A great big straw man argument again.

A bomb would have worked just as well (as it recently did in Finland). Or poisoning consumer products (remeber Tylenol?). Derailing a train. There's lots of ways to kill randomly without guns. Happens all the time.

Recent news suggests strongly that the perps of these shootings are attempting extortion--they may not actually be insane, but rather simply sociopaths.

Rant as you will, *I* don't think it's an accident at all that most of the early shootings happened in Maryland rather than Virginia. Of course, now that their confidence is up after so many successful shootings they're now getting cocky and operating closer to home. I think they're ultimately going to be apprehended there.

Or shot. Depends who gets to them first.

I see your point, but I stand by my remarks -- and recommend that you avoid writing paragraphs that are that easily misinterpreted, especially when read within the context of your entire post in this entire thread.

And such injustices amount to active support of evil by the legal apparatus and judiciary of the United Kingdom. What periwigged sons of bitches. What idiocy. What immorality.


When violence is occurring, countervailing violence is not at all wrong -- pacifists notwithstanding. People with martial-arts backgrounds such as myself understand this. One gets it in any self-defense class, armed or otherwise, and the principle is the same regardless of the tools used.

Pacifism isn't a sustainable philosophy. It is only practicable within bounds guarded by non-pacifists, for one; but what really keeps pacifism from taking over the world is that under lethal assault, either the pacifism or the pacifist must die. If you can manage to crowd a pacifist hard enough, they hoist the Jolly Roger anyway.

You quoted my post where I said 'from a distance', and then went on to answer like you did...
And that's a good reason for giving a means to anonymously and easily murder from afar?

Ah, I forgot - guns can be used for good as well as evil.

It would have been a lot harder for him to do so. (you cite breaking into somebody's house at night as comparable, which it isn't: it requires personal physical involvement and locational presence, both of which are absent in the sniper case)

If I got a rifle with a noise/flash suppressor and got on the roof of my house, I could easily kill several people, and most likely nobody would ever find out that I did it. The sniper is doing something very similar. I can get a rifle from a local gun show, no questions asked. All that stops me from being a successful serial murderer is the motive. All the tools are right there, it'd only take me a couple of minutes to do it.

It was only a matter of time until somebody cunning started exploiting a very obvious means of terror. Now that it's begun, and that everybody realises how pathetically easy it is to terrorize millions and millions of people using only a rifle and a van, whilst displaying the inability of state and federal law enforcement to deal with it, the genie will never be stuffed back into its bottle.

A bomb requires knowledge of assembly and materials involved, as well as the know-how to make it, place it, get away unnoticed, and detonate from afar. While a smart individual can do most of that reasonably easily, I can - as mentioned above - become a successful murderer with much greater ease using a rifle.

There are no 'Bomb Shows' for private citizens - they are reserved for heads of state and ministers of war. I wonder what the FBI would do if I built a couple of bombs and started selling them to the highest bidder in my backyard. Apples and oranges.
Strange. I don't see CNN reporting 24/7 about that. Terror is being inflicted right now in your backyard, and all it takes is a gun and a van. Pandora's box has been opened, and it contained FMJ rounds.

Sure, you can easily derail a train. But what tool is being used to intimidate millions, kill (potentially) dozens, and get a nation to hold its breath? It's not al-Qaeda training camps, it's not American Airline jets flown into buildings, it's not WMDs being stockpiled by a dictator at a secret Middle East location. It's a guy with a rifle.

As an aside, I think your flame baiting ("rant as you will", which is an obvious provocation) requires a bit of moderation. Maybe dave/dhamsaic is willing to mod this forum, and bring his well-exercised tempering approach to your posts. ;-)

X.

PS: I'd love to see some of the people voicing their pro-gun beliefs going up to the families of the murdered victims, looking into their eyes, and saying "Guns don't kill people." Especially to the husband who saw his wife dying right in front of his eyes, or the six (?) children of the man shot at the Manassas gas station.

I wouldn't want to be one of these guys right now!
 

from Reuters

He said he could not confirm widespread media reports that one of the two was John Allen Muhammad, a former U.S. soldier, also known as John Allen Williams. "Attempts to verify their identities are being made right now," he said.

So are we talking Gulf War Vet?

If thats the case, do we ever consider the impact on American society of constantly submitting fragile psyches to war making. X is right to a point about the circularity of violence. He IMHO is wrong however when it comes to allowing ourselves to be victims or in not trusting people to make their own decisions.

(Of course these two may have been setup by the real sniper, time will tell.)

One of the pics i saw (Wired Mag Online report i think) the guy was wearing a camo top, looked like a military mugshot.

No, it didn't.

Well, fortunately, *this* forum is still part of The Cellar. A curious notion of "tempering", but then others have observed your philosophy leans toward coercive collectivism in other ways too.
Not true. Take multiple shots from your roof and pretty soon the cops will be at your door; they know how to draw lines on a map. The shooter's location is known for each of these murders...these perps have evaded as long as they have through mobility.

There are all kinds of way of comitting mayhem.. When they occur, they all get their "15 minutes of fame" on CNN, whether train wreck or Tylenol. Too bad your memory is so short.

Now that suspects are in custody, perhaps anger can be properly focused on *them* rather than inanimate objects, which is as pointless as getting angry at the hammer after hitting your thumb with it.

I quoted your post where you said anonymously. And if you really want to get technical change what I said to bow and you can have your distance.

I don't think there was much "dying". She was alive, and then she was dead. Such is the nature of getting shot in the head with an expanding/fragmenting round.

The man with six children was Kenneth Bridges, shot near Fredericksburg, many many miles from Manassas. The shooting in Manassas was of Dean Harold Meyers, of whom no children have been mentioned.

I know it's nitpicking, but I've been following the case closely. Plus, two of those people were shot ~8 miles from my house. So that kinda automatically puts me into the "interested in the case" group.

...submitting to the US military... as opposed to the people who are supposed to defend the country if the military doesn't: the militias? I'm sure you don't want to go there;

...or as opposed to paramilitary groups who are ANTI-U.S. -- as may be the *actual* case in this situation?

...and don't you maybe have it backwards: maybe the warlike are attracted TO the military instead of CREATED BY it, in which case:

...isn't firing rifle rounds at the enemies of the US really the most ideal place for them, especially for a guaranteed amount of time during their most angry youth? And isn't rigid order likely to improve their chance to learn to make it through life without killing those who aren't the perceived enemy? And anyway,

...if a handful of random people are killed, whilst 300 million people who represent the biggest voice for freedom in the entire world are defended, is that such a big problem?

It is my position that sending Americans into Iraq had no connection to defending the US but actually weakened us.

Lets consider the psycho, he joins the US Army for whatever reason, (maybe because he is warlike) he and his unit go to Iraq, he eventually realizes that he has been tooled. He starts noticing the big thank you the other Vets are getting when their GW Syndrome is denied, maybe notices the civilian body count in Iraq. He starts to wonder, who are the good guys? What drove him from sheep dog to wolf?

I understand the theory about defending the US. But don't quite see how it weakened us. It gave us more soldiers with real experience, that can't weaken the military.

That's an awful lot of fantasy masquerading as proof.

Assuming he's capable of, interested in, and motivated by such complicated moral calculus, the truth is that he could have come to similar conclusions following *any* military activity. There will be no world violence in where there is a 100% clear moral situation, especially for those who are directed to kill.

And no peace unless there is a set of people who are willing and trained to kill. Negotiations are backed up by force; that's how it works, that's how has to work.

But the US Military is 100% volunteer, and everyone who enters into it knows that they may be put into harm's way for political purposes.

Gulf War 1 created more enemies for the US, so we're weakened even if our military isn't IMHO. It could be argued that we used up a lot of equipment, weakening us as well, but I'm more concerned with our helping to radicalize the mid-East .

They just make the mistake of assuming that they've joined an organization that has something to do with protecting America.

Last time I checked the whole point of the military was to "serve" the country. That usually includes protecting it. Luckily for us our Military is strong enough that it doesn't have to spend a lot of time protecting us.

True. Reminds me of Bush and Iraq.

Oh, you mean the operation where by the request of the Saudi government, the major Islamic country that contains the two major Islamic sites, we turned back a non-Islamic-oriented dictator bent on threatening and/or taking over the middle east and 44% of the world's oil? I guess you're taking bin Laden's word on this one, but damn.

Yes, at the request of another unrepresentative mid-East government, whose rule is also threatened by radical Islam, we station mostly Christian soldiers in the heart of Islam. True, we did turn back a secular thug who we previously used against radical muslims from Iran. See how complicated things get when you expand the militaries role to protecting American "interests" rather than America. Yes, I understand we've done that since Jefferson but it doesn't make it right.

What Bin Laden claims, happens to be the outlook of the radical Islamists we have chosen to engage.

It's damn near impossible to tell the difference between defending the US and defending the US' interests without benefit of hindsight.

As far as coddling militant Islam goes, ha! ha! Yes, just being near them to defend their land is something they find unacceptable. It turns out that just breathing and living freely under something other than Sharia law is an offense punishable by jihadic death. If we hadn't pissed them off by defending their land, I'm sure they would have found something else to hate about us, just as they have with just about everyone, all around the world.

In comparison to the millions of military servicemen of the US *and* of the rest of the international coalition who returned home peacefully, satisfied with a job well done and with no beef towards their own countries. Ah, but those guys don't prove your point, do they?

No, they don't prove my point. Most soldiers can and do come home and are productive citizens. There will always be a few, however, that can't handle the stresses involved and will come back as trained killers with serious mental problems. I need to be careful here because I still think he's responsible for these murders but I want to point out that this event could be another unanticipated outcome of intervensionism.

You seem to be finally coming around to understanding that many nations that don't subscribe to democracy and capitalism are mired in an endemic cultural and social problem that'll react very aggressively to interference.

You used the shame/guilt culture approach, which is all fine, but more importantly, many countries where religion plays an important role in public life are so strictly dogmatic in their cultural beliefs that any enemy is automatically demonized. Since the US has been at the forefront of - in their eyes - sometimes-questionable foreign initiatives (and this isn't the place to debate their worth), the US will be the enemy for a long time to come.

Everybody allied with the US and aiding them, i.e. pretty much everybody in the West who isn't categorically opposed to American support of Israel, the US invasion of Afghanistan, and US aggresion in Iraq - as well as US interests in the middle east - becomes associated with the enemy, and a target.

The only way to solve this is either by stepping back and not getting involved politically and financially in the Mid-East or Asia, or throwing the full force of the US military, hopefully backed by the UN, against every single militant dictatorship out there, taking them down one by one, and enforcing democracy on them.

Anything short of that will leave a worrying number of militant activists, who will - possibly with state-support - continue to create situations of terror and death. Even enforcing democracy will still leave considerable numbers of terrorists, but it's likely that extended periods of self-determination will reduce that factor. Supporting a dictatorship friendly to the US will lead to terrorism and prolonged anti-Americanism. (see also S-Arabia, Iran)

It's all or nothing. And since 'all' is essentially politically impossible in the US (and the UN, for that matter), it willl be a little war here, a little war there, a US general appointed as governor of Iraq, more agitation here, and increased militant muslim aggression over all of it. One day, when a terrorist group actually does get its hands on a nuclear device, we will reap the consequences of this approach.

Once more - the 9/11 terrorists were mostly Saudi-Arabian. Even the US stauchest allies (and I'd like to use 'our staunchest allies' at this point) have a large anti-American group of people who are breeding terrorists even as we speak. When acting, it must either be a complete victory, or a complete retreat.

X.

I agree with all of that. Maybe "nothing" would have been better, but at the same time, maybe inevitably impossible too.

A culture, a school of thought, is unproductive and winds up controlling only areas of the world that are seen as unneeded. The school of thought survives, however, because of its extremely insular and tribal nature. It protects its own at all costs because that is the only way to survive in the desert, or in the mountains, where so little else survives.

Other cultures or schools of thought become more productive, overtake desireable areas of the world, learn how to be even more productive. They struggle with how to divvy up the stuff they produce, and the power that comes with the new powers of production.

All of a sudden all that productivity learns to take advantage of the stored energy of oil, and almost by accident, the worst of that insular, unproductive, tribal culture gets the gift of half the world's most important resource. What had only been sand, the world's least important...

Perhaps Allah saw His guys falling behind and wanted to gift them back into being players? Nope. It was merely an accident. But now, they *have* to deal with the rest of the world, because it is too important to the rest of the world. What happens now?

How did Kissinger put it? "The oil fields are too important to be left to the Arabs." paraphrase, can't find the quote.

Has anyone seen this documentary? Was it any good?

Not the quote you were thinking of ... but an interesting one, nonetheless:

(from the documentary web site) "Instead, the documentary exposes the White House and US State Department's hidden agenda in the Gulf as well as the Pentagon's use of radioactive ammunitions made of uranium 238."

It's not a secret that they use ammunitions made of U238, otherwise known as "depleted uranium". It's basically what's left over after the more useful U235 is taken out. It's a very heavy metal, twice as dense as lead and is used in munitions meant to pierce armor.

It's also used in civilian aircraft, and it's used to transport radioactive materials because it absorbs gamma radiation better than lead.

It is lightly radioactive, but almost all the radiation it produces is alpha or beta particles. It is dangerous if you find it IN your body; alpha particles are stopped by skin, and beta stopped by clothing. But if you find munitions inside your body, chances are you have a much worse health risk at hand.

It also produces a light amount of gamma radiation, but no more than you find in the background. DU is "60% as radioactive" as U235 but the 40% it's missing is the highly dangerous gamma particles.

It's not surprising that folks have pounced on emotionally-laden terms like "radiation" and "uranium" to produce scare pieces. Some will say that it's dangerous because if exploded it can be airborne and breathed in. That is the worst danger, I think, that is a legit concern. But you also get a dose of inhaled alpha particles if you smoke cigarettes, and the battlefield is not exactly a no-smoking area. It's dangerous by design.

Call me paranoid but i wouldn't want people living in areas full of depleted uranium shells and i certainly wouldn't want to wear a jacket made of the stuff, would you? Alpha and beta particles are like wrecking balls for your DNA, it's a risk i'd rather not take personally.

Gee...not in mine, I hope.

I suppose it's used for ballast and counterweights. I know there's a "bobweight" on the stabilator on "my" Cardinal (ownership shared with nine other pilots). I think that's made of lead or steel, though.

Sam Donaldson on cnn/wolf just said that if Muhammad is "convicted" he'll be kicked out of the Nation of Islam.

Now, that's a fate worse than death.

Nah, they'll just relegate him to passing out The Final Call at I-57 and Halsted in south Chicago.