Re: Firearm Personality Types

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lurker wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:38 am :welcome:
good morning, stranger.
we generally prefer new members to go make themselves an intro post, here:
viewforum.php?f=37 (note the new topic button)
where you can tell us such things as where you are located and what you like to shoot and how you became aware of us without embroiling yourself in an ongoing controversy. and we like pictures, too, especially of your guns.
meanwhile your concerns about how to express self-deprecating humor without denigrating others are valid and worth discussing. many of us have linguistic and literary bents and enjoy wordplay. me, i'm just verbose. as you can see in this very thread, some of us are more sensitive to and aware of the potential for abusive language than others. let's talk.
Done!

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very good! most of us are a little slow to start in the mornings, especially on the weekends.
as you can imagine, south africa is fraught with all sorts of race issues in the american mind, so this could get vivid. is apartheid really gone, or does it persist in more subtle ways?
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

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lurker wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:32 am very good! most of us are a little slow to start in the mornings, especially on the weekends.
as you can imagine, south africa is fraught with all sorts of race issues in the american mind, so this could get vivid. is apartheid really gone, or does it persist in more subtle ways?
Apartheid is gone, dead, and buried. You will always have small-minded people who insist on clinging to and perpetuating racist beliefs, but they are in the minority. A far greater concern is the rise of the African nationalist Left in the guise of the EFF: they are openly racist, see those who embraced reconciliation after 1994 as sell-outs, all white people as invaders who must be forcibly dispossessed of all they own, and who want to establish a centralized Marxist state in order to enrich their leaders at the expense of everyone else. And they are at present the third largest political movement in our country.

Fortunately there is extensive push-back against their ideas and agenda by black people who see them for what they are, but whether or not that will be enough is at present an open question. The EFF are what the most racist, xenophobic, and narrow-minded white extremists in history were like. Except in this instance they are black nationalists.

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YankeeTarheel wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:45 am In a different take, it's still an issue, albeit subtley, mostly over a minority owning most of the wealth, especially in farmland. Not sure I'm saying anything different than our newest member.

This was just in yesterday's NYTimes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/worl ... frica.html
I will try to get a link to the correct info, but white people actually don’t own the majority of the land - most of it is in the hands of tribal trusts and the government itself. The tribal land issue is thorny too - the chiefs and kings own all the tribal land, and the people who farm it basically do it as serfs. But the government protects the interests of these tribal chiefs and their trusts for political reasons, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. As for the white farmers - their numbers have steadily declined over the last few decades. Much of it due to the creation of large industrial-scale farming conglomerates that do most of the commercial agriculture. In many parts of SA the climate is very difficult for profitable farming, and in those instances the smaller commercial farmers struggle to stay afloat and usually sell-off their holdings within a generation or two.

Economically we have been closing the inequality gap since the mid-1980s. A few years ago the size of the black middle-class officially overtook the white one. The trajectory is still upward in that regard.

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lurker wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 9:52 am aaaaannnnd they're OFF! down the straightaway, coming into the first turn....
No, no! I'm happy to stand (or sit) corrected! :thanks:
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

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Are white South Africans not invaders who forcibly took the wealth that they now hold?

Reconciliation is good, but reconciliation has to be balanced with actually undoing the injustices that caused conflict in the first place. Surely the way you describe the EFF isn’t much different from how the ANC (a communist organization) was described in the 1980s.

In the US, we have generations of history of racial injustice that has been dismissed by some for 150 years by declaring that “that’s all over now” as if the injustice of slavery is the only racial injustice ever to exist here and that once slavery was ended, everything was fair and equal. We know exactly how little such words mean in our own context. Tell us how they mean any more in yours.
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Marlene wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:05 am Are white South Africans not invaders who forcibly took the wealth that they now hold?
No they aren’t. And the history of the various white population groups are as varied as they are long. For example the Boers of the Orange Free State Republic assisted the baSotho in their struggle against the British colonial government of the Cape Colony during the Basotho Gun War of 1880/81. Similarly, after the fall of Dingane the Boers and Zulus had extremely friendly relations until the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War of 1898-1902. By far the worst excesses of oppression were perpetrated under British rule, and many that came after find their origins therein. To oversimplify the issue into one such as you mention is ridiculously disingenuous, and ignores 367 years of history for the sake of political expedience.

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Paratus85 wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 12:26 pm
Marlene wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 10:05 am Are white South Africans not invaders who forcibly took the wealth that they now hold?
No they aren’t. And the history of the various white population groups are as varied as they are long. For example the Boers of the Orange Free State Republic assisted the baSotho in their struggle against the British colonial government of the Cape Colony during the Basotho Gun War of 1880/81. Similarly, after the fall of Dingane the Boers and Zulus had extremely friendly relations until the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War of 1898-1902. By far the worst excesses of oppression were perpetrated under British rule, and many that came after find their origins therein. To oversimplify the issue into one such as you mention is ridiculously disingenuous, and ignores 367 years of history for the sake of political expedience.
Oh, dear... :no:
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You mean that if you take shit and keep it long enough and control who gets to tell history and aren’t an asshole to everyone 100% of the time because of momentary self-interest, then you didn’t take someone else’s shit after all? Really?

I don’t even have to go looking for references to know what kind of bullshit your fantasy is.
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Paratus85,

I was raised in the US Commonwealth of Virginia. I attended K-12 school there (albeit with a few skipped grades - a Kennedy era kid.). We were taught Virginia History. For the most part, they really did a good job. But they sucked when it came to the history of slavery, indentured servitude and the causes of the Civil War. 50 years later, I am STILL earning that many of the 'facts' I was taught in Virginia public schools were pablumized bullis**t.

It looks to me that you have been similar mis-educated along the way. A small number of people who colonized Africa likely had good intentions; most were looters and murderers. And, if most of the worst offenses were perpetrated by the British long ago, why exactly was Mandela in prison? And why was apartheid STARTED in 1948 and ended in the 1990s? I am afraid that if you wish to persuade others of your position, you will need to find people who did not read any news in the 1970s and 1980s.

Marlene chose to not look up references ... and I only had to look up one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

Which, if one reads to the bottom, contains 222 references.
Last edited by max129 on Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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I do need to ask everyone to keep things civil in here. Jumping quickly to foul language does not help.
106+ recreational uses of firearms
1 defensive use
0 people injured
0 people killed

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I am one who finds that the concept of private real estate very iffy. I believe there are a few forms of legitimate private property - mostly creations and inventions.

But real estate seems to have always been stolen from someone in the beginning and the provenance of benign long term ownership is missing everywhere in the world.

I don't have any proper suggestions regarding with what we should replace our current model of privately owned real estate. But the majority of arable land in North America was populated by Native Americans and they were forcibly removed from the land with guns and deliberately introduced diseases.

In the case of the Boers, who wanted a safe harbor on the Dutch/East-India route, they introduced slavery immediately on the Cape. The history of the Koi and San peoples was almost identical to that of the Native Americans - and the bad acts were clearly started by the Boers. As the British started to push the Dutch out, the Boers then conflicted with the Xhosa peoples. So from a distance, it all looks a lot like North America to me - and none of it pretty.

Now, to be clear, those of us white folk who never owned a slave or treated a Native American badly are in an awkward spot. Clearly many of my direct ancestors did bad things. I never agreed to those bad things and I cannot undo the consequences. Do I feel a sense of collective guilt? Hell Yes. What can I do about it?

1) Acknowledge that bad things really happened - try to know the facts
2) Treat people as equals - and to his credit, Paratus85 is making such an argument
3) Support fix-it programs politically and personally
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Re: Firearm Personality Types

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Paratus85 wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:36 am
K9s wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 3:46 pm
highdesert wrote: Sat Mar 09, 2019 3:27 pm Another spin on the topic, personality type by the pistol brand.
http://paratus.info/2017/02/23/firearm- ... indicator/

The anti-gunners might take it seriously but we don't. :lol:
And, of course, the last entry betrays the author's bias. :)
.38 Special Snubnose – you are a master operator who ends all violent confrontations in 5 shots or less. In fact, you don’t even need a firearm to be dangerous, which is why you keep it locked in the safe. Reloading is for amateurs and try-hards who can’t shoot straight. You know that semi-automatics are a passing fad, and that all shall return to the Church of the Wheel Gun…in time. Using sights are a dangerous fantasy, since all gun fights happen at 3 meters or contact distance. You can kill a Mastodon with a plastic spork.
While all these are funny, they really push the heterosexual manliness fantasy of gun ownership.
Good morning all,

So, I am the offending author of this particular tongue-in-cheek attempt at humour. As well as the owner and editor of the website in question (for my sins). My own personal biases against .38 Special snubbies aside (there is a long and sad story behind that, for another time), I find the last comment interesting.

My reference framework for firearm ownership is in the South African context. It is still very much dominated by what you may call a heterosexual manliness component of society, although that is rapidly changing on this side of the water. And that is indeed a good thing. The difficulty with satire of this nature, is that I need to stereotype to a large extent to make it work. Now, if I can include more people to offend, so much the better.

If you have any comments and suggestions on what would constitute more liberal stereotypes in the firearm world, please tell me so that I can bring out a liberal edition of this piece, and so-doing cause required offence within yet another population segment :) I live to please, after all.

Cheers all!
As a snubby lover, I didn't catch all the sarcasm due to my own pro-snubby bias. Re-reading it, I can see that now. Most of these things are written to show that one brand or type is the "correct" type and poke fun at others who disagree. I think that my own sensitivities are on display in my response. It is easy for a self-described liberal to become automatically defensive in a Red State. A few years ago, I would have laughed it off. Today, I see too much hatred and it makes me question the motives of the author. Sorry.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: Firearm Personality Types

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max129 wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:21 pm
Eris said:

I do need to ask everyone to keep things civil in here. Jumping quickly to foul language does not help.
Thanks Eris!
Looks like I answered a way-back post. I am skipping the rest of this discussion for reasons that should be obvious.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

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i'd like to advocate at this point that we all at least skim our new members' website before going much further. he can't do much about race relations in his country, much like we individually cant do much about ours, and it would appear that in some respects, particularly w/ regard to firearms rights, that he (i presume a he) is on our side. immersed as we all are in our particular cultural assumptions, we're probably never going to agree that mr. paratus has done everything possible to rectify past injustices. neither have we. i suggest that we back off the attack mode for a bit, let mr paratus express him self, and if appropriate, attack that, rather than a historical perspective over which he has no control.
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

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K9s said:

Looks like I answered a way-back post.
Actually, as one who carries a snubby about 1/3 of the time, the defense was welcome :-)

Things do get a bit heated on some threads - I would clutch my pearls, but I own none.
lurker said:
he can't do much about race relations in his country ...
And I agree with you. Just as I cannot fix the US, he cannot fix ZA. His assertion that the actual history of 300+ years of white people cannot be easily summed up. I agree with this. I disagree that the original history of white people in any part of Africa was particularly friendly or benign.

As for the current arguments for gun ownership, I am finding the site reasonable.

I wish I had more time to truly understand the gun cultures of various Countries. Perhaps in a few years.

I recently had a very good private message exchange with someone on this forum. As I said there, I doubt I completely agree with the entirety of anyone's positions on this forum, but I do feel that this is about as close as I am going to get to finding "my gun forum". We need to be a big enough tent that people can disagree.
Last edited by max129 on Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Firearm Personality Types

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max129 wrote: Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:20 pm 1) Acknowledge that bad things really happened - try to know the facts
2) Treat people as equals - and to his credit, Paratus85 is making such an argument
3) Support fix-it programs politically and personally
this, i believe, is a really good post, and i thank you for it. :thanks: except for the land ownership part, you dirty commie! :oops2:
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

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lurker clarified

... you dirty commie!
Yes, when it comes to land ownership, I am way out of sync with everyone else. I think the original owners of all land originally stole it from someone else or everyone else.

But I have no alternative system in mind. And people do need to live somewhere.
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