Shootings

[chris vickery]

Try working in industry with Metric.
Go cut me a piece of 500mcm cable 3710mm long....
Do I need a friend to help me? How heavy is that?
I had a young trainee years ago that I had asked to get me a piece of material.
I asked for a piece 20 x 40. He returned with a piece 20mm x 40mm, a slight difference from 20" x 40" Considering the job we were working on, common sense should have prevailed

[Marc Montgomery]

isnt it fascinating how the thread started out talking about mental wackos shooting people and ended up talking about metric measure?

back to topic, Kalashnikov always said he had no remorse for making the AK, that he invented it to protect the motherland and if people used it to kill each other around the world it was politicians fault not his
..but now revealed is that he had remorse shortly before his death and asked Orthodox religious leaders about it... saying he had spiritual pain..and asking them if he was to blame for the slaughter around the world using the gun he created.

Apparently the reply was the church supported the designer saying the weapon was intended to protect the motherland and that was all and he could not be spiritually condemned for that.

Oppenhiemer and Rotblat invented the nuclear bomb (relunctantly) to end war..fearing that Hitler was trying to do it

Gattling invented his "machine gun" believing it would reduce the size of armies, reduce killing and make war futile.

[guyvapeur]

There are many ways to resurrect a thread that has pettered out. Last night 3 police officers were murdered in the Moncton New Brunswick area. That should bring a spark back into this thread. Any one interested can certainly get better information from the many news media outlets.
I will leave it at that..... I am going to take the flag to half mast until we lay these three officers to rest.
I have a lot more to say.......but..... I will probably be in front of the tube until this matter is resolved.

[motto (RIP)]

No response Guyvapeur. Not because nobody cares but because 'what can be said in the face of these senseless killings that seem to have become part of our lives?' It's not only law enforcement officers that are the victims. The pre-disposition of people to perform violence on each other appears to be increasing generally. Last night a 19 year old man was fatally shot in a Sydney street. This sort of thing didn't used to happen.
It is a complex issue of which access to firearms is only a part. After WW1 & 2 hundreds of thousands of men trained in the use of firearms returned to civilian life with easy access to guns but shootings were a rarity. In Australia these shooting rampages started happening around the time that the generation that fought WW2 was handing over the reins to the following generation.
The great Australian poet Henry Lawson uses a line in one of his poems that refers to 'rotting in a deadly peace'. I suspect that he perceived something of the big picture. We've had it too good for too long. It seems that violence, lamentably, is part of the human condition in one form or another and always will be.

David

Shots fired into the front of a house in Sydney overnight. This never used to happen either. Now it's not uncommon at all in Sydney and Melbourne and firearms legislation is vastly more restrictive than it was when I was a youth.

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by motto

After WW1 & 2 hundreds of thousands of men trained in the use of firearms returned to civilian life with easy access to guns but shootings were a rarity. In Australia these shooting rampages started happening around the time that the generation that fought WW2 was handing over the reins to the following generation.

David, you mean shootings of white people were a rarity. Australian ex-servicemen shot thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children over the years, sometimes several hundred at a time, ably assisted by police of course. I suspect that would qualify as a "shooting rampage".

[rob love]

One change to this recent occurrence is that the media is not playing up the shooter, making him infamous and thereby offering infamy to the next guy who wants to go on a spree. It will do nothing to boost the media's sales, and I find it rather incredulous that they have done this. Good on them.

Too often, within days of the shooting, we hear every minute detail possible about the shooter, along with every known photo of him. Hopefully, if this is the media's new operandi on these horrible events, they can stick with it.

[motto (RIP)]

Tony, bad things happened in the isolation of the countryside in the 19th century, I don't doubt that but what actually went on is largely confined to hearsay and what is believed by any individual is dependant on their natural inclination and allegiances.
What I am trying to identify and comment on here are the changes in community attitudes and behaviour in my lifetime plus two generations. When I was born in 1948 there were still huge numbers of people around who were born in the late 1800s. By then the 'aboriginal massacres' were a thing of the past and I strongly object to them being associated in any way with returned servicemen from WW1 & 2.
Rob, I agree entirely, the media have played a large part in perpetuating this aberrant behaviour.

David