Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Florida Man Is Shot to Death for Texting During Movie Previews..30 minutes ago.
DavidA human residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Ancestral territory of the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga and Neutral First NationsVeteran
What does illegal activity have to do with legal gun ownsership? Do you know that only 1% of gun owners can own a fully automatic weapon in the usa, both the license and the gun prices make it so only the rich can do it. A gun that a criminal can get for 300 bucks would Cost the legal class 3 rich gun owner 15,000. Criminal activity is criminal activity.
I don't mean to sound like a dink but will you be taking a gun with you when you join the ranks of the monastics?
Why or why not?
A silly emotionally driven comment, no offense. Will i be taking my computer and camera equipment and other things i own? We all know Monks own 8 requisites, half of which are clothing.
Your response is emotionally driven but the question is quite sincere. Computer and camera equiptment aren't made for the sole purpose of harming sentient beings.
If you believe it will be acceptable to have a gun with you at the monestery I think you are in for a surprise.
Im confused.. What does giving up something have to do with its purpose... Your comment makes little sense. You do know that monks give up ALL possessions right? There are many more things i need to give away besides my guns.
You arent the first person to make a comment about me bringing a gun to a monastery, which is as silly as me bringing anything i own... Since im giving it all up.... I cant understand where that comment would even come from logically.
It seems I'm the one that was confused, sorry about that.
:dunce:
Still... I worry a bit about a fearful world. I dislike guns as they make killing childs play.
What does illegal activity have to do with legal gun ownsership? Do you know that only 1% of gun owners can own a fully automatic weapon in the usa, both the license and the gun prices make it so only the rich can do it. A gun that a criminal can get for 300 bucks would Cost the legal class 3 rich gun owner 15,000. Criminal activity is criminal activity.
Those weapons are produced legally in the USA or are imported legally by US gun distributors before finding their way into the hands of criminals. The weapons manufacturing industry is thriving under the US system that is supported by American citizens like yourself who buy and own their products. It's a toxic industry that you apparently are a defender of. An AK47 should not be in the hands of a civilian.
"On Saturday, in a speech to the Mexican-American community in San Jose, California, President Felipe Calderon lashed out at the U.S. weapons industry.
"I accuse the U.S. weapons industry of (responsibility for) the deaths of thousands of people that are occurring in Mexico," Calderon said. "It is for profit, for the profits that it makes for the weapons industry.""
The notion that it's the citizens right to own guns as a measure for keeping the government in check doesn't make any sense to me. If there comes a time when US citizens rise up against their government for what ever reason, can you imagine that it will be a unified movement? It will more likely be small groups of insurgents with their own agenda fighting the government and each other. Like it was in Lebanon for many years and more recently places like Iraq or Somalia. And the abundance of military style weapons will have the same results. Pointless random killing.
If it were just a simple chat, I would agree. But people get very intense and emotionally upset this topic. So I say, let go of what you have absolutely no power over. And if you can't let go of the status of a particular law, go out and do something real about it.
Being willing to discuss something that is unpleasant to face is doing something about it. Not being willing to discuss something that is unpleasant to face is not doing anything about it.
Im taking vinlyn's wise advice and bowing out.. I made this big response post but then i realized this debate was so ridiculous and its doing nothing but getting me frustrated, which is a rarity for me these days and a good lesson. People believe what they believe, and nothing will change that.
The rare times i talk about non dhamma on here it reminds me to just talk dhamma.
@Jayantha If I were an American, or more so, a Mexican, I would be interested to know the answer to the question of what you plan to do with your AK when you ordain. Will you destroy it? Or will you allow it to remain in circulation, to wind up who knows where?
Im confused.. What does giving up something have to do with its purpose...
I think it has more to do with having it in the first place. It's purpose is to take life. Having it indicates a certain degree of willingness to use it for that purpose. Right now. Today. That's an incompatibility.
I'm seeing it in my own ownership of a gun and I'm wondering how best to deal with it. I'm reluctant to sell it or give it away as I can't be sure whoever gets it won't use it to kill. It occured to me that I might be able to drop it off at a police station where it might be destroyed in due time. I may swing by my precinct station tomorrow and ask around. The gun breaks down into three pieces and I could break it down and throw the pieces away, one at a time over a month or two.
Have you given any thought to what you'll do with yours?
Why not just sell it? If you're worried about bad karma from selling it, you could just donate the money to charity or just use it to promote peace somehow. Might even help create more positivity than destroying it. You're making use of it.
Why not just sell it? If you're worried about bad karma from selling it, you could just donate the money to charity or just use it to promote peace somehow. Might even help create more positivity than destroying it. You're making use of it.
I'm not interested in the karma involved. I just don't want the gun used to kill anything.
Why not just sell it? If you're worried about bad karma from selling it, you could just donate the money to charity or just use it to promote peace somehow. Might even help create more positivity than destroying it. You're making use of it.
In the case of a collector gun like a rare antique, selling it does not have the same risk of future mayhem that selling an assault weapon does. Many of those guns showing up in Mexico were likely acquired from legal purchasers reselling them on Craigslist. Just a guess.
Ha, holy wa. People are being whipped into an anti-gun frenzy on here. Sure I don't feel that every civilian should have a rack full of military-grade weaponry but good god what about us hunters? what about the people who find a burglar halfway in one of their windows, with an illegal untraceable gun in their hand? What about people who live so far out in the rural areas that they might not exactly be at the top of the food chain? What about shit like this? http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/No-Charges-Against-Officers-Who-Mistook-Surfer-for-Rogue-Cop-Dorner-in-Manhunt-240214551.html
If we cannot trust our police force to protect us, we're not allowed to at least have the chance to defend ourselves? No matter what crime a police officer commits, chances are extraordinarily high that no legal action will be taken against them. They might get a nice paid vacation, though. You have to realize that police are only human, and that in most precincts here in the U.S. if you score too high on an intelligence test, you are not allowed to be a law officer. Sometimes, you just have to be aware that it is better to be prepared for any eventuality, rather than being entirely naive and passing it off as "pacifism"
If it were just a simple chat, I would agree. But people get very intense and emotionally upset this topic. So I say, let go of what you have absolutely no power over. And if you can't let go of the status of a particular law, go out and do something real about it.
@vinlyn I was discussing this with some friends the other night who thought that USA gun control could practically count as a religion in it's own right considering how fervently folks related to it. I am sure this was how it was with any other past cultural fixations when as much personal investments were at stake. Slavery comes to mind, as one example.
Would you have remained silent about what you thought caused un nessesary suffering just because the subject caused folks to get very intense and emotionally upset over that topic? Do think that some might of counciled you to remain silent over a topic that you have absolutely no control over?
Being willing to discuss something that is unpleasant to face is doing something about it. Not being willing to discuss something that is unpleasant to face is not doing anything about it.
It depends on where you discuss it, and with whom you discuss it.
And it depends on what you want the fruit of your "labor" to be.
Although I started back before the internet was as common a tool, I could yak away about Civil Rights (like some of my principal colleagues), or I could: a. become a dues paying, card carrying member of the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center (even though I am White); b. reach out in my school to hire more minority teachers and administrators (thereby more than quadrupling the number of minority professional staff in my school); c. develop student activities that highlighted civil rights and minority success stories; d. write a reader's theater and produce it with students and teachers to present it to the community; e. seek out minority students who were overlooked for admission to our gifted/talented program; f. spend time gaining insights from conversations with our minority students and parents; g. boycott PTA meetings when your all-White PTA decided to hold their homes in wealthy White homes; h. hire minority secretaries so that the first person a parent met when they came in our front office was a minority person; i. bring in notable guest speakers...who were minorities...to help lead our staff to looking at students differently. j. sit down and have a chat seeking advice from Julian Bond.
I could talk about it, or do something about it. And guess what, none of those things was particularly difficult or time consuming. In most cases, it took me saying to my administrative team: "Let's stop talking about it, and start doing something about it."
I'm not talking about remaining silent. I'm talking about investing the time spent yakking about it in an environment where most people will shake their heads in agreement with the whining, and going out and taking action...LARGE or small.
Interesting that "civil rights" to you means treating people preferentially and differently based on the color of their skin and mere tribalism. And belonging to an anachronism that calls itself "colored people." I'll take a color blind society anyway over your sickening racial caste system.
That's an example, it's pretty much the same everywhere else. I guess they call people with too high of an IQ score "overqualified" to be a police officer.
Interesting that "civil rights" to you means treating people preferentially and differently based on the color of their skin and mere tribalism. And belonging to an anachronism that calls itself "colored people." I'll take a color blind society anyway over your sickening racial caste system.
"Colour-blind" just means you ignore the socio-cultural-historical-economic realities that come with being a person from a particular ethnic group.
A) A Chinese person being taxed several years' income just to immigrate into a country, then treated as sub-human in said country.
A British immigrant to N. America post-WW2 who had no trouble integrating into society and carried with them a modest amount of money. They had to settle in a farming community to have work, compared to their job in an English city pre-war.
C) A Cuban refugee living in Florida who escaped their country on a makeshift raft, with only the clothes on their back.
A "colour-blind" attitude would say that these people are the same. Because of various things that life has thrown at them, they clearly do not start on the same page. It would be an insult to each individual's plight. It would be insensitive to assume they all carry the same baggage.
Comments
:dunce:
Still... I worry a bit about a fearful world. I dislike guns as they make killing childs play.
The rare times i talk about non dhamma on here it reminds me to just talk dhamma.
What could possibly go wrong?
If I were an American, or more so, a Mexican, I would be interested to know the answer to the question of what you plan to do with your AK when you ordain.
Will you destroy it?
Or will you allow it to remain in circulation, to wind up who knows where?
I'm seeing it in my own ownership of a gun and I'm wondering how best to deal with it. I'm reluctant to sell it or give it away as I can't be sure whoever gets it won't use it to kill. It occured to me that I might be able to drop it off at a police station where it might be destroyed in due time. I may swing by my precinct station tomorrow and ask around. The gun breaks down into three pieces and I could break it down and throw the pieces away, one at a time over a month or two.
Have you given any thought to what you'll do with yours?
Why not just sell it? If you're worried about bad karma from selling it, you could just donate the money to charity or just use it to promote peace somehow. Might even help create more positivity than destroying it. You're making use of it.
Many of those guns showing up in Mexico were likely acquired from legal purchasers reselling them on Craigslist. Just a guess.
or this http://www.salon.com/2014/01/09/chicago_cops_accused_of_raping_man_with_a_gun/
or this http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/14/us-usa-beating-police-idUSBREA0D00O20140114
or this http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/us/bloggers-incarceration-raises-first-amendment-questions.html?_r=1
Or this http://us.cnn.com/2014/01/07/justice/north-carolina-teen-killed/index.html?sr=fb010714carolinateenkilled5p
If we cannot trust our police force to protect us, we're not allowed to at least have the chance to defend ourselves? No matter what crime a police officer commits, chances are extraordinarily high that no legal action will be taken against them. They might get a nice paid vacation, though. You have to realize that police are only human, and that in most precincts here in the U.S. if you score too high on an intelligence test, you are not allowed to be a law officer. Sometimes, you just have to be aware that it is better to be prepared for any eventuality, rather than being entirely naive and passing it off as "pacifism"
and that in most precincts here in the U.S. if you score too high on an intelligence test, you are not allowed to be a law officer.
You Kidding???
It depends on where you discuss it, and with whom you discuss it.
And it depends on what you want the fruit of your "labor" to be.
Although I started back before the internet was as common a tool, I could yak away about Civil Rights (like some of my principal colleagues), or I could:
a. become a dues paying, card carrying member of the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center (even though I am White);
b. reach out in my school to hire more minority teachers and administrators (thereby more than quadrupling the number of minority professional staff in my school);
c. develop student activities that highlighted civil rights and minority success stories;
d. write a reader's theater and produce it with students and teachers to present it to the community;
e. seek out minority students who were overlooked for admission to our gifted/talented program;
f. spend time gaining insights from conversations with our minority students and parents;
g. boycott PTA meetings when your all-White PTA decided to hold their homes in wealthy White homes;
h. hire minority secretaries so that the first person a parent met when they came in our front office was a minority person;
i. bring in notable guest speakers...who were minorities...to help lead our staff to looking at students differently.
j. sit down and have a chat seeking advice from Julian Bond.
I could talk about it, or do something about it. And guess what, none of those things was particularly difficult or time consuming. In most cases, it took me saying to my administrative team: "Let's stop talking about it, and start doing something about it."
I'm not talking about remaining silent. I'm talking about investing the time spent yakking about it in an environment where most people will shake their heads in agreement with the whining, and going out and taking action...LARGE or small.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
That's an example, it's pretty much the same everywhere else. I guess they call people with too high of an IQ score "overqualified" to be a police officer.
A) A Chinese person being taxed several years' income just to immigrate into a country, then treated as sub-human in said country.
C) A Cuban refugee living in Florida who escaped their country on a makeshift raft, with only the clothes on their back.
A "colour-blind" attitude would say that these people are the same. Because of various things that life has thrown at them, they clearly do not start on the same page. It would be an insult to each individual's plight. It would be insensitive to assume they all carry the same baggage.