Do You Come From The Land Down Under?

While at the Fort, one of the visitors to come through, was from Australia.

I wanted to break out into songs from Men At Work, but restrained myself.

During our conversation, we were talking about the nasties that live in Australia.

Of course, there were the spiders. We agreed that spiders were worse down under.

We agreed that koala bears are cute to look at but nasty, vicious animals if they aren’t drugged.

She explained that the big red kangaroos are nasty critters. They will lean back on their tails, then kick out with their legs in a way that will knock a strong man down.

The little gray ones are not as nasty.

Another thing I didn’t know, was that kangaroos are extremely destructive to crop land. They will eat a field bare.

This led to a discussion about the definition of varmint. I am not a lawyer, so check the regulations where you are before you depend on some random guy on the net.

It is my understanding that farmers are justified in removing destructive varmints. So when that cute deer is eating your crops, they are not deer, they are a varmint that can be removed. Same with several other animals.

Which led her to talking about American’s having guns. I described the lever actions over the sofa. Bear, Deer, Raccoon and Squirrel rifles. Or in gun culture language, 45-70, 30-30, .357 Magnum, and .22LR.

While we agreed that there were some nasty faunae in Australia, she felt that bears were worse. She wanted that 45-70, “Bear Rifle” if she was going walking in the woods of New England.

For me, the most interesting part was getting to ask her about the gun confiscation.

It was obvious that she had been asked this before. She started by trying to answer for the group. Not herself. I had asked her explicitly about her opinion, not the opinion of others.

She explained that she had turned in their rifles. Not because the state knew that she had the rifle, but because she and her family were afraid that somebody would snitch on them.

Once the guns were collected, crime started to go up. She wishes they still had guns, envoys the gun culture of America. And of course, strongly suggests that we not give up our guns.


Comments

3 responses to “Do You Come From The Land Down Under?”

  1. Joseph L. Roberts Avatar
    Joseph L. Roberts

    from my e-mail tagline:
    “God created all men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.” – Unknown
    “A Smith & Wesson does more for empowering women than Feminism ever could” – Greg Gutfeld, 29 Jul 2017
    “An armed society is a polite society” – Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
    “People sleep peaceably in their bed at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” – Eric Arthur Blair (AKA – George Orwell)

    1. pkoning Avatar
      pkoning

      And also:
      “Victim disarmament types are sick, sick people, who’d rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand.” — T. D. Melrose, quoted by L. Neil Smith on his blog (ncc-1776.org).
      Speaking of Orwell, I saved this one:
      “That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.” — George Orwell (quoted by Oleg Volk, image democracy0785.jpg).

    2. I have badgered MANY of my women friends to go out and learn how to properly use a handgun. It is literally the thing that equals the playing field. The bottom line is, criminals are looking for easy prey. They don’t want to come up against firearms or competent people. There are plenty of rubes out there, and they’ll happily switch targets if one looks too hard.

      My message to women, ALL women, is “look hard.”