I drove across Maryland on I-68 on Monday, and was treated to Maryland drivers tailgating 15 feet apart at 70MPH coming down out of the Appalachians. One flat tire and they have a massive 30 car pileup.
These same people are terrified that some NRA member with an AR-15 is going to come shoot them, even though such a thing may have never actually occurred.
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You mean like this?
GRANTSVILLE, Md. — One moment it was a line of traffic, edging westward through fog that had hooded Interstate 68 and Big Savage Mountain all day. The next moment, it was mayhem, a maelstrom of cars and trucks, crashing, skidding, shredding one another.
…
At mid-evening yesterday, eight hours after the fact, emergency officials tallying the loss said two were killed. They estimated that nearly 100 were injured — from sprained wrists to severe trauma that could push the death toll higher. Hospitals in Cumberland, Md., said they treated 64, admitted six and transported one to a trauma hospital in Baltimore.
http://old.post-gazette.com/localnews/20030524crashreg2p2.asp
Steve, welcome to our neck of the woods! You will quickly see that MD is loony land.
15 feet? They were giving you lot’s of room.
Seriously, that;s a whole carlength.
I expect our resident Progressive will reveal to us that these drivers were NRA members going downtown with their AR-15s to terrify people.
Oh, you mean it should be a 2.0 second gap, not a 0.2 second gap …
Maybe they were all progressives who have problems telling the difference between precision and accuracy …
Welcome to the madness Steve.
We moved out of the Boston MA area to the wilds of NC twenty years ago. Every time I see a tailgater I know they are from Cary NC
Containment
Area for
Relocated
Yanks
15 feet and 70mph is a Sunday driver for MD. Once they come south of the Potomac it’s 90mph and trading paint.
Cars only kill like 40,000 people in the US every year. I don’t know why that would be scary compared with the literally dozens of people who die from rifle fire every year.
And yet, every time I offer to buy a “Gun Free Zone” sign for a “gun-hater’s house”, they decline my ever-so-generous offer….
Hypocrites….. They just don’t want the crooks to be sure it’s safe to rape and pillage at their house…….
Just have a few signs printed up and carry a ladder. Starting to putting the signs up (especially if a friend has a video camera) would make for a great comedy routine.
Wouldn’t do that. Some of the virulent gun haters I know are dangerously unstable.
I always defer to the insights of people fretting about parking lot gun fights and killed lovers. They know themselves.
This ignores the fact that for example, two days ago a 4 year old found his father’s gun and shot himself dead. This happens virtually every day. A GOP talking point overlooks these many dead children not to mention the people who kill lovers nearly daily using guns.
Get a grip. Citing CDC statistics, 98 “kids under age 18” died from accidental shootings in 2010, and that is down from 150 deaths in 2000 and 417 in 1990. There has been a radical drop in accidental shootings from 1990 to 2010.
“In the United States during 2011, more than 650 children ages 12 years and younger died as occupants in motor vehicle crashes,5 and more than 148,000 were injured.”
Ban cars, or children.
That is because of lousy parenting not guns. There is a REASON for gun safes. You can get a new one for as little as $250 link
I was 3 years of age when Dad brought a gun into the house. The first thing that was done was teaching my brother and I gun safety. I shot my first shot gun at age three. If you have a gun you have a safe and you teach the kids gun safety. Anthing else is rotten parenting.
Kids are poisoned all the time too. (Again because of lousy parenting.) According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2008 over 41,000 people died as a result of poisoning.
GRAPH: Deaths per 1000 by Motor vehicle, poisoning and drugs
Guns do not even make a blip on the graph.
LIFE IS LETHAL So get over it.
re: emsnews May 22, 2014 at 10:41 am
HEY LOON, check out the number of toddler deaths DUE TO MOP BUCKETS!
WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THE BANNING OF MOP BUCKETS WHERE TODDLERS RESIDE?
Loon …
.
In case you think I’m kidding, loon, check this out:
mop bucket deaths
Queens baby dies after falling into mop bucket at day care center – police
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens-baby-dies-falling-mop-bucket-day-care-center-police-article-1.375078
Police were investigating the death of a Queens baby who perished Monday when he fell headfirst into a mop bucket at his baby-sitter’s house.
James Farrior, who would have been 1 year old next month, was declared dead at Jamaica Hospital at 11:25 a.m.
“What can I say, he was my baby? We’re trying to cope,” said his devastated mom, Chrisann Josiah. “We don’t know what happened yet.”
It was not immediately clear if James drowned or broke his neck. An autopsy will be performed today.
“I saw the firefighters bring the boy out. He was gasping for air,” said neighbor Billy Casares, 41. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Baby-sitter Kristal Khan, 28, who normally took care of two neighborhood kids along with her small son and daughter in an informal but legal day care arrangement, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, police said.
– – – – – – – – – – –
. . . . BAN MOP BUCKETS !!
. . . . FOR THE CHILDREN !!
.
Unfortunately it is not that uncommon. I had a kid drown in a bucket and my boy friend’s 2 year old sister drown in a goldfish pond in the backyard. It was about 3 ft wide and 6” deep.
EMS should really be upset over the right to own swimming pools…
“What’s more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there is no comparison: a swimming pool is 100 times more deadly.
In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children under the age of 10 drowned in the United States last year alone. Approximately 550 of those drownings — about 75 percent of the total — occurred in residential swimming pools. According to the most recent statistics, there are about six million residential pools, meaning that one young child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.
About 175 children under the age of 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200 million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one child killed by guns for every one million guns.
Thus, on average, if you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.”
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/27/levittpoolsvsguns/
And I cannot remember the last time a swimming pool saved someone’s life…
“This happens virtually every day.”
[Citation Needed]
(Reality: accidental gun deaths and rates are at historic lows.)
“…not to mention the people who kill lovers nearly daily using guns.”
[Citation Needed]
You apparently mis-spelled “gang bangers” and “each other” as “people” and “lovers.”
Over 4.5 children die every day or over 1,640 yearly from parental abuse. Will outlawing parent hood help matters? You must think so because taking your post to its logical limits you seem to be promoting a nation wide band on heterosexual sex.
Where did those 98 kids live? South Chicago? L. A.? There are all kinds of ways to state a figure like that. It’s almost for sure that very few or none of those 98 were from homes with responsible parents. The kind of home where that happens is littered with infected needles on the floor, loaded, unsafe guns lying around on the coffee table and all sorts of criminals going and coming all day and all night.
Some of those ‘kids’ were old enough to vote and join the military. And yes, probably zero from NRA homes.
Only 70MPH, Steve? Why were they going so slow?
People under 18 are ‘children’. You are all so upset when someone points out things that are obvious. See?
This is a HANDICAP for anyone trying to work with you guys, you all fly off the handle when someone suggests a reality you dislike. I recall, we have to have strict vehicle laws which put you in jail or fines you if you violate many of these laws including speed laws, for just one example.
You can’t drink and drive, you can go to prison for that, for example. But if anyone even suggests similar laws about guns, the NRA screams bloody murder.
Do not Bob Tisdale making fun of speed laws which are imposed to protect drivers.
You are not citing reality. You are emoting. Guns save lives, every day. Pools do not save lives, and yet you seem to be missing the reality of pools being 100 times more deadly than guns.
The NRA promotes gun safety and legal ownership. They protect my civil right to defend myself. That’s right EMS, this is a civil rights issue.
Hey gator69! Just a quick point, and my apologies if it seems I am nit-picking, but this is a subject of some importance to me. You say: “They protect my civil right to defend myself.” Well…self defence is not a “civil right”. It something much more basic; it is a “natural right.” Civil rights are those we get by virtue of our form of government. Voting is a civil right. Use of a public park is a civil right. Civil rights may be granted or taken away if governmental dictates and edicts change. Self defence is a natural right; it is inborn in you and in every sentient creature and exists completely before and outside of any form of government. Self defence is a natural right because it is intrinsic to the concept of self-ownership. No one — not Stalin, not Bush, not Obama! — have the ethical authority to deprive you of your natural rights. They were born with you and are as much a part of you as your lungs and your heart. Sorry of this sounds like nit-picking, but I think the basic division of natural rights and civil rights is important enough to pick a few nits here and there!
Jason you are absolutely right. I just like throwing the whole ‘civil rights’ argument into the faces of those who still claim to support our first ‘civil right’, free speech, and march whenever one of their pet rights is ‘threatened’.
As our once useful Constitution states, our ‘rights’ are most definitely not provided by Big Brother.
emsnews,
The laws do nothing to protect people. How many people do you know who speed or drink and drive? Heck I can point to three drug dealers on my road and the cops do nothing except harass my neighbor, a forester, who reported the m.j. plantation he found down the street.
It is personal responsibility that matters not laws.
This is what I find to be a key difference between a Progressive and a Conservative.
If I catch someone abusing a horse (and I have) my first response is to offer help and try to re-educate the person. The first response of a ‘Progressive’ is to call the cops and get the person jailed or to agitate for a new law.
In the case of the horse, the owners were just dumb as a brick about horses and pathetically grateful for any help or tips I could give them.
Yes, you seem to have some kind of handicap, but it should not completely prevent you from using logic. Try harder. It works.
Actually, no.
A person under 18 is a minor. In most US jurisdictions, a child is a person 14 years of age or younger.
You might not think the distinction relevant, but the conflation is intentional and significant. The vast majority of 15-17 year olds killed with firearms are gang members.
Trying to conflate the real, epidemic problem of gang banging (that constitutes a genocide of young black (and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic) men) with the near-zero number (and rate) of accidental gun deaths of children may serve a certain political end, but it won’t help solve any real problems.
The reality is that accidental gun deaths – both numbers and rate – are at historic lows, and have been trending down for decades.
First, there are laws that regulate driving because 1) unlike the right to keep and bear arms, there is no consitutionally protected, natural right to drive a car, and 2) the state has a demonstrated, significant public-good interest in regulating the activity of driving a vehicle.
But that’s really beside the point, because instead of trying to argue that point, you erect yet another straw man, by conflating drinking and driving with drinking and carrying firearms.
Please, find one – just one – example of an NRA member who would advocate for the propriety – much less, the right – to carry a firearm while under the influence of alcohol.
That you would erect and demolish such ridiculous straw men indicates that your discussion here is insincere and unserious.
Possibly the best comment this year. +100 and thanks.
“Please, find one – just one – example of an NRA member who would advocate for the propriety – much less, the right – to carry a firearm while under the influence of alcohol.”
Uh oh! Here’s one! I’m an NRA member, and I think the right to carry is absolute, regardless of how much alcohol one has been consumed. I believe in spontaneous order, that people do not generally do things beyond their own ability to control.
Note that 100 years ago, drinking at shooting ranges was common. It still exists in Europe. The paranoia of mixing firearms and alcohol has more to do with prudery than safety.
http://www.swissrifles.com/shooting/
Note that I said under the influence of – as in: drunk. You want to drink a beer or a glass of wine at dinner while carrying? No problem with that. But if you’re going to go beyond that, you shouldn’t be carrying. And if you advocate that it is prudent to handle firearms while drunk, you would be in the (extreme) minority in that opinion, and also directly violating NRA safety rules:
It has nothing to do with prudery, and everything to do with not having control of one’s own physical and mental faculties when handling a deadly weapon (whether a firearm or an automobile).
Chip receives another A+.
One of the highlights of the year around here is what I call my ATF weekends. I invite a crowd of shooters, and we may have a beer while shooting, but the real drinking is reserved for after the shootout. Then we break out the cigars and whiskey and toast our Second Amendment right.
BTW – Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is a great idea for a convenience store, but a waste as a government entity.
Cheers!
“You want to drink a beer or a glass of wine at dinner while carrying? No problem with that”
Problem with that: it is illegal in my state.
“And if you advocate that it is prudent to handle firearms while drunk”
I advocate people choosing what they do, and determining for themselves whether they are drunk, not your “more than one drink” standard. I stand for freedom, not prudery.
BTW . . . I’m consistent, I don’t believe in DUI laws, either.
re: gator69 says May 23, 2014 at 4:50 pm
… BTW – Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is a great idea for a convenience store, but a waste as a government entity.
Toss in the use of Tannerite (used to ‘animate’ targets upon a hit) and get a Four-fer; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms AND Explosives …
.
emsnews says:
People under 18 are ‘children’. You are all so upset when someone points out things that are obvious. See?
What we don’t see are citations.
You claim there are deaths “virtually every day”, and that guns “kill lovers nearly daily using guns.”
Citations required.
Put up or shut up.
Any citations would be meaningless. Just as blaming an inherent right is meaningless. A right never hurt anyone. Criminality, immorality and irresponsibility do the hurting.
+1
And Guys, save the beer for AFTER shooting.