Oh, where are you, Ustwo, to insert one of your facepalm pics? It's so desperately needed here!
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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
you can choose to consider it a troll or a strawman as you wish.
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A troll is something that we don't tolerate around here. A strawman is tolerated but not really a respected argument. We're not going to turn this thread into something that it's not just because you want to talk 2nd Amendment. Start another thread if that's what you want.
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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
But how long has piracy been a problem around the world?
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I'm going to go with thousands of years. Well before firearms were even invented, piracy was around. It's the reason that navies were invented. It's been out of the headlines because ships have grown so large that they're not usual targets. That's changed because of the problems in Somalia.
Oh, and "shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Hymn refers directly to the Barbary Wars of the 1790's against the Barbary pirates who raided US shipping.
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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
how many more deaths or hijackings do you think it will take before any single government chooses to intervene? my guess it that unless there emerges some sort of pirate group that becomes so large and bold to start targeting oil tankers, governments will do little, if anything, to actively patrol the ocean for them.
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I am now accusing you of not bothering to read any posts in this thread. I'm also accusing you of having done absolutely no research on the topic or have any idea of what the current events are. If any of those accusations were false, then you'd know that several nations, including the Danes, Americans, Indians and Russians, have all actively engaged pirates in the Indian Ocean. And that the Russians killed all the pirates that they captured. If you'd read the thread, you'd have known that. If you'd researched the topic at all, you'd know that.
Governments are not "doing little". But it's a big ocean and there's only so much that they can do.
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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
So that leaves private citizens with two choices. don't sail or take your chances.
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Or with staying in the patrolled shipping lanes or in groups. If you'd read the thread, you'd know that ignoring that common sense suggestion got these folks killed.
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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
1) Do we start taking measures to provide for our own protection, or
2) Do we demand that governments around the world add the expense of increasing attack ships and combat sailors to patrol enough of the ocean to protect against pirates?
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Given that piracy is the original reason for the creation of international law and that the US Navy's original charter refers to piracy, I think that choice 3 is "Let the navies do their jobs and figure out how to better coordinate to repel attacks." If I were I pirate, I wouldn't think too much about attacking a small vessel armed with automatic weapons, especially if there were more of us than you. If there were a naval vessel in the area, armed with guns bigger than anything I could ever muster, I wouldn't go pirating.