on probing for "excuses" for criminal action. I don't see why the violently mentally ill cannot be humanely controlled or simply put down (many of these individuals make the choice NOT to take their medication then go out and harm other folks and are slapped on the wrist like overgrown children). My thoughts may be disturbing to some but I have met some of the hostile mentally ill; they are not all cuddly and victims of an uncaring society like pro mentally illness advocates claim them to be.
Not to excuse any of the atrocities which took place on an individual or mass scale during the 20th Century but such crimes have been going on since before recorded history. The one crucial difference is that the advancing technology of the past hundred years (from mass literacy to the internet and beyond) has insured that the latest batch of atrocities are recorded in some detail for posterity while earlier crimes were often forgotten. Yet, even earlier crimes from this century - atrocities which occurred before our society "liberalized", have been mothballed into the closets of forgotten history in an effort to blame the pop culture's obsessions with sex and violence. For instance...
Fritz Lang's movie M and the more recent Tenderness of the Wolves were based on the same German serial killer who plied his deadly trade decades before any Era of Permissiveness.
Few here will recall serial murderers like Ed Gein and Al Fish. Ed was immortalized, albiet loosely, in Robert Bloch's novel Psycho. Both killed during an era when our nation was supposed to be innocent.
Depression era gangsters are reported to have used Tommyguns and BARs in addition to repeating shotguns and explosives and must have knocked off a number of noninvolved citizens as well as law enforcement personnel and rivals. What do we blame these atrocities on?
After those two morons shot up Colombine highschool, these very own forums noted that there had been even greater American highschool mass killings, one of which was initiated by an ADULT (one of those pillar of the community types) and didn't involve firearms, violent videogames and whatnot. This incident is reported to have occurred, I vaguely recall, in pre- WW II rural America.
Public hanging for violent criminals? Too merciful, I think. The only reason I don't desire mass killings of felons is because of the limitations, ineptness and outright corruption that has made many citizens suspicious about the law enforcement insititution. I have no qualms about Joe the Rapist getting griddled on the hot squat but my stomech turns when I hear about noninvolved citizens actually being framed for crimes they were totally innocent of (and I believe, for instance, that scumbags like getaway car drivers should be as fully to blame for crimes that their comrades commit as
opposed to being allowed to plea bargain their sentence down).
I may have plenty of respect for police but think this framing nonsense is absolutely contemptible. Whether the person (s) involved is a beat officer or a DA, they are as much a threat to their fellow officers and the public as any hardened con. They are traitors to the police force and should be held accountable by their fellows.
Jeff
[This message has been edited by Jffal (edited August 07, 1999).]
Some years back I read the thriller The Irving Solution by Leonard Simon ( NY Avon Books 1978).
It involved the use of a Rat Ecology experiment to decipher the actions of a serial poisoner and track the criminal down. The population issue was a big issue in the story. Thankfully, the fictional poisoner would not be around for any potential sequel.
Ben Bova, who among his many achievements is associated with our stop and start space program, addressed population control issues in The High Road, a text about the value of space exploration and commercialization. He regarded the natural resources of our world as a shrinking pie which the increased global population was forcing us to slice up into smaller and smaller pieces. As it is, we are dirtying up what remains of that pie with the industrial and natural wastes of too many humans, insuring that our children and their progeny will live a radically altered world.
Bova views near space missions as a way of supplementing that pie with the unlimited resources almost within touching distance of our world. The current weakessess of the space program
began during the seventies with cutbacks and Luddite style cries about the dangers of advancing technolgy, or so Bova claims.
I am not trying to state that global overpopulation is the sole excuse for today's crime but it certainly is making life more strenuous for the rest of us with shortages, higher prices, more competition for better paying positions, etc. Criminals were once human beings, with the ability to make choices like the majority of our species. They decided to, tragically, invest in wrong choices. Factors in their lives may have contributed to a career of crime but ultimately, just about every thug made a bad choice on their own free will.
However,our culture and courts insist on probing for "excuses" for criminal action. I don't see why the violently mentally ill cannot be humanely controlled or simply put down (many of these individuals make the choice NOT to take their medication then go out and harm other folks and are slapped on the wrist like overgrown children). My thoughts may be disturbing to some but I have met some of the hostile mentally ill; they are not all cuddly and victims of an uncaring society like pro mentally illness advocates claim them to be.
Not to excuse any of the atrocities which took place on an individual or mass scale during the 20th Century but such crimes have been going on since before recorded history. The one crucial difference is that the advancing technology of the past hundred years (from mass literacy to the internet and beyond) has insured that the latest batch of atrocities are recorded in some detail for posterity while earlier crimes were often forgotten. Yet, even earlier crimes from this century - atrocities which occurred before our society "liberalized", have been mothballed into the closets of forgotten history in an effort to blame the pop culture's obsessions with sex and violence. For instance...
Fritz Lang's movie M and the more recent Tenderness of the Wolves were based on the same German serial killer who plied his deadly trade decades before any Era of Permissiveness.
Few here will recall serial murderers like Ed Gein and Al Fish. Ed was immortalized, albiet loosely, in Robert Bloch's novel Psycho. Both killed during an era when our nation was supposed to be innocent.
Depression era gangsters are reported to have used Tommyguns and BARs in addition to repeating shotguns and explosives and must have knocked off a number of noninvolved citizens as well as law enforcement personnel and rivals. What do we blame these atrocities on?
After those two morons shot up Colombine highschool, these very own forums noted that there had been even greater American highschool mass killings, one of which was initiated by an ADULT (one of those pillar of the community types) and didn't involve firearms, violent videogames and whatnot. This incident is reported to have occurred, I vaguely recall, in pre- WW II rural America.
Public hanging for violent criminals? Too merciful, I think. The only reason I don't desire mass killings of felons is because of the limitations, ineptness and outright corruption that has made many citizens suspicious about the law enforcement insititution. I have no qualms about Joe the Rapist getting griddled on the hot squat but my stomech turns when I hear about noninvolved citizens actually being framed for crimes they were totally innocent of (and I believe, for instance, that scumbags like getaway car drivers should be as fully to blame for crimes that their comrades commit as
opposed to being allowed to plea bargain their sentence down).
I may have plenty of respect for police but think this framing nonsense is absolutely contemptible. Whether the person (s) involved is a beat officer or a DA, they are as much a threat to their fellow officers and the public as any hardened con. They are traitors to the police force and should be held accountable by their fellows.
Jeff
[This message has been edited by Jffal (edited August 07, 1999).]
Dennis. I am guessing at late 1961. I was in the air Force at the time, and was reading the article, while waiting to catch a hop home. To be safe, I would check out 1962, and maybe early 1963 although I think it was earlier than that. I believe the article was titled "THE RAT SYNDROME."
BTW. There has been a rash of shootings like the ones we have been experiencing in Russia. It was in todays paper. Russian soldiers got mad and started shooting each other.
Look at at incidence of AIDS in Africa.
All the small wars going on that our illustrious liberal press never even mentions. I heard someplace, that there were 57 seperate wars going on at one time, right now.
I read somewhere else that some scientists believe there is something in the brain that causes these anti-social type actions due to population levels. Can't remember where I read that one though.
I agree with Art when he said that although we are of a higher level than the animals, we are still subject to biological forces that we have no control over. I think that the reason it hasn't gotten worse, is because we are a higher life form; we are able to think and reason. We are more cognizant of life and death. We are also not the only creatures on the planet to make war. Chimpanzees do it. Ants do it.
I also think that unlike animals, we are aware of a higher power. Even the most remote aboriginal has some kind of religion, even if it's only the sun.
I think the Rat Syndrome may be a stronger influence in the causing of violence world wide than we may be giving it credit for. Certainly a lot of the permissiveness we have allowed our young ones hasn't helped.
While I do not condone the homosexual lifestyle, maybe there is some truth in they're saying that they were born that way. Maybe it is natures way of helping to achieve population control. I can't remember if that issue was addressed in the article or not. 38 year is a long time to remember all the details of such a technical article.
Paul B.
BTW. There has been a rash of shootings like the ones we have been experiencing in Russia. It was in todays paper. Russian soldiers got mad and started shooting each other.
Look at at incidence of AIDS in Africa.
All the small wars going on that our illustrious liberal press never even mentions. I heard someplace, that there were 57 seperate wars going on at one time, right now.
I read somewhere else that some scientists believe there is something in the brain that causes these anti-social type actions due to population levels. Can't remember where I read that one though.
I agree with Art when he said that although we are of a higher level than the animals, we are still subject to biological forces that we have no control over. I think that the reason it hasn't gotten worse, is because we are a higher life form; we are able to think and reason. We are more cognizant of life and death. We are also not the only creatures on the planet to make war. Chimpanzees do it. Ants do it.
I also think that unlike animals, we are aware of a higher power. Even the most remote aboriginal has some kind of religion, even if it's only the sun.
I think the Rat Syndrome may be a stronger influence in the causing of violence world wide than we may be giving it credit for. Certainly a lot of the permissiveness we have allowed our young ones hasn't helped.
While I do not condone the homosexual lifestyle, maybe there is some truth in they're saying that they were born that way. Maybe it is natures way of helping to achieve population control. I can't remember if that issue was addressed in the article or not. 38 year is a long time to remember all the details of such a technical article.
Paul B.