General Chat

So we are debating the laws on guns, and discussing the statistics across the pond, particularly in the light of many hundreds of other debates going on, on the same subject everywhere, on the radio, TV, Newspapers, internet forums, pubs clubs and cafes all over.

So who decided to take it upon themselves to be offended on behalf of someoen else again? Are we not to talk about things that have just happened, or even topics related to them? Should we just pretend its not there in the hope that it might go away?

Hi TW
I'd just finished writing a long piece about Robert Sartin who lived near to me,about his 'killing rampage' throught the quiet roads in Monkseaton,Whitley Bay when i posted it went poof!! ah well....I don't often take part in debates but thought I'd give my take about gun laws etc.

And I was in the middle of posting a treatise on crime statistics in continuation of our discussion, TW. ;)

Are we quite sure that some outside power deleted that thread?

I'm not.

I could understand if it is someone who has been affected by gun crime and perhaps wants to escape from discussions about it but is that really what's happened here? I was looking forward to catching up on the debate.

However, again it is GR who has the power to delete threads/posts and should be explaining as much as possible to the thread originator why it has been deleted. They really should judge whether it is reasonable for the thread to be deleted.

Edit: to clarify I mean that they shouldn't just delete automatically because someone has asked them to. They should weigh everything up.

OH well.

Janey, it's not like Eldrick to just delete, he's gone out before in the middle of a debate he's set up, and we all know they do get a bit heated by their very nature. I really don't think he would have deleted without saying something.

SRS, yes I could understand it in a way, but surely someone who has been victim to gun crime would have a very valid opinion on the current state of gun laws? Who knows? But somehow I doubt it was someone in that position.

OH well, off to do something else then...

Just for info: I have had two apologies in the last month for deletions of threads I started that should not have been deleted. The crusade/vendetta had been given its usual knee-jerk validation -- but someone actually looked at the threads and wrote me non-bot replies explaining that the deletions were inappropriate, the threads did not violate anything, and apologizing.

I thought maybe there was a new broom ...

We still don't know, however, who deleted the thread.

No, it was me. It had turned into a rather predictable diatribe and gone well away from the original topic to the extent that I thought it best, as I'm about to go out, to get rid.

I haven't got the strength to keep reading endless C&P's from all over the internet, have every single word analysed, scrutinised and twisted round and have the goalposts moved every second. So I exercised my perogotive!

See you all tomorrow :-)

frEEEEEE speech!

Whee.

I can't argue with you there TW, I may be wrong but I don't think it's the case either. As you say, I imagine some people would have very valid views on the subject if they were affected by it.

**tuts** you could have waited until I had the chance to read the "predictable diatribe" whatever it was ;)

Have a good evening :)

Well thanks very much Eldrick you wasted quite a bit of my valuable time replying to your debate thread!

Ah well at least we got to the bottom of that.


So.....what shall we talk about?

The weather? Nope thats already done LOL

oooh sounds like I missed a good one....

We can keep on chatting, of course, as long as TW doesn't delete. ;)

I've been the victim of an extremely violent crime -- no gun involved. If there had been, I'd be dead.

I've been a secondary victim of two gun deaths.

The man I was in a relationsihp with while I was articling - older - once had two sons. When I met him, he had one. His younger son, at 13, depressed to an extent no one obviously knew about surgeries for congenital spina bifida ("club foot" -- surgery gone wrong, apparently), killed himself with one of his father's hunting weapons.

Hence, perhaps, my noticing the high rate of suicides committed with Swiss military-issue firearms. (The other point on that is that quite a few firearms suicides there and elsewhere are actually suicide-homicides: usually a man killing a woman and then himself. Non-firearm suicide-homicides are rare. Not many people want to stab or suffocate or drown their victim and then stab or suffocate or drown themselves, or get on a bus to the nearest tall building to jump off. Those are clear cases of deaths that would be fewer in number if firearms were not present.)

Several years later, when I was in practice, I pulled into my parking space one winter morning to the news on the radio that a client of mine had been shot dead. Her sister had sponsored her new husband, a gang-involved drug dealer, from within Canada. Because of his abusive behaviour, she had withdrawn the sponsorship, and he was told he would have to leave. He climbed in a window of the family home (where she had gone for safety) early in the morning with a handgun, started shooting, and killed my client. She was not the direct victim of his abuse, but she died because he was a woman-abusing piece of scum, in the crossfire of his attempt to kill his direct victim.

Maybe that's why I have noticed the number of women killed by men using military-issue firearms in Switzerland.


Or maybe, in both cases, it's just because I give a darn.

Kitty ... really ... nobody forces you to read anything anybody else writes.

And complaining about what other people write, without saying anything about that or anything else, just isn't really worth your bother. Me, you see, I get tired of reading posts that do nothing but complain about other people's posts ...

but Kitty... my post was long but certainly not tedious,and no C&P either...I sometimes think I'm invisible :O(

I see you.

Tip: I've been using the "add" link because it lets you see what you're replying to.

(And for anybody who needs to figure it out: I C&P from the posts I'm replying to because in a non-threaded thread, there is no way of knowing who is talking to whom about what. I really wish we could stop whining about this.)

But if you use the "add" link and something goes wrong, like the thread being deleted, when you back-page, the text is gone.

However, if you use the "Reply" button/box, you can back-page, reopen the box, and your text will still be there for copying. In my Firefox that works, anyhow!

No I'm with Kitty, although I did put a really long post which covered current firearms legislation, but only to portray the facts of what we were discussing. I apologised for the length too ll

However, when I see a really long post I usually read the first line and the last line but somewhere in between start losing the will to live LOL.

Which is why I prefer to just use a small but relevant quote to illustrate one point in a post, rather than attempt to cover everything in one go.

Mau - I'll join you in the invisible brigade ;-))) x

* skips away with Sheila down the yellow brick road :O) x