BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together

Subject: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 02:43 PM

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/20/1308465/-New-Study-Ranks-50-States-By-Gun-Sense-And-Gun-Violence-Deaths?detail=emailcl

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:02 PM

Two points:

'Tain't necessarily so. Illinois (Chicago) has extremely tight gun laws but has a high rate of gun violence.

Washington, DC, the same.

As long as neighboring states have lax gun laws and controls access to guns is easy.

2nd Point

I am most awfully tired of the UK citizens' (subjects?) insulting use of the brainless 'banging rocks together.'

Unless and until you lot understand more of cultural and historical diversity in a huge country ya dun know what you talkin' about.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:09 PM

Is the USA more culturally and historically diverse than Europe ?

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:09 PM

"Banging the rocks together" is one of those catch-phrases people keep using; but I can't find it defined in any dictionary of idioms &c.

What, please, does it actually mean?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:15 PM

It's quote from a work of literature.

Try a web search.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:44 PM

As long as neighboring states have lax gun laws and controls access to guns is easy.


And that is exactly why we need a Federal statute that applies the same regulations to ALL states, despite what the National Rifle Assassination has to say and/or which pols they bribe.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:44 PM

"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 04:59 PM

Also quoted as "the secret is to keep banging the rocks together, guys!" I wonder which is right.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST,Olddude
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 07:09 PM

Greg how many times do you and I have to repeat that. About every other week. Gun shows to get rid of and a Federal law consistent across states.. Problem solved

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 09:08 PM

What possible effect could this and similar threads have upon a problem with which the United States is already all too familiar? Do you seriously believe that anything you post here will have any effect whatsoever?

Contributing to divisiveness does not solve this or any other problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 09:14 PM

The article is over a year old.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Jul 15 - 10:48 PM

"It's quote from a work of literature.
Try a web search."
,..,
Whoever posted this at 0415 pm -- Do you really imagine I would have posted such a question without doing a web search first?! It was the fruitlessness of that search which induced the post, obviously.

Thanks for the pointer to Douglas Adams. But it sounds as if he is simply using an established phrase in dialogue, rather than coining one. Still can't make out what exactly it's supposed to mean. WHICH rocks? To what purpose?

Still puzzled ···

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:13 AM

Remember the old thing about keeping something at bay? Like, Why are you banging those rocks together?

Answer: To keep elephants away.

Response: There are no elephants here.

Answer: See? It works.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:49 AM

well fair enough, we know you've got this proud history and the right to bear arms.

but the figures do seem to suggest that if there were a few less guns, les people would get killed.

one of my best friends lives in Texas and loves guns. in fact he was lamenting recently that he couldn't afford to shoot as much as he would like. i said -why not get an airgun, with an airgun - you can go shooting all the time and it doesn't cost much and you can do it in your back garden.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 03:54 AM

Thank you, Ebbie -- a most convincing derivation & explanation.

❤·M·❤

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 05:14 AM

Whoever posted this at 0415 pm -- Do you really imagine I would have posted such a question without doing a web search first

Sorry, that was me. I got the quotes from Douglas Adams (both versions) as the first, second, third and fourth returns from Google. But Google knows I am in the UK.

I am fairly sure Adam's did coin the phrase, as he did many others amongst people who followed what was, at the time, a cult radio program.

Any how the explanation, which Ebbie and probably Rapparee, know, is THIS Adam's may have been making an oblique reference to an early scene in 2001- a Space Odessy.

To us in the UK it makes some of you look primitive (and dangerous) in your attitude to guns and others of you look primitive in your inability to change things. Except the term that follows from the Adam's quote is not 'primitive' but 'un-intelligent', which is unfair on the caveman.

I have been to the USA, I have stopped the car in a prosperous neighbourhood to read the map, had a guy coming back to his home pull up in front, take something heavy from the glove compartment (or whatever you call it) and put it in his pocket, come over with his hand in that pocket, find that I was a white guy with an English accent, give me directions, then go back and return the heavy object from where he got it.

I don't think the heavy object was a rock.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: bubblyrat
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 08:08 AM

Perhaps the activity in question is somehow related to primitive Man's attempts at fire-lighting by knocking lumps of flint together to create sparks ?? Not applicable in Tasmania of course, where the Aboriginals never did learn how to make fire by ANY means and relied on natural phenomena such as lightning strikes.In which case, it doesn't either apply to , or concern , them (because they are all dead !).

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 10:56 AM

And tool making.
The sharp jagged broken rocks are found to be useful.

The first weapons were created like that which led ultimately the the development of firearms, so perhaps not so appropriate in this context.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 12:30 PM

The process is called knapping. I did some while at university as part of an anthropology course. Made some edges that were quite sharp to help skin and scrape muskrat and rabbit--although rabbit can be skinned bare-handed. It's a bit more complicted than banging rocks together, something I see as a stupid expression to beging with. However, some people use it because they lack anything more intelligent to say.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Teribus
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 01:35 PM

Doesn't your right to bear arms depend upon you being part of a "well regulated Militia"?

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 02:31 PM

No. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 04:00 PM

It's a bit more complicted than banging rocks together
They have to start somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: wysiwyg
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 04:51 PM

What Ebbie said up top. All of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 06:21 PM

Concur with Ebbie &Wysi

I have explained MANY times here about the 2nd amendment, the sad, ridiculous gun culture... and WHY it got that way and WHY it is so embedded and hard to dislodge.

Some of you Brits just do-not-care to have a clear explanation. You'd rather just make sarcastic comments and insinuate that "we", as a nation, are somehow primitive, stupid or unable to see the point. You cannot comprehend why the history, demography, geography and political structure of the US, as compared to the UK, is so very different. YOU don't have or allow many guns, so WE should just see how fine that system is and emulate it!

Get it thru your heads... guns and the gun culture here are a Catch-22! Many millions here hate the damn things, and many are attacking the problem within the system! What would you have us do...buy a bunch of guns and storm Congress and the NRA offices?
You don't need to tell most of us here at Mudcat... you are preaching to insulting the converted.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 06:29 PM

YEP. You are indeed as you describe. Devotees of a Wild West Cult. Time you grew up.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: gnu
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 08:55 PM

Another gun thread! Yippee!

As Ebbie and others have pointed out... stick it. Brits yanging? Fer fuck sake... you English Germans have shot more people world wide than anyone else and yer still at it every day. Including the fact that you control who the USA and the Commonwealth bomb the shit out of every day. You English Germans bomb and shoot and spill oil all over the fuckin planet every day. Piss off.

Guns don't kill people but English Germans do. Fix THAT shit for a start.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 09:30 PM

A quote from Winston Churchill:

What enterprise an enlightened community may attempt that is more noble and profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of a fertile region and large population?...The act is virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often extremely profitable.

Oh, yes -- he was writing about the Battle of Omdurman, where the British killed or wounded some 25,000 Ottoman soldiers while suffering about 50 casualties themselves. The Brits had rifles and Maxim guns, the Ottomans spears and few old muskets.

As I noted earlier, whatever makes you think that whatever is said here will make any difference at all? Those in the US know the problem and are working to correct it. Bill D. is correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jul 15 - 09:30 PM

A quote from Winston Churchill:

What enterprise an enlightened community may attempt that is more noble and profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of a fertile region and large population?...The act is virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often extremely profitable.

Oh, yes -- he was writing about the Battle of Omdurman, where the British killed or wounded some 25,000 Ottoman soldiers while suffering about 50 casualties themselves. The Brits had rifles and Maxim guns, the Ottomans spears and few old muskets.

As I noted earlier, whatever makes you think that whatever is said here will make any difference at all? Those in the US know the problem and are working to correct it. Bill D. is correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 02:16 AM

Whatever makes you think that here is the only place where people point out that its attitude to guns makes the USA look stupid ?

Thanks for the reminder of our past. The UK, and several other European countries, have stopped using superior technology against hapless natives AND have agreed, through democratic processes, that tools designed for killing people will not be held by private citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 04:42 AM

America has this, you butthurt Britishers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJlB5K6JXm4

Just because you're obsessed with the USA and yet Americans don't care about boring, stick-up-the-arse Britain is no cause to get your drawers in a bunch daily.

The new British Imperial Mission: colonize websites and kill them with utter boredom.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 04:47 AM

Do Americans care about any other country ?

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: akenaton
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 05:35 AM

My tool kit contains a knapping hammer, square at one end and wedge shaped at t'other.
Used to chip and dress very hard stone.....its correct use is difficult and requires skill. I use it mainly on granite and dolerite.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 06:12 AM

well yes, but do ever feel a bit sorry for all these people who get shot. feel sorry for their families?

i really don't know how you live with it. its like a town the size of Boston in Lincolnshire was levelled to the ground every year and all the men women and children were killed.

i think its that, that amazes us. i'm really sorry if we seem boring and repetitive on the subject. but amazement that you put up with this - that is our attitude.

as for disarming the population. it wouldn't be impossible, but if you never start a difficult job, it will never get done.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 06:30 AM

another advantage if you moved over to airguns - i just bought a crossman bejamin that cost me £120 from a gunshop. you could buy it from Walmart for about $70. so it would be really cheap.

you could still shoot at each - but probably you probably would kill as many people. i can't hit a tin can with the damn thing...

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 07:16 AM

Some of us also find it odd that a main reason given for not changing is a document designed for a situation that existed 220 years ago. Banging rocks together is an exagerration but as a metaphor it works for us.

We may have constitutional anachronisms (monarchy, House of Lords etc) but one massacre related to assault rifles and out they go, then one related to hand guns and out they go. The design function of these things is killing people. Other firearms are designed for killing things ranging from rats to red deer and we still have those under fairly strict control.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: bubblyrat
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 09:54 AM

The problem in Britain is the hypocrisy of it all. When a guy went doolally a few years back, and murdered a number of people in the town of Hungerford, the IMMEDIATE reaction of our government was to BAN all semi-automatic rifles.Later atrocities led to a COMPLETE ban on hand-guns of ANY sort, and also semi-auto and pump-action shotguns were limited to 3 rounds only .Pump-action shotguns,by the way,are regarded with GRAVE SUSPICION in Britain.
I asked (politely) many police officers, over time, if the various murderers had chosen to kill by driving Landrovers or Jeeps Cherokee into crowds, or bus-queues,would the government have immediately banned these types of vehicles ? The answer, of course, is/was always "No, of COURSE not ! ! " .
Meanwhile , our Olympic pistol-shooting team have to travel to FRANCE every time they want to practice !! It is INSANE !!!
PS ; I used to own a Mossberg 20-gauge pump; it was DELIGHTFUL !!

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Wesley S
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 10:14 AM

One thing I've noticed over the years is that the disapproval of British citizens over American gun laws has no affect on the situation here. It will take American voters to change things.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 10:19 AM

well i think they did the right thing with Hungerford.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 10:26 AM

And I am appalled that Britain seems to export such problems as football hooliganism.

But if you wish to visit the US and are truly fearful of gun-related crime, remember that something like 80+% of the population lives in urban areas -- more than the UK. So, don't visit New York, Washington DC, LA, Chicago, Boston and concentrate on other places. Zion National Park in Utah, for one example, is quite lovely, and so is Bryce. And while no place anywhere is totally without crime, you might visit Seattle, or Portland (Oregon or Maine), or Memphis. Any of those should give you a nice musical experience and, as long as you avoid Certain Areas (much as you'd do in London or Manchester or Belfast or Birmingham, etc.) your chances of being involved in gun-related or other crime would be very, very slim indeed.

Or visit Canada. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton -- all great places, and for a real treat, try Whitehorse, Yellowknife, or Dawson.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 10:57 AM

Aaahh! Change the subject - the tactic of the defeated.

As we did with guns, we dealt with football hooliganism - very little here now. And such as there is is dealt with very promptly.

If you want to see REAL football hooliganism, try some of the Eastern European countries, or South America.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Stu
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 11:41 AM

"Meanwhile , our Olympic pistol-shooting team have to travel to FRANCE every time they want to practice !! It is INSANE !!!"

Alternatively, it's a small price to pay for avoiding the slaughter that occurs in the US. I'd rather have no guns than Sandy Hook.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST,#
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 12:15 PM

The USA has a constitution which is the ultimate law of the land, and until such time the SCOTUS rules firearms are illegal to possess, people will possess them. That's it, that's all. I suspect many posters here have never read the Constitution, Bill of Rights (which is the first ten amendments) or the subsequent seventeen amendments. Getting nasty with each other accomplishes nothing, possibly other than to show your own degree of miscomprehension to do with how the American system of government (or lack thereof) works. If a court case to ban guns were started today it would take probably ten years to reach the SCOTUS. Fact.

I don't really give a rat's ass how much Yanks and Brits fight each other here or anywhere else. It's not my business because I spend most of my time in the music section. But all of you should at least argue from an informed position. Few of you are.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 15 - 12:41 PM

if the various murderers had chosen to kill by driving Landrovers or Jeeps Cherokee into crowds, or bus-queues,would the government have immediately banned these types of vehicles

Those vehicles are not designed for killing people. Semi-automatic rifles and handguns are designed for killing people. Simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 02:29 AM

....and 95% of all forest fires are caused by trees!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST,Musket weighing in
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 02:32 AM

I could be wrong, I don't read every thread on account of having a life.

But I think I'm the one who tells our colonial ex subjects to "bang the rocks together" when we discuss items where third world countries such as The USA need to progress somewhat in order to keep up with the civilised world.

Guns and capital punishment are the main two to which I advise rocks and a loud banging noise.

Yeah I got it from Douglas Adams.

Yeah, it denotes how banging rocks together did so much towards prehistoric man progressing.

Live with it.

Oh and keep it in your own bloody country. If you start removing guns, make a show start with that sick dentist who cuts heads off lions in conservation areas. Let him near my teeth? I wouldn't let him near a bowl of mashed banana and a rubber spoon.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST,Aloysius Chuckabutty
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 03:14 AM

I always thought "banging the rocks together" refers to nuclear fission, the "rocks" being obtained from uranium ore. Although flint knapping may have been the starting point.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 04:58 AM

Richard, I don't understand what motivates you to open threads which comment on some disagreeable fact or other about the USA. I don't understand your reasons for opening this one in particular. It deals with a topic which has been discussed over and over again, ad nauseam, ad infitum, with the same points made endlessly by the same people.

All it does is irritate those American 'Catters who know perfectly well what happens in their own backyard and are perfectly aware of the issues surrounding the topic. Do you pretend to some British moral superiority which you want to wave in the air? If you do, it's fucking tedious.

If you want to get worked up about social issues, there's a whole heap of shit in our own UK backyard - try concentrating on that for a change.

As if anything discussed here - no matter how hot the topic gets - will make any difference anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 07:18 AM

Cutting the head off a lion is one thing, cutting the head off a person in the street is quite another. People in glass houses.....

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 08:19 AM

It is important to continue to condemn primitive stupidity and arrogance. And to note that in general those waving the most wholly unnecessary rifled phallic symbols are waving the most confederate symbols of racism.

What do I think of American civilisation? I think it would be a good thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Guns - keep banging the rocks together
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Jul 15 - 08:23 AM

PS - although POTUS has been doing well the last week.