Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

you know what they say........
big guns compensate for little dicks.

If this discussion is to continue it needs to be tasteful and not become derogatory. There are a few posts starting to step over the line. Keep in mind that the weapon which has caused more death and suffering in this world than any other is also a tool. Words.

Have been following this discussion with increasing dismay. It's a bit like one of those really bad TV shows that you watch despite your better judgement.

I'm thankful that we don't have citizens carrying or feeling the need to carry guns in their normal day to day business in Australia and suspect that our falling rate of gun deaths is partly related to gun control - although rates of violent crime have been falling for decades now and predate the gun control. We've had no mass shootings since Port Arthur but these were/are so rare here that a statistician would hedge their bets on a definite association - in the same way that knowing someone who once protected themselves with a gun doesn't prove that guns are good for society as a whole.

I don't think it's fair to point fingers at the US for the rise of Islamic State... Australia (UK and others too) was a very willing participant in the antecedents to this rise. I do feel a bit irritated by Coachchris's apparent extreme confidence that the land of the free and home of the brave is the best country in the world... particularly given he's typed so many words describing why it isn't. But I come from a very different culture and, if I'd been raised making repeated oaths of allegiance, believing unquestioningly in God (maybe also creationism ) and some God given or constitutional right to have a gun and was lucky enough to be a "have" so feel at risk from the "have nots", I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have an anti-aircraft gun in my front yard.

Someone suggested a while back that the OP asked for Australian comments but was clearly looking to make a point rather than seek information or opinion. The point has been repeatedly made and it doesn't seem anybody is shifting in anybody else's direction.

Someone more recently suggested that discussion should stop before someone gets poked in the eye (or was it shot?).

Can somebody please lock this discussion so I can spend more time on the fish and veggies... because I'm not strong enough to do it on my own.

Sorry Earthbound... you have said it so much more succinctly and better than me... might not have posted if I knew that you were posting while I typed.

All good Dave. But i don't like to lock threads unless they get really out of hand. There have been a few of these threads in the past and generally once people get it out of their system they die down and disappear among the masses of old threads. But being an emotive subject, people sometimes get the poke in the eye.

this is the only end this discussion could ever have, locked/deleted.....and rightly so....this is no place for personal opinions on such a devastating issue...

I can text while I'm walking, (currently backing up over the line .)

Was probably a bit unreasonable for me to ask for freedom of speech to go out the window. Will just have to take more Valium before I check for the latest posts and, if this thread is up the top, give myself another shot of morphine so I can resist the urge to read it.

I have also been watching this thread unfold with some interest and mixed feelings. Thought I would finally throw in my two bobs worth (for those who need a translation, a bob is a shilling or 12 pence and would roughly equate to a 10 cent piece or a dime - so it is not worth much ).

I grew up with shotguns on the wall in a clay target shooting and farming family. I could handle a shotgun from when I was big enough not to fall over with the recoil. My dad was a clay target shooting champion and coach, and I often participated in local shoots either shooting, in the trap house loading targets or as the ref in competitions. Gun safety was drummed into us. So yes Domani, guns can be used for other things besides killing and violence.

We would NEVER think of pointing a gun at a person for ANY reason. There was NEVER any discussion about guns as a form of self defense. The shotguns hung on the wall and were beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. The 22 rifle was locked up and shotgun shells were locked up, but there were a couple high spread, low range shells in the cupboard near the back door so we could grab the bottom shotgun off the rack to kill tiger snakes (yes, a protected but highly venomous species) which would often invade our house yard from the nearby irrigation channel. I was usually the gun dog on quail, duck and rabbit shooting expeditions (flush &/or retrieve and carry).

My dad was really sad when he sold and handed in his guns because it got too expensive to keep them appropriately locked up after the laws tightened - some were collectors items. However, he was not shooting anymore, and he couldn't have them on display anyway. He was always adamantly against the pump action and semi auto shotguns that started to pervade the sport, mainly owned by young bucks with big attitudes (who usually drove overpowered cars and had big dogs - Mudeye, maybe they were compensating for something ).

As a 12 year old girl refereeing a club shoot I had to send off one of these young men with a 5 shot semi auto, because he turned around facing the spectators with it still loaded (a BIG no no, as all guns had to be broken or unloaded if they could not be broken). He had a go at me, but I was backed up by the old boys who saw him off with a life ban. There is absolutely no need for semi auto shotguns in the community. Professional shooters (vermin or meat) use rifles, not shotguns, and single or double barrel shotguns are quite adequate for sporting shooters, amateur duck or rabbit shooters, or to deal with a snake or feral cat.

In my view there is also absolutely no need in the community for concealed weapons (ie small arms), semi/automatic weapons (except by special licence for professional shooters) or military style weapons designed for killing people. Licencing and requirements for gun ownership and storage should be stringent for all other guns as they are dangerous. Just as we have licencing and roadworthy requirements for driving and owning vehicles, as they are even more dangerous.

I have some empathy for the arguments about self defense and protection given by our US friends and some others too, but once started, where does this personal arms race end ?

We are lucky here in Australia where the gun control laws helped limit this arms race early after some terrible mass shooting tragedies. Does it stop all crime and violent death? Of course not, but it has mainly stopped the random nutter with a cache of semi-auto weapons wreaking maximum death and destruction on innocent victims, and accidental gun deaths from kids playing with unsecured guns at home or inexperienced 'holiday' hunters shooting themselves getting through fences . Yes, there needs to be more work done to disarm and bring to justice criminal gangs who have an affinity for illegally importing guns and taking pot shots at each other lately. And we must be vigilant on not letting semi auto or multiple shot weapons 'legally' back in to the wider community through technical loopholes (Sorry Bodgy, there is no need to have shotguns that can fire off 6 or 7 shots in rapid succession with minimal effort and no reloading).

Other countries and cultures may be at a different place, and it is hard to imagine someone else's lived experience. However, I am pleased to live in a society that is predominately unarmed, who do not feel the need for such extreme self defense from fellow citizens or their own government. We have our share of crime and violence and needless death, and I feel that greater access to guns would only exacerbate this.

Be at peace folks, and try to understand other perspectives

I should get outside now and help my O/H put in the box to hold the Raspberry Pi monitoring techno thingy and backup air he is building for me

No need to apologise Joc, I actually said that I'm happy to see them moved into the same category as pump actions, rendering them unlawful for virtually everyone. It's the hype about what should be a straightforward reclassification and the complete review of laws based on that hype that bothered me a little.

there is a need for semi auto shotguns Joc, farmers need them when chasing foxes and pet dogs that have killed their stock,. we used to do it on a very frequent basis.. a double barrel was not good enough..
we used to have 300acres until urban development crawled up and sat beside us.. we were then banned from poisoning foxes and dogs, banned from trapping, had to put in a 10mte firebreak on grazing land so that when kids would like our crops it wouldn't burn the houses down... and eventually lost our right to shoot on our own property, hence to say then lost the reason why we should own a gun so lost the licence as well..
Now I can easily go out and get a gun licence and buy multiple guns to sit in the cupboard and use on weekends at targets only, but I cant get a gun licence to use on the farm....... go figure.........!!!!
that's our Australian gun laws working for us..

I think you'll find that is a want rather than a need mudeye.

Joc

I had a little brno .22 semi auto; try shooting wabbits out with a single shot rifle (I think they breed faster).

Would I have used it for self defense? Quite frankly I did not even consider it; it was kept on the top shelf of the walk in wardrobe, the clips were kept in a locked filing cabinet and the ammunition in another drawer. I don't think I would have even hit someone with it, or my torque wrench or any other of my tools.

Because of a political stunt I had to hand it in.

BTW Looked at your sig

"600 litre PIST"

Now that is just utter bragging; I have been known to down a few but seriously.

that's right Earthbound.
if I WANT a gun licence I can get one.
if I NEED a gun licence I can't...

I meant your comment about semi automatic shotguns being a NEED.. Not sure what you mean...

ohhhh, ok earthbound
when shooters, (I'm talking the farmers and professional shooters who have the need to shoot vermin & what they call "marauding dogs" on "permission given properties" with shotguns) it is often the case that these animals are only wounded on the first and even the second shot, so by the time a double barrel shotgun is emptied & reloaded, the dog/vermin has got out of range or maybe gone through a fence and has been lost, (many reasons) and the animal is maybe lying somewhere in pain and will probably die a miserable death.. I have had many injured dogs leave the farm over the years that manage to find their way home after being only shot once or twice..... yep, that's right I used to own only a side by side double barrel.....people can say that we should learn to aim straighter but at the end of the day, we are not in it for the fun and the majority of shooters would prefer to kill something as quickly and as humanly as possible. hence a 5 shot semi automatic is a far better option...especially when it comes to animals larger than a rabbit.

To a lot of people that may sound absolutely cruel and unforgiving, (completely understand whole heartedly.) but give me one of your days and i'll show you the damage that one or two dogs can do in a matter of minutes.. have you ever seen a small lamb with no face, a sheep that can't stand because its back legs are laying somewhere in the paddock, ever heard the noise that a dozen lambs make after a fox has ripped out there tongue's..?
sometimes a 5 shot isn't enough.

(probably said to much I think)