Firearms

Red wrote: sorry, but that is really dumb. The new law only has to do with where they are aloud. specifically, National Parks. Your comment has to do with the second amendment. realize the difference.

Uhh, he was being sarcastic. Realize the difference. And "aloud" = "allowed".

kirra wrote: so we're required to attach a silencer..?

ha ha, nice. good catch...

Andy Novak wrote:Uhh, he was being sarcastic. Realize the difference. And "aloud" = "allowed".

no shit -duhh. Red got it.. (;

o.k. Novak -brandish your pistol, 30 paces lets get at it..!

Red wrote: sorry, but that is really dumb. The new law only has to do with where they are aloud. specifically, National Parks. Your comment has to do with the second amendment. realize the difference.

Ya, I get that. National Parks ought to remain a safe place (and it only takes one drunk trigger happy etc...). I don't see the new law making them safer. Time will tell.

This is a fairly objective article presenting the new law and different points of view:
aolnews.com/nation/article/…

kirra wrote: no shit -duhh. Red got it.. (; o.k. Novak -brandish your pistol, 30 paces lets get at it..!

Zing.

Guns don't kill people, Kirra does.

Andy Novak wrote:Zing. Guns don't kill people, Kirra does.

haha ~good one. You still loose & the winner gets your gear

readers poll from Timmomok's link (as of right now): aolnews.com/nation/article/…;>>>>

What do you think of the new rule allowing guns in national parks?
It's a good idea 67%
It's a bad idea 31%
Not sure 2%

kirra wrote:You still loose

Loose? "Loose" = "Lose" I win!!!

Also from my link:

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees and the Fraternal Order of Police lobbied unsuccessfully against the rule change.

Like I said - objective.

Andy Novak wrote:Loose? I win!!!

no sorry -you never head it coming, I had a silencer remember..

Wehling wrote:And last, yeah, I've been confronted in an area where I had a weapon on me, but my first instinct wasn't to draw or brandish my weapon, my instinct was to defuse and create separation, I wish that was the mindset for more people out there, whether they carry or not.

Good comments -GriGri, Lauri, Tea, Wheling that's commendable. I wish everyone would think before they drew, or say "what would Chuck Norris do"...? I seem to remember that he always tried to talk things out first or am I mistaken...maybe it was that intimidating look that made folks back down

S. F. Pitman wrote:I was always taught that a gun is a tool. If it is treated as a tool, it will only be used in a utilitarian way. If one thinks of a gun first as a weapon, the likelihood that it will be used as a weapon or just more liberally than a tool is much higher.... However, other people with guns often frighten me. I can't guarantee that most people were given the meticulous training and respect for the devices that I was....

I like the "tool" teaching....(show me your tool and I may...) But seriously, it's the "other people" that worry me too. Gang warfare, drug lords, thieves, people that loot when there is an emergency situation. People that really don't care about *your* life if you happen to be in their way. If chaos ever broke out and I had to defend myself, my property or my turkey jerky -this is what concerns me

S. F. Pitman wrote:I'm pretty sure that it is still illegal to discharge them in most instances (no hunting in the park, so any animal kill would be poaching and subject to serious fines).

if we discharge in self-defense would we be fined..? I guess it would still be worth the price if it saved your life.

I've been robbed at gunpoint but it was the wrong place-wrong time. This didn't make me want to run out and purchase, it just made me more street-smart. I frequently solo in National Parks and carry a fully loaded pre-tested can o'spray within reach. I have considered in the last few years of purchasing a firearm but said I would never do it untill I took a class and was fully trained. I thought that unless I was a good enough shot to injure a person and not kill, I would never consider it. Many people told me that unless I have the intent to kill -I should never consider carrying. I have "almost" accepted this but I am still 'a bit' curious, how do others here feel..?

Wehling wrote:Also, I can say that it isn't paranoia that drives me to carry at any time. It's that old mindset from the Boy Scouts I think, "Be Prepared".

Don't even get me started on the Boy Scouts, but I can agree with the "be prepared mentality." Our ability to be prepared in the outdoors is limited by our carrying capacity. Therefore, our ability to be prepared is limited by weight/bulk.

A loaded glock 23, concealed carry handgun weighs 31 oz-about 2 pounds. Here's a list of things that are much more likely to save your life than a gun that weigh two pounds of less:
1. extra water
2. extra layers
3. personal locator beacon
4. compass/map
5. epi-pen
6. bivy sack
7. emergency blanket
8. cell phone
9. extra headlamp
10. knife
11. hatchet
12. tarp
13. ...

The point being that the security and safety of the gun is more symbolic that actual, which is okay. I just find it odd how the gun has become the symbol of security. I don't really care about you carrying it or not. Just don't expect me to schlep it.

Evan

GiGi,
I'm surprised you think I live in a nice area. I see the cops at least twice a month and there was recently a body in the dumpster next door. My girlfriend has called me twice to ask what to do about the mob forming outside our front door beating the crap out of someone. I think someone is sleeping under the bridge next to my house and several times I've had to yell at the kids smoking pot next to my house. A couple nights ago I found footprints in the snow and hand prints on my car window where someone was checking to see what was inside. Despite that it's not the worst neighborhood in town but it was all I could afford at this point in my life. On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being nice and 5 being a crime ridden ghetto I give my neighborhood a 3. I don't feel my life is in danger every day but I don't want to raise children there.

Granted, if guns are outlawed then only outlaws would have guns. I just wish we were substituting sticks and stones for guns. We're smart enough to cure disease and build fantastic structures but too dumb to not control ourselves or provide for people so they don't murder and maime.

My thought is that people make mistakes, I'd like them to not make mistakes in a national park with a gun. I doubt it's likely but I won't be surprised if the frequency of the phrase, "I thought it was a bear" increases. I also think there will be a higher incidence of destruction of property. Probably not as bad as on BLM and NFS land but more than there was before. On a climbing note, anyone been to Bullethole Rock, out by the Dynamite Shack near Junction. It'd be great if assholes hadn't sprayed the rock with bullets. What we consider a resource some consider a target.

Self-defense is obviously a huge reason people decide to carry guns. Personally I don't see the point. The first week I moved to Boston a guy tried to grab me near the train station to "show" me something. Had I been dumb enough to let him manhandle me into going with him like he was trying to he would of had the drop on me whether I had a gun or not, because I'd of been dumb. Since I told him to let go of me and get the fuck away in a crowded train station I didn't, at that point, really need a gun to take care of the situation. Had he, instead of trying to show me something, put a gun to my back, my having a gun wouldn't have done much good because it's highly likely his crack addled brain would have shot me before I shot him. Dunno, maybe I'd have a better reaction time. Not sure I'd chance it, unless he said I had a perdy mouth. Maybe that's dumb but it's something I'm willing to lose my life over. Had someone else had a gun it's not necessarily likely they would have noticed what was going on, or if they had, done anything about it. I forget when this was but when I was in college we read about a women getting beat to death in the street while a crowd of people just watched. At the time I couldn't accept the fact that nobody would do anything but over time I've learned that people are generally weak and fragile creatures mentally more so than physically.

Sorry I assumed that it was men making you insecure, that's just how it sounded to me. I'm also sorry you had to experience some of those things. I've not been without violence in my life but nothing to those degrees. I do think there is a certain paranoia that makes city life survivable as well as how one grows up. Both my parents grew up in Chicago. Things my dad does still seem weird to me. I noticed I started doing things differently when I lived in Boston. Things that seem stupid in smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas are important tools in other places. It's funny, I was dirtbagging around NH after I quit law school in Boston and the first thing I thought when some guy offered to let me stay at their house, eat with them, and use their shower was that they were going to try and rob or hurt me. I slept with a knife under my pillow. Now it seems silly, but at the time it felt justified.

Personally I feel more comfortable in the woods. I feel like I know what to do and where to hide. I don't feel that way in big cities. I feel like I've always got to look over my shoulder and watch my step. It could be the fact that I've never been assaulted by human or beast in the wild.

I think it'd be great if everyone who had a weapon could be trusted to use it only when necessary and only responsibly. But as was previously stated, just because you've got one doesn't mean you know how to use it responsibly or effectively. If just half the gun owners are like the people that have a driver's license in Colorado then we should all be much more afraid.

The whole purpose of the 2nd amendment was to keep the government from getting to far from the people. Look how well it's done for us. Besides that, taken to it's logical extent I should be able to purchase RPG's, tanks, missles, whatever I can afford for my defense from you people and the government. I like the idea of the 2nd amendment. I think we've just not put it into practice like we should have. Given the size of our military, the composition of our country and events of the past. I would be hard pressed to believe that citizens in our country could forcefully overturn our government. Please somebody prove me wrong.

jmeizis wrote:But as was previously stated, just because you've got one doesn't mean you know how to use it responsibly or effectively....I would be hard pressed to believe that citizens in our country could forcefully overturn our government. Please somebody prove me wrong.

no problem...

I don't understand why guns were disallowed in national parks in the first place. Where in the Bill of Rights does it say:

"...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed EXCEPT IN NATIONAL PARKS.”

???

Timmamok wrote:Get ready to watch the crime rate in NPS sky rocket. I guess when some idiot starts taking pop shots at me because they think I'm a bear or something scurrying through the brush I can shoot back.

This is an absolutely moronic statement. Do you honestly believe somewhere in your peanut brain, that your bubble law ever stopped someone that wanted to carry from doing so in NPs?

Laws don't stop people from breaking the law. Laws deliver repercussions when people get caught breaking the law.

John Hegyes wrote:I don't understand why guns were disallowed in national parks in the first place. Where in the Bill of Rights does it say: "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed EXCEPT IN NATIONAL PARKS.” ???

Geez, why right there in the front, where it says, "a well regulated".

Ha ha!

Cheers,

-Brian in SLC

I knew a guy once-- he wasn't a climber, but his kid had been to a birthday party at an indoor gym, and he had seen Vertical Limit. He was willing to generalize widely on climbers' thought processes and motivations. He would expound at length on the inevitable outcome of even allowing climbing on public lands. If you tried to tell him he sounded uninformed, he wouldn't even consider that it might be true.

Brandy Persson wrote: This is an absolutely moronic statement. Do you honestly believe somewhere in your peanut brain, that your bubble law ever stopped someone that wanted to carry from doing so in NPs? Laws don't stop people from breaking the law. Laws deliver repercussions when people get caught breaking the law.

Time will tell.

You seem angered by my comment.

Kirra, you think the lady because she's holding a gun AND wants to be president that she's going to allow the citizenry to overthrow her with force?

HA!

More likely she'd force legislation down our throats that most of us don't need or want while most people vapidly follow along. You might ask how could I possibly suggest such things? Well, it's only be happening for the last two hundred or so years. Ain't a democratic republic just grand!