This feels like a weird form of American Exceptionalism where we insist something is impossible despite it already existing elsewhere in the world. We do it with universal healthcare, we do it with public transit, and we do it with low gun crime.
eh, at least he had the balls to say something. I don't like Beto as much as the next guy with any lick of common sense, but I view him like I viewed the last presidential election: when one option is a dangerous criminal, and the other guy is a good-hearted idiot, then give me the dummy any day
I was thinking about this last night, why the NY shooting so quickly disappeared from the news cycle despite a manifesto, white nationalist, terrorism, all that stuff. Though of two specific things: 1) it happened at a grocery store, which is akin to us talking about car accidents. We all have to use cars, so it might fall into that "acceptable risk" category. 2) the victims were black. Which is just really horrible to think about, but what if the victims had blonde hair and blue eyes? Think we'd still be talking about it? And I guarantee you there's some sick fucks out there looking at Uvalde and thinking "well, a few less mexicans, so..."
I think the folks saying "that won't work" to whatever's being proposed are about to be challenged with "Fuck you, let's try it anyway." We're rapidly approaching the point where the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is occurring in the internet era, where the memory runs a little longer, and I think very soon "doing nothing" is going to be unacceptable, if it's not already. If you accept that a solution must be presented, and that solution will be imperfect, pissing off one of two groups: the group that demands the right to carry and bear firearms wherever they want for very thin reasoning, and a group that simply does not want to get shot....I would imagine the gun advocate group is going to lose, if for no other reason than they are wildly outnumbered, and it'd be a pretty straightforward expansion of how some cities and states treat gun registration anyway. The credibility of the 2A crowd is shaken every time there's a pile of dead kids, because that is a stupidly high price to pay for your right. The increasing public cringe & widening chasm between gun culture and reality I think will continue to weaken that credibility. This is the point where the "muh freedoms" shit during COVID starts to bite them in the ass: because you made it clear that public safety isn't something you're interested in, when it comes to rational gun control laws, there's no point in giving you any credit or space to participate. In other words, your intolerance and inability to have a nuanced discussion means that if regulation happens, it will be written about YOU, the largest group that insists on sporting guns everywhere. It also means you will literally be the target for enforcement, because you're easy picking. I detest this, because I support gun rights, and I think most of the current regulations we have do very little to control or restrict access to firearms. However, I think we're looking at the last set of politicians who fail to address this issue beyond the same old plattitudes. Put another way: if after 40 years, the anti-abortion crowd gets the SC to repeal Roe v. Wade, I'd expect a pendulum swing in the exact opposite direction where some of the stupider liberal wedge issues make leaps, and idiotic gun control measures at the state and local levels would be just the kind of launching pad for the next group of officials trying to make it to the top reality tv show on Earth.
I sort of shy away from people advocating for "the traditional family" as the start of the problem, because that is some Rush Limbaugh talking point. Magically, the "traditional family" is the one that fits the dominant narrative, instead of making space for different family composure, it seems to belittle, dismiss or marginalize it. In my experience, the emphasis on traditional family is used to denigrate homosexual or interracial or whatever household isn't in a Normal Rockwell painting. Put in a different way, some people's families suck, and they can't help it. Trying to say the family has the sole and ultimate responsibility for this I think is unrealistic, and absolves the community of responsibility, which I think is somewhat unfair. Also, there's no putting some of that back the way it was: too many fractured and fragmented families out there already. There should be dozens of layers to a community that could act to "intercept" someone, and reinforce the community's values. So, the family might have been the "last line of defense" here, and there were dozens of other structures from the Masons to a bowling league that could have connected with this kid and kept him a part of the human race. None of that happened, and with someone so spurned and isolated, he absolutely targeted the most sensitive thing he could think of and it worked. In other words, the weirdest part about Fight Club is that 20 years later, you couldn't get a bunch of angry, violent disaffected men to come to meetings.
The more I hear about this shooting and the reactions to it and some of the things our representatives in government are saying about it, the more I'm leaning towards the thought we just need to put in the strictest measures possible to remove guns from the majority of people. Sorry to say it, but we have completely lost the plot and as a society really aren't equipped to be responsible humans.
So we know more now about the shooting. He apparently used an AR-15 to murder those children and teachers. The worthless cops sat outside for hour listening to gunfire from inside the school rather than be fucking cops try to save these kids. Other cops showed up and prioritized saving their own kids instead of all of them. Edit: Here's a video of the cops stopping parents from going into the school to save these kids and being too chickenshit to do it themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXtymq-A6w Here's a story from the AP about it https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683 If you still believe in a good guy with a gun, or hardening a target, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
Maybe we need a good girl with a gun. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...-rifle-into-party-crowd/ar-AAXLIkp?li=BBnbfcL
I know this post is a little old, but I didn't have time to discuss it on Wednesday. Who do you include in the majority that gets their property removed? Me? @Revengeofthenerds? @walt? @Rush-O-Matic? @toytoy88? @effinshenanigans? @AFHokie? @xrayvision? @Kubla Kahn? @wexton or @Nettdata, even though they're Canadian? Are any or all of us too irresponsible?
Try this for gun restriction: no more semi-auto rifles in caliber greater than .22. Bolt actions are more accurate for hunting anyway, more deliberate. Semi-auto .223 for hunting? That's spray & pray, hunt better. For home defense? That's just stupid, you'll blow your kid's head off from behind his bedroom wall, use a shotgun.
In a word, yes. Remember during the height of Covid, when we finally got a vaccine and it was recommended that EVERYONE get the vaccine for public safety? This is no different. I'm sure there's some part of the population that really doesn't need to give up their weaponry, but for the overall public safety, it's probably best we do. There is ZERO need to own a toned down automatic weapon. I understand the platform the AR is built on isn't special, but there is zero need to have anything more then a pistol, a bolt action rifle, and a shotgun. All of these should be allowed under strict rules and regulation of use, be registered, have annual mental health training, have annual safety training / inspection for continued registration, etc etc. Do you know one of the best side effects of severely restricting gun ownership in other countries? Male suicide rates have dropped by an alarmingly large amount. For this alone, it should be worth it to HIGHLY restrict gun ownership throughout the US.
I think it's interesting that you think all the people that Fiveslide named are irresponsible gun owners. There are 80 million gun owners in the U.S. When so many people keep driving drunk and driving irresponsibly, causing accidents and killing people, why aren't you advocating that everyone's cars be taken away?
That's not accurate without cherry-picking the data or at least making some very generous assumptions about it. According to the WHO a few years ago, Canada, UK and Australia all have suicide rates per 100k people that are comparable to the US. France and Japan have higher rates per 100k.
I always enjoy the potshots people take at Chicago during times like this. I've lived here ten years, now. You know what I don't own? A gun. You know what I have no intention of ever owning? A gun. And yet, everyone else apparently lives in some kind of nightmarish dystopian Mad Max-esque hellscape that requires a gun just to survive day to day. I guess Chicago's not so bad in comparison........
I've owned guns for 40+ years, and in those 40+ years my guns have never been used in a crime, shot anyone, or even been pointed at anyone. Yet you advocate for taking away my guns, while the people that don't give a shit about the law or human life will remain armed? Also while people all across the country are advocating for defunding/disbanding the police and millions of people from God knows where come pouring across our borders unchecked and carrying who knows what ( Hint: Disarm our citizens, it will be loads and loads of guns) with them? Uh, no.