What measures do you have in place at your house to take care of intruders?

[FunkyDexter]

I figure a contingency plan for the end of the world is little redundant because it'll be... well... the end of the world. If I have a plan it involves port and a cigar.

I am guessing many wished they had one

It would be more rational to wish that he didn't.

[kareninstructor]

I figure a contingency plan for the end of the world is little redundant because it'll be... well... the end of the world. If I have a plan it involves port and a cigar.

It would be more rational to wish that he didn't.

End of the world could mean end of the world as we know it

[baja_yu]

It could also mean End of the World of Warcraft.

[FunkyDexter]

That'll never end! NEVER! STOP UPSETTING ME!!

[InvisibleDuncan]

End of the world could mean end of the world as we know it

Or it could simply mean "Wales".

[Shaggy Hiker]

End of the whales?

[dilettante]

I'm a little surprised this hasn't gone off in the gasoline generators, dried and canned food caches, woodstoves, etc. direction. Or maybe I just missed those posts.

[penagate]

End of the world could mean end of the world as we know it

Either way, I feel fine about it.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Just got a load of wood. I'll try a bit of wood heating, but we get some nasty inversions around here, and I don't want to contribute to the problem, so I'll be judicious about when I heat with wood.

[SJWhiteley]

Like the UK where i live? or in fact most of Europe?

in 2012 the US has

over 60% of all homicides by firearm that's over 9000 (out of around 12000) homicides = that 2.97 per 100,000 people

in 2012 the UK has

we had 6.6% of all homicides by firearm that's around 40 (out of 550) homicides that's 0.07 per 100,000 people

it seems fairly obvious to me that if people don't have access to guns not only will gun crime fall but murder rates will fall as it is a very different thing killing someone from a distance by pressing a trigger then say stabbing someone which requires the murderer to be up close and personal with there victim.

However, you are more likely to be a victim of a crime in the UK than the US by a 4:1. the ratio of crimes where the victim does not know the perpetrator is significantly higher than that - I don't have the exact statistics at hand (I've done a lot of research comparing UK/US crime rates, and types of crimes, and so on).

There's a reason the Limeys have the BCS - British Crime Survey. The incidence of crime has left the police powerless in the majority of cases, leaving victims who report crimes to become victims again.

With the election over, we will now fight a battle over guns as Obama will now seek to remove (ultimately) or restrict firearm ownership. Which I why I now officially own no guns, no sir, and If I did, I sold 'em to a guy in a parking lot somewhere, I can't remember where.

[SJWhiteley]

I'm a little surprised this hasn't gone off in the gasoline generators, dried and canned food caches, woodstoves, etc. direction. Or maybe I just missed those posts.

For a lot of people in the US, this is the de-facto way of life. I, personally, don't have a wood stove, but have propane and a wood-burning fireplace. Some (a lot!) of us live in places where we have the potential to loose 'civilization' for an undetermined amount of time.

[claws135]

like me! the closest town is 30 mins away

[Shaggy Hiker]

With the election over, we will now fight a battle over guns as Obama will now seek to remove (ultimately) or restrict firearm ownership.

I've always been a bit puzzled by this attitude. As far as I can tell, there is not even the slightest shred of evidence to support this. It appears to be entirely ginned up by self-fulfilling right wing attitudes. There isn't any serious pressure to do this coming from Democrats anymore (it was always a loser of a cause), and without that pressure, Obama certainly isn't going to bother with it. He's getting enough heat on other issues, he's not going to throw himself on his sword for a non-issue.

On one very long hike, I spent a day in a torrential downpour. Dripping wet, I emerged from a forest into a cow pasture. There were two calves lying in the pasture, more or less along the trail I was following. The first calf saw me and stood up rather nervously, since I was dressed pretty funny, even for a hiker, due to the rain. The second calf saw the first one stand up and jumped up in alarm, though it never looked my way. The first calf saw the alarm in the second calf and started backing away, which caused the second calf to start trotting, which caused the first calf to go into a full panic, and both went stampeding over a low hill, which I soon crested, only to see the two panicked calves stampede an entire herd of dairy cows. Those cows are NOT designed for stampeding anymore, and they have a heavily used trail running right through the middle of their pasture, so they must see hikers every day, and often by the dozen, yet those two calves started a flat out panic that had the whole herd gallumphing off across the sodden pasture, bellowing and bawling, with udders flapping about.

That's pretty much how the right wing sees Obama on the issue of guns. Most of my friends are Democrats, virtually all of my friends are avid hunters, and not a single one has the slightest concern about gun ownership related to Obama...or anybody else currently in office. The issue is dead outside of the right, but the right, like those calves, have worked each other into a panic.

[baja_yu]

That's a nice story but if you've been more descriptive of the udder-flapping it would have been great.

[moonman239]

The world will not end, but insanity will soar to new heights on December 21st.
Let's go back on topic, now.

[SJWhiteley]

I've always been a bit puzzled by this attitude. As far as I can tell, there is not even the slightest shred of evidence to support this. ...

You are looking in the wrong place, or not listening to comments made by Obama in the past 4 years. Placation of the anti-gun crowd? Perhaps. But with the UN arms treaty talks now being on the table, again, and the US officials talking out of both sides of their mouth, this is a real possibility. Dedicated hunters tend to have a doesn't-apply-to-me attitude; while initially this is true, there is a slippery slope.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's a nice story but if you've been more descriptive of the udder-flapping it would have been great.

I don't know if you were serious, or not, but when I wrote that, I felt the same way. I left out a more comical description of dairy cows in flight because the post was already too long.

Somebody recently stated that it isn't the case that the left and the right can't agree on any issues, but instead, the case is that the left and right don't even agree about what the issues are. The whole gun control thing is such an issue. For the mainstream Democrats and any centrists (assuming they actually exist), the gun control issue isn't worth even bringing up. It's a fight not worth having because only a few dedicated special interest groups are still pushing it. The issue was around in the 90s, it was a loser then, and isn't worth wasting a minute on anymore. The more that anybody in Democratic leadership state that, though, the more alarmed the right becomes. Whenever Obama says that he's not interested in gun control legislation, even immediately following an otherwise leverage moment, such as the shooting in CO, the conservative gun rights folks conclude that it's further proof of a sinister design. As if it was more clever to wait until there is NOT any leverage before springing this on people.

Obama will not advance a single piece of legislation that in any way limits gun rights unless there is overwhelming support for it. He just doesn't care enough about the issue to spend any time on the issue without the public already strongly backing it to the point that congress won't oppose it. Since that isn't going to happen, neither will there be any gun control legislation proposed by the executive branch for the next four years, just as there wasn't for the last four.

@Moonman: When have we ever stayed on topic in Chit-Chat. I'd say we are doing pretty well with this thread compared to most threads.

[MMock]

I would like to know how many people have a contingency plan for disasters such as Katrina and Sandy

I feel as though I've said this before, but I guess not in this thread and maybe not in this forum. We have a huge stash of canned food in the basement and pails of water. So guns to protect, and sustenance to allow us to remain holed up if need be. Maybe it's from my husband (and myself as well, but it was his idea to stock up) having watched/read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He's also building a generator, I don't know exactly how it runs but I know he bought engine parts before Obama made them illegal.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Frankly, if anything like The Road ever happens when I'm alive, I would make use of a gun, but I'd only need a single bullet. That was the most relentlessly depressing story I know of. I don't think I belong in such a world, and probably wouldn't want to live in it. Of course, that story was a little non-specific as to what the actual disaster was, and there's always a chance that I'd end up feeling a sense of obligation to help some other person or group of persons, but if it was just a matter of saving my own life....I wouldn't do it. At best, I'd spend whatever time I had left wandering around reminiscing about places and people, but there wouldn't be any "starting over".

[kareninstructor]

FWIW

I have been to several sessions at our state capital and other venues where politicians attempted to restrict concealed firearms carry in schools (this might be a hot topic for some) where at the current time in Oregon you are permitted to carry concealed. Personally if I could not I would put my concealed firearm in my car’s bolted to the chassis gun safe or simply walk in open carry with my state license to carry openly for armed security work. My point here is the politicians attempting to change state law have been doing so since (at least in my memory and may be longer) 2001.

Would Obama put legislation together that would farther restrict firearms or make them illegal to own? Doesn’t really matter if they did because eventually it will happen if they want this to happen. I think it will happen someday but not for many years yet I could easily be wrong.

Guns are evil in the wrong hands (Criminals and uneducated) and good in the hands of trained people. This lies the root of all firearm issues.

[dilettante]

Jeremiah was a decent TV series on a post-apocalyptic world. A little less grim than The Road though in many parts.

[baja_yu]

I don't know if you were serious, or not, but when I wrote that, I felt the same way. I left out a more comical description of dairy cows in flight because the post was already too long.

Completely serious. To be frank, there's no story that wouldn't be better with mention of flapping udders. That's just funny when you think about it. In fact, I'm going to write in my will that whoever is to give eulogy at my funeral, or rather scattering of the ashes, they have to work flapping udders into it. There's no reason why people should smile a bit just because I'm dead.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's a good philosophy, too.

The way we've bred milk cows for maximizing production is udderly ridiculous.

The only movie I can think of that was more relentlessly depressing than The Road is On The Beach. I really liked both movies, but the first one left out the slimmest sliver of hope, while the latter removed every last vestige.

[moonman239]

With the election over, we will now fight a battle over guns as Obama will now seek to remove (ultimately) or restrict firearm ownership. Which I why I now officially own no guns, no sir, and If I did, I sold 'em to a guy in a parking lot somewhere, I can't remember where.

We have the Constitutional right to "bear arms." Obama would have to either get both houses of Congress to agree that firearm ownership should be banned or get 2/3 of the states to vote to overturn the amendment. (2nd Amendment?)

[kareninstructor]

I think it really irks some of the powerful people in our country that citizens have the right to bear arms. Then on the other side of the pond we have some pro-gun people who go way over board. Personally I believe in the right to bear arms and stand at middle ground. BTW sometime in the coming months I will be published in a gun magazine discussing what I call “Tools in the toolbox”.

[SJWhiteley]

I think it really irks some of the powerful people in our country that citizens have the right to bear arms. Then on the other side of the pond we have some pro-gun people who go way over board. Personally I believe in the right to bear arms and stand at middle ground. BTW sometime in the coming months I will be published in a gun magazine discussing what I call “Tools in the toolbox”.

Which mag?

[kareninstructor]

Which mag?

Will let you know once I know. Here is the deal, another instructor wrote on FaceBook that she got a gig writing for a gun magazine several weeks ago and indicated she would be asking some of us (all self-defense instructors) to do interviews for articles in the magazine. Several years ago I sent her an article I wrote for our group, she decided to use it for the magazine. What she is going to do is turn the article into a question/reply, an interview done thru the document, send a proof to me then get my okay. Funny thing is I never did ask her which magazine it's for but plan to ask her when I get off work and will post back here once I know.

For the record this is the site for the group http://www.cssdsc.com/ that both her and I are instructors for.
I am list under http://www.cssdsc.com/instructors/ as Kevin Gallagher

I mainly teach here http://www.jimjacobe.com/