Posts by Marvin Shilmer

73

An 11-year-old boy is in custody for murder for shooting and killing an eight-year-old neighbour girl with a shotgun . . .

by nicolaou in

.

because she would not show him her puppies.. nobody has to tell you what country this happened in, you already know.. source.

Marvin Shilmer

The US is by no means unique as a country which has armed its citizenry in order to overthrow an oppressor. It happens often in third world countries to this day. And to suggest that it was because of a US gun culture that tyrants were overthrown is quite a claim. I assume part of your claim refers to Adolf Hitler. If this is the case, the influence of gun culture could hardly be accepted as a cause for Hitler's defeat except in perhaps the most minutely debatable way - the noteworthy reasons for his defeat wouldn't even entertain your suggestion.

SSC, I'm not sure what you mean. It's the culture of the then US citizenry that led to it engaging 20th Century tyrants as it did. Prevalence of gun ownership was only a piece of the overall construction of that culture. Whether that citizenry's culture would have developed as it did to perform as it did in the 20th Century without its precursors holding very personal views about gun ownership I don't know. The argument is not mine, but when you think about events of the 20th Century and the role played by US citizens in defeating genocidal governmental tyrannies one has to wonder whether the US gun-owning culture played a role in US citizens' willingness to do what they did to prevent an even worse world than we have now.

73

An 11-year-old boy is in custody for murder for shooting and killing an eight-year-old neighbour girl with a shotgun . . .

by nicolaou in

.

because she would not show him her puppies.. nobody has to tell you what country this happened in, you already know.. source.

Marvin Shilmer

The notion that you need guns in civilian population to have an effective army is funny. Maybe if your army is a bunch of amateur militia types then yes, but we expect professional soldiers to be trained and again, the professional military equipment has no place on the streets in the hands of civilians which renders the argument void.

I don't think the argument is as simple as needing guns in the civilian population in order to have an effective army.

Insofar as it's been presented to me the argument is more along the lines of a US population that has established a culture of standing up against governmental thuggery to a point that its citizenry is willing to put itself at risk in order to further what is in their mind a better way of governing. This willingness includes a willingness to fight and die for other peoples under threat. It happens to be the case that gun ownership has played a role in the construction of this culture. As the argument goes, without personal gun ownership its uncertain that the citizenry of the USA would have evolved the culture that led to this willingness, which in turn led the US citizenry to help defeat horrendous governmental aggression of the 20th Century.

73

An 11-year-old boy is in custody for murder for shooting and killing an eight-year-old neighbour girl with a shotgun . . .

by nicolaou in

.

because she would not show him her puppies.. nobody has to tell you what country this happened in, you already know.. source.

Marvin Shilmer

... but just look at the price your country is paying.

I don't want to take away from the utter sadness I feel for the children involved in this horrific incident, but on the bigger question there are multiple and overlapping issues, one of which I'm not sure gets much attention because harsh backlash to the idea is likely and understandable. What am I talking about?

For the past century the USA has been a world guardian of sorts. Think what the world would look like had not Germany been defeated... twice. And what about Japanese aggression in the mid-20th Century?

The boys who fought and died under the stars and stripes were nurtured by a country with a rich history in having and using firearms. Had not so many of these boys been raised around firearms I'm not so sure the 20th Century would have turned out as it did. What I mean to say is, things could have turned out far worse.

I think the day will come and should come when access to firearms in the USA is much tighter than it is today. I don't know when, and I don't know how, but I think the day will come, and probably the result of the whole world advancing socially and not so much just the USA. For one, if I had reasonable assurance that my family would not need to have firearms available for self-defense (not to mention hunting) I'd happily give up my firearms right this second if doing so would stop the madness of human-on-human violence I see.

73

An 11-year-old boy is in custody for murder for shooting and killing an eight-year-old neighbour girl with a shotgun . . .

by nicolaou in

.

because she would not show him her puppies.. nobody has to tell you what country this happened in, you already know.. source.

Marvin Shilmer

But there needs to be some serious penalties for parents and other gun owners that fail to secure their fire arms. I think we can all agree that regardless of whether guns are legal or not, an 11 year old should not have unrestricted, unsupervised access to a fire arm. And that if that 11 year old DOES have unrestricted access to a fire arm, there should be some serious consequences for the negligent gun owner including wrongful death civil liability and criminal manslaughter charges if the unthinkable should happen.

Amen to that!!!

___

11

Anyone have an s-77 form?

by breakfast of champions in

i've searched this site and and all of the links (posted 7-8 years ago) are dead.. i also tried googling it, but to no avail.. there was one pretty poorly scanned copy on here.. .

.

boc.

Marvin Shilmer

Don't forget the blue envelope!

Special Blue Envelopes

138

My Mother Died Two Weeks Ago

by Perry in

jw
friends

none of my jehovah's witness relatives called to tell me or my family.

just found out this morning.

Marvin Shilmer

So sorry to hear of your loss, and the dreadful feelings you must be encountering. The stuff of life can really kick us sometime. Things will get better. My thoughts are in your and your family's behalf.

Marvin

11

Anyone have an s-77 form?

by breakfast of champions in

i've searched this site and and all of the links (posted 7-8 years ago) are dead.. i also tried googling it, but to no avail.. there was one pretty poorly scanned copy on here.. .

.

boc.

Marvin Shilmer

S-77 form from 1992

S-77 form from 1999

S-79 forms for year 1984

447

Does Anyone Still Believe in God?

by LaurenM in

do any of you ex-jw's still believe in god?

even with the new rebranding/softening of this religion, i still don't see how people can believe in him.

the god of the old testimate is an angry murderer who approved rapes and slavery and killed thousands of men, women and children.

Marvin Shilmer

God Discussion

My take on this subject is this: The subject of God is the subject of how humans attempt to understand the universe our specie lives in. Humans are like guttural bacteria. We live in a universe with no clue what is beyond it. So we attempt to explain what we see based on information we do not have. Because we recognize our puniness in the universe, we assume something much bigger (read: more powerful and smarter) than ourselves is behind the event of our world. For millenniums the term assigned to this theory is "god".

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447

Does Anyone Still Believe in God?

by LaurenM in

do any of you ex-jw's still believe in god?

even with the new rebranding/softening of this religion, i still don't see how people can believe in him.

the god of the old testimate is an angry murderer who approved rapes and slavery and killed thousands of men, women and children.

Marvin Shilmer

...like the laws of nature...

The laws of nature are no more than human explanation of what we see happening around us. What we observe makes sense (read: seems organized) to us because we are here (read: we're the survivors of untold catastrophic destructive events) to see those things the way those things have come to this point.

What will we have to say about the laws of nature when our terrestrial specie is wiped out by a Shoemaker-Levy type event? Nothing. Because we won't be here to explain how the synchronization was not as well-honed as we'd hoped for in our prayers to god, the creator of this wonderfully tamed universe we live in. (Read: sarcasm)

22

How to Read Financial Statements

by JeffT in

jw
friends

i just put an entry on my blog.

thought it might be useful in all the discussions about money.

feel free to post questions or comments either here or on my blog.. http://pathologicallyintellectual.blogspot.com/.

Marvin Shilmer

I guess that is one of the advantages of being an international organization when just moving money around between countries can result in a profit. Nice gig.

The gig is nice of it pays off. Betting on currency exchange rates is a gamble like other investments. Only this gamble is more heavily influenced by political elements that can pop up without notice. There's also business elements that take everyone by surprise. The Euro is heavily driven by the German economy. My money would have gambled the Euro would make gains against the US dollar in the months ahead. But this VW (German!) thing that has recently become known changes the math for me.