Dear Connecticut...

[Dave W]

Likewise, Bill. Murder is murder, regardless of the supposed justification.

[Muzikman7]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30sjtuXcvOE&sns=fb Its all a lie no so called assualt rifles, he used all hand guns he had one rifle in the car but did not use it ( he tried to buy another rifle but could not because of CT gun laws ) the police found four hand guns not two in the school. I find it amazing that people want to change the constitution, some people need to walk among the war dead in a veterans cemetery those men & women fought & died so we can enjoy our freedom. If anyone thinks that more gun control is the answer they are sadly mistaken.

[Dave W]

Thanks, Tony.

[the mojo hobo]

Obama's inadvertant new stimulus policy.

Many firearm dealers and manufacturers say that Obama's comments since the Newtown school shooting are driving demand.

James Zimmerman of SelwayArmory.com, a website that sells guns, ammunition and knives, says that sales really took off on Dec. 19 after President Barack Obama held a White House press conference announcing that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a team tasked with coming up with "concrete proposals" to curb gun violence.

http://news.yahoo.com/fearful-ban-frenzied-buyers-swarm-gun-stores-225130224--finance.html

[Denis]

I wasn't advocating non-democracy! But Tito, certainly no democrat, wasn't Stalin. And probably more a Titoist than any other "...ist". But he has my respect for preventing in his years that hatred flared up like it did after he died.

Stalin or Hitler?  When Sturmgewehr comes to Kalashnikov, I prefer Stalin. For the simple reason that more Germans survived under Stalin than Russians under Hitler. Easy math: 2/3 of Russian POWs died in German captivity, but only 1/3 of German POWs in Russian captivity - and that after we had raided, marauded and scorched their country for no other reason than that crappy "Lebensraum" nutcase idea.

About 110,000 Germans surrendered at Stalingrad and less than 6000 returned home in 1955 when the Russians released the last of the POWs. That's a pretty poor survival rate. I did read recently that around 40,000 of those died in a typhus epidemic.

No love lost between the Germans and the Russians at that time, in any case.

[lowend1]

I am convinced of one thing: there will never be world peace. Period. It's like playing Whac-A-Mole.

[uwe]

The Stalingrad surrenderers had been malnutritioned for months, hence the huge death rate, they couldn't cope with the extreme cold as they were marched off. Once in the camps, survival rates improved.

Uncle Joe offered prior to Stalingrad reciprocal Geneva Convention treatment for Russian and German POWs - Hitler turned it down because he feared higher surrender rates of the German Army.

In German concentration camps there were hidden shooting ranges just for Russian POWs to be executed (even Russian generals were executed there)- nothing of the sort existed in Russian camps.

There was a German Army order - the Kommisar-Befehl - to single out all politcal soldiers from captured Russian units and shoot them at once. Again, nothing of the sort existed on the Russian side.

My grandfather was a POW in Russia for five years. He survived. If I may quote: "We had nothing to eat and those poor sods had nothing to eat. I was laways hungry, but I wasn't beaten once."

To put things into perspective: You had a way better chance surviving as an allied soldier in Japanese captivity than you had as a Russian in German captivity.

And finally: We started it. We breached a non-aggression pact and attacked Russia without any threat from their side. And right from the start German plans were to starve half of the Russian population to death. We would not even let Leningrad surrender, it was decided to starve the city out over a period of months and years.

There WAS a difference.

[Denis]

I'm fascinated by the resistance of German soldiers to orders from Hitler or direct commanding officers. Sadly, little is written about it. I know that during 1939-1945, around 20,000 German soldiers were executed for desertion but it's difficult to find many details. One of the SS units at one of the concentration camps revolted and again, little is to be found on the internet about it.
I did find, through a series of links a photograph of a bunch of civilians AND a German soldier being lined up to be shot. The German was being shot because he refused to go along with executing the civilians.

[Muzikman7]

[Denis]

Oh, the irony...

[Dave W]

Obama's inadvertant new stimulus policy.

Many firearm dealers and manufacturers say that Obama's comments since the Newtown school shooting are driving demand.

James Zimmerman of SelwayArmory.com, a website that sells guns, ammunition and knives, says that sales really took off on Dec. 19 after President Barack Obama held a White House press conference announcing that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a team tasked with coming up with "concrete proposals" to curb gun violence.

http://news.yahoo.com/fearful-ban-frenzied-buyers-swarm-gun-stores-225130224--finance.html

Definitely happening here. Obama spoke, sales went through the roof right way. From a store a couple miles from me: "The craze is on," he said. "It's a feeding frenzy." And that was before Christmas, it's gone up even more since then.

[dadagoboi]

Definitely happening here. Obama spoke, sales went through the roof right way. From a store a couple miles from me: "The craze is on," he said. "It's a feeding frenzy." And that was before Christmas, it's gone up even more since then.

How many are first time buyers vs. current owners who are stocking up for whatever they think is going to happen next?

I guess it's as good a way as any to boost the consumer driven economy...maybe Gibson can reissue the little known 12 gauge 'Victory' bass.

[Pilgrim]

Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?

I appreciate the way you state that so ironically.  Of course, that's the justification that has been used by every group that wants an excuse to position another group as unworthy and irrelevant, so they can be disposed of.  In religious terms, it was used to justify all kinds of brutality.  It's also used in politics, and frankly, it seems to me that it's the underlying assumption behind many arguments.  

Part two.....

There is a nearly Pavlovian response to firearms killings in the US, and it's in full force right now.  People who are hard-core Second Amendment types (and those who just became convinced they should own a firearm) immediately become afraid that "the Gummint" will try to take away their firearms, so they go out and buy them in huge quantity.

Right now in Colorado, sales have reached such volumes that the time required to perform a firearms background check (required before purchase from a commercial entity) has gone from an average of 23 minutes (normal) to more than 10 hours.  The law enforcement unit doing the checks is working 18 hour days and can't keep up with the wave of firearms purchases.

This really says something about the way that a sizeable segment of the public views firearms.

[dadagoboi]

I appreciate the way you state that so ironically.  Of course, that's the justification that has been used by every group that wants an excuse to position another group as unworthy and irrelevant, so they can be disposed of.  In religious terms, it was used to justify all kinds of brutality.  It's also used in politics, and frankly, it seems to me that it's the underlying assumption behind many arguments. 

For instance those about the heathens on Talk Bass.

[uwe]

I destill from the more recent posts that Obama should not be allowed to discuss gun control because that drives gun sales up? And this coming from people who think they should be more or less unrestricted. Don't drown in your own crocodile's tears, guys.

Whenever ANY administration wishes to tackle an issue by introducing new regulations, people react that way and try to hoard whatever they believe to need before the new regime takes hold. Tax advisors, attorneys, subsidies specialists make a living out of these pre-legislative-change-surges, always have, always will. Now some people here obviously wish to draw from that effect that government should give up announcing, steering and implementing new policies at all. That is tantamount to surrendering a government's role and duty to effect change where necessary to "keeping everything as it is, no matter how bad". "Don't rock the boat" non-politics that is. You guys should spend some time in Afghanistan to relish the lack of a strong central government first hand and enjoy the politcal wisdom of various assorted warlords (whose local power is ironically based on weapons that are more or less freely available to them). I've lived in Africa, I know all about weakish central governments and how they can cripple a country's development.

And I always thought the Union had won the Civil War, not the Confederacy. In essence though a lot of the contributors here argue for a "Confederacy of American States".

Everybody has their own defining collective historic experiences I guess. For you guys the Boston Tea Party seems to have been only yesterday and you are still battling the King, whether he has his throne in London or Washington, for me it's the fact that a German nation only got its act together late in the 19th century.