Watch: Setting up a fake gun store in NYC

So find a lazy way to make a difference! :wink: You can always spend an extra buck or two for LED lightbulbs and fair trade coffee, and refuse the happy meal toys. Thatā€™s a lot easier than running for the local school board, and it still counts for something.

My thoughts exactly. How many nutbags did they have to usher out of the store for wanting a specific weapon thatā€™d killed X people?

Besides, this activism seems better placed somewhere outside NYC as I would suspect the majority of NYC citizens would agree with the premise that gun laws in the US are lax.

No, I agree with not selling to the mentally unstable. I am just not sure what all has to happen for you get on on that list and not pass the NICS check. For example, just going to counseling wonā€™t put you on it. Many people suffer from mental illness but are never actually institutionalized. They may be on drugs and/or therapy.

But your further point that we have cut funding and our mental health care as whole is broken is the bigger issue. The homeless problem is also largely a mentally ill problem as well.

So I agree we should have better programs in place to help these people, and if they are on list as being a danger, they shouldnā€™t have access to firearms.

But while these nuts make the best headlines with things like Newtown, they are still a small slice of the overall pie. And I donā€™t think you can always stop crazy. In the case of Newtown the one person who intimately knew this person the best and knew that he wasnā€™t right not only ignored all the warning signs but enabled him further.

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Hunting feral pigs in America, from what Iā€™ve seen and done, always involved a firearm, whether pistol, rifle, or shotgun. In New Zealand, itā€™s common for hogs to be tracked and held by dogs, with the hunters using knives to kill the pig. Dogs hold the pig by its ears, and the hunter comes from behind, grabs and lifts a hind leg of the pig, and then sticks it in the chest with the knife. That type of hunting seems perfectly okay to me, especially given that the hog has an excellent chance of escaping, and a smaller, but still high chance of causing harm to the hunting party in one fashion or another. I found it amazing how easily a feral hog will quite literally fling an 85 lb dog over its shoulder and ten feet into the brush with just a flick of its head.

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This video was a neat psychological experiment. Iā€™m not sure it proved anything other than people making a decision are easily swayed.

You could also set a store up filled with firearms that were used to protect their past owners from harm. Iā€™m not arguing about the statistics but there are enough such cases.

Iā€™m pro gun ownership, handguns too, but count me among those who have no problem making their ownership a bigger hurdle, at least in terms of training. California has a handgun safety test requirement before we buy and a required FFL seller demonstration of the rawest basics of safe handling. It is not enough, in my opinion, but neither are our automobile driving tests.

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I agree, but given the level of stupid Americans seem to experience with other, similar classes (Iā€™m thinking of Human Sexuality at the moment), Iā€™m guessing theyā€™ll be even less interested in a gun safety class even though the benefits are clear.

i did not really want to step foot into this politically charged shitpile of a discussion, however? I find one thing about it all very interesting.

The Actor who plays the shop staff? is Ned Luke - the actor playing Michael De Santa in Grand Theft Auto 5.

yeah, the bloomberg funded astroturf group that built this thing? hired the actor who played one of the most violent gun users as their clerkā€¦

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I already do that stuff. I live in SoCal, Iā€™m obligated by government and social mandates to do so :smiley:

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Youā€™d be surprised how many laws there are preventing hunting on more equal terms. I have, er, heard rumors of people who hunt with swords, spears and atl-atls and they are usually supposedly breaking several laws in the process. They carry guns just in case they get caught, but itā€™s considered really bad sportsmanship to use one.

Yeah, I know, crazy people. Taking down an actual boar with an actual boar spear is a really good way to get horribly maimed. I hear itā€™s quite invigorating, though!

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Am I the only one who watched this with a sense of nausea?

The customers look like actors, which makes it a bit OKer, though. Unless everyone in NYC gets their hair done to buy a gun. Their demographics seem really cherry picked to be ā€œbroad spectrum of non-black societyā€. Their reactions are not what I would expect from normal humans who were just faced with a completely lying salesman.

And the salesman WAS lying. Sure, the stories he gave were based on reality, but he was not a salesman, those were not the guns he was claiming (and sometimes not even the same models), so he was an actor rather than the knowledgeable person he was claiming to be.

The moment of realization of what the store actually is was notably missing, but perhaps they chose not to show it because either the actors never had that moment, or because these mysteriously actory people really are perfectly legit customers, but that moment didnā€™t fit their narrative for the store.

Scooted to the bottom here just to say that Iā€™m so glad that for once I was able to resist the temptation to spend a couple dispersed hours or so here, joining the same old actors in another round of the same old argument. I feel sort of . . . free! :smirk:

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Plus, the guy selling the guns, Ned Luke, plays Michael de Santa in GTA V. Nice touch.

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@matt_t
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

While it is highly unlikely, it isnā€™t imaginary.

Actually, you should get your hands on a Mac-10 to examine if you havenā€™t. It is a pretty amazing hunk of what is essentially sheet metal. Would be an interesting project to make one out of something like scrap autobody panels.

And what you are pointing out is that it is a root violence issue. We have guns so it manifests as gun violence, but in places without guns the same violence generally persists, but with machetes, knives, fists, etc.

If we agree the police and government needs firearms, any restriction on the general populace is creating a special class of citizens, and at the end of the day, we are the police and military and they are us, creating a separation like that drives towards a disparity in power which is subject to extreme abuse which canā€™t be readily redressed or undone. We can not eliminate all inherent disparity, but some tools, actually allow us the ability to decrease the disparity when distributed, which is often at the root of the ā€œfirearms as self defenseā€ argument.

Thatā€™s just like, your opinion, man.[ /Lebowski ] You are looking to restrict objects, but you canā€™t undo or eliminate the existence of those objects. No matter what the law people are going to be cooking meth up. Criminals will use whatever force multiplier tools they can lay their hands on and because of that fact of existence, I support the rights of citizens to have access to the same or better force multiplier tools. War on personal freedom is the same - war on drugs, war on guns, war on personal computing, war on privacyā€¦all have the same faulty foundation IMHO. Support individual freedom, care for your fellow living beings.

I know a guy who night hunted wild boars at night with a spear in marshland. He could spear them and hold them underwater and they went pretty quick. They are notorious for being a tough animal.

I really, really hate pigs.

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Thatā€™s one I never heard of before! Iā€™m pretty big, but I donā€™t think I could hold a full grown boar underwater unless Iā€™d already pegged him in the heart. Well, maybe one of the little javelina-type guys. Probably not a European wild boar, though.

I donā€™t know what kind of pig. I want to say it was in Florida, I think in a rice field. They were fairly small, not a hogzilla by any means. There was a youtube video of it I think. Search spear vs pig i think.

This is a perfect example to apply here on the general attitude.

CA has outlawed the use of dogs in hunting bears as ā€˜barbaricā€™.


And when they feel that hogs are as adorable as bears and they can garner public support they will do the same.

The slow incremental elimination of legitimate hunting and firearms ownership is one of the reasons so many gun owners take a HARD line against any additional restrictions. The needle has a lot of inertia, and once it moves against us it is unlikely to be restored in our lifetime.

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Obviously feral hogs and wild boar are not such a huge problem in CA, compared to the south east part of the country.

Out that way, the local governments are mulling organized culls, because thereā€™s not enough hunters hunting them. They are invasive as hell and wrecking the place.

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Well, when you have a environment in which pigs will flourish, it is pretty damn hard to have enough hunters, fecund little boogers that they are. :smile: They arenā€™t as rampant here, but still doing high $ amounts of ag damage.

Sure - if we assume that you have more of a right to be there than they do. Sorry, but itā€™s hard for me to take human claims of other species ā€œinvasivenessā€ seriously.

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