And the NRA, “nunhucks are just two sticks tied together with twine” crowd shows up again, just for the gun and knife show…its all they care about…guns wont leave them all alone , paying child support, huh?

Yeah, sure you guys are right…only neo-cons get drunk and make mistakes…anti-war and pro-gun—still strikes me as an odd combination…where does it stop? Maybe when these people get drafted and can pursue their “rights” more fully…

If you aren’t convinced this law is a good thing, I encourage you to watch this two minute video.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8145457.stm

It isn’t outrageous or irresponsible to want to protect your family. If your argument is people will come in and break the law by drinking anyway or by carrying even though a sign is posted, then you can’t contend that they wouldn’t break the law by carrying in these places if the law was repealed. You just said, yourself, that they would do it anyway. Permit holders deserve more respect than that and everyone deserves the right to defend their lives and the lives of their families no matter where they are.

PSmith, Dave’s story is heartbreaking, as were the experiences he had, and saw, in Iraq. I’m glad the “friendly stranger” came along. (Was it you?) People who recognize a friendly tiger when they see one yet interact with them on a human level are probably responsible for helping still-wired vets like Dave maintain a sane, if wary, perception of other human beings.

Our government’s lack of concern for making the returning overstressed overdeployed vets’ readjustments as smooth and safe as possible is disgusting. the vets deserve better than what they are getting.

THE OTHER ‘WIRED’ Part 2

About things other than his first tour, Dave was quite forthcoming. On the second tour he did convoy escort duty on trucks full of supplies. At the beginning they would see four and five year old kids at the road side and they would drop them the things that they didn’t want out their rations. As the end of their tours approached they would drop whole ration packs. And several of them. Because the Vietnamese four and five year old kids were signalling to their elders when to set off explosions under the trucks. If enough supplies were dropped, they would signal on a different truck. It must have worked, because Dave made it to the end of his tour and ‘back to the world’.

He had gone to work in the local factory on his return from Vietnam. A boring job on a production line, where all the locals worked. But those who had not been to Vietnam hated him. They called out ‘baby killer’—and didn’t hide their feelings in other, more unpleasant, ways. When a two foot iron bar was thrown at his head he finally left. And set up his own gunshop and indoor pistol range, built with his Dad’s help - physical and financial. Dave had been an armourer in the army; where, when and for what unexplained.

One day a mother and son had come in when his father was minding the shop. They wanted guns with which to stage robberies so they held up the store at gunpoint. They drove his father to a nearby railway line, made him walk several yards and shot him three times. He survived. Thereafter he carried a compact .32 revolver with the hammer filed off so that it would not catch on a fast draw.

Another day ‘Dave’ explained why he had volunteered for his second tour; he missed being in Vietnam. ‘How could that be?’ the stranger wondered. So Dave explained exactly how.

On Saturday nights, on his return from Vietnam, he used to go out to a local bar, he said, and have a drink. He would get two chairs and sit on one, with his feet on the other, despite the fact that there was a big shortage of chairs. He would wait for someone to take it away from him. But they never did. And he did this for quite some time. He would be carrying several guns, he explained, including a revolver behind his back in his waistband.

Dave was still ‘wired’ alright in 1986. But not like he had been on his return from overseas. Not by a long shot.

THE OTHER ‘WIRED’

Why you probably don’t want to go drinking in Tennessee bars, or any bars, if there are newly returned Iraq War veterans in the same bar.

In 1986 a stranger to these shores went into a gun shop and asked if he could rent a handgun to learn how to shoot, as such things were not possible in his country. After a conversation and some searching questions about why the stranger wanted to learn to shoot and whether he had anything, or anyone, he wanted to shoot with said knowledge, the owner, who we will call ‘Dave’, said “You are not an Iranian or an Iraqi, you come on out the back and I’ll show you how to shoot.” Which he did on an indoor pistol range attached to the gunshop.

In the course of several months they moved through .22, .32, .38, .357, 9mm, .45, .22 converted .45, Mac 10 .45 and a Lee Enfield .303. The stranger received all the education in shooting he could have desired. It was sometime later that he came to prefer the wisdom of the Amish elder in ‘Witness’—use the Swedish chef Muppet’s accent—“Put out of the hand the gun that kills the man.”

Dave was thin and of medium height. He had a young man’s face, his hair was short and sandy coloured and his ears stuck out. Something indefinable about him looked a little ‘odd’; he bore more than a passsing resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald. But he was very kind to the stanger, visiting this strange US land, who thought that he was one of the most interesting people that the stranger had yet met; his first Vietnam veteran acquaintance. They used to chat before and after target practice and were friends, albeit that the stranger always treated him warily; quite like a temporarily friendly tiger. On who said that he always carried a pistol and always slept with a gun under his pillow.

Yes, Dave was ‘wired’, as the stranger defined the term from reading about US Vietnam veterans. Dave too had the ‘thousand yard stare’. He explained that he had done two tours in Vietnam. What he had done on his first tour he declined to answer. Operation Phoenix? The tunnels of Cu-Chi? inquired the stranger. Answer came there none. But he demonstrated that ‘thousand yard stare’. Every time he insisted on asking what Dave had done on his first tour, despite Dave’s obvious discomfort with the topic.

Decades in the future, the stranger learned that the quickest way to see post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was to ask a veteran what he had done in the war. But he didn’t know that yet.

- to be contd.

Shift:
‘Guns do not create peace, they create a balance of terror.  Some lifestyle huh?’

So, should we disarm the police?

Guns do not create peace, they create a balance of terror.  Some lifestyle huh?

Nathan Thompson, excellent comment. But inaccuracies rarely stop people from engraving their opinions in the stone of .

coloradokarl has a point, though. When our neighborhood in San Francisco became dangerously crime and drug-gang ridden, a police sergeant conducting a community meeting said that he could not say so officially but he recommended people carry a loaded .38 for self-defense when walking or jogging around alone. The school in which our youngest was about to start kindergarten was a major center for drug dealing. We couldn’t afford to move into a better neighborhood, so moved 65 miles north to a rural mixed ag/residential area.

The gangs of course eventually spread to the little towns near us, but kids were not in danger of getting shot on the playground. Before we moved, I did buy and carry a .38. The one time I forgot to carry it was the one time I was attacked and could have used it.

As we are pretty remote, nearest neighbor about a 1/2 mile away, we keep a couple guns in our house, a .357 magnum and a shotgun. Only needed the latter once, to scare away a mountain lion running around our horses and new foals, but shot it into the air as I was afraid, even with the big flashlight, I’d hit a horse by mistake.

Colorado: Carrying a legal holstered gun anywhere is allowed (you know, no courts, schools, Etc.) Elpaso county: $500.00 gets you a Concealed weapons permit. EVERYONE who can legaly own a gun can buy the permit. 16,000 permits for a population of 300,000 gets us one concealed weapon for every 50 people at the mall. I LOVE IT, I truely feel safe and wish every law abiding citizen carried a gun. Guns do not kill people, NEO-CONS Kill People….....

Goodbye. America.  You used to be a good idea.

Looks like more evolution in action to me.  I myself have probably stopped evolving, physically at least, and I don’t claim innocence, but I plan to stay out of Tennessee bars on hot Saturday nights anyway.

Wishful thinking on my part, admittedly. Then again, if one walks into a bar wish full knowledge of the patrons and more importantly, whats in their pocketses…well.

its already legal in ohio—the prob is, you CANT keep innocent bystanders out of the way.

the law, for all practical purposes, makes carryoing a gun mandatory in bars here now…its stupid as the rednecks who passed the law.

If we could keep the innocent bystanders out of the way, I wouldn’t mind so much.

Like to like, gun to gun, free-flowing whiskey and let ‘em have some fun.

Culls the herd ya know.