I expect part of the reason is a result of culture clash. Two different cultures that don’t mix well in society often result in back and forth petty complaints about minor stuff like trash cans, landscaping, etc.
1 Like
There’s both a violation and a felony, they’re separate. Some offenses become crimes, either misdemeanors or felonies, if they’re extreme enough. Speeding, for example, becomes a misdemeanor at one speed (26 mph over in Illinois, 100 in NH! - drive free and die.). Misdemeanors and felonies don’t have to be witnessed by police.
1 Like
Sometimes they take over a complete intersection for a very long time
I doubt the guys taking part in the take-overs are going to be reporting injuries
Like I said, it’s often the innocent people walking home that have NOTHING to do with the take-overs that are hurt or killed
3 Likes
Yes the police do respond, not necessarily as all of us would like but here is a good story. I was returning home from a visiting a friend. It was about 11:00 PM (late at night…) and a large U-Haul rental truck dragging a trailer passed me going in the opposite direction.
The trailer was a large one (double axle) and smoke was coming from one of the wheels on the driver’s side. I figured that it probably had a locked brake and it would not be long before it caught fire.
I quickly turned around and caught up to it and tried to stop it, but being late at night, the driver was not going to stop and I think he flipped me off. I thought about just pulling front and slowing down in an attempt to make him stop, but that was a BIG truck and he might be about to go into survival mode and try to ram me (I know he had no idea what my intentions were…), so I stayed back, hoping he would hit a stop light, but as it turned out, he pulled onto the interstate. I quickly called 911 and told the operator what was going on and told her that I would follow the truck, reporting the location, and to please send a police vehicle to pull them over.
It took less than 5-minutes, and in the meantime, the operator told me a cop was in pursuit and should be there shortly and that one of the other 911 operators had taken a call about a car following and trying to stop another vehicle and they were trying to figure if those people were the ones in the truck or there was another situation. I told the operator to tell those people, if they are in a U-Haul truck, to stop before their trailer catches fire.
But the police quickly arrived and pulled the truck over. As it stopped, the trailer tire started burning and the police (a Virginia State Trooper) pulled out a fire extinguisher. The Trooper then called the fire department. I stood over on the side of the road until the fire department arrived and then I went up to the Trooper and identified myself. He took me over the family driving the truck and they were an Army family moving to another post. He said they were starting out late so that they could pass through Richmond and Washington DC at night to avoid the traffic.
He also said he was armed and he said he was ready to use it… I told him I was glad it did not come to that… I wished him good luck, the VST took my name and the next day, the captain of the unit called and thanked me… I felt pretty good and glad the police were not too far away.
2 Likes
That’s a good story. I didn’t know they allowed the troops to carry though.
I was heading to the cabin one night after work, and a few miles east of that Sinclair station, I ran across a bunch of cows on the road. It was dark enough so hard to see them. So I called 911 and reported it but the guy asked me if they were black or brown. I suppose it would tell them what farmer left the gate open. I said I didn’t know. I’m a city kid and wouldn’t know the difference between brown or black cows, but I knew they were cows and not pigs.
1 Like
Not on base. They can’t have any firearms on base unless they are checked out for training as I understand it. As a private citizen like the one mentioned by @LoudThunder, it seems like the Army couldn’t stop him from carrying firearms. If he has on base housing my guess is he is forbidden from having firearms in the house though he could keep it locked up at an Army provided facility.
Been that way when I was in the Army back in the early 70’s.
A little back-story to better understand my posting. First off, I am a retired 30-year Air Force Veteran and I live between an Air Force Base and an Army Post. Just south of me is the Norfolk Naval Station (largest Navy base in the world…) So, we have a lot of military folks living in the area… One of the many things I learned in the service was “Service Before Self” which explains why I would chase down this truck and call 911 rather than just call 911 and notify them or ignore it completely…
After we got a chance to talk, they told me they were being re-assigned to another Army Post up north; (in military parlance) they were performing a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) and they were performing a Do-It-Yourself (DITY) move. When a member PCS’s, the military pays for moving of the household goods (weight limits based on rank…), but if the military member performs the move themselves, they will be reimbursed for about 75% the cost of moving it commercially.
The military member also has the option to do a partial DITY move. If the member has family heirlooms that they would rather move themselves rather than risk a commercial move, the military will move all the other stuff: furniture, beds, dressers, refrigerators, etc… I think a partial DITY percentage is lower.
As for weapons, a military member would never be allowed to transport military issued weapons during a PCS move. This soldier was transporting his own personal weapons, be they handguns, rifles, shotguns, cannons, etc… (LoL… I actually knew a fellow AF member who was a civil war reenactor who owned his own 3-pound black powder cannon (3-pounds being the weight of the cannon ball…) and the Air Force would not move it, ever…).
As for having weapons in your residence. Military members are not allowed to store military issued weapons in their residence. For example, Security Police who are armed at all times while on duty turn their weapons in at the end of their shift, unlike civilian police.
If a member lives in the on-base dormitories, they must turn their personal weapons in to the on-base/on-post police for secure storage. Members living off-base/off-post in civilian housing or in on-base/on-post family housing are allowed to maintain their weapons in their quarters.
As for military moving personal weapons, whether across state lines or national borders, the laws are the same for them as the laws are for civilians.
As for the type of weapons that a military member may own, the laws are also the same as for all civilians. No military member may own a Bazooka by virtue of their military status. But a military member, as any civilian, may acquire a Federal Firearms license and that opens the door for all sort of privately owned weapons: machine guns and even bazookas…
Below is a video of folks, everyday Americans, enjoying a day at the range… Many of these weapons are privately owned. Some firearm businesses bring out their finest and it affords regular folk a chance to pay a few bucks and shoot a clip or belt of ammo and scream at the top of their lungs envisioning themselves as Rambo…
And to acknowledge @bing 's observation, at 0:55 seconds, the video shows you what you can do with that old car that nobody wants…
1 Like
Oh boy. That looks like fun. And you kept it car related. What to do with a car that you absolutely have no more patience for. Blow it up of course or shoot it up to relieve frustration.
Something I hadn’t thought about is the interstate transport of a hand gun. I have heard that can be tricky depending on what state you go through. At any rate there should be allowances for members of the military. I have no hand guns but have about a dozen rifles and shot guns, some I have never fired. It’s hard to find a place now where you can just target shoot with them, without joining a club.
But as they say, thank you for your years of service. It’s quite a lot to put up with. I still believe though that it was a mistake to end the draft.
1 Like
Good story @LoudThunder … Can’t top that, but reminds me of a humorous incident. A few years ago I noticed a fire under a freeway underpass, flames reaching the cement under-structure, so pulled over and phoned fire department on my cell phone. Dispatcher told me they were already aware, and truck was on the way. In the meantime s bunch of homeless-looking folks come out from the underpass, telling me to mind my own business … lol …
Did you tell them that you paid for it though?
That I paid for the underpass? No, wouldn’t be a good idea for my own safety to say that.
I have very mixed feelings about a mandatory draft, in time of war, yes! But just for the sake of it; never, too many are against it. Too many feel the country owes them and they own the country nothing… And I’ll let it go there…
As for mandatory government service, absolutely! Like the AmeriCorps (to serve communities at home…), The Corps Network (“Shovel Ready Jobs” to help restore the environment in the USA), and the Peace Corps (for those who think countries like North Korea, Afghanistan, Burma, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan; just to name a few… are so much better than the United States…
I use to have a lot more respect for the Peace Corps, but it seems that they are pushing an agenda more than an effort to improve the living conditions of those they are sent to help… I have a couple of acquaintances whose adult children joined and returned early as what they were doing was not what they signed up for… Instead of teaching the locals to be self-sufficient, they were teaching the locals how to solicited/picket/poll/demonstrate, etc… in an attempt to force the local governments to succeed to their demands and these young people felt like “agitators” might very well find themselves thrown in jail…
Folk who want to be someplace work hard to stay there; Folks who do not want to be someplace, work hard to be someplace else…
And to get this back on subject, I stop typing now before the Police do something….
I’m down for that as well. One of the advantages of the draft-era is folks came away with a shared experience of public service. That fueled an era of folks making contributions for public good, NPR benefited a lot for example. The NPR radio station in this area asks for public contributions every 3 months, but seems to be finding contributions harder and harder to come by, compared to the past. Likewise public schools here are having very tough times passing school bonds.
Wife’s cousin was a general in the reserves and sort of agree with the national service but mandatory seems to work pretty good in Israel. Boys and girls carrying m16 with double taped spare ammo and know how to use it. It was interesting though when our local reserve unit was decommissioned. At the ceremony and banquet, there was quite a difference in those of us forced in the 70 s, to the new gung ho volunteers. I just think the experience is important to building purpose and patriotism. After all the civil war was won with largely draftees who went back to their farms when it was all over. But yeah Lincoln was greatly criticized for starting the draft. Still something about engineers and professionals serving that seems to fit.
@Bing, I know you are old enough remember the “Duck and Cover” Drills of the 1950s that we performed in school where we ran into the hall ways to get away from flying glass and tucked out arms over our heads to protect ourselves against falling debris…
However, those same children in Israel today (like we were in the '50s) still perform those same Duck and Cover Drills, but they are praying the Hezbollah Missiles and Rockets that are raining down on them do not hit their homes and schools…
It’s a whole different culture… Just take the difference between our fathers who voluntarily went down to the recruiter to enlist at the beginning of WWII and look at our peers and how they demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. This is not to criticize either generation, one for being Hawks or the other for being Doves…
Merely an observation in the difference in cultures. Just looking at your neck of the woods, there are probably more privately owned weapons within 100-miles south of the Canadian border that in all of Canada…
Look at the United Kingdom where even owning a shotgun requires a reason and permit, owning a rifle is even more difficult and a hand gun is almost out of the question… While here in the USA, open carry of all manner of weapons in tolerated and legal…
Look at the difference of cultures everywhere in the USA between Blue cities and Red urban/rural areas…
In the grade school (K-6) that I attended, the 5th and 6th graders could participate in extracurricular activities… One was the Sportsman’s Club, two male teacher (both veterans) taught us to fly fish, track, use a compass, pitch a tent, make a fire, and they even brought guns to school and after school, on the school grounds, I got to shoot my first high power rifle (an M1 Garand Rifle) and a Black powder Brown Bess… I already owned my own .22 caliber rifle and a double barrel 12-guage… And again, we did this on school grounds. We also said the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and each child took a turn in leading the class in singing the Star-Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, or God Bless America.
Now schools are being threaten with being sued if a child is forced to endure such an outrage as even having to listen to one of these…
Yeah, it’s a whole different culture…
Here, we just have problem with the kids passing…
I must be lost . I thought this was a vehicle forum .
2 Likes
We have a revived school skeet club and the kids are very good. NRA gun safety course was taught at the junior high after hours. On several of the classes we needed to bring our guns. No one ever got shot or threatened. Yeah culture.
We had a bond issue in three parts. One was approved and the two that were poorly thought out were not approved. There are several controversies now involving illegal grants from the state but we have a conservative board after many years. The public is plain and simple fed up.
That didn’t happen in the 1960s/1970s. I worked in a steel mill and all the engineers used their job as a way to avoid military service in Vietnam. A lot of industries were considered critical to the nation’s military and got a draft deferment. ALL the hourly workers a little older than me were in Vietnam though. No deferments for those guys.