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Well, I think it is clear that Tony offered the only real and effective solution -- disgruntled, poacher-hating goats. By the way, Filippo, should I be alarmed that the elephant in the photo can paint better than I can because I am sure feeling a bit self-conscious right now.

What no holiday best-wishes from you Todd?

"Whatever position you take, comparing elephants (threatened wild animals) to Cattle/baby cattle (genetically engineered, delicious atrocity in gross excess that could not survive in the wild) is purely asinine."

Hi Joey,
I have lived on a Dairy farm And I know that Dairy cattle are generally well taken care of - although I have seen a few tails get twisted to get the cows to do what they are supposed to do. All the young calves are separated from their Mothers but what I spoke of is the fate of many of the dairy breed male calves. They often wind up in a veal calf barn, where they are put in pens too small to move around in (so the meat stays tender) kept in the dark (so the meat stays white) and fed a liquid diet of milk substitute. I have visited veal calf barns and seen the poor anemic animals with the bloody scours.The farmers aren't being intentionally cruel, but to me it is inhumane to keep animals like this. Meat eater that I am, I do avoid veal.
To rationalize the inhumane treatment of calves because they are a "genetically engineered delicious atrocity in gross excess" and are bred to be slaughtered seems to miss the point that they are still living creatures. My point was that we will tolerate animal abuse if we eat them, but not if they are raised to entertain us. And yes, it is asinine to blame the dairy industry for the conditions veal calves live in, but it is an unintended consequence of breeding cows for milk production.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I have personally prevented what was likely going to be a stabbing with my own firearm in the lower 48 some years ago. You can also see all kinds of evidence to the contrary on youtube.




Just imagine if all the law abiding citizens turned in their weapons. Criminals keep theirs because well, they are criminals. How do the scenarios above change? Sheep for the tyrants would be my answer.

That being said I don't care to talk about guns anymore. Our positions differ and that is ok. That is my last $.02 on that issue. There is probably nothing I can say or that you can say that will change one another's positions. Back to the original topic....

This has been a healthy debate and regardless of what happens I hope that at the very least one person here has decided to change their position and not use ivory in the future. After all that is realistically the best thing that we ourselves can do to make a difference. If the ivory vendors saw a solid position against the use of ivory by a majority of the builders, they will be less likely to pursue ivory in the future. If the one luthier supplier that currently carries ivory stopped doing so then I'd say that we've done our part.

Hanging's for treason? Hahahaha- who would run the country once they are all hung???

Maybe we can get some goats to do the job. Hopefully some goats that are impervious to lobbyists!!!!

I think after getting rid of our politicians through the voting booth.We can call 1-800 INDIA and for about 1/3 the price more or less without fancy offices and high class health care.We can get/hire enough responsible politicians to run this country, and maybe even balance the budget, so we would not have to ban everything to make it fair and balanced.

What can I say, apart from being perfectly happy to live in the emotional gun illegal UK - a place with one of the lowest gun homicides in the entire world, yet 'average' crime figures. No wild elephants though.

Nothing will ever change- right or left until corporations are "not people". Right now big business owns and runs our country through campaign funds/bribery. Call it what you want. Every candidate fits corporate America wants/needs aka the 1% that own 99% of the world's wealth. If they don't fit the corporate model they will never be funded for candidacy in the first place.

As for the budget- it is mathematically impossible to pay off the deficit. This is because the Federal Reserve (which is a conglomerate of private banks, not a Federal Institution) loans money to the gov't at interest in exchange for Federal Bonds. SO for example- if the gov't borrowed 1 Million for circulation at interest of 4%, where does that 4% (now 104%) come from if there is only 100% of the currency in circulation? Answer- print more money (at interest as well) and then compound interest (debt) really sets in.

Further more, that hypothetical $1 Million get's distributed to banks, who also loan the money at interest. In this overly simplistic example wealth (debt) has been created out of thin air twice in under a week. This has been happening since the gold standard was removed in 1933. What's more crazy than that is 90%+ of America's currency right now is digital debt, or value created out of thin air without currency to back it, without gold to back it. There is no balancing the budget under the current system. There is only balancing the debt (through inflation- printing more currency), which is artificial to begin with. That is why I laugh when I hear the left/right argue over who would better manage the countries debt. It makes no difference other than which corporate agendas get funded under the current system. Show me a politician that doesn't take bribes and I'll show you a liar.

Joey I agree with your analysis.My remark was strictly toungue in cheek , and not to be taken seriously.

I respect this perspective too Michael but I wanted to ask you something that has been troubling me for a while.... since I took history in school. Mind you my intent is NOT to be offensive to our brothers and sisters across the pond and never to you Michael.

I've always wondered why during the revolutionary war, the US's revolutionary war you guys did not understand the affinity that the colonists had for firearms? More specifically why would you ever march in straight lines, wear red, and have big white X's on your torsos? If I understood history correctly you even stood still..... While all the while we ran, wore animal skins that blended in with the environment, hid behind BFRs (big, fr*aking rocks), etc. What the hell were you thinking?

You guys also have civilized... er I mean socialized medicine but I won't get into that here, this place is fraught with government haters....

Hope that you know that I am kidding with you Michael and that I actually like you and you are just going to have to deal with that!

Happy Holidays to you and yours my friend!

My thoughts are similar to fingerstyle1978. It's to easy to get around the rules and regulations as it is. Can anyone here look at ivory and tell if it's pre ban or post? I cant and I'm sure the average government employee can't either.

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Another day, another dollar.

No problemo. My fault for getting worked up. It's just that the only thing that I hate more than a left/right politician is a left/right blowhard that regurgitates the "information" that they are fed via the corporate media. I'm glad you don't fit the bill, Happy Holidays!

Mandrake…I agree.

Wing attack plan R….

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
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Via Harvard-

I've just learned that Washington, D.C.'s petition for a rehearing of the Parker case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was denied today. This is good news. Readers will recall in this case that the D.C. Circuit overturned the decades-long ban on gun ownership in the nation's capitol on Second Amendment grounds.

However, as my colleague Peter Ferrara explained in his National Review Online article following the initial decision in March, it looks very likely that the United States Supreme Court will take the case on appeal. When it does so - beyond seriously considering the clear original intent of the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to armed self-defense - the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court would be wise to take into account the findings of a recent study out of Harvard.

The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom, and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no, showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and suicide decreases.

The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:

Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population).

For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns. As the study's authors write in the report:

If the mantra "more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death" were true, broad cross-national comparisons should show that nations with higher gun ownership per capita consistently have more death. Nations with higher gun ownership rates, however, do not have higher murder or suicide rates than those with lower gun ownership. Indeed many high gun ownership nations have much lower murder rates. (p. 661)
Finally, and as if to prove the bumper sticker correct - that "gun don't kill people, people do" - the study also shows that Russia's murder rate is four times higher than the U.S. and more than 20 times higher than Norway. This, in a country that practically eradicated private gun ownership over the course of decades of totalitarian rule and police state methods of suppression. Needless to say, very few Russian murders involve guns.

The important thing to keep in mind is not the rate of deaths by gun - a statistic that anti-gun advocates are quick to recite - but the overall murder rate, regardless of means. The criminologists explain:

[P]er capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent. (p. 663 - emphases in original)
It is important to note here that Profs. Kates and Mauser are not pro-gun zealots. In fact, they go out of their way to stress that their study neither proves that gun control causes higher murder rates nor that increased gun ownership necessarily leads to lower murder rates. (Though, in my view, Prof. John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime does indeed prove the latter.) But what is clear, and what they do say, is that gun control is ineffectual at preventing murder, and apparently counterproductive.

Not only is the D.C. gun ban ill-conceived on constitutional grounds, it fails to live up to its purpose. If the astronomical murder rate in the nation's capitol, in comparison to cities where gun ownership is permitted, didn't already make that fact clear, this study out of Harvard should.

Certainly one of the best. Hard to go wrong when you have a cutting-edge director, an all star cast, and a friendly witness in a supporting role. "Dr. Strangelove". "High Noon". "Missing".
Oh, wait, no friendly witness in that one. Some people just never got anything other than Costa-Gavras' first level of humor.

Good lord, introduce me please.

I've never been attracted to a military woman until RIGHT NOW. Grazi.

Where do you get the idea that Holland has a very high murder rate fingerstyle?

Current intentional homicide rates for those countries that you stated had high 'murder rates' :

Holland : 1.1 per 100,000 population.
Sweden: 1
Denmark: 0.9

Norway: 0.6
UK: 1.2
USA: 4.7

1995 was the height of Hollands murder rate at 1.95 and has been steadily declining ever since, reaching it's current level of 1.1. No idea where the so called high murder rate comes from. In fact of those countries that you stated had a high murder rate (yet low gun ownership) the official figures show it's quite obviously a very misleading statement.
Norway does have a very low rate but it also has a very low rate for other types of serious crime. Might have something to do with being very Oil rich and one of the highest standards of living in the world!
What does stand out from the above figures (and quite clearly) is the extremely high rate for the USA. A rate of 4.7 is very high for a rich, advanced industrialised nation.

No worries joey.My only way of defending against the gov/t is through humour.

See what happens when you remove women from their preban or otherwise ivory towers!

download/file.php?id=43557

i am so tired of the NRA's favorite "just look at chicago" example used to promote the handgun market- chicago, along with almost all other american cities, is not an island. anyone with common sense knows that if all you need to do is walk, ride a bicycle, hop a bus/train, drive, (or have someone do it for you) to the city limits in order to purchase rounds or pistols and rifles, then firearms restrictions within the city are not going to be very effective. just as if, right on the outskirts of London you could buy all the guns and ammo you wanted to, well then guess what? there'd be a much higher gun homicide rate in London.
i live about 2-3 miles from chicago city limits. i don't own a gun, and i believe i am in NO danger of a big bad guy kicking in my door and menacing me with his gun. why? because i am not a gangbanger or thug, so i am not at risk. virtually all of the murders in chicago are thug-on-thug.
out of everyone i know in the chicagoland region, many right in NW chicago, not any of them have ever been shot and as far as i know, have ever even seen a shooting. i myself lived in a few gang infested(hispanic) neighborhoods(humbolt park, far west logan square, wicker park) in the 1990s, and while i had to drive past a few burning cars in the wee hours, i never was shot or witnessed a shooting either. nor was i strapped.
so to spin reality and insinuate that you have to own a gun(s) in chicago to be safe, i say: bullcrap. just more NRA hero-to-the-rescue spin.
for the record there are just over 400 homicides for the year in chicago, and the year closes in a week......
the problem the USA has is weapons proliferation, and even i recognize that if all guns were banned tomorrow, shooting rates wouldn't change in the slightest- but after a few decades they sure would. long term and NATIONAL thinking is what is needed here.

Well we can exclude any particular group of society to strengthen our views. I pretty sure that if we exclude all human beings in Holland then the gun homicide will be zero. Probably about 0.1 per 100,000 population in the UK though. Here some of the dogs carry illegal weapons, not sure about the cats.
Anyway, this side of the pond we just don't get the fascination with guns. Not at all. The only time I've ever seen a real gun was on a special Police officer. Probably three times in my entire life and I'm from the bad part of town.
I think I'll leave the thread. It's got WAY off topic, considering it was regarding Ivory.

Dismissing those who have reasoned opinions as "haters" is a tactic most often employed to end debate.

I don't hate government...fear is a better word, as Todd said. I wouldn't fear it if it were comprised of transcendent, benevolent beings but it's comprised of human beings who deserve respect and trust not through what they say, but by what they do...and how they comport themselves when holding authority. I have every legitimate reason to question the integrity of government these days. In a civil society, one ought to be able to express that opinion without having a derogatory label hung around his neck.

You want respect? You have to give it to get it and I don't perceive respect coming my way from my federal government.

I too want to live under the law...law prepared by deliberative, accountable bodies and not by political fiat.

It isn't complicated.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Absolutely! We have a government full of pushers, much like drug pushers, pushing the crack of the Nanny state as hard as they can go. We are short on leaders, who would lead us back to the freedoms the nation was formed on.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Todd, is that a joke?

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.