I own a gun!

There's one reason that I've never heard mentioned, but is nevertheless high on my list. I believe that it's a moral responsibility for all motorists to carry at least a small-caliber pistol. I don't, because of draconian D.C. gun laws (I have to drive through it every day). But several times over the last few years I've come across injured wild animals by the side of road, for whom veterinary attention was not an option. I could have made things a lot easier for them if I had my pistol with me. This was instilled in me as a kid, after an incident with an opossum, where if my parents had not had a revolver in the car, the critter probably would have lived for another hour or so. No, we weren't the ones who hit it.

I can just imagine what the response to this post is going to be.
 
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Buckaroo said:
There's one reason that I've never heard mentioned, but is nevertheless high on my list. I believe that it's a moral responsibility for all motorists to carry at least a small-caliber pistol. I don't, because of draconian D.C. gun laws (I have to drive through it every day). But several times over the last few years I've come across injured wild animals by the side of road, for whom veterinary attention was not an option. I could have made things a lot easier for them if I had my pistol with me. This was instilled in me as a kid, after an incident with an opossum, where if my parents had not had a revolver in the car, the critter probably would have lived for another hour or so. No, we weren't the ones who hit it.

I can just imagine what the response to this post is going to be.
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Ax, in the trunk. But I imagine that most people wouldn't be able to bring themselves to doing that. Still, and ax in the trunk is very useful, even just a small camp ax.
 
GreNME said:
I'm not wrong just because you say so, but it would be fabulous if you could share why you think so. Bringing up the Olympic (and other) sporting events is going to bring us around in circles, because many of those same sporting events (including at least one session of the Olympics) involved shooting live game before it was decided instead to use targets.
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Of course you're not wrong just because I say so. You're wrong because you're not right. Because you're incorrect. Because what you're saying is a straw man of your own construction. The purpose of guns is many fold, killing things being only one of them. Many fold like the purpose of a car. I've used mine on a few occasions to pull fence posts. Many fold like a hammer. I used one just today to scratch away some soil to level a fence panel. Many fold like a spade, another tool I used today for cutting some ivy and levering up the ends of fence panels, not for digging. It would take a person lacking objectivity to believe those things are made for single purposes. Oh wait, you go on to say...

The purpose of a gun is to kill, the purpose of a plane is to fly, the purpose of a gun is to drive, the purpose of a hammer is to pound in (and sometimes remove) nails. A spade is a spade is a spade. There's nothing wrong with having fun not killing with an instrument designed purposefully to kill, otherwise a whole lot of things would be illegal.
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Something like 10 billion rounds of ammunition are manufactured in the US each year. Plain old American citizens buy and use somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 billion rounds. Hardly any of them are using those bullets in devices other than guns. And a few less than 7 billion people (or deer or ducks or coyotes or rabid raccoons) get killed here each year. So those guns, which were clearly made for more than a single purpose, are quite apparently being used for target shooting at a ratio of what, some hundreds of millions to one?

See? You're wrong. But carry on boxing with your straw man. You're kicking his butt. You might have more fun shooting him though. I'd be glad to take you out to try it sometime.
 
Buckaroo said:
There's one reason that I've never heard mentioned, but is nevertheless high on my list. I believe that it's a moral responsibility for all motorists to carry at least a small-caliber pistol. I don't, because of draconian D.C. gun laws (I have to drive through it every day). But several times over the last few years I've come across injured wild animals by the side of road, for whom veterinary attention was not an option. I could have made things a lot easier for them if I had my pistol with me. This was instilled in me as a kid, after an incident with an opossum, where if my parents had not had a revolver in the car, the critter probably would have lived for another hour or so. No, we weren't the ones who hit it.

I can just imagine what the response to this post is going to be.
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Wow! A gun proponent has just come up with a reason for carrying a gun that I agree with!

I don't think it's enough of a reason to be arming the entire population, especially in cities, but it's one hell of a compelling argument for a very very rural area.

Rolfe.
 
GeeMack said:
Of course you're not wrong just because I say so. You're wrong because you're not right. Because you're incorrect. Because what you're saying is a straw man of your own construction. The purpose of guns is many fold, killing things being only one of them. Many fold like the purpose of a car. I've used mine on a few occasions to pull fence posts. Many fold like a hammer. I used one just today to scratch away some soil to level a fence panel. Many fold like a spade, another tool I used today for cutting some ivy and levering up the ends of fence panels, not for digging. It would take a person lacking objectivity to believe those things are made for single purposes. Oh wait, you go on to say...
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So you take the "everything looks like a nail" approach. That's fine. The problem with what you're saying is that a gun hurls an object from its barrel at extremely high velocities. Exactly what "many fold" purposes can you come up with?

GeeMack said:
Something like 10 billion rounds of ammunition are manufactured in the US each year. Plain old American citizens buy and use somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 billion rounds. Hardly any of them are using those bullets in devices other than guns. And a few less than 7 billion people (or deer or ducks or coyotes or rabid raccoons) get killed here each year. So those guns, which were clearly made for more than a single purpose, are quite apparently being used for target shooting at a ratio of what, some hundreds of millions to one?

See? You're wrong. But carry on boxing with your straw man. You're kicking his butt. You might have more fun shooting him though. I'd be glad to take you out to try it sometime.
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Looks like the only strawman being boxed is the one you've built. I already said that conflating the goal of the shooter with the purpose of the gun. I also already pointed out that the mechanics of a firearm have been utilized for other purposes (nail gun), but those things aren't firearms.

So, again, what are the other purposes of guns outside of hurling a projectile at massive speeds at a target? If none, what is the purpose of hurling projectiles at massive speeds at a target? S & Gs?
 
GreNME said:
The purpose of a firearm isn't necessarily to kill a human, but make no mistake that the sole purpose of a firearm-- despite how an owner may use it-- is to kill, and to kill from a distance. Much like with bows and crossbows, some of the mechanics of what guns do have been modified to have alternate utilitarian purposes-- a nail gun, for instance-- but firearms themselves are built to kill from a distance. I see no need to try to avoid that fact.
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So basically the purpose of a firearm is to kill even when its purpose is not to kill. That makes a certain kind of sense, I guess.

edited to add re your comment further down, what purpose to hurling an object at great speed out of a barrel? Nobody has yet addressed how we are to deal otherwise with varmints.

Next time I get a sick animal staggering into my yard, how about I call you? I'll hand you a tennis racket and you can decide whether to diagnose rabies or distemper.
 
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GreNME said:
So, again, what are the other purposes of guns outside of hurling a projectile at massive speeds at a target? If none, what is the purpose of hurling projectiles at massive speeds at a target? S & Gs?
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Cool. I'll take that as your admission that you were wrong in saying, twice, "[...] the only purpose of a gun is to kill." Because after your building the straw man, you certainly wouldn't be continuing by moving the goalposts, would you? :)
 
GreNME said:
The purpose of a firearm isn't necessarily to kill a human, but make no mistake that the sole purpose of a firearm-- despite how an owner may use it-- is to kill, and to kill from a distance.
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No, you're still wrong... again. Seems you have some problem being consistent. You are wrong about a particular thing, twice. You are shown to be wrong. You admit to being wrong. Then you go say the same stupid wrong thing again. :rolleyes:
 
GeeMack said:
No, you're still wrong... again. Seems you have some problem being consistent. You are wrong about a particular thing, twice. You are shown to be wrong. You admit to being wrong. Then you go say the same stupid wrong thing again. :rolleyes:
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NTSA.jpg
 
*pokes head in*

Ooops. I thought this was the gun show.

Does anyone know where I can get a gently used FNP .40 with Tritium night sig....

I'll leave now.
 
JoeyDonuts said:
*pokes head in*

Ooops. I thought this was the gun show.

Does anyone know where I can get a gently used FNP .40 with Tritium night sig....

I'll leave now.
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Should've hit me up at Christmastime. FN Manufacturing is one of our clients, and I was offered bargain basement close-out prices for the models their factory made, but I already have the FNP-9 and was holding out for the .45.

Could've gotten you a .40 right off the showroom floor for under $300. :(
 
Drudgewire said:
Should've hit me up at Christmastime. FN Manufacturing is one of our clients, and I was offered bargain basement close-out prices for the models their factory made, but I already have the FNP-9 and was holding out for the .45.

Could've gotten you a .40 right off the showroom floor for under $300. :(
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FN at good prices! Damn, they make some of my favorite guns. Well, I don't have my handgun permit (which is required in New York to own any pistol) yet so it isn't like I could have jumped.

Still, the FN 9, and the FN Five-seveN are so sweet.
 
tyr_13 said:
Still, the FN 9, and the FN Five-seveN are so sweet.
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My complaint with the FNP-9 is it's so elitist. I made the mistake of shooting crappy Blazer ammo through it and it's been giving me problems ever since. As a result it's gone into storage until I get around to servicing it. They warn against shooting anything other than military-grade ammo through them in the manual but seriously, for $500+ retail should that really be an issue?

Not only did my Glock handle the same ammo without any problem, IT HANDLED THE EXACT SAME BULLET. 15,000+ rounds and exactly one misfire which was the fault of bad ammunition (tried it twice). I love my FN because it was my first semi-auto, they're one of our clients, they're a work of art when disassembling and shooting a gun made within driving distance is pretty cool... but in a life-or-death situation I'm much more comfortable trusting Austrian weaponry. :cool:
 
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