Hi folks, Jay here. Carrying in parks has been a bit of a contentious issue, and I don't think anybody is intentionally putting themselves into a situation where they feel they have to draw their sidearm, which is why I am very glad the event of a polar bear on the verge of mauling Mr Werbowy did not end in any gunfire.
If Werbowy's situation was not already dire enough, he said the polar bear was standing on his firearm, which he had left at the front of his now-collapsed tent.
So Werbowy said he did what an Inuit elder once told him to do: punch the polar bear in the nose.
"I quite believed it's going to be the last thing I ever did, so I might as well do a good job," he said. "The bear vanished as rapidly as he appeared."
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"I do not have a scratch, and the bear is alive. We didn't have to kill him," he said. "It was a win-win-win all the way around."
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Bravo, Mr Werbowy! Bravo!
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Stumbled across this in my websurfing wanderings...
Clearly, each country has its own laws regarding guns, and sometimes special laws regarding guns on vessels. In some areas, cruising with guns is perfectly legal, elsewhere it can be a minor misdemeanor, and in some areas of the world it will land you in prison. Most countries want you to declare any weapons, but as many have pointed out, the countries with the most restrictive firearm laws are also often the most dangerous, so many cruisers take the attitude that it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
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Obviously anecdotal, but we have to give some consideration to the fact that these folks are hyped about boating - not guns - and yet see enough of a trend to remark on a lack of armed citizens corresponding to heightened general danger.
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They have come to realize that with police response times increasing, even a 911 call may serve little purpose beyond getting someone to take a report long after the criminal has gotten away.
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So, I was up in the foothills of the pocono mountains the other day helping a technologically-challenged friend figure out her wireless internet. She lives in a heavily wooded area where there's only one other occupied house in sight, the other 3 houses being closed up or currently abandoned. I asked her why the immediate neighboring house had a chain across the driveway and she told me about an increasing number of house breaking and raiding that had been going on, gutting empty homes for all of the copper and anything else that could be sold.
This, and the nearest police station is listed as 27 minutes away. When seconds count, you better hope someone stood up against those who think guns kill people and therefore should be banned. When the police are only minutes away, you better hope someone stood up against those who think carrying a gun even in your own neighborhood is only for the paranoid.
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Oh how quickly we pre-judge and place improper blame...
During Cannon's trial it was an Oregon State University scientist who testified that lead in bullets recovered from the murder scene matched lead in bullets found in Cannon’s garage. He stated that, "There was a 1 in 64 million chance of getting a match like that."
The problem as it turns out, is that the lead matching process used by this scientist to reach the Polk County, Oregon prosecution's conclusion, no longer stands up in court. It has been deemed "Junk Science" by the FBI.
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So, I wonder how many Libs and Dems would immediately suspect some random dude, just because he owned guns. Oh, wait, aren't we just now watching the republicans immediately suspecting all random muslims, just because they are muslim?
It is always hardest to see the errors in ourselves, but we must never forget that they are there.
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Shots Heard Round The World...
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Do not go gentle into that good night.
A gang of suspected gun-toting kidnapers, who have been kidnapping people unchallenged, by merely shooting into the air and scaring both police and passersby alike, received a rude shock yesterday as their targeted victim, turned out to be a retired general, shot dead one of the gang members.
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Sensing that their mission was a failed one, with one of them down, the gang subsequently fled after commandeering a vehicle which they used to carry away their slain colleague.
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Need I say more?
"Dead! Go and (expletive) dead." These were the words shouted at a helpless fisherman after he and his crew were thrown overboard a pirogue by four masked robbers who went on a reign of terror on the high seas on Friday night.
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"If we have guns to defend ourselves, then this would not have happened," he said. "As it is, we are helpless. We need firearm protection. We need a legal firearm."
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Man, Two Daughters Murdered in El Salvador
Two of the assailants were armed with machetes and the others had firearms, police said.
Perez tried to defend himself with a machete and wounded one of the assailants in the chest, police said.
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And, to bring our globetrotting back home, here's a little something posted just today in Maryland...
Charges were filed Wednesday in District Court in Annapolis against a man who shot Bear-Bear, a Siberian husky, at a Severn dog park about two weeks ago. The dog died a few hours later.
Keith Shepherd, 32, of Severn, a civilian police officer for the Army in Northern Virginia, was charged with animal cruelty and discharging a firearm within 100 yards of an occupied home, according to Anne Arundel County prosecutors.
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Cheers, folks, and be safe.
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Patrick Gray Sharp died after a shootout with officers, but it's unclear whether he was killed by an officer's bullet or one of his own, McKinney police Chief Doug Kowalski said.
No one else was hurt during the Tuesday morning clash, which led a local college to lock down its campus and alert students and faculty to stay home.
Sharp may have intended to lure people from the police station so he could shoot at them from a field across the street where he had taken position, Kowalski said. He also may have intended to kill them by blowing up the trailer, he said.
The fire set off ammunition in the truck but failed to ignite the trailer, which was filled with wood chips, ammonium nitrate, gasoline and road flares, Kowalski said.
Investigators found an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun on Sharp. Kowalski said Sharp fired at least 100 rounds at the police station, and the chief counted at least 23 bullet strikes on the building.
Sharp was found dead after police fired an unknown number of rounds while pursuing him in a line of trees where Sharp had taken cover and into an open field near Collin College, the chief said.
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Gun-toting soccer moms a scary thought in D.C. area, but not out west
Starting last month (AZ) residents who have no criminal records and are at least 21 also are able to carry concealed weapons just about anywhere, without the bother of getting a permit. The full embrace of firearms is just as fervent to the north in Montana, where nearly two-thirds of all households have firearms. Montanans feel so strongly about their right to own guns for hunting, fending off grizzlies and -- if it comes to it -- fellow humans that lawmakers passed a measure last year that challenges the federal government's authority to regulate guns made and kept in their state........
This is the gun culture of the American West, and it is from here that the latest challenge to the District's firearms laws has come. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) have proposed a law that they say would sweep away overly stringent regulations imposed by the D.C. Council after the Supreme Court struck down the city's 32-year ban on handguns.
Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) said the McCain-Tester bill could gut the District's regulatory powers, including laws that are stricter than most states about keeping guns away from people with records of domestic violence. He also said the law shows a disregard for the realities of the District, where guns mean drive-bys, holdups and intimidation more than sport, tradition and the American way.
"The national debate about guns just misses that they are very different cultures," Mendelson said of the District and much of the rest of the country. "It's like a psychology, a mind-set, as to how people as a group think about guns."