Should Guns be Allowed on Planes?

[Luke T.]

Yeah, even in the 80s in Charleston, I saw some real eye-opening stuff. And don't even get me started on my battles in Mississippi in the late 80s.

Anyway.

I feel like Uncle Sam expects us to always be in our Sunday best dress and deportment, shanek, and will make us so whether we like it or not. I don't like it either.

But you know what? I am better off. I wouldn't dream of going anywhere in a car with my kids without them strapped into a car seat. Unfortunately, there are parents to this day who let their kids run around the back seat unbelted at highway speeds.

Everytime a new law is passed telling me what I can and can't do, I get upset. I still have a resentment about recycling.

I just wish Libertarians and others wouldn't go to such extremes on the issues. I wish they would pick their battles more wisely. The majority is never going to ever want to return to allowing every Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry to carry a gun on an airplane.

You are one of many people here responsible for selling me on the idea of legalizing/decriminalizing marijuana. I will probably forever disagree with you on legalizing/decriminalizing other drugs.

If you want to talk to someone about having their hands tied over the decades, talk to a cop. We have more civil liberties than ever.

As for the Patriot Act, I have remarked on that in another topic on this forum. I believe it will eventually be repealed when the heat of passion has worn off. The signs have already begun.

 

[Luke T.]

No, you havent; not enough to show that armed passngers, who were very peaceful, now today are this big danger.

I don't think passengers are this big danger, but your pilot in your first link does.

And so do the flight attendants in one of my links.

My belief is that you can't tell the difference between a law abiding gun-toting passenger and a gun-toting hijacker at the ticket counter. So let's take away all their guns and everybody makes it home safely.

Then what's your point? Seems to me the only difference is that there's more information out there than there was, which can only be a good thing!

The lack of information of events in the past forces us to make assumptions. Your assumption being that passengers were more peaceful and deterred hijackers because they had guns. My assumption being they probably were as surly as they are now and there were no hijackings because of the novelty of international airline flying.

That is a very bigoted and untrue statement. You're turning into EvilYeti.

I don't even bother to defend myself against claims I am a bigot any more.

 

[Luke T.]

I admit I am bigoted against the South. That's because my first two wives were from Alabama and the second wife was possessed by a legion of evil spirits.

I can't even stand to hear country music any more.

But that's a personal problem I have to overcome.

I also know that when the KKK was at its peak, Indiana (which is in the North for our non-US friends) led the pack in memberships.

I also know that my home town in Connecticut had zero blacks. On purpose. We actually had to import some from New York and set them up in what was called the ABC (All Black Community) House so they could attend our schools so we got federal funds for our schools.

Now that we are waaaaaayyyyy off track (my fault), I will shut up.

I think we are at an impasse, shanek.

edited to add: The ABC House is still there today.

 

[Leif Roar]

It is obviously an anomaly!

Yes, but that doesn't mean you can ignore it. You can only ignore statistical anomalities when you are looking at trends. However, you are interested in the change caused by gun-restrictions aboard airplanes - in other words you're interested in the interface or the point-change .

Furthermore, it is not at all unexpected that you'd find such a spike just prior to the imposement of strict gun-restrictions - these restrictions were imposed because hijackings had become a problem. If hijackings hadn't increased to the level that they'd become a problem there would not have been any incentive to impose the restrictions on guns aboard aircrafts. The question is if the restrictions managed to "break" the anomality, and get the number of hijackings back to a less explosive numbers.

The sudden rise in the number of hijackings at the time can be explained by the political situation of the time, the increased availability of air-fare and of the initial success of the hijackers tempting others to do likewise. In other words, there is a suggested explanation for the rise prior to the restrictions. Unless you have an alternative suggestion to explain the abrupt drop in hijackings it seems prudent to credit this to the imposition of efficent gun-control aboard the planes.

To merely claim that "well, the number of hijackings increased sharply, so why shouldn't it decrease sharply too?" doesn't cut it, as it ignores the reasoning about why the sudden increase occured.

Furthermore, your attempts to imply that hijackings "really increased because of the gun-restrictions" by ignoring the "anomality" that caused the gun-restrictions to be instated in the first place and then point to the fact that hijackings increased from 1973 and onwards to the early 80-ties is ... not very sound. Statistically speaking, you have not even made any attempts at seeing if the rate of increase of highjackings increased in 1973, and you've completly ignored the further growth of air-transport throughout the world and the apperance of international terrorism, both factors wich one would assume affected the increase in hijackings.

 

[Earthborn]

Luke, please... I don't see how you help your argument with those horrible pictures. And since you attached them nobody can even get to the source to see when they were taken and how relevant they are to your argument. To me they look like they were taken no later than the 1920s (but I may be wrong) so it has little relevance with the time period you speak about.

If you think you need to show them, change them into links to the pages (so we can read the accompanying text!) where you got them.

If you don't, report yourself to a moderator, to let him/her make a decision. Or I will.

 

[CFLarsen]

If you don't, report yourself to a moderator, to let him/her make a decision. Or I will.

On what grounds?

 

[Suddenly]

Luke, please... I don't see how you help your argument with those horrible pictures. And since you attached them nobody can even get to the source to see when they were taken and how relevant they are to your argument. To me they look like they were taken no later than the 1920s (but I may be wrong) so it has little relevance with the time period you speak about.

If you think you need to show them, change them into links to the pages (so we can read the accompanying text!) where you got them.

If you don't, report yourself to a moderator, to let him/her make a decision. Or I will.

He helped his argument quite a bit, I thought. Shanek appears to have made a statement that such things didn't happen.

Luke said:

If this were the 50s, or even the 60s in Alabama, I could take a black man away for looking at a white woman, hang him from a tree, get my picture taken next to the corpse, and win votes to be mayor.

And shanek replied:

That is a very bigoted and untrue statement. You're turning into EvilYeti.

As far as I am concerned these types of pictures are very valuable to illustrate that when people talk about racial strife they aren't always talking about waiting for a table at Denny's

 

[Luke T.]

Luke, please... I don't see how you help your argument with those horrible pictures. And since you attached them nobody can even get to the source to see when they were taken and how relevant they are to your argument. To me they look like they were taken no later than the 1920s (but I may be wrong) so it has little relevance with the time period you speak about.

If you think you need to show them, change them into links to the pages (so we can read the accompanying text!) where you got them.

If you don't, report yourself to a moderator, to let him/her make a decision. Or I will.

I believe they were taken in the 20s, but I don't know for certain.

Part of my comments about lynchings were meant as satire, but that seems to be lost on some people.

The overall point about how our freedoms are quite secure and our civil liberties are ever increasing is still valid.

Feel free to visit the site I got the pictures from at:

http://www.musarium.com:16080/withoutsanctuary/

 

[Luke T.]

I'm going to give y'all a little peek into Luke T.'s mind again. Without the satire.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in my white suburban neighborhood library. One day, I opened up a Life magazine and there was a picture of a dead black man tied to a tree with barbed wire. He was facing the tree and was leaning backward. That photo scarred me for life with a burning hatred. That was the 1970s. But I believe the photo was taken in the 60s, maybe the 50s.

I wish I could find that photo somewhere. It has to be out there. Billy Joel used it in his "We Didn't Start The Fire" video.

And we all know about the three civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi in 1964, right? They made more than one movie about it.

And then there was the lynching of a black man in the 80s in Mobile, Alabama for no other reason than that he was black whereupon Morris Dees sued the Klan and got the mother a 7 million dollar award. The Klan couldn't pay up, and so she got and took possession of their national HQ in Mississippi. POETIC JUSTICE!

Freedom on the move.

 

[Luke T.]

The caption for the first photo I posted reads:

The lynching of Dick Robinson and a man named Thompson. October 6, 1906, Pritchard Station, Alabama.

Card-mounted gelatin silver print. 7 x 5"

The next one:

Charred corpse of Jesse Washington suspended from utility pole.

May 16, 1916, Robinson, Texas.

Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2"

The third one:

The lynching of nineteen-year-old Elias Clayton, nineteen-year-old Elmer Jackson, and twenty-year-old Isaac McGhie. June 15, 1920, Duluth, Minnesota.

Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 "

Etched (in error) into the negative: "Three Negroes lynched at Duluth, Minn. for rape. Oct, 1919 by mps"

 

[Luke T.]

From Publishers Weekly

In what came to be seen as a seminal event in the fledgling civil rights movement, two white men abducted 14-year-old Emmett from the home of a relative in rural Mississippi in August 1955. That night they tortured the boy before dumping his lifeless body into the Tallahatchie River. His crime: he inadvertently whistled in the vicinity of a white woman who happened to be the wife of one of his killers.

Amazon.com

 

[Luke T.]

Perhaps my rant last night makes a little more sense now.

I asked where the philandering Presidents are in response to your question about fistfights on planes in the 60s because neither were likely to be reported in the 60s except under the headline "LBJ's Bigfoot Love Child (Exclusive Photos Inside!)".

Those were the days when a man could drive down the road liquored up on moonshine without a seatbelt and run over a schoolteacher on his way to a negro lynching. As long as he confessed to the accident to the local sheriff in a timely manner around the bonfire cross, he was likely to only get a 50 dollar fine after the Good Old Boy discount. As for it getting reported, Jimmy Olsen was probably inside one of the robes to his left.

Yessir, we had lots of freedoms then. And I understand how some of them have fallen by the wayside. I feel your pain. I honestly do.

Now, I used to abuse my right to act like an idjit or a maniac more than the next guy, but according to the capitalist pigs at Corporate Media HQ, the population explosion has led to the number of idjits and maniacs reaching critical mass and is starting to affect the price of snow tires.

And I really don't feel like living with the possibility of having to blast my way through the skies above the purple mountains majesty on my way to The Amazing Meeting to get my picture taken with Randi.

I hope if I should one day find myself complaining to the African-American female next to me in the voting booth line about how having to wear a seat belt by law is really starting to chafe my neck red and that our civil rights are sliding down the slippery slope to subjugation that she doesn't get mad at me for losing perspective. Cause nothing scares me more than an angry black woman.

So that's what I meant when I asked about philandering Presidents. I let my skull crack open a little bit and that slipped out. I thought it was kinda funny myself.

That's how my brain works. It makes it real hard to decide on things. I was for the war in Iraq, then against it, then for it again. I was against legalizing marijuana, then for it. This stuff keeps happening upstairs and I don't know if that makes me an idjit, a maniac, or a skeptic.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

There is very little if any hijackings prior to 1968. In fact, only two years—1961 and 1965—had any hijackings at all, and they had 3 apiece. Compare that to after 1973. Only two years (1973 and 1974) reached the max levels of the pre-1968 decade, and only one year (1976) dropped below it with only 1 hijacking. The average for the post-1973 decade is 7.2 hijackings per year, and as you can see on the graph it just goes up, up, up!

OK, you've ignored my previous post showing just how dishonest your analysis of the figures was. How about answering two simple questions?

Why do you think it is appropriate to ignore 121 (1968 - 1972) of the 127 hijackings (assuming your figures for pre 68 are accurate) before 1973 in calculating the base position against which to compare the post 1973 position?

Would you accept the argument of a homeopath who ignored over 95% of the statistical results so he could claim the balance as evidence supporting "water memory"?

 

[corplinx]

I guess the point is, Its up to the airline to decide whether or not loaded firearms should be allowed on an airplane. If some airline, lets this happen, you can vote with your pocketbook.

 

[CFLarsen]

I guess the point is, Its up to the airline to decide whether or not loaded firearms should be allowed on an airplane. If some airline, lets this happen, you can vote with your pocketbook.

So, it's up to private companies to decide who dies?

I. Do. Not. Think. So.

 

[Zep]

I guess the point is, Its up to the airline to decide whether or not loaded firearms should be allowed on an airplane. If some airline, lets this happen, you can vote with your pocketbook.

In this country, you wouldn't even be able to keep that cigar in your mouth inside an airplane. In fact, dogs travel in the baggage hold.

 

[Thanz]

I guess the point is, Its up to the airline to decide whether or not loaded firearms should be allowed on an airplane. If some airline, lets this happen, you can vote with your pocketbook.

shanek said this as well, and I wonder again why you think this. First of all, no airline would allow guns - unless it was NRA Air or something. Second, airport screening and security is done for everyone at the airport at once, and is consistent for all airlines. If you want differential security, it will cost a ton to modify every airport and ensure that guns don't make it onto no guns flights. With no corresponding benefits.

Lastly, WHY do you think it should be up to the airlines? Is it up to the drivers or the car manufacturers to set the rules of the road? Why can't people be without their guns for a few hours?

 

[CFLarsen]

In this country, you wouldn't even be able to keep that cigar in your mouth inside an airplane. In fact, dogs travel in the baggage hold.

As it is, cats don't. I brought Rosine into the US in the cabin. She never said a word. (And I mean that, because she talks in her sleep. HUMAN talk!)

"Carry on (!)" Ha! I kill me!

 

[Tesserat]

I guess the point is, Its up to the airline to decide whether or not loaded firearms should be allowed on an airplane. If some airline, lets this happen, you can vote with your pocketbook.

This comes up every once in a while. The airlines can't be the ones to decide, because when an airplane flies, it flies over land that has people below it. Those people have not agreed to the risk. If a gunfight breaks out in a plane, there is a chance that the plane will crash, and kill the people on the ground.

 

[corplinx]

This comes up every once in a while. The airlines can't be the ones to decide, because when an airplane flies, it flies over land that has people below it. Those people have not agreed to the risk. If a gunfight breaks out in a plane, there is a chance that the plane will crash, and kill the people on the ground.

Weak.......