the two of you are hoot. the need to shore up your egos and prove your better and smarter than others who disagree with you is laughable. there is no logic of reason in your arguments just emotion and an undeserved surety of your own superiority. if you note im not actually trying to change your opinions, people rarely change their core beliefs and even less often do so because of logic. logic is actually the worse way to change someones beliefs. please keep it up this is comedy gold. you got a person who thinks its appropriate to threaten to shoot people for believing in gun control and someone so emotionally unstable they think its appropriate to swear and verbally abuse people because they dare have different beliefs. and you honestly believe your the rational side. though in all seriousness your delusions are getting people killed and you just don't care. I'd pity you all but its just not worth the effort. its sad and you prove the point of this thread with your bravado.
To me it's all about how a poster contributes and moves a discussion forward. If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion then open a thread or topic where you can offer something of worth.
I would say we are all the same. Only on opposite sides. Perhaps it's time we all took a step back, re-evaluate as to how we proceed in regards to how we communicate with each other. Most importantly, we need to remember there's another person on the other side. I mean, I am not one to talk. I have torn through this place on too many times to count and I have also been very abusive towards others. And I recognise that. Will it happen again? Probably. While I may be perfect in my own mind, I know that reality is vastly different. He believes we are foolish when it comes to guns and politics, just as we believe his beliefs about guns is equally foolish. Are we though? I don't think we really are when it comes down to it. It's just a matter of how we articulate it. I am sure a sex toy joke could be made here. In fact, I have a few, but I shall refrain. Hey, come on now. We could say the same thing about you as well. For example, I find this grip on firearms to be completely devoid of logic. Just as you find my stance on firearms to be completely devoid of logic. So what now? We get big sticks, walk 10 paces and start whacking at each other's heads from afar? Or do we try to find some middle ground on what can be done in the process? Or perhaps a recognition of what the other is trying to say and how they feel? Because truth be told, you are also ignoring the concerns and genuine fear that others have around you when it comes to firearms and the rate of firearm violence and their concern is valid, just as your right to bear arms is valid (and certainly, I think it's an insannnne right to have, but it is a right your constitution afforded you and no one seems to be willing to let it go). So where to now? How do you progress past it? How do you make your neighbours feel safer about guns and the sheer volume of guns sold legally across your country? How do you make the kids feel safer in school and home? How can you reduce the rate of gun violence, be it self inflicted or against others without infringing on your right to bear those arms? Would it entail registering firearms? Holding gun owners more accountable for their firearms? A more comprehensive background check that would entail all forms of law enforcement sharing the same database (which should include military as well)? Would it entail people with mental health issues having their firearms removed from their homes and person while they are suffering from those issues? Would it entail a requirement of a gun safe if there are others living in the house to prevent those others from accessing those firearms and shooting others? Would it require a gun safe or removing guns from the premises if there is someone who is living there who has a criminal record or is mentally incapacitated? Would it entail addressing a very real and dangerous problem for everyone and not just one sector of society? Some middle ground has to be reached. A simple measure that will not infringe on your rights, could end up saving thousands of lives. But it will take acceptance that something does have to be done. Or we can just get big sticks. Which do you prefer?
I'm willing to listen to other opinions, but I'm unwilling to be accused of insanity because I have weapons. If a person is uncomfortable with firearms, or unsure of their ability, by all means don't have them. Out in the sticks where I live jam-up on a nature preserve, there are coyotes, puma, and my son saw a black bear the other night in his headlights. Most of my neighbors keep guns for the same reasons I do. I don't want any of the dogs to end up ripped to pieces by a pack of coyotes, much less my own good friend. Nobody wants their horse killed by a mountain lion, nobody wants their family killed, by either wild beasts or "tame" beasts, like the meth-heads that are nearby. Thankfully, a few nights ago the sheriff rolled out there with about 20 patrol vehicles, a SWAT unit, and a spotting helicopter. Some more will turn up again in another spot, no doubt... Good night, all!
And that is not what anyone has said any differently. You live in an area where you actually need a firearm for protection from 'what's out there'.. I'll be honest, I think the attitude in the US when it comes to guns, not for necessity for living out in areas where it is needed, but the general attitude around guns is insane. I am not talking about people who live in pastoral or farming areas where a firearm is a necessity (farmers get a gun permit here in Australia because it is necessary, although given some recent events with farmers and a horrific uptick in gun suicides by farmers and a couple of farmers who murdered their families and then committed suicide with their firearms that are registered for farm use, some questions are being raised as to how better manage that as well, to reduce the number of deaths), but people who live out in the 'burbs, who have firearms that would be more at home on the front line, because they feel they need it or simply have it because it is a right. Looking back through the mass shootings that have occurred in the US, the greater majority of them occurred in suburbs, usually quiet suburbs and more often then not, the middle class or upper middle class suburbs. These are people who store the type of firepower normally reserved for people living in a war zone, for protection and because they have a right to have it. Not out of necessity so much as it is a right. To keep within the context of this thread, lets look at the response to mass shootings in schools. The shooters have tended to be young males, the guns have not been their own for the most part (the guns have tended to belong to a parent or family member), all of them had a mental health issue that was never addressed properly in the sense that the family did not appear to do enough to keep those guns out of their hands. For example, would you object to a regulation or requirement that would see firearms being kept in a safe if there is someone who is diagnosed as being mentally unstable in the house? How about a requirement or regulation that would remove firearms from people who are diagnosed with a mental health issue or have a violent criminal history? Look at the case of Travis Reinking, who after a history of mental illness and threatening behaviour, saw the authorities take the move to remove his firearms from his possession. Instead of confiscating the firearms, they were given to his father, who then subsequently gave them back to Travis. Travis then went on to kill 4 people at a Waffle House. “It seems like they were proactive and effective at suspending this dangerous person’s access to guns in the first place, particularly since that’s not something they could’ve done in most states,” said Ari Freilich, a staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. But they “did not foresee the father being so irresponsible and dangerous in returning the guns to this person.” [...] States vary in what they do with firearms that are seized. Some states give the option of selling or transferring the guns to a licensed dealer or law enforcement. Others allow the person to give them to a friend, relative or some other third party. Experts caution about the danger of allowing relatives or friends to take possession of the firearms. “Family dynamics are unusual. And here’s a situation where the family knew of his danger and still gave him a gun,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law and gun industry expert. Reinking’s move to Tennessee — which has considerably more lax gun laws than Illinois — exposes another loophole with the laws, experts say. “That safety net in Illinois that works so well … evaporated when he moved to Tennessee,” said Everytown’s Oransky. Would you agree that the father should never have been given his son's guns and that those firearms should have been confiscated and his ability to purchase more firearms anywhere in the US should have been revoked? Sadly, this is not that much of an isolated incident. John Zawahri had a history of mental illness and violent threats towards others. He was institutionalised and barred from purchasing a firearm. So he bought the components online, built his own firearms, murdered his father and brother and then went on a shooting spree and murdered 4 other people at a local college campus in Santa Monica. Even with a red flag that would prevent someone from buying a gun, is not enough to prevent that person from buying components to make a gun. Such as the case of Kevin Neal, who was denied access to purchase a firearm, was legally able to buy the components to make high powered firearms and then went on to commit a mass shooting. To wit, there were no laws in place to prevent people who cannot legally own a gun, from buying the components to build their own guns. In Neal's case, he had been ordered to give up all his guns earlier this year under a restraining order that was issued against him after he was charged with assaulting two women who lived nearby. He signed a document in February saying he surrendered a 9 mm handgun to a gun store, which also attested to that. When Neal was arrested, police seized an AR-15 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. During Tuesday's rampage, officials say he chose random targets and stole two vehicles as he moved through town. Officers recovered one semi-automatic rifle and two handguns. One of the stolen vehicles, a white truck with bullet holes in the windshield, was removed from the area Tuesday night, reports CBS News correspondent Jamie Yuccas. Neal was known to authorities and had at least one prior arrest. His neighbors had complained he had fired multiple rounds for days before Tuesday's deadly incident. "He's a bad guy and I'm not going to glorify him in any manner whatsoever. He attacked my school," Johnston said. While making a ghost gun is legal, selling one is not. Federal officials are sounding the alarm about an increasing black market for homemade military-style semiautomatic rifles and handguns. Would you agree with tightening such loopholes, and perhaps having a national registry for people who are barred from owning firearms to prevent them from buying them and buying their components? The Texas church shooter should also have been barred from owning a firearm due to his history. Alas, he was able to obtain a firearm. The Caltech shooter should also have been barred from owning a firearm due to his mental health issues. Alas he was not. Mental illness is not driving the gun violence crisis in the US. Access to firearms for the mentally ill is.
There is no doubt that most if not all reasonable thinking citizens of the USA know that they have a major problem. I think also most feel utterly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of that problem. That no matter what they do, 200+ million people can not come together and decide a course of action. So it is inevitable that any change for the better will be slow and no doubt painful. From what I understand the union of states in the USA is not like the union of states in Australia and whilst we may have small and sometimes significant differences in law enforcement across those states we basically have a common and shared ethos or philosophy. ( for want of better terms) The union in the USA is considerably more confrontational. Considerably more differentiated to being almost akin to separate sovereign states trying to just get along as best they can. So it is challenging for an outsider to make value judgements in such a fractured pseudo democracy that the USA as a whole appears to be. We get to the very core of the issue that maintains the divide and that is a constitution, that even though well intended by it's writers, is both the USA savior and it's jailer. Not only can you not vote a government out of office or force it, as we call in Australia, into a double dissolution and go to the polls prematurely, you have to threaten the governments of that Union with bloody revolution to prevent a tyranny from forming. The divide between government and it's people, the Us vs Them situation being significantly magnified almost to the point of dysfunction. Subsequently you have a police force that is terrified and acting accordingly. You have a government always on the look out for a shooter taking the 2nd as a right. You have scared children going to school not knowing whether they will make it home afterwards because someone decides the bullying at school is the same a government's tyranny and becomes a 2nd amendment vigilante/hero. I might be mistaken but I would guess that the USA is the only nation in the world that has a constitution that includes the promotion of violence against government institutions that could be deemed tyrannical by any one using their own particular definition based on what scares them the most at the time. An amendment that over rules the rule of law in a constitution that demands it is a startling contradiction IMO. One that is incredibly corrupting especially to young people. A corruption that you will go on paying for. Courage: Long term. The only way IMO, is to reform your constitution and make the second amendment redundant. Short term: Suffer the repeated slaughter of innocents until you do make the 2nd amendment redundant and re-indoctrinate your children into trusting the rule of law. Once constitutional right to over rule the rule of law has been removed maybe then and only then will this entire tragedy of gun use in the United States make sense and recovery may be possible.
In a thread directly addressing the matters of cowardice and bluster, specifically their roles and association in the gun control debate, Toad's postings seem relevant and illustrative. That counts as a contribution. For example: About as comprehensive a single post illustration of that aspect of that oneside of the gun control jamb as one could imagine, no? Even managed to fill the "racism" bingo square.
It has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is not the issue. Allowing the NRA to frame gun control as a conflict with the 2nd Amendment is a capitulation to gun lobby propaganda, and a reinforcement of the bothsides jamb. It does nothing like that. It does not "promote" anything. The cowardice evident, the fantasies and bogeys of looming threat (on bothsides, btw, uniquely) are creations of political manipulation and residue of specific history. You cannot - cannot - make sense of the specifically US "psychology" or whatever without taking race, frontier, and technological innovation, into account. The purpose of the Constitution might be described as the limitation of the rule of Law. The entire document is devoted to that.
There was a theoretical threat, the new government might become tyrannical. There was also a very real threat, the First Nations who had been dispossessed or were afraid they would be. One of those would have been primary, one secondary. Reading the literature of the day sorts this out nicely.
Next to the cassette deck and the exercise equipment and the wringer washer. In a box. The ammo went with the half bottle of brake fluid and the old boat battery - there's a yearly discount hazardous waste disposal event in most suburban areas.
Reading the literature of the day, one finds these threats conjoined - aspects of one basic situation. Most of the people feeling threatened had family history of government disarmament - along with government dispossession generally.
Yeah, I said there were two issues. The point is that one of them was primary and immediate, the other theoretical.
And I pointed out that those were two aspects of one issue, neither one theoretical for the people involved - here's another illustration, handy from Wiki: Being tarred and feathered for attempting to buy a firearm is not a theoretical issue.
I disagreed on the count, from which the criticality became comparable. The history of the consequences of a central government disarming its citizenry was already long, extensive, and consistent, by 1750. It was also personally familiar to most of the population of the American frontier - not a theoretical issue, but a matter of personal and family history as well as immediate consequence. Not only was disarmament a pressing concern of the economically dominant slaveholders on the southern front, but in the north even the Quakers had informing family memories - http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/events/dates/cromwell.shtm The pioneers of the American frontier - first Euros to cross the Appalachians, etc - were often known as "Ulstermen" or "Ulster Scots" as well as "Scotch Irish". Disarmament by a central government in the face of an immediate threat (regardless of instigation) was no more a theoretical issue for them than it was for the Virginia slaveowners. The arguments against the 2nd Amendment were not in general based on the danger of an armed citizenry, but on the observation that such rights were already taken for granted and unchallengeable - so that singling one or more out for specific mention actually endangered the unspecified, could be used to argue that only the specified rights were protected by the new Constitution. That has proved prescient - but so has the wary and conservative insistence on specifying the critical few. The 2nd Amendment was not born in cowardice, or argued by bluster.
Try to bear down: You asserted that there were two threats in the vicinity when the 2nd Amendment was passed, and claimed one was theoretical and the other immediate, one a primary and the other a secondary concern. I disagreed, noting that there was one threat, and it was immediate and primary: that the incoming central government of the newly created country would disarm its citizenry and thereby make it vulnerable to/unable to attack the forces of the armed, of which there were several at hand and in immediate prospect. Simply: that vulnerability to the various different Reds and vulnerability to the various agents of a central government were the same thing - not only because the new central government was expected to be at best indifferent and more likely often in league and common interest with those specific Reds, and Euro central governments also, but because the threat involved (abuse by local thugs and paramilitary forces and nearby gangs and so forth) was (and is) exactly the same. The fantasy of directly fighting a national army on a field of combat was no more serious then than it is now, and less accepted by the influential then (why they didn't want one, and blocked its creation for years), but the threat posed by groups of nearby armed men allowed free rein by that central government was (and is) entirely non-theoretical. It was a matter of personal and family experience. And this, settled, returns us to the thread topic: the role of cowardice and bluster in American gun culture and its politics. It does so by setting the 2nd Amendment aside, allowing a less obstructed view of the issues bound up in the bothsides jamb.
26,171 bombs fyi: The "polyester poontang" character was the wife of heironymus merkin in the above named movie. The actress was also the wife of the actor off stage. The movie is a movie of a movie about making a movie... Curious thing---I remember seeing it while at Oklahoma University circa 1967---and the listed official release date is claimed to be 1969. .... (when poontang came up on carlin's expanded list, it kicked the memory circuit) (memory circuits are indeed curious things)
Of course! There are 3,200,000 public school teachers in the US. If each had ten guns then school shootings would cease to exist. Remember, the more guns, the less shootings. And if the opposite seems to be true, the only solution is more guns.
