An excellent writer
Lenox Rawlings has been such an excellent writer (“Time to move on; a new season beckons,” Dec. 16) that he almost convinced me that organized sports are important, that strategy and tactics that surround individuals and groups of people who bounce balls, shoot balls, bat balls, kick balls, pass balls, roll balls, throw balls, pitch balls, hurl balls, sling balls, spin balls, stop balls, block balls, slap balls, fire balls, kill balls and toss balls (etc., etc., etc.) are more than superficial.
People running in races or riding an animal or guiding some motorized conveyance round and round and round and round seemed to do so with notable purpose.
Lenox Rawlings made such obvious nonsense interesting and salient, and I rarely missed reading at least the first few lines or paragraphs of his articles and/or columns during the past 30 years. Imagine the social impact that he could have had if his focus and his interests had been on serious topics. Maybe he still has time for useful and profound work? Certainly, he has the skill and the grace of the best writers to do it.
KEN BADGETT
Dobson
Protection solution
How's this for a solution: Ban all bullets, make all new guns and convert all current guns to shoot only tranquilizer darts. Same “good guy” protection, nobody gets killed or wounded.
PAUL LUNDRIGAN
Lexington
Insulting attitude
The Dec. 23 story “Nominee supports right to bear arms” quotes prospective Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board member David Regnery stating that if he was in a Newtown-like situation, he would save lives. How preposterous. How naïve.
Our neighborhood gun yahoos think that a safety course and a full clip make them law-enforcement or combat professionals. Simply charge in and blow ’em away. Concealed-carry did not help Gabby Gifford or the people in Aurora, Colo.
Regnery’s attitude is insulting to our police and military people, trained not only in gun safety, but well equipped and ready for aggressive tactics day in and day out. Too many of them still fall victim to people with guns.
John Wayne-type invincible heroes only exist in movie-land. Get real. Get rid of all civilian guns.
PAUL SPEDDING
Winston-Salem
Scapegoats
Apparently, conservatives don’t want us to react to the Newtown, Conn., tragedy by making scapegoats of guns. And I suppose there’s some justification for not blaming the tragedy entirely on guns, even though it would doubtless not have occurred had the gunman not had access to guns; but I do wish they had realized the seriousness of mental illness before they decided that one of their core principles would be that we should live with as few social services as possible.
The Republican Party: Now, more than ever, the party of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face.
Some of their champions, like Mike Huckabee, came up with their own scapegoat for the Newtown massacre, pointed their fingers at “the Godless,” revealing their own prejudice toward those who don’t believe what they believe, blaming this tragedy on the lack of our willingness to allow them to indoctrinate our children in our schools, as if their god is so petty and so childish that he requires the blood of children because he’s not being catered to enough.
Oh, if only we’d listened, if only we’d allowed them to teach our children to hate and discriminate just like they do.
ANNA STOCKTON
Winston-Salem
Deceitful heart
On Dec. 14, 2012, in yet another day of infamy in American consciousness, a soulless male terrorist armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle executed his mother, then seven women and 20 first-grade children and then himself. Their parents and loved ones are suffering unimaginable horror and stabbing grief.
Does not Jeremiah 17:9 describe this gunman’s nucleus? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” While you can argue a case example should not be construed as a generalization, here’s my point: I believe there is an ancient fiendish force outside human beings that exists solely to tempt, harass, attack, oppress, infiltrate and sometimes possess human beings. What better explanation is there for such a man’s homicidal, malevolent assassination of children and women?
Surely he was mentally ill. But is there any psychiatric disorder that can diagnose his monstrous mind-set, motivation and act?
Banning assault rifles would minimally be the right response, but this not the solution. No human being can exorcise such evil power without the help of Christ himself. God help us.
PETER VENABLE
Winston-Salem
A child’s life
Nearly every day we read about infants and young children being either severely abused or killed by their young parents. This is the result of children having children.
Please, save the life of a child — teach safe sex, have contraception available to everyone and keep abortion legal.
KAREN McHUGH
Winston-Salem
"John Wayne-type invincible heroes only exist in movie-land. Get real. Get rid of all civilian guns."
ReplyDeletePAUL SPEDDING
Winston-Salem
_________
'Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.'
John Wayne
Phoenix: An Arizona man who garnered national media attention for giving birth to three children after having a sex-change operation has hit a snag in his divorce proceedings that could prevent him from having his marriage legally dissolved.
ReplyDeleteA judge is questioning whether the state's same-sex marriage ban bars him from ending Thomas and Nancy Beatie's union — or even recognizing its validity. Thomas Beatie was born a woman and underwent a sex change but retained female reproductive organs and gave birth to three children.
________
A man that was a woman, got rid of his good end, and when with having a permanent badend, but retained some his good equipment, then had three children, now wants a divorce.
Makes perfect sense to a liberal.
Here's another cute couple, maybe Rush will send them some money.
Deletehttp://abcnews.go.com/US/kansas-sperm-donor-pay-child-support/story?id=18102778
Kathy Griffin Kisses Anderson Cooper's Crotch On National Television
ReplyDeleteRead more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/01/01/kathy-griffin-kisses-anderson-coopers-crotch-national-television#ixzz2GjYl6akv
________
I told you CNN had a bunch of loony liberal freaks on it.
I see 2013 is off to a banging Bucky start.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to you all my forum friends. May we continue to opine for our mutual enjoyment. It would also be wonderful if we could have some attempt at sane gun safety measures. Mike you can keep your 45. Dotnet wants a date, and it would be enjoyable if we could celebrate some other momentous occasion together again.
Rush must have had more than his daily bowl of pot last night. We haven't heard a peep out of him.
DeleteSpeaking of weed and another one of your favorite topics, from twitter: Happy New Year to you all. May you continue to oppose Sharia Law with joyous same-sex marriages celebrated with legal marijuana.
Delete
ReplyDelete> > " Morning Sex"
> > She was standing in the kitchen, preparing our usual
> > Soft-boiled eggs and toast for breakfast, wearing only
> > The 'T' shirt that she normally slept in.
> > As I walked in, almost awake, she turned to me and said
> > Softly, "You've got to make love to me this very moment!"
> >
> > My eyes lit up and I thought, "I am either still dreaming
> > Or this is going to be my lucky day!"
> > Not wanting to lose the moment, I embraced her and then
> > Gave it my all; right there on the kitchen table.
> >
> > Afterwards she said, "Thanks," and returned to the stove,
> > Her T-shirt still around her neck.
> >
> > Happy, but a little puzzled, I asked,
> > "What was that all about?"
> > She explained, "The egg timer is broken"....
Happy New Year Mr. and Mrs. Whitewall. That was cute.
DeleteThanks, same to you and your favorite husband.
DeleteHAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!
ReplyDeleteWe had planned a New Year's Day hike, but couldn't find anyplace that it wasn't raining, so spent the day at our friend's mountain house in Virginia.
Since one of the crew is a South Carolina grad, we actually watched part of a football game, almost unheard of for this group.
So the Gamecocks are trailing 28-27 but driving from their 30 well into Michigan territory, when star QB Connor Shaw is injured and replaced by his backup, Dylan Thompson. You can feel the air going out of the ball.
Thompson completes his first pass for 3 yards, then runs for 1 (most importantly getting out of bounds to stop the clock), then hits a 7 yarder for a first down at the Michigan 32. He spikes the ball to stop the clock.
17 seconds. SC only needs a field goal, but needs another 10 yards to give them a better chance. Thompson is rushed hard, but gets the pass off just before being flattened. Instead of the expected down and out or buttonhook for ten, he throws deep. Caught by Bruce Ellington at the two. Finding his way to the end zone blocked, Ellington does a little juke left. Touchdown. Game over.
Quite a moment for a backup QB.
Poor Rushie....he's like the Wicked Witch of the West, he'll melt if he gets in the rain.
DeleteI'll bet he really was a tough customer in Vietnam.
Hee..Hee...oh dear. It just never stops.
Happy New Year, all! Funny joke, WW. Thank you, Wordly, for the dispensation re the .45, but that weapon found a new home some years ago. The .45 is probably the best handgun ever designed, as noted by OT sometime back, but that old soldier had been around for awhile, and was pretty loose. I sold it to a dealer. I replaced it with a Browning 9mm, which is a bit more tractable to shoot, though I haven't fired it or any other firearm in several years.
ReplyDelete". . . a soulless male terrorist armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle . . ."
ReplyDeleteThis LTE correctly identified the murderer, but incorrectly identified the weapon. Depending on the configuration, it was either a rifle or a carbine. Regardless, it fired a rifle cartridge of conventional configuration. Assault rifles fire a cut-down rework of a standard rifle cartridge, the AK-47 and its numerous variants being a prime example.
The AK series is descended in spirit from a German cartridge developed during WW2 after the Germans discovered that they were contending with more Soviet soldiers than they could put to good use. The standard Wehrmacht rifle was the 7.92mm Mauser 98k, a slow-firing but powerful bolt-action rifle that had a capacity of 5 rounds. German soldiers so armed were facing battalions of Sovs armed with Shpagin submachineguns that fired at a rate of 12-15 shots per second from 71-shot drums (65 was really the effective capacity) or 35-shot magazines.
Faced with such numbers and volume of fire, the Germans cut down the 7.92 cartridge case, and shortened the 7.92mm bullet, pairing the new cartridge with a futuristic-looking rifle called a Sturmgewehr (assault rifle), and fed from a 30-shot mag. Rate of fire for the Stgw series was 8-9 shots per second. Range was less than for the old 98k, but most combat occurred within the new rifle's effective range, so no matter.
The Stgw series was indeed effective, though never produced in sufficient numbers. It impressed the Soviets, who subsequently cut down the cartridge for their antiquated rifle, the 7.62mm Moisin Nagant, coming up with a cartridge of similar performance to the Stgw round. Postwar it first went into a sturdy 10-shot rifle called the SKS, later finding its way into the 30-shot magazines of Sgt Kalashnikov's gem, the AK-47. Thus, the assault rifle.
The 5.56mm cartridge employed by the M16 and its variants, including the civilian AR-15, is what's called a varmint round, a near twin of an earlier hunting cartridge called the .222 Magnum. Such ammo is intended for rodent pests, illegal for a man-sized target like a deer. But since military ammo is intended to cause casualties not specifically to kill, the M16 round is suitable for military use, in theory. In practice, it is actually a bit underpowered. Unfortunately, it is quite sufficient to kill children, moviegoers, mall shoppers, firefighters, etc.
However, fearsome as high-capacity rifles are, assault or otherwise, they are involved in comparatively few killings. More people die from blunt instruments, or knives, or bare hands than die from rifles of all types. Handguns kill many more folks than do rifles, but the most prolific handgun killers are not the overhyped semiautomatics, but the lowly 5- and 6-shot revolvers.
Newtown CT is an unspeakable slaughter of innocents, but Chicago recorded 506 murders this year. I suspect the number of innocents killed probably exceeds Newtown. We have a problem, sure enough, but the problem extends far past rifles, regardless of ammunition type and capacity.
Thanks for the excellent history of the "assault rifle".
DeleteAnd agree about the real threat. "Assault rifles" get the headlines, but is the lowly handgun that provides the blue collar industrial grind'em out deaths day after day.
At Columbine, the shooters had four firearms, a Hi-Point model 995 carbine (9 mm, which had a 10 round magazine), a TEC-DC9 semi-automatic handgun (9 mm, also holding 10 rounds), and two ancient sawed-off shotguns.
Eric Harris fired by far the most rounds, 96 with the carbine and 25 with his Savage-Springfield 67H pump action shotgun, a total of 121. Dylan Klebold fired 55 rounds from his TEC pistol and only 12 from his double barreled Savage 311-D shotgun, a total of 67. All four weapons were frequently reloaded.
But the ancient shotguns were the most deadly weapons, being responsible for about 2/3 of the deaths, mostly in the library.
The most primitive weapons that they had, about 95 homemade bombs, some placed earlier in the school and others that they carried with them, had by far the most destructive potential. Fortunately, only one of them detonated, blowing out some windows but otherwise harming no one.
The majority and worst of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan have been caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs, or homemade bombs).
We have spent millions on such weapons as the XM-25 high tech grenade launcher, which turn out to be useless in modern warfare, while my childhood chemistry set could have produced cheap, effective weapons for today's combat situations.