US Election 2016

[BruceVC]

 

As much as I hate to say it, I wasn't even really trying to offend you, Bruce: in a technical sense, you write horrifically. You use punctuation wrong more than you use it right (when you use it at all), you often erroneously place spaces where they should not be, your sentence structure generally leaves much to be desired, your word usage is...actually, pretty much just fine. What I said had no bearing upon the quality of your arguments or your thoughts (though I routinely have very negative feelings about both of those as well, but it is a separate matter) - merely the quality of your writing. I also did not say it with the expectation that you'd like, magically get any better or anything - I don't expect anyone to understand English to any great degree at all, as a matter of fact. So, my apologies for you using as an example - you're just what came to mind.

I know you aren't trying to offend me and I appreciate the feedback. You not the first person to make these types of points so there is truth to it

 

So i  know my grammar is bad and I notice the spaces but it just seems like its unnecessary to go back and change it because to be honest this is a gaming forum...and of course I want to be understood which I generally am...so to go back and make changes would waste time?

 

And at work I use spellcheck ...and  I  have become lazy on these forums 

Edited April 24, 2016 by BruceVC

[Longknife]

 

Law in Germany has a "Gutachtenstil," where you are expected to let nothing slip through the cracks. Basically, when addressing a case, you're expected to both attack the stance of your opposition on all points while simultaneously mentioning everything that supports your case. Mentioning support gets you the sweet grades, failing to even acknowledge or attack a point can flunk you. This is likely what you're seeing and lamenting, because yeah, I understand I can write more concisely, but I much prefer to get all my points and thoughts out. After all, if you or anyone else doesn't care to read, you don't have to, I'm just making my stance available, nothing more.

Yes, well, the 3 or 4 friends I have that are Germans and that live in Germany do not share your posting mannerisms...and the needless thoroughness and redundancy is making it impossible for the rest of us to read your posts. Your choice, though.

 

 

Just clarifying since you missed it:

 

I said law in Germany has that. It's something that gets hammered into you if you study law, and apparently had an effect on me. I am not suggesting something in German genes causes you to be outrageously thorough.

[Zoraptor]

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

[ShadySands]

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

That made me laugh more than it probably should have

[Valsuelm]

@Valsuelm

 

Also, most of the time such things occur, the police are not notified. And on top of that, the vast majority of the time the police are notified about such things (and a great many others), a news article is not written.

 

 

How ****ing convenient for you and your stance on the matter!

 

I tend to think that acknowledging reality, ugly as it might be, is more convenient and far more ideal than not.

 

Insofar as much of the rest of your longer post and your other follow ups. While I appreciate the time and effort you put into making it, I honestly don't think much of what you said is relevant to the 2nd amendment or the arguments others put forth in regards to it.

 

Insofar as the police specifically. Yes, they have too much power, and a lot of the wrong people become them (seemingly increasingly so even). However more training isn't going to fix that problem. The very nature of what police in the USA are for the most part, the strong arm of an increasingly corrupt state, keeps most intelligent good people from wanting to become one. If I could change one thing about police, it wouldn't be their training, it would be to make them accountable for their actions. By and large they are not, from writing a plethora of erroneous tickets which bog down the court system (yet provide oodles of revenue overall, so the government looks the other way) to quite literally more often getting away with murder than not when they commit it, the general immunity police have is problem #1 I'd say. However, that's not easily fixed in a society where oodles of people think they can do no wrong (a chunk of the time police get away with murder a jury fails to even indict). This isn't just a problem with police either, but with politicians, and bureaucrats.

 

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." - Sowell

 

[Gromnir]

 

 

 

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

That made me laugh more than it probably should have

 

well, especially since  battle o' spotsylvania were 19th century and the rifled muskets during the american civil war were scary accurate.

 

http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/detail.asp?smallarms_id=525

 

if we were talking a non-rifled weapon from 100 years earlier, then zor mighta' been ... accurate.

 

not your fault though.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited April 24, 2016 by Gromnir

[ManifestedISO]

Holy moly, 1,000 yards effective, shots on target at 2,000 ...

[Valsuelm]

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

 

I assume '18th' is a typo.

 

Either way, the rifles used during the U.S. Civil War most certainly could hit an elephant from 400 yards. Between the eyes even, if in the right hands.

 

Gun technology had come a long way already by the time of the U.S. Civil War. This wasn't a musket loading era. ~200,000 dead, ~400,000 wounded, and a lot more witnesses can attest to that.

 

One example of one of the common rifles used during the era of U.S. Civil War, had an effective firing range of 500 yards:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_repeating_rifle

 

Other guns had effective ranges of up to 1,000 yards. Obviously the capabilities of the marksman mattered and it's widely considered that most shooters couldn't reliably hit anything beyond 200 yards (this is still true today with modern weapons to a large degree), as did the quality of their scope (which weren't that common), and luck always matters.

[Gromnir]

Holy moly, 1,000 yards effective, shots on target at 2,000 ...

to be fair, am suspecting that the typical kentucky longrifle woulda' been extreme inaccurate at 400 yds, though hardly constituting an impossible shot.  jack hinson, one o' the most dangerous snipers in history, utilized a customized .50 kentucky longrifle and some o' the ranges attributed to him were impressive if unconfirmed.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Valsuelm]

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

 

Upon further reading of the life of John Sedgwick these past few minutes, I came across some words that either make yours coincidence, or a good jest.

 

If the latter, well done sir.

[Leferd]

During the Peninsular War in 1809, Rifleman Thomas Plunket of the 1st/95th Rifles was reputed to have killed French General Auguste-Marie-Francois Colbert at 600 yards using the flintlock Baker Rifle. Proving it wasn't a fluke, he then shot General Colbert's aide-de-camp right after (keeping in mind that a trained rifleman could only discharge on average, two shots a minute).

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Plunket

Edited April 24, 2016 by Leferd

[Guard Dog]

 

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

That made me laugh more than it probably should have

 

Nah, it was perfect!

[Guard Dog]

 

 

When did I ever claim your guns were going to shoot you? That's a blatant strawman.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTwnwbG9YLE

[Zoraptor]

 

 

General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a Virginia farmer using a flintlock Long Rifle from over 400 yards at the Battle of Spotsylvania.

 

 

What, an 18th century rifle? Story must be apocryphal, they couldn't hit an elephant from that distance.

 

 

I assume '18th' is a typo.

 

 

The Long Rifle is an 18th century weapon, albeit used in the 19th in this case.

 

Upon further reading of the life of John Sedgwick these past few minutes, I came across some words that either make yours coincidence, or a good jest.

 

 

That would be a fairly extraordinary coincidence, especially considering how often that phrase is assumed to be apocryphal.

[Guard Dog]

In truth I don't know if the story about who actually shot Sedgewick or that it was a pre-revolutionary war rifle they used is 100% true. I read that in a book I have here on my shelf Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign by Gary Gallagher. I also read a similar detail in another book. The actual history of the Overland & Wilderness campaigns which Spotsylvania was a part of just says Sedgewick was shot by a sniper shortly after saying his famous last words.

 

The .30 Enfield musket was the standard weapon for infantry for both sides so in truth it would have been a hell of a shot using one of those. But a well made and maintained rifle, even and old one was a formidable weapon. It was not widely used because they took too long to reload. The Union infantry practiced a drill called "loading in 9 times" until they could do it without thinking. They could fire the Enfield 4-5 times a minute. 

 

I have a real fascination with the US Civil War. I have a LOT of books about it.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Guard Dog

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

It is the height of hubris and arrogance to assert as so many politicians do (and many of the people on this board do) that “you don’t need firearms” or “guns don’t make you safer”.

 

 

Please explain how guns make you safer by naming one significant situation in American history in the last 100 or so years where someone (a private person rather than an officer) owning a gun was to everyone's benefit and helped defuse a dangerous situation. The only situations I can think of involve a home owner shooting an intruder who did or did not have a weapon, and I believe I recall one news story about a mass shooter being shot first. This is dwarfed by all the accidental shootings, the cases similar the Trayvond Martin, mass shootings themselves, or even cases where a citizen ACKNOWLEDGED owning a firearm but a scared as **** cop shot them dead anyways with the attitude of "ask questions later."

 

Uh.... I personally have witnessed at least two such events in my life off the top of my head, and have been told of a few by friends who have experienced such events. Such things really are not all that rare.

 

 

 

The plural of anecdote isn't data.

[Valsuelm]

 

 

 

It is the height of hubris and arrogance to assert as so many politicians do (and many of the people on this board do) that “you don’t need firearms” or “guns don’t make you safer”.

 

 

Please explain how guns make you safer by naming one significant situation in American history in the last 100 or so years where someone (a private person rather than an officer) owning a gun was to everyone's benefit and helped defuse a dangerous situation. The only situations I can think of involve a home owner shooting an intruder who did or did not have a weapon, and I believe I recall one news story about a mass shooter being shot first. This is dwarfed by all the accidental shootings, the cases similar the Trayvond Martin, mass shootings themselves, or even cases where a citizen ACKNOWLEDGED owning a firearm but a scared as **** cop shot them dead anyways with the attitude of "ask questions later."

 

Uh.... I personally have witnessed at least two such events in my life off the top of my head, and have been told of a few by friends who have experienced such events. Such things really are not all that rare.

 

 

 

The plural of anecdote isn't data.

 

 

If you need 'data' to tell you that it is not uncommon for people to fart, engage in buttsex, be delusional, cut their toenails, eat their toenails, spout profanity, pray to Jobu, poop colors other than brown, etc., as well as about exactly how often they do it, even if you do none of these things and oodles of others for which accurate data can never be obtained, you live a truly sheltered life.

 

He asked for one example, I can give him at least five based on the experience of myself and those close to me. The point of that is, is that I'm one person, out of many many millions. Lightning didn't strike me or my area a number of times. The stories I could relate aren't all that unusual. Such was my point.

Here's the quickest story I can tell, and the only one I'm going to relate (again, as I've told this story and at least one other before on this forum in other 'gun debate' threads). I have a friend who is alive because her husband had a gun handy when a mountain lion cornered and attacked her in her backyard, pinning her to the ground (this happened in semi-rural Minnesota). She was injured fairly badly, but fortunately had heavy clothing on which protected her to a degree, before the firing of a gun stopped the cat attacking. Yelling, some yard tools, and throwing things it at didn't work.

 

 

I'm done with the gun issue in this thread. (Feel free to create a new thread or dig up one of the many that already exist on this issue. I may participate, but not here.) To a large degree it's a red herring issue, and it's not even the main point of this thread. Very rarely can I say I speak for millions on anything, but my previous posts, as well as what much of Guard Dog has been saying sums up what tens of millions if not hundreds of millions think on this. I don't think there's anyone evil in this thread, but there are some grossly uninformed folks who like to chew red herrings.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Valsuelm

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

 

 

It is the height of hubris and arrogance to assert as so many politicians do (and many of the people on this board do) that “you don’t need firearms” or “guns don’t make you safer”.

 

 

Please explain how guns make you safer by naming one significant situation in American history in the last 100 or so years where someone (a private person rather than an officer) owning a gun was to everyone's benefit and helped defuse a dangerous situation. The only situations I can think of involve a home owner shooting an intruder who did or did not have a weapon, and I believe I recall one news story about a mass shooter being shot first. This is dwarfed by all the accidental shootings, the cases similar the Trayvond Martin, mass shootings themselves, or even cases where a citizen ACKNOWLEDGED owning a firearm but a scared as **** cop shot them dead anyways with the attitude of "ask questions later."

 

Uh.... I personally have witnessed at least two such events in my life off the top of my head, and have been told of a few by friends who have experienced such events. Such things really are not all that rare.

 

 

 

The plural of anecdote isn't data.

 

 

If you need 'data' to tell you that it is not uncommon for people to fart, engage in buttsex, be delusional, cut their toenails, eat their toenails, spout profanity, pray to Jobu, poop colors other than brown, etc., as well as about exactly how often they do it, even if you do none of these things and oodles of others for which accurate data can never be obtained, you live a truly sheltered life.

 

 

 

My point:            --> x  -->

 

 

Your head:               O

 

 

[Valsuelm]

My point:            --> x  -->

 

 

Your head:               O

 

 

 

Oh, I understood what you were getting at, it's you who apparently fails to understand what I'm getting at.

 

Or, you're just trolling, in which case, F off.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Valsuelm

[Valsuelm]

Stories about Dems going Trump, which reflect not only my personal experience talking to many Dems this year, but also what a buddy in the NY Dem party said his experience was when he canvased registered Democrats for Hillary on Long Island.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/politics/4016904-more-60000-disgruntled-pennsylvania-democrats-switch-parties

http://nypost.com/2016/03/19/why-its-time-for-a-trump-revolution/

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/2016/02/amid_trump_surge_nearly_20000_mass_voters_quit_democratic_party

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-01-08/new-poll-shows-donald-trump-is-a-real-threat-to-hillary-clinton

One can find a lot more of these stories.

Stories denying the above phenomenon:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/25/no-trump-wont-win-votes-from-disaffected-democrats-in-the-fall/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/trump_democrats_are_a_myth.html

One can find some more of these stories.

Stories denying the phenomenon and denying that 'Reagan democrats' even exist:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-myth-of-the-reagan-democrat/475608/ (the author of this one is especially out to lunch)

 

Good luck finding stories about Republicans going Clinton!

Edited April 24, 2016 by Valsuelm

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Hillary victim blames homeowners for financial crisis

[Leferd]

Cruz and Kasich announced that they will work together (collude) in a divide and conquer anti-Trump strategy.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/ted-cruz-john-kasich-join-forces-to-stop-donald-trump/index.html

[Namutree]

Stories about Dems going Trump, which reflect not only my personal experience talking to many Dems this year, but also what a buddy in the NY Dem party said his experience was when he canvased registered Democrats for Hillary on Long Island.

 

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/politics/4016904-more-60000-disgruntled-pennsylvania-democrats-switch-parties

 

This was taken from above: During the 2008 Democratic primary, she gathered her own young granddaughter to watch history unfold on TV, and cried when Hillary Clinton lost to Obama.

 

Here's my question. Why would they be upset Hillary lost to Obama? Obama is just a slightly better version of Clinton.

[Meshugger]

Hillary victim blames homeowners for financial crisis

 

I'm not surprised really. She changes her tone depending who she is adressing at any given moment.

 

Cruz and Kasich announced that they will work together (collude) in a divide and conquer anti-Trump strategy.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/ted-cruz-john-kasich-join-forces-to-stop-donald-trump/index.html

 

There aren't any prominent republicans around to tell the children to stop messing around while the adults are talking? I mean actively having 'sabotage' as a strategy? I am now actively starting to believe that these two are in facts plants working for Trump, not against him, as there's no way people would like to vote, well sincerely that is, for someone that claims that their winning achievement is to make others fail.

[Valsuelm]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/ted-cruz-john-kasich-join-forces-to-stop-donald-trump/index.html

 

 

There aren't any prominent republicans around to tell the children to stop messing around while the adults are talking? I mean actively having 'sabotage' as a strategy? I am now actively starting to believe that these two are in facts plants working for Trump, not against him, as there's no way people would like to vote, well sincerely that is, for someone that claims that their winning achievement is to make others fail.

 

 

Um..  it's quite arguable that for decades now far more people go to the polls to vote against a candidate than for a candidate. The 'lesser of two evils' has been the name of the game for awhile now for lots of people, especially in national elections. While it's not that common for one of the major parties to eat their own frontrunner by painting them as a 'great evil' of sorts, it certainly has happened in the past to a number of candidates (e.g. Ned Lamont, David Duke). Basically whenever a non-establishment candidate wins in the polls. Trump is just the highest profiled one in recent memory to be targeted this way.

 

All that said, Cruz, Kasich, and both the Republican and Democrat party establishment are total slime.