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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
43 posts |
Apr-01-14, 09:06 PM (EDT) |
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"A Musing Upon Firearms"
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The Thompson SMG ad in the "A Boring Look at the Non-Process" thread reminded me of something I recently read in a hunting magazine that's been bothering me, but I couldn't articulate why until seeing that ad, and I wanted to see what others thought of the problem. So, without further ado: The gist of the problem is that the article in question was advocating that You, Dear Reader, you need to buy a Steyr AUG as your varminting gun. You'll want to make sure to get the genuine 30-round box magazine (a 42-round box is also available, if that's not enough lead!), and also be sure to get one with picatinny rails on the top so that you can mount your reflex sights as well! There's two problems I see with this position; first, the AUG is a semiautomatic rifle in a bullpup* configuration, firing 5.56 NATO rounds. And this is supposed to be a varminting gun? Did the lower 48 suffer an orc infestation when I wasn't looking? When I think "varmint", I think "squirrel, rabbit, raccoon" and similarly-sized things, and when I think "rabbit being hit with a round of 5.56", the image that comes to mind is "fine aerosol mist". It seems very excessive. Second, reflex sights? I'm sure they're handy, but does nobody bother learning how to aim anymore. I've heard the old joke about Smith & Wesson making the world's first point-and-click interface, but this just sounds like a recipe for aerating the local landscape thirty holes at a time, rather than aiming at the target and hitting what you aim at. So am I out of touch with the needs of the modern hunter, or is this really as crazy as it sounds? *While the rest of this sounds like a bad idea, I'm fully in favor of the bullpup design. One of the first things I learned when being taught to shoot was "be careful when turning around, you might whap somebody upside the head with the barrel of your gun". This is especially embarrassing when the gun in question is a Remington 1890, and the owner checks the gun for wounds before the poor sucker with a cuff-mark on his head. "This is probably a stupid question, but . . ." |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-01-14, 09:24 PM (EDT) |
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1. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #0
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>The gist of the problem is that the article in question was advocating >that You, Dear Reader, you need to buy a Steyr AUG as your varminting >gun.Well, obviously. See, the problem is that nobody in the firearms industry (and by that I mean not only manufacturers but also everybody else who makes a living through the Shooting Culture) can actually admit that a) shooting is fun and b) thinking that doesn't mean we're crazy people who are going to kill our neighbors, so fuck off and leave us alone. No. That kind of thing simply isn't perceived as sufficient justification. So instead, the Done Thing is to rely on ever-more-convoluted, ever-less-convincing rationalizations for why we need these things. Vanishingly few people here in the Developed World actually have to hunt in order to eat; in most cases - all cases that involve taking a couple of weeks off of work and driving hundreds of miles to the kind of lodge my grandparents used to run, which was packed with salesmen from New Jersey every November - it's an obvious recreational activity. But just saying you like to go into the woods and shoot at things sounds crazy, so instead there are Patriotic Appeals to the Ancient and Honored Craft of the Colonial Woodsman Feeding His Family and all that utterly anachronistic horseshit. It's not convincing even to the people who say it, but for whatever reason, we as a society have sort of tacitly, collectively agreed to pretend that we buy it. Ironically, for those of us who don't even want to kill anything in the first place, apart from some old milk jugs full of dyed water and/or empty baked bean cans, it's even worse, because we can't even play the I'm a Hunter, How Dare You Question My Frontier Roots card. We're just nuts who like to shoot stuff for no even-pretendably-practical reason. But anyway, yeah, that's why the Shooting Press is always talking about the Sportsmanly Uses of obvious military and military-derived hardware, in exactly the same way that the civilian ads for the Thompson (a weapon designed for the trenches of WWI but perfected too late to be of use there) transparently pretend that there's some conceivable practical use for a portable machine gun that doesn't involve soldiering or crime. There isn't, and no one, including the people who write those ads, really believe there is. It's just the game we've all decided, for whatever weird social reason, that we have to play rather than just admit that we like stuff that isn't practical or useful and there's nothing wrong with that. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
463 posts |
Apr-02-14, 02:08 AM (EDT) |
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3. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #1
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>It's just the game we've all decided, for whatever weird social >reason, that we have to play rather than just admit that we like stuff >that isn't practical or useful and there's nothing wrong with >that. I would submit that this isn't a social reason, or at least not entirely; it's a political reason, and actually quite a smart one. Morally speaking, there's absolutely nothing wrong with "We like us some guns for no practical reason. It's fun to talk about them and buy them and smith them and then haul them out to the backyard and see what we can do with them. Sort of like guys who are gearheads, except, you know, with guns." My brother is one of those guys, my maternal great-grandfather kind of was, as was his son-in-law (my maternal grandfather) and other sundry people I know. It's an eminently reasonable position. However, when it comes time to craft public policy, that position is... somewhat weak. There are lots of people who are, in fact, crazy nuts who are gonna kill their neighbors. Or their ex-wives. Or their current wives. Or leave the damn things somewhere their eight-year-old can get at it. Or start a shootout in a movie theater. Or think that walking down main street with a full-auto assault rifle strapped to their back is an act that contributes to public order and safety. Coupled with the fact that there's pretty solid evidence that restricting access to firearms does in fact result in radically lowering the incidences of people shooting themselves and others up (England and Japan are pretty good examples of this; hell, in England the police don't carry guns as a matter of course and adamantly resist efforts to try and get them to do so) "guns are fun" starts to look like weak tea when people start saying things like "Maybe assault rifles and extended pistol magazines should be illegal" and "Perhaps there should be an extremely comprehensive and robust registration and tracking regime." So you want to lay your hands on actual, practical arguments for your arsenal. There are lots of those, and appeals to Cultural Heritage are one subset of them. It's the smart play, really, especially if you're economically invested in Shooting Culture. It's one of the four most common ones; the other three big ones, in my experience, are "you need to be able to go to war against the government if the need arises", "you genuinely need firepower of this magnitude to be safe and defend yourself and/or your home", and "FREEDOM!". -Merc Keep Rat |
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Nathan
Charter Member
1104 posts |
Apr-02-14, 06:04 AM (EDT) |
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4. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #3
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>There are lots of those, and appeals to Cultural Heritage are one >subset of them. It's the smart play, really, especially if you're >economically invested in Shooting Culture. It's one of the four most >common ones; the other three big ones, in my experience, are "you need >to be able to go to war against the government if the need arises", >"you genuinely need firepower of this magnitude to be safe and defend >yourself and/or your home", and "FREEDOM!". Given the blatantly suicidal nature of any endeavor to take on an Army Of Oppression as untrained civilians carrying any level of firearm (as opposed to the sane man's option, the Quite Large Bomb), the way general availability of firearms acts first and foremost to arm the criminal element, and the blatant and contemptible lack of logic in the emotional appeal, my own position is that Cultural Heritage and Gun Fancying are the only two actually legitimate arguments on the list of five. It's a pity that we have people actually drinking the Kool Aid of the other three who are likely to make a sensible legal middle ground unachievable. They're going to ruin the hobby for a quite considerable number of more sensible people by locking out compromise positions and leaving what they think they're fighting as the only option. ----- "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious." |
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laudre
Member since Nov-14-06
297 posts |
Apr-02-14, 09:45 AM (EDT) |
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6. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #3
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>Coupled with the fact that there's pretty solid evidence that >restricting access to firearms does in fact result in radically >lowering the incidences of people shooting themselves and others up >(England and Japan are pretty good examples of this; hell, in England >the police don't carry guns as a matter of course and adamantly >resist efforts to try and get them to do so) "guns are fun" starts to >look like weak tea when people start saying things like "Maybe assault >rifles and extended pistol magazines should be illegal" and "Perhaps >there should be an extremely comprehensive and robust registration and >tracking regime." So you want to lay your hands on actual, practical >arguments for your arsenal. This hedges awfully close to politics and is sort of tangential, but nonetheless... The argument (stronger gun restrictions lead to less violence) to which you are referring is predicated upon two things: the perception that the restrictive gun laws of Japan and the UK are causally linked to the low incidence of gun violence, and that gun violence is in some qualitative way worse than other channels of violence; e.g., that dying from a stab wound or a bomb is in some way not as bad as dying from being shot. (There's some interesting stuff to explore in terms of human perceptions of risk and such in that, come to think of it, similar to the perception of safety in an airline vs. in a car -- something about control, perhaps?) In any event, there may be a causal relationship between the restrictiveness of gun laws and the incidence of violent crime (not just gun violence, but violent crime in general); I don't have the references to hand, but there have been some studies that have found some statistically significant correlations that actually controlled properly for confounding factors (ISTR one looking at Philadelphia, but even that one was imperfect). Not only that, but while there are US states with liberal (i.e. low-restriction) gun laws and high violent crime rates, there are also U.S. states with liberal gun laws and low violent crime rates (Vermont has almost no gun laws to speak of), and there are U.S. states with long-standing extensive gun regulation and perennially high violent crime rates. Furthermore, there are countries that have restrictive gun laws and very high crime rates (Russia's at the top of that list, AIUI), and still other countries with gun regulation more restrictive than most of the U.S. but far more liberal than the UK or Japan, but low violent crime rates. In rural Finland, for example, it's not unusual to see people walking around with semi-automatic AK-47-type rifles slung on their back, and nobody thinks anything of it, because such firepower is sometimes necessary to deal with particularly ornery wildlife. (Handguns are heavily stigmatized there, mind, and very tightly controlled.) There are many other factors that are much more strongly correlated with, and probably causally related to, violent crime in general and gun violence in particular than the restrictiveness or liberality of firearm legislation, such as poverty or corruption. While there's psychological and political reasons why the discussion around reducing violent crime in the U.S. frequently revolves around guns and gun laws, I've long been of the opinion that passing new gun laws while neglecting social welfare is at best inefficient, given the costs of enforcement, and most likely completely ineffective. "Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis." - Kenneth Boulding
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
463 posts |
Apr-02-14, 12:05 PM (EDT) |
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8. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #7
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>Fuck public policy. I'm tired of being circumscribed because other >people can't be bothered to do things right. I would submit, sadly and without an ounce of snark, that "being circumscribed because other people can't be bothered to do things right" is sort of the bedrock of a lot of policy crafting. It's sort of the political equivalent of "this is why we can't have nice things." -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-02-14, 12:10 PM (EDT) |
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9. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #8
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> >>Fuck public policy. I'm tired of being circumscribed because other >>people can't be bothered to do things right. > >I would submit, sadly and without an ounce of snark, that "being >circumscribed because other people can't be bothered to do things >right" is sort of the bedrock of a lot of policy crafting. And you'd be quite right! Ergo, "Fuck public policy." I had more, but my interclass gap is too short. Fermat's post, as it were. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
463 posts |
Apr-02-14, 12:34 PM (EDT) |
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10. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #9
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>And you'd be quite right! Ergo, "Fuck public policy." Oh man, can we get into a discussion about Exit, Voice, and Loyalty? Because I bet that argument would consume, like, two or three days at least. (Two or three awesome days.) -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-02-14, 01:06 PM (EDT) |
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11. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #10
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> >>And you'd be quite right! Ergo, "Fuck public policy." > >Oh man, can we get into a discussion about Exit, Voice, and Loyalty?Magic Eight-Ball, what do you think? Signs point to no. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Offsides
Charter Member
1147 posts |
Apr-02-14, 07:52 AM (EDT) |
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5. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #1
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This has got to be one of the most reasonable and rational arguments for owning guns I've ever seen. How dare you! :P Seriously, I'm still leery of letting to many people have massive firepower near me simply due to the law of averages, but people like you don't worry me at all, if for no other reason than you're honest about it. Offsides [...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles. -- David Ben Gurion EPU RCW #π #include <stdsig.h> |
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Malkarris
Member since Jan-5-11
46 posts |
Apr-01-14, 11:04 PM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #0
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LAST EDITED ON Apr-01-14 AT 11:06 PM (EDT) As someone from western Washington, and all its hippie tree hugging-ness, I say any gun is overkill for any of those things. After asking my wife, from Texas and with ancestors from swamp country in Louisiana, she says the only "varmint" you need one of those for is the two legged variety, coming in varieties such as ex-husband and get the heck off my lawn. Varmint needing more than a squirrel gun includes gator, for which she recommends a shot-gun. EDIT: after seeings Gryphons post, I'll add that shooting milk cartons and such like is a perfectly good excuse, and more people should adopt it. I won't fight you Atton. I don't care, I just want you to die. (Disciple and Atton KOTOR2) |
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DaemeonX
Member since Aug-3-08
55 posts |
Apr-03-14, 03:47 AM (EDT) |
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13. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #2
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Seeing as I live in Alaska I have rather loose ideals of what is proper strength in a side arm, or a rifle for that matter. When out fishing I like having something that I can point at Mr. Bear to advise that; while I AM going to hand him the 15 pound silver salmon, he had better not go any farther than that. This fact goes into critical mass when my son and daughter are around. DaemeonX "Never memorize anything that you can look up." ~Albert Einstein |
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The Traitor
Member since Feb-24-09
656 posts |
Apr-04-14, 10:46 AM (EDT) |
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20. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #19
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LAST EDITED ON Apr-04-14 AT 10:48 AM (EDT) Living in the United Kingdom, I'm okay with US citizens having guns in the US. Keep them there. And for goodness' sake do more rigorous background checks. It is not that big of a deal to ask a man in last season's tinfoil if he really needs another military grade assault rifle. I needed more strenuous checks to work in an arcade that offers children's parties than I would have had to undergo to buy a thing that I could conceivably use to fill a children's party full of lead. That seems weird to me.Also, given how much facenoise has been spent on drone warfare, I think it's kind of adorable that people in the US think armed rebellion'll accomplish anything other than being a large Predator-provided blast radius. --- "She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-04-14, 10:51 AM (EDT) |
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21. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #20
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Y'know, guys, I find I can't help but be slightly depressed that Asami's very first UF screen appearance didn't even cross the [View All] threshold, but THIS just keeps going and going. I've tried to keep from whining about that, but fuck it, I have to try and get to class on about 2/3 of one working leg right now and I am out of KC&CO. Also, how kind of you to acknowledge US sovereignty in US internal affairs. Very magnanimous considering how fresh the memory of the revolution must be. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-04-14, 11:55 AM (EDT) |
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24. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #23
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>Well, I hate to say it, but I'm not a terribly huge fan of Green >Lantern, and the only way I know Avatar canon at all is through you >guys. That said: I think she'd do a hell of a lot better job than >any of the canonical ones, and she looks a damn sight better than any >of them, too. ... what? --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-04-14, 05:04 PM (EDT) |
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27. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #26
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>>... what? > >I presume 'Asami=Green Lantern-image, and this is why I didn't say >anything about it, but have said things about guns.' Sort of, at >least. Oh. That's not the post I was talking about, though. Hence my confusion. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Terminus Est
Member since Nov-5-04
255 posts |
Apr-08-14, 10:01 AM (EDT) |
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31. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #25
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LAST EDITED ON Apr-08-14 AT 10:02 AM (EDT) This is the time and place for what those in the business call a 'warning shot'. :)The way it works out in my head, at least, is thus: - Bear sees fish. - Bear wants fish. - Fisherman gives bear fish. - Bear sees fisherman. - Bear decides he wants fisherman, too. - Fisherman displays gun. - Bear ignores gun; guns can't talk, silly. - Fisherman fires gun in air/into river/somewhere he's not likely to hit something accidentally. - (AP1) Bear gets message, leaves with fish. - (AP1) Fisherman enjoys rest of morning. - (AP1) Bear perhaps remembers that guns can, in fact, talk. Loudly. - (AP2) Bear ignores message. - (AP2) Fisherman fires gun again, this time at bear. - (AP2) Bear either gets message and runs (possibly with fish), or bear gets dead. Follow either outcome to logical conclusion. There is of course a third alternate path, but it's a bloody mess. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
13661 posts |
Apr-04-14, 05:12 PM (EDT) |
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28. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #18
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>If I point >anything at Mr. Bear, Mr. Wolf or any of their friends, they generally >tend to ignore that as being irrelevant. So, I'm much impressed with >the level of comprehension of the wildlife of Alaska... There's a long-standing argument in Wrangelia about which bears are smarter, the ones from Alaskan stock or the Siberians. (The Greenlanders and Norwegians stay out of it because they're each convinced that a) it's them and b) there's no point in entertaining anybody else's arguments about it; the Canadians don't get involved because they perceive the entire controversy as specious anyway, since all five groups came up through the same genetic uplift program. :) It also depends on the type of bear. Alaskan polar bears get advanced technology, no problem. Those brown jagoffs, though? Dumber than a bag of hammers and wouldn't know what one was for anyway. Grizzlies are the frat boys of the bear kingdom. This Guide entry was written by Ragnar Ragnarsson, who may have a personal bias against brown bears. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
185 posts |
Apr-05-14, 07:38 AM (EDT) |
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30. "RE: A Musing Upon Firearms"
In response to message #28
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"I was out walking in the woods, when I came across a WOLF! He chased me for several minutes before I found a hole. I jumped into the hole and stayed there for about 43 seconds. I jumped up, and there was the wolf waiting for me. He chased me round and round and round. I jumped into the hole again, and stayed there for about 33 seconds. I jumped up, and there was the wolf, dumbass, drooling all over the place. He chased me round and round and round, and I jumped into the hole once more. I stayed there for about 27 seconds and then I jumped-""Christ, man, why didn't STAY in the hole?!" "There was a bear in the hole..." >This Guide entry was written by Ragnar Ragnarsson, who may >have a personal bias against brown bears.
Just maybe. A little. ...! Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers! |
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Eyrie Productions,
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