Guns (Yawn)

[justdrew]

wouldn't the best thing be to come up with some sensible regulations and put this issue to bed once and for all? The biggest problem with this country is we just let these sort of issues drag on and on for decades, that's not the way things should be.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I was under the impression that "Exploratory Thinkers" was more of a compliment than a epithet.

If he called y'all "Confirmatory Thinkers," you might have grounds for a bar fight.

Please note that this fulfills my 2013 quota for active moderation. Thank you all for playing.

[82_28]

Your able, just and unfailingly non-egocentric presence will be missed as a mod.

Can't blame you though.

[Laodicean]

[Elihu]

wouldn't the best thing be to come up with some sensible regulations and put this issue to bed once and for all?

you mean like some regulations to limit tv and movie depiction of gun murder to like no more than 1000 per week? end military recruitment in colleges and high schools? convene a blue-ribbon panel to assess the suicidal and psychotic proclivities of zoloft, ritalin, etc with perhaps a one year moratorium? convene a panel to assess relations between the american psychological association, major university psyche departments, and national security agencies? that kind of stuff? or just turning weaponry into contraband? i think that will cause more violence.

The biggest problem with this country is we just let these sort of issues drag on and on for decades, that's not the way things should be.

if we had a school shooting every week, would the body count be higher than collateral civilian deaths caused by the us military in iraq, afghanistan, north africa, south america, central america, the south pacific, south asia, central asia? is there anywhere we're not killing innocent people? so it's type, style, and proximity that's the problem?

[KeenInsight]

The problem is more complex since time immemorial of human civilization. A failed species that kills each other off over indifference, beliefs, power, and territory in whatever way mankind has dreamed up for centuries. The issue of 'gun control' doesn't bestow in me any hope of that ending, at least in my life-time. I believe in non-violence and peaceful co-existence, but at the same time, I know that the entire history of humanity is like one giant Dark-Age of oppression and ignorance. One would hope at some point in our evolution it would be-gone with.

Obviously there are those of us in society that are screaming for social change, and end to this nonsensical violence that has plagued Humanity forever, but it also must be an effort world-wide. There is also the real fear in misguided and criminal acts by government, since they hold the cards, making others feel destitute and powerless, while inciting yet more violence to repeat a constant cycle.

In this day and age I would hope to never, ever, have to use the guns that I own, but I also acknowledge that the governments have and will kill their own people. Its not even that though, people are driven towards violence through the very nurturing of humanities troubled existence.

And now a message brought to us by the Prime Directive



The dark ages of superstition, ignorance, and fear, indeed.

[Elihu]

The problem is more complex since time immemorial of human civilization. A failed species that kills each other off over indifference, beliefs, power, and territory in whatever way mankind has dreamed up for centuries. The issue of 'gun control' doesn't bestow in me any hope of that ending, at least in my life-time. I believe in non-violence and peaceful co-existence, but at the same time, I know that the entire history of humanity is like one giant Dark-Age of oppression and ignorance. One would hope at some point in our evolution it would be-gone with.

Obviously there are those of us in society that are screaming for social change, and end to this nonsensical violence that has plagued Humanity forever, but it also must be an effort world-wide. There is also the real fear in misguided and criminal acts by government, since they hold the cards, making others feel destitute and powerless, while inciting yet more violence to repeat a constant cycle.

In this day and age I would hope to never, ever, have to use the guns that I own, but I also acknowledge that the governments have and will kill their own people. Its not even that though, people are driven towards violence through the very nurturing of humanities troubled existence.

And now a message brought to us by the Prime Directive



The dark ages of superstition, ignorance, and fear, indeed.

that was a nice post. indeed, our whole society is in a deep psychosis. i would call the gun-ban mentality elitist if it weren't so childish. "i myself am pre-possesed enough to handle a weapon even though i may choose not to. but many others are obviously not. let us level the playing field." meanwhile they themselves are party to policy tantamount to extra judicial murder on an ongoing basis. so it is obvious to me that the murder is not what is bothering them. rather it is an overbearing desire to eliminate the possibility that it could, in one out of a million, statistically speaking, affect them personally. and that includes being discomfited by it on TV. personally, i don't even believe that the odds bother anyone in particular. it's just the pure jolly of dropping the hammer on others unlike themselves in order to displace their own dis-satisfactions in life. there's no talk of investigating and healing society's psychoses to the point where a majority are healthy, lucid, responsible and respectful enough that we could live safely with weapons in existence to the point that they would essentially never be resorted to.

"gunz are the problem so let's ban 'em" wouldn't be the first myopic legislative agenda carried into effect. however, the un-regarded consequences could be made to serve an un-disclosed political agenda.... bah! now i'm talking conspiracies....

[compared2what?]

i would call the gun-ban mentality elitist if it weren't so childish.

{snip]

"gunz are the problem so let's ban 'em" wouldn't be the first myopic legislative agenda carried into effect.

Elihu, have you ever stopped to consider that a really good way for moneyed interests to prevent you from having any political power at all is to get you to squander your energies and attention on non-existent threats that nobody anywhere is planning to menace you with, such as the banning of guns?

[compared2what?]

Wayne LaPierre is now taking it to the real enemy: Sasha and Malia.



Charming.
____________________

____________________

Gun politics are always about race in this country. That's the NRA's issue. The thing that motivated them to spend the last forty years and hundreds of millions of dollars generating patriotic fervor for the ostensibly life-and-liberty-giving properties of guns. ("Hitler took the gunz, Mao took the gunz, Stalin took the gunz," etc.)

For reals. Try G--gling that shit some time. Then follow the money. It's always bought and paid for by the NRA or by an NRA cut-out. And the war the NRA is prosecuting is a race war. Although, you know. There's money and other stuff at stake too, as with all wars. But it's about race.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Via: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ns/308608/

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

[wintler2]

.. Try G--gling that shit some time. Then follow the money. ..

Thats too much like thinking to qualify as special knowledge, lacks many extras.
Wheres the:
- authority figure providing The Truth (bless charlie heston, ronnie raygun, clint eastwood, chuck norris..)
- minion parrots on billionaire media
- tribal membership conferred on believers (free dum-loving 'muricans)
- and wheres my colour-classed scapegoat?
You libruls just don't understand how to sell!

[compared2what?]

Via: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ns/308608/

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

I almost linked to that for the history, since it has the basics. But that little twist where the author decides to blame the Black Panthers for making racists want to shoot negroes kind of ruined it for me.

The truth is that the NRA got its panties in a twist at the sight of black people with guns (or, as the Atlantic would have it, black people with guns started it! They started it!), then did what the right always does: Grabbed the rhetoric and cast themselves as the oppressed ones. That's where that oh-noes-our-guns!-they're-taking-them tone of imminent genocide comes from.




Anyway. If you overlook the part where it goes that extra mile to put a fresh new spin on the argument that armed black men are the cause of violence in this country, that article's not a bad place to start.

[8bitagent]

Why the AR-15 is most-wanted gun in America
'It’s kind of fashionable ... the young generation likes them, the assault-looking guns'
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50685277/ns/b ... Q8Xx_Lg9Ms



Snapped this at my local grocery store. 17 gun magazines, only 2 craft magazines.

[8bitagent]

Wayne LaPierre is now taking it to the real enemy: Sasha and Malia.



Charming.
____________________

____________________

Gun politics are always about race in this country. That's the NRA's issue. The thing that motivated them to spend the last forty years and hundreds of millions of dollars generating patriotic fervor for the ostensibly life-and-liberty-giving properties of guns. ("Hitler took the gunz, Mao took the gunz, Stalin took the gunz," etc.)

For reals. Try G--gling that shit some time. Then follow the money. It's always bought and paid for by the NRA or by an NRA cut-out. And the war the NRA is prosecuting is a race war. Although, you know. There's money and other stuff at stake too, as with all wars. But it's about race.

Those have to be fake jokey twitters...right? Man I hope. Willie Nelson believes in many things the typical right winger would cringe over.

It's interesting how some right wingers are calling for total big brother in the wake of Sandy Hook, while other fringe right wingers claim Sandy Hook was staged to bring in Big Brother and take guns away

[Elihu]

Elihu, have you ever stopped to consider that a really good way for moneyed interests to prevent you from having any political power at all is to get you to squander your energies and attention on non-existent threats that nobody anywhere is planning to menace you with, such as the banning of guns?

thanks for following up on that C2W. while that post is my true opinion of principle, it is mistaken in the sense of hatin' on fellow travellers and hence retarding progress in the fight, not advancing it. as we have said before, a "ban" is not specifically what's in the cards and hence a red herring. i fell for it, sorry.

the overlords want to appear yokels playing checkers when in reality they are shrewd chess players. the 90's "assault" weapons ban was relatively harmless. a broader more agressive and arbitrary ban like the list put out by feinstein and schumer is another matter altogether. something like that will, imo, create a dangerous adversarial situation out there in meat space. the armed rebellion being as ridiculous as the blue helmet invasion, this could provide the pretext for increased aggression via a longish campaign of attrition if the machine is restive or spoiling for a fight. keep an eye on it.

heck if they just banned everything, all guns, i think there would be less trouble than some wedge half measure that (again) divides society on either half of the the law. the majority being law-abiding would just comply imho. but with this there will be alot of money to be made. gov bureaus with big budgets and big payrolls, more criminals and jails, and lots and lots of trafficking profit$, and we know who runs the biggest and best illicit operations and rakes that cash off-budget. the whole mess is just sad man.