If you are a card-carrying liberal . . .
. . . or live in Europe
This will likely cause you to scratch your head - or, perhaps go completely off your nut.
I walk into the post office and place a package on the counter.Clerk: "Is there anything dangerous or prohibited in your package?"
Me: "No, but it is a rifle that I'm shipping to a licensed dealer."
Clerk: "Is there any ammunition in the package?"
Me: "No, and, of course, the rifle is unloaded."
Clerk: "How do you want to ship it?"
Me: "Priority Mail, insured, with a return receipt."
Clerk: "That will be $XX.XX"
Me: Plopping credit card on the counter.
Clerk: Do you need stamps or anything else?
Me: No, that's all.
Clerk: Thank you, and have a great day.
6 comments:
You see, BEFORE I came here I guess I could be fairly described as leaning towards the "a bit liberal" side of things. That's what nearly 12 years of pathetic government can do to you.
Now, I seem to have progressed to "right wing republican" (I even *know* a bit about such things as the Kansas-Nebraska act too nowadays).
It doesn't any longer seem weird, or indeed particularly wrong for me to be able to own, buy or carry a gun because, well, why not?
British culture has this whole big thing about being told what to do and expecting the government to act like some sort of benevolent mother-figure who tells you "don't have a gun in case you shoot somebody" or "of course I need to know your every movement - you might do something I don't like".
It's entirely refreshing to find a country that, at least in theory, does not think like that. Government by the people, for the people - how many Europeans think that's a bad idea? (We'll skip over the health care "reform" debate, it's a dog's breakfast of a solution which has resulted in neither side winning and all of us losing unless we work in Health Insurance).
Guns are dangerous. That's why we don't carry them loaded and swinging loquaciously from our fingertips in the middle of a school playground "in case we see a rabid squirrel" but if you were the sort of person to do this you could get a similar effect if you drove on the pavement. It's the operator that's dangerous when combined with the means to screw up. Nutters will always find a way to wreak havoc or kill people - have we all forgotten then underpants bomber already? He was pretty dangerous and he had no guns or knives and had passed through the most extreme forms of routine security checking we can experience today.
It is a little odd still, though to see guns *everywhere* (and they are, everywhere in Omaha) - but no longer shocking or wrong.
All that, and yet we remain relatively civlized.
Clearly you have not gone to the "right" parts of Omaha in some time... ;-)
A. I said "relatively."
B. I could tell you stories about North Omaha.
I have no problems with this.
Socialist.
European.
I have no problem with socialist Europeans either . . . in Europe.
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