Doc

Well, it was the University of Chicago that conducted the study. Perhaps the other two entities provided assistance and pieces of the study. But just who was it that coughed up the actual grant money. I always am extremely curious and suspicious of these kinds of studies. I know that in some cases they count on the fact that no one really has the resources or interest to check them out. But I see the power that such research can have, and the fact that so many people merely accept the findings as gospel and then spout those findings all over the globe until eventually it becomes recognized as fact. And we never seem to question any of it, but simply except it as gospel. These people can turn supposition and opinion into fact just by flashing their credentials. I simply have a distrust of handing that kind of power over to anyone without pointing out that these studies do have the capability to be bogus and that their findings and conclusions should carry no more weight than our own native intelligence, logic and reasoning.

They used a slimy but apparently legal tactic on a group of constituents that they determined were not really dedicated to the principles of the 2nd Amendment. If they had not firmly believed that we are a disorganized harmless bunch of people who will cave at the polls, they never would have had the stones to use that underhanded tactic. But all they had to do was to look at the membership of the gun advocacy organizations, do a bit of arithmetic, and the numbers laid it all out for them.

The point is that there would be a whole different attitude among legislators if we were able to demonstrate the importance of 2nd Amendment issues by overwhelmingly being members of the largest gun advocacy group. As it turned out, it appears that those legislators who voted for the Safe Act (be it in a clandestine fashion or not) would have known by the sheer numbers that they were committing political suicide. However, it appears that they did their homework and saw that only a very tiny percent of the gun owners have seen fit to join any activist group. That speaks volumes to a candidate. It may very well turn out that gun owners do not have the courage of their convictions. Or more accurately, have no real convictions at all when it comes to those who trample the 2nd Amendment. And that was the signpost that legislators saw when they felt they could get away with cramming the Safe Act through. This upcoming election may just prove that they read it all correctly. We cannot organize. Legislators now know that. When their gamble is proven to have been a wise assessment of the gun owners, get ready for a massive crush of new gun legislation that may very well reach well into weapons that everyone considered sacred hunting weapons.

Ever hear the saying that figures don't lie but liars figure .... lol. It would be interesting to see just who paid for this study. The interesting thing about this study as regards the topic of this thread, is the tone of such passages as : "Fertility declines for black women are three times greater than for whites (12 percent compared with 4 percent). Given that homicide rates of black youths are roughly nine times higher than those of white youths, racial differences in the fertility effects of abortion are likely to translate into greater homicide reductions. Under the assumption that those black and white births eliminated by legalized abortion would have experienced the average criminal propensities of their respective races, then the predicted reduction in homicide is 8.9 percent. In other words, taking into account differential abortion rates by race raises the predicted impact of abortion legalization on homicide from 5.4 percent to 8.9 percent." It all sounds like an ad promoting abortion among blacks. Kind of reminds me of the days when racists called for sterilization of blacks, a notion that is probably still popular among members of the KKK. It sounds like the idea may have some support among these researchers who seem to think that the most significant cause of crime and violence is the birth rates. I am not a proponent or opponent of abortion, but the tone of this study certainly does have a chilling effect when their conclusions seem to support a camouflaged version of genocide as a significant solution to crime in this country.

Who said older folks were slow???? Ron, an elderly man, had owned a large farm in Florida for a number years. He had a large pond in the back. It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts and some orange and lime trees. One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while, and look it over. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence, and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out until you leave!" Ron frowned, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked." Holding the bucket up Ron said, "I'm here to feed the alligator." Some old men can still think fast.

Of course we are talking about modern times and not getting into prehistoric history.....lol. And certainly, when I say that sanctity of life is on the decline, I am alluding to the motivations as opposed to raw numbers. Certainly we can enter in wars and other monumental episodes of killing, but I believe we are talking about modern day U.S. societal evolution. Quote: "Crime hasn't increased, just our awareness of it has." There is a statement that kind of defies belief. With the advent of the drug culture and the massive, elaborate organizations that dwarf the Mafia in terms of size and resources, I really do have a hard time accepting that statement. Quote: "Go back through history and tell me a time period when every human life was held in higher regard than it is now." For openers, I would say the 1950's were definitely a calmer and even a sedate decade. And even the 60's which may be the decade of the beginning of the moral decline has been dwarfed by subsequent decades. I might also point out that the increase in the impact of media, entertainment and other forms of communication that have entered into the shock realm have been on a parallel increase. Coincidence??? .... perhaps not.

There's a current song going around that has a line in it that relates to this year's Republican campaign perfectly: "Say something, I'm giving up on you"

Interesting thought. Back in the 50's, we had the same sort of thing involving the gyrations of Elvis and such back in my teenage years. Yeah, we also had all those movies with James Dean, Sal Mineo, Brando, and all those other "bad-boy" guys who cranked out all those gang war, rumble, juvenile delinquents, switchblade kinds of movies. Heck, I didn't even know what a switchblade was until I saw those movies..... lol. But other than a few harmless hair-dos, the turned up collar, the black leather jackets. and engineer's boots, I survived all of that without heading to a life of evil. But then too, can anyone deny an evolution of severe deterioration of morals, increase in the callousness of crime, cheapening of life, and yes, even an increase in the number of "satan worshipping murderers" over all those decades? So maybe they all had it right, but just had the "extent" a bit overstated. Perhaps they shouldn't have said "every" teenage boy. But then maybe we shouldn't pooh-pooh such notions just because it didn't happen to "every" teenage boy. I'm just saying that maybe some of this stuff really is exactly as evil as it sounds to one extent or another. It just might be that when you have the entertainment industry cramming this stuff in your eyes and ears constantly, there just might be an erosion of society that takes place. Like so many other invasive evils, they come slowly and hardly perceptibly. But they grind their way to form reality just as surely as any form of erosion.

A very powerful ad. Now the question is where is it placed on TV? Are we still preaching to the choir by running these on hunting channels and programs, or is it out in the general programming with a properly targeted audience? Somehow, these kinds of ad are slipping by me because I have not seen any of them anywhere on the TV.

This statement may very well be the crux of the whole problem. That is exactly the way it all seems ..... like they are not really even trying to defeat this guy. They put up a weak candidate and then withhold all support. What other conclusions are you supposed to draw?

I think Cuomo was vulnerable if a credible candidate was put forward, and a serious campaign were to be launched by the candidate and his party. Gun owners are not in the majority, but they are a fairly single-minded voting block. There are other Cuomo enemies besides us. Even his Liberal buddies are a little put out with him. With enough fracturing of his base, and enough organization of the anti-Cuomo forces (all of them, not just gun owners), and a true sincere campaign effort along with aggressive support of the Republican and Conservative Parties, The guy may not have been easy pickins, but definitely not unbeatable.

It came today.

Yup, I sure do call now. But lately, it's not even worth the cost of a phone call. They simply have been dropped from my list of suppliers. For years there was never even a question. You just would go up there and start loading up on whatever you needed. They always had even the most obscure items. But now it can just be assumed that they won't have what I need. Believe it or not I actually have better luck driving all the way to Auburn to the Bass-Pro shop.....lol. I'll say that I am starting to understand the hoarding mentality. You never know when the next load of components will be the last time you will ever be able to get some of the stuff. Your next purchase of those kinds of products may turn out to be your lifetime's supply. That is one thing about reloading. Once you have spent all the time experimenting and finally have found the best performing combination of components and powder, you pretty much want to be able to stick to it. It's not like if you can't get a particular manufacturer's product, you can simply change manufacturers on the spot. It can take hours of testing to get the best groups. So, it is no small thing when months go by without being able to get the products that I have settled in on. There is no clear-cut direction to place the blame. There's enough stories going around so that you can point at anybody and chances are pretty good they share in some of the responsibility.....lol.

Ok, Mine came today. However, since I don't have a lifetime bow license, I stopped down to the town hall to get my bow license and two antlerless permits. Things got a little weird then. First of all, my wife couldn't get her fishing license because the computer that hooks all of her info to the auto licensing system couldn't find her. All her info was put in about 4 or 5 times and it screwed up everytime. So she will have to go back and try later on another day. Everything went fine with my bow license and my two permits except that apparently there is some printing problem with Ontario County (and maybe more) that mis-registers the one side from the other so that if you flip the license over to cut out the notched month and day, you will find them part way across the next perforated tag. Archery only as near as I can see. It's going to make tagging a bit of a challenge if I get a deer with the bow. This is the first glitch that I have ever had, in all the years that the computer has been involved in licensing. I have always been a big fan of DECALS. So why on earth did they change the whole thing around once they got the bugs out of the old system? Anybody know?

I'm not griping, I am making an observation and expressing an opinion. That is kind of what we do on a forum. I have no intentions of donating $100 or making a career out of running the Republican Party. I'm looking at Cuomo's campaign and I'm looking at Astorino's stealth campaign and to me, there are some pretty wild glaring differences that indicate that one candidate and his party came in prepared to win, and the other came in simply to see his name on the ballot and obviously has no support from his party. That's not griping.... that's simple observation and comment. If you are happy with the way the campaign is being run ..... good for you.

I suppose an accident could have occurred that broke an antler off. But the guy is still in velvet. Are they really that brittle at that stage?

What the heck..... I'm out there looking for nice bucks and all we get are goofy things like this. And no, I do not live next to a nuclear power plant ..... lol. Oh, and then there are the aliens ... lol. The eye reflection burn-out of the foxes face is no big surprise, but the reflection of the 12' tall sasquatch eyes behind him was:

Well, as long as everyone is satisfied with the way this campaign is going, I guess that's the important thing ....eh? Rob who??? Oh yeah, he's the guy Cuomo is always talking about in his campaign ads.

Yes and while he and his missing Republican backers wait for the perfect timing, Andy is filling the airwaves with unanswered slander, building up the case that this guy is just short of being an Al Capone. Those kinds of charges if not answered right away, stick like glue and become the only "facts" that voters can remember when they go to the polls. There is no real excuse to be going into a campaign underfunded. All that shows is insincerity, and the lack of ability to plan. And by the way, if he came into this campaign counting on every gun owner to contribute $100, then we definitely are backing the wrong horse. That is about the silliest notion that I have ever heard. He and the Republican party know what it takes to run a campaign. It's not a big secret that somebody just sprung on them this year. If their campaign fundraisers don't know what the heck they are doing, they need to be replaced. We can't continue to be putting up these "lightweights" and expect to beat a real political animal like Cuomo. And I think that going easy on the Republican Party for this fiasco of a campaign is letting them off the hook way too easy. Somebody needs to answer for this non-campaign. The party is either totally incompetent, or they have some other unknown agenda that calls for hanging a paper candidate out to dry. We can talk about liberal this and liberal that, but maybe the problem in NYS is that we simply run a crap campaign with crap candidates and a know-nothing political party.

They used to be the "go to" local source for re-loading components. Not so much anymore for what I need. Last several trips up there (a 45 minute to 1 hour drive) I have returned home empty handed.

A simple question ..... a simple answer without any editorializing: A 12 gauge shotgun for small game and my .270 for deer.

So, what is the ammo situation in PA? Is it any better than here? In other words is it worth the trip to stock up on items that seem to be missing here?

Look, I understand all the popular excuses, but the fact is that Cuomo and the Democratic party seem to have no problem raising gobs of money. They have an organization that comes to the show equipped to perform. And I'll bet nearly none of that is from mom & pop individual contributors. The Republican Party has failed to catch on to something that seems to be second nature to the Democrats. It's time (past time) for them to smarten up and start preparing to actually run a campaign. This Astorino is not supposed to be standing by himself. He is supposed to have a political machine behind him that has already accumulated the cash to run an effective campaign. Why hasn't that happened? If a dingbat like Cuomo and his merry bunch of pinkos can do it, it can't be all that tough to figure out.

So where are the Astorino TV, radio and newspaper ads? It appears that the Republicans have a stealth candidate. One of the best kept secrets in the world of politics. Quite frankly it is getting a bit worrisome. This clown Cuomo seems to have the complete run of the media and for all appearances seems to be running unopposed. I'm hearing a lot of "Astorino who?" from people who see the sign out front of my place. The only name recognition he is receiving is coming from the slew of unanswered Cuomo attack ads. It is shaping up as a bloodbath this fall. And with this potential landslide goes our gun rights as the anti-gunners become emboldened by the "mandate". What seems to be the problem with the Republican party? They had a whole bag of real good issues this year, and they are all being squandered ...... again.

Actually it is a myth that overseas production and technology is inferior. We have spent decades actively shipping production lines along with technology and procedures, and have mastered the art of using the hunger for higher standards of living in other countries to our benefit. Until we get to the point where we are willing to work for a couple of fish heads and a cup of rice, the tech drain out of this country will not stop.