For those who don't know, BAG stands for Buy A Gun. This is an Internet "meme" started by a guy in the US a coupla years ago. April 15th is the day on which all USA people must settle accounts with the Taxing Authority. (IRS)
This Aaron fellow (he has a web site but I don't remember its URL and it's been defaced by mohammedans anyway) thought that a good protest against the State would be for everyone who could, to buy at least one gun on April 15, the tax-due day.
It's in the tradition of the Boston Tea Party, and the American Revolution.
I bought a nice little Marlin .22 rifle.
Being Canadian, I don't understand the point of buying a gun when you should be filing taxes.
I have no interest in owning a gun, and I generally don't participate in days with commands for names. Like Buy Nothing Day.
"Because I want one, and I'm a free citizen of a Republic" sounds like a good enough reason to have one, for me. Besides, a bolt-action .22 rifle hardly counts as a nasty "defense" gun, it's (for me) mostly a way to have an enjoyable mental discipline while poking holes in paper at a distance.
This being Patriots' Day (April 19) in at least two American States reminds me of another reason to be armed; this is the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, "...where ... the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the World."
Those "embattled farmers" were resisting the forces of the British Crown who were on their way to confiscate (steal) privately-held military-grade artillery and gunpowder.
There were also some complaints about taxes then and there, I remember reading; I think that's why Aaron chose April 15 for Buy A Gun day.
I think, and I think the people who fought it thought, that the American Revolution was done for the purpose of restoring and protecting the ancient rights of Englishmen, foremost among them the right to keep and bear arms.
Read the Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights (from 1689,I think), both sadly ignored in your country these days.
We improved on your Bill of Rights, with ours; you don't have to be Protestant to bear arms here.
to answer you points, by the numbers:
1. I think that may be sometimes true for some, but mostly not. I recall a cousin who was quite well-armed, who chose to do himself in with car exhaust gas in an enclosed garage. His dad did use the Hemingway, or 12-bore, method, but I attribute that to his having been an infantryman in New Guinea. Personally, I've spent most of my adult life more or less depressed and have never considered offing myself over it. Must be my Celtic temperament, or something.:-)
I did know one person who I thought was much less depressed than I who killed himself. My personal opinion is that some people will suicide at the slightest setback and some will sometimes feel too depressed to eat but will never think of killing themselves.
Oh, and poison is not nearly so messy. Snork.
2. This problem can be avoided by always observing the Four Rules of Gun Safety, to wit:
1. Always treat the gun as if it is loaded.
2. Never point it at anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off of the trigger until you are ready to shoot. and
4. Be sure of your target and what's behind it.
3. Um, "attacker steals your weapon"? No, you shoot him before he gets that close, or you're not resolute enough to have one safely. I don't choose to exercise the aweful responsibility to carry a piece in public (though my quite small girlfriend does) but I assure all that anyone coming into my house through, say, my bedroom window at 3:00 am is welcome to the contents of my "other" gun, just not the gun itself.
A lot of people who are very likely NOT trained are registered to vote and treat the franchise like a toy. Hence the reason this "Democracy" seems like the world's stupidest idea. (Oh, and I'm at least half-serious about that!)
crys, the Sweetie lives in Georgia. No matter, you're probably safer walking around anywhere in Florida than in any big city in Canada, the British Isles, the Northeastern US, or Kali-fornia, precisely because the honest people just might be armed, here. In those other places I mentioned, only the criminals are armed. Government employees count as criminals, too, as far as I'm concerned.
I've read that those of you who live in UK are about to be even more insultingly disarmed; something about a knife confiscation program?
What's next? Will you not be allowed to have sharp sticks?
FUBAR, could you explain what you mean by that? It seems to me that you've used an emotionally evocative image to propagandize a gun as a tool of coercion.
I think of a gun as a tool of liberation. I note that you claim to live in Finland, whose inhabitants used personal weapons to good effect against the bolsheviks from across the border.
Yes, Gareth, but if you, or I, don't personally screw up with firearms, we won't kill anyone. (by accident, anyway) Are you afraid of someone else shooting you either accidentally or on purpose? The answer to the former fear is good firearms training for all, and to the latter good government and good manners.
Good government and good manners are in decline, these days, in what used to be called Western Civilization. I would like to see you, as a father, and as someone I think I might like if I met him, at least as well armed as the barbarians.
What's next? Will you not be allowed to have sharp sticks?
The Wadeye (a native Aborigine community in the north of Australia) are currently having trouble, as in the inhabitants are being evacuated to Darwin-type trouble, because of two local gangs killing people with "sharp sticks". Here in Australia we call them "spears" and they make lethal weapons.
Alison
...Owhell, I'll continue if others do...
Quoting FUBAR: "...When someone has a gun, it doesn't matter who the person on the other side of the gun is. It does not discriminate. Big, small, rich, poor, black, white, religious, atheist, you get the point. When someone has a gun, all men are equal..."
Umm, not exactly. When *everyone* has a gun, all men are equal. This gives us democracy, which I regard as inferior to government by a perfectly virtuous monarch.
I think something in between is about right, considering average human fallibilities.
I'm willing to put up with a republic of the kind we used to have here in the States before the Constitution was so obviously and outrageously ignored.
N.B., Democracy is the system which murdered Socrates, and also the system by which two wolves and a lamb decide what's for lunch.
If the lamb had a pistol...
To couldbecousin:
I've been horribly angry at people both before and after I armed myself, and it never occured to me to shoot any of them. This may have to do with my arming myself late in life (post 40 years) so that when I get angry at someone I don't instantaneously think of a gun, or it may be my consciousness that possession of a firearm is a tremendous responsibility which requires one to exhaust all lesser means of self-defense before using one.
Believe me, if you've shot one of the things just a time or two, and you're a decent rational person, you'll exert every effort to avoid even getting into a situation in which you might have to shoot somebody.
The rifle I bragged about buying on the 15th of April was a *boy's* rifle, dammit!
I was just trying to catch up on my education: A piece like that one was a common Christmas or birthday present for an eight-year-old in my country when I was eight. I'm trying to catch up on some missed education, here, guys and gals!
Self-defense is an excuse! (and a damned life-saving good one, on occasion!)
and defense or offense for one's country's sake are also good excuses, but, I must admit, I just like to shoot guns for fun, and poke holes in paper targets, for the sake of the mental discipline which I think is good for me.
There, I've said it.
I think that's a mostly harmless, if not praiseworthy perseveration.
Just how much of your lifespan did you spend to earn the value of those possessions? Someone who steals them has effectively stolen that part of your life. If he's like a lot of criminals, I betcha he wouldn't mind stealing all of your life, just to shut up a witness. Some people are just bad.
That said, it take a helluva lot to get me to use deadly force of any kind against any form of life as high as a mammal. (I have no problem with swatting mosquitoes.)
I remember the time when Uziel Peaches Dexron Felix Dzerzhinshky, my kitty, was interrogating an Enemy of The People (a rat).
The kitty was very happy, and purring, but the rat was confessing in a way that creeped me out. The rat being already crippled, I determined to dispatch it, and whacked it on the head good and hard with a baseball bat.
That was revolting. The rat did the "de-cerebrate posturing" we've read about, and stopped twitching after a while. I had a bad dispute with my stomach for a while.
The cat refused to have anything to do with me socially for a couple of days.
So, yes, I determined experimentally that I'm right squeamish about killin'.
I'm happy to participate in autistic tangential thread drift.
IMHO, there are more people on the planet, than there are useful things for them to do.
Being partial to auties, I'd try and see that the auties were better-armed than the rest, before the inevitable crunch comes.
(To get back on topic)
Snork.
I absolutely refuse to say how serious I am, about what I just wrote, above. Serious inquiries will be referred to my lawyer.
Non-serious inquiries will be answered by myself, in a light-hearted, good-humored kind of way, if I choose to answer.
No, really, I'll try to earnestly and honestly answer anyone posting here, I just was feeling liability-and-lawsuit fear from my previous post.
Never forget the Four Rules:
1.All firearms are loaded.
2.Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you're not willing to destroy.
3.Keep your finger off of the trigger unless your sights are on the target.
4.Be sure of your target, and what's behind it.
Obeying these rules at all times will, I think, keep you from shooting yourself or others by accident. As for shooting people on purpose, that's between you, the law, and your conscience.
For pictures of bad examples of social-monkey people with guns, look at
http://idiotswithguns.blogspot.com
Monkeys ain't got no business with guns. Snork.