These mental gymnastics that take place to indicate there is no use for a firearm have been discussed in many previous posts, there are plenty of legitimate, valid uses for firearms. Multiple. Kinder surprises are illegal in the US, does that make them useless as well?
Kinder eggs have been available in the U.S. since 2018.
I didn't say anything was useless. Guns aren't useless at all, hence the debate over what they are useful for.
The other objects I mentioned can all have recreational uses as well, just like guns.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
A lot of recreational drugs are like that, even ones that are illegal. Not everyone who casually uses cocaine, molly, mushrooms, lsd, etc.. instantly becomes a fiend. A lot of people can use substances and moderate themselves perfectly fine. I personally know some very affluent business people, lawyers and accountants that use cocaine regularly.
But we make it illegal because other people can't handle it.
We make it illegal because we falsely believe that it’s a moral failing that causes addiction therefore punishment as opposed to treatment is required to fix. It’s much more akin to cancer than a crime.
Using drug laws as a reason to support gun laws is a rather poor argument given how ineffective drug laws are.
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EDIT: I guess my question becomes: why do ordinary vanilla gun owners take any talk about “gun nuts” (their psychology, predispositions, etc) so personally and as an insult? Don’t you think you’re categorically different from that type of person?
Because we get lumped in with it anyway, mentally ill trolls like duffman don't make that distinction. To him anyone with an opposing view is a gun nut Rambo cosplayer
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Because we get lumped in with it anyway, mentally ill trolls like duffman don't make that distinction. To him anyone with an opposing view is a gun nut Rambo cosplayer
Sure but, is the opinion of someone like that even worth reading? He doesn’t come close to representing the majority.
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Because we get lumped in with it anyway, mentally ill trolls like duffman don't make that distinction. To him anyone with an opposing view is a gun nut Rambo cosplayer
He said ordinary vanilla gun owners, you are beyond that, you are in compensation and or obsession territory a long time ago.
Sure but, is the opinion of someone like that even worth reading? He doesn’t come close to representing the majority.
Nah, of course not. He's just an interesting study.
Back on topic, I've always found it interesting how many people project their own wants and needs on other people. You can explain why you like something, to them, it's invalid because it's different from their life. Everything from guns, all the way down to what kind of vehicle you drive or where you live. No matter how much I explain to people why I have a large truck, they still don't understand because they don't need one.
Back to pepsi's point, the masculinity thing doesn't bother me at all, it just always makes me roll my eyes and laugh.
Remember when has was on peter12’s ass for doing the same thing?
He’s a troll. He’s admitted he doesn’t care about logical arguments. That why his rebuttals are nothing but personal attacks and non sequiturs. He’s loving this attention.
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It look identical to the C79 sight I was issued in 1993.
That's exactly what it is, a surplus elcan c79
Edit: The idea was to build a c8 clone since they re-sell for crazy. C79 (Not an a2, they're like $2000), a legit Colt Canada SA15 upper, stripped CC lower, real colt canada bolt and carrier group, then sourced the furniture from a friend that owns a business selling weapons to law enforcment.
I have a bare bones stock SA15.7 too which would also double in price in the next few years (if it was legal to sell it) but now I'm stuck with them. Oh well at least they're very neat pieces of history.
Last edited by btimbit; 05-12-2020 at 10:08 AM.
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Nah, of course not. He's just an interesting study.
Back on topic, I've always found it interesting how many people project their own wants and needs on other people. You can explain why you like something, to them, it's invalid because it's different from their life. Everything from guns, all the way down to what kind of vehicle you drive or where you live. No matter how much I explain to people why I have a large truck, they still don't understand because they don't need one.
Back to pepsi's point, the masculinity thing doesn't bother me at all, it just always makes me roll my eyes and laugh.
I think, just generally speaking here, that many people lack empathy or just have no desire to put in the minimum effort to understand people/things that are different from them. It's so much easier to categorize someone based on what they own/like (guns, tigers, tiger ice cream, anime, bicycles) or part of their identity (gay, Muslim, Christian, tiger king) instead of saying "ok, well I know of this one negative connotation with this group, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and put a little effort into some logical separation, this one individual can define how I see them."
So I definitely get that. My only recommendation for any gun owner, as someone who has experienced their fair share of being lumped in with a group or had a negative label placed on the group, is to simply ignore the ignorant crazies. But also to at least acknowledge that there are absolute wackadoos in the same (very broad) category that the majority of people have an issue with lol.
I love owning a truck and have had some wild times shooting guns. I still find the psychology behind the "obsession" element of those things fascinating though, without shovelling that weight onto the casual owners.
So I definitely get that. My only recommendation for any gun owner, as someone who has experienced their fair share of being lumped in with a group or had a negative label placed on the group, is to simply ignore the ignorant crazies. But also to at least acknowledge that there are absolute wackadoos in the same (very broad) category that the majority of people have an issue with lol.
Oh and we do. We call them "Bubbas" and laugh hysterically at their nonsense along with the rest of the world, lol.
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It's kind of funny, lots people in general and on this forum seem to have an opinion on what the typical Canadian firerarms owner looks like, what they do for a living, etc.
Most of you probably think of the American 2nd Ammendment Enthusiast/Don't Tread on Me/From my Cold Dead Hands type of guy, or maybe a "bubba" / redneck white trash dude wearing a stained wife-beater screaming about the "gubment" and giving "special rights" to non-Christians and "the gays". While I'm sure that there is a portion of the Canadian gun owner population that could probably fit into the latter category, I can honestly say that everyone that I have met, competed with, or enjoyed some beers with after the shoot has been pretty much like me. My story is fairly typical of the Canadian gun owner, with some minor differences. It's a bit of a long read, so sorry for the wall of text below.
For one, I'm an immigrant, and came to Canada as 10 year old child fleeing a civil war in my home country, that ended up tearing it apart and splitting it into six different countries that you now require a passport to travel between. I grew up here in Calgary, went to school, played many sports at a competitive level my entire life, started my first business at the age of 16, incorporated a software company at 19 with some partners, went to university, got a job in Oil & Gas IT while still running my own business, eventually got married and sold my software company, and now run a cybersecurity consulting company with my wife.
I was never exposed to firearms, apart from being shot at by snipers, tanks or artillery. When I was 19 or so my buddy wanted to go shooting for his birthday, so we all went to the Shooting Edge here in Calgary. That was the first time I handled a pistol, and I was honestly surprised that those were legal in Canada, purely out of my own ignorance. It was fun, but I didn't really care to explore what it would take to ge ta license or get one myself.
Fast forward 14 years later, my wife is told that she's going to inherit a bunch of firearms from her grandfather, and he suggests to her that she gets her license so that the government doesn't just take them. My wife didn't grow up around guns either, and she was actually quite afraid of them at the time. We both decided to get our license at the same time, and the non-restricted kind sice we didn't have any intention of owning a restricted firearm. We took the one-day course, submitted the 4 page long application, waited about 5 months for all of the background checks and reference checks to come back, and finally got them in the mail. I bought her a 20 gauge over/under shotgun to celebrate and we went skeet shooting a bunch of times, which got her hooked.
I never hunted as a child, only fished, so I was really curious about what it took to hunt an animal for sustinence/food. With everything going on in the world at the time I figured it would be a useful skill to have, even if I didn't hunt on a regular basis. So I bought a hunting rifle and scope, learned to use it properly, got pretty good with it, and tried to learn as much as possible about the art and skill of hunting (I'm not talking about dudes with four-wheelers ripping it up). I've hunted on foot throughout the Rocky Mountains, searching for that elusive Elk or whitetail buck, putting on an ungodly amount of miles on foot while carrying a 35lb pack and a firearm in thigh-deep snow.
I got into competitive shooting on a lark, got invited by a work vendor to their "Annual Turkey Shoot" sporting clays day. I ended up winning that, somehow, 2 years in a row, having never competed with a gun before. That got me hooked, honestly. Like I prevously mentioned, I was an athlete my whole life, and this kicked that competitiveness in me into overdrive. I was told by a friend to check out IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) if I was interested in competitive sport shooting. Check out a sample YouTube video to get a flavour of what it's like, this is actually a CrossFit Promo video showing how much people train for thigns like this, and gives a good sample of what the competition is like (https://youtu.be/uhjZk4EnSZM). It's one of the oldest "run and gun" disciplines, and competitors from 160 countries compete in the sport. It's basically a bunch of stages setup in a way that can be completed by you however you choose, which is why it's called a "freestyle sport". You shoot at cardboard targets that have been setup around walls and obstructions, and have scoring zones on them with a point corresponding to each zone. Add up the points and divide by your time it took to complete the stage, and that's your score. So I decided to get into it.. I didn't have a restricted license, so I had to take another course, pass another written and practical exam, complete another application, and wait another 6 months for my license to come in the mail. I bought my first pistol, and figured I'd be good to go. Nope...
In order to compete in IPSC you have to pass a thing called the "Black Badge Course", which is a 3 day course that teaches you the rules of the sport like scoring and technical/procedural rules, but also empasizes safety, safety, and some more safety. They also teach you how to safely draw your loaded pistol from a holster (and quickly), proper grip technique, magazine reloads, on the fly movement/reloads, shooting while on the move, and the most common ways to get an automatic disqualification (i.e. breaking the 90-degree plane, and trigger finger on the trigger while moving). There are a tonne of rules, and they teach and test those throughout the 3 day course. On the last day of the course you compete in what's called a "mini match" where you and your classmates compete against one another in a stage setup by the instructor. You're timed, scored, and judged to see if you break any of the rules that would DQ you. If you get DQ'd, you don't complete the course. If you do complete it, you're not done yet.
In order to get your "Black Badge" (BB) certification you have to actually register and compete in your first sanctioned match, and not get disqualified. It may take a while to do this since the matches fill up to their capacity (150-200 per day) within 60-90 seconds from registration opening. There are so many competitors waiting for the 7pm registration opening time that they're hitting refresh on the registration page like a bunch of teenage girls waiting to buy One Direction tickets (insert updated boy band refence). If you do manage to register, now you have have to complete the entire full-day match that typically involves about 8-10 stages, without getting disqualified. It's a big deal to pass, and everyone cheers for you, because it's a big rite of passage. Nobody wants to have anyone beside them that's wholly unsafe, or does stupid things, which is why the BB course is so well respected. It actually is internationally recognized as a "holster certification", meaning that each range requires either their own range holster course to be completed before you're allowed to draw a pistol from a holster, or tjat you hold the Black Badge certificate.
A lot of us are professionals, like doctors, psychologists, business owners, lawyers, accountants, etc, and there are tons of people from all walks of life, backgrounds, religions (or lack thereof).
Painting us all like crazed "gun nuts" that "fetishize" the gun, or whatever the hell that means, is wholly unfair and quite hurtful, in fact. We spend a lot of time dedicating ourselves to our sport, countless hours of dryfiring during the winter to make sure we can be a 1/2 second better next year, to the countless thousands of dollars spent each year on ammo for training and competition, to travel for competitions, to gear purchase and upgrades, and all of the other things associated with it.
I went, in about 6 short years, knowing nothing about firearms and guns, to effectively being an "expert" and an amateur gunsmith. I do all of my own light gunsmithing work (i.e. no milling or machining) and have tuned my pistols for competition numerous times. I do all of my own repairs and maintenance as well.
I can honestly identify what kind of make/model/caliber something is (90% of the time) from a quick picture or 1/2 second TV shot, and now I'm that guy that yells at the TV when something is "unrealistic or doesn't work that way in real life" LOL
Like anything in life, if you care about something you'll try to learn all you can about it and be the best you can be at it.
So please don't make me out to be some lonely crazy guy clutching his gun and his bible yelling at the clouds. For one, I don't even own a bible....
Last edited by Envitro; 05-12-2020 at 11:10 AM.
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