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Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
My girlfriend's Aunt and Uncle were in Hawaii during the Missile Crisis and apparently had no idea what was going on, like according to them no one around them had heard about the missiles until AFTER everyone else found out.

Some people might say that's suspicious but I think it's kind of funny.
 

Akai

Indeed akai is either a mom or 50
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My girlfriend's Aunt and Uncle were in Hawaii during the Missile Crisis and apparently had no idea what was going on, like according to them no one around them had heard about the missiles until AFTER everyone else found out.

Some people might say that's suspicious but I think it's kind of funny.
I think the autority didn't want to spread a general panic.
 

Tera Melos

Banned deucer.
I think the autority didn't want to spread a general panic.
I think the autority didn't want to spread a general panic.

But I've heard other stories that people were in mass panic for up to half an hour. People calling loved ones, businesses closing down, a few suicides, and apparently a woman putting her kids in a storm drain to protect them...also some guy (probably not real) trying to sell entry to his fallout shelter.

My point being, it seems that there's conflicting sides of this...some people saying they never even knew it happened and others claiming they (among others) were living out the last 30 minutes of their lives.
 

Akai

Indeed akai is either a mom or 50
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But I've heard other stories that people were in mass panic for up to half an hour. People calling loved ones, businesses closing down, a few suicides, and apparently a woman putting her kids in a storm drain to protect them...also some guy (probably not real) trying to sell entry to his fallout shelter.

My point being, it seems that there's conflicting sides of this...some people saying they never even knew it happened and others claiming they (among others) were living out the last 30 minutes of their lives.
It was just a supposion; I wasn't there to see what happened by own eyes.
 

GatoDelFuego

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Shrug

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i dont think we need immigration and customs enforcement as an agency. we dont need a force of jackbooted-and-windbreakered people forcibly removing people from the country. this is an atrocity, and the entire premise of ICE. they've managed to outdo themselves with utter depravity even outside of what is required by their organizational mission though. the end goal would be pretty much untrammeled immigration and the understanding that the term "illegal" (a slur) immigrant functions as essentially permission for racism.

tht brings me to something ive been thinking about. vougish racism today easily circumvents the tentative and fragile aversion to outright saying "Black people are bad" or whatever. you still see that but less often. maybe vougish is the wrong word - it's maybe a sinister and clever evasion of this new sort-of taboo. whatever. the point is racism is set up as a a bunch of trip wires for POC and when they trigger them they're slapped with a label. this label is supposedly the result of their own choice - a criminal commits a crime, or an undocumented immigrant crosses the border. then this label is used to justify essentially any brutality. but the choice was never there. if you make nearly everything a crime, strangle schools, and militarize cops, you'll end up with criminals. if you destroy a country's economy, then choke off the opportunity to legally go to another country, you'll have illegal immigration. and then the people whove hit these wires become these things rather than people. going to prison is being raped, deprived of food, medical care, treated with the utmost inhumanity. being undocumented is to be vilified, hunted, abused, and so on. and these are nearly all poc by design. so yea, i dont think we need ICE. they're a malignancy that deserves to be excised, and the only objection ought to be to leniency - that too many are unpunished for the atrocities in which they were complicit.
 
9/11 and the patriot act is one thing, but the same tragedy also inspired a wave of reform tightening security at airports. Saying tragedy shouldn't inspire change is far too shortsighted, especially when the tragedy occurs so often that it's impossible to ignore as a systemic problem.

The issue is similar here. Gun control doesn't solve all the problems we have with mass incidents (criminals can still acquire them illegally even if it's more difficult, you can avoid using a gun and still cause mass incidents, etc) but there are still clear gaps in our current system that are well worth investigating, and i imagine there are sensible gun laws which if properly enforced could effect some real change.

The good guy with a gun doesn't stop a bad guy with a gun in a school or a concert. There's a line where we can be doing more to get guns out of the hands of unstable people without infringing on second amendment rights, but there isn't a time when having that conversation is easy.
 

Soul Fly

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small brain: so apparently a youtube account with the same name as the florida gun shooter posted "i wanna be a professional school shooter" sometime before the tragedy. hell of missed warning sign. shooter was hiding in the plain sight of all of youtube.

big brain: Hannity thinks FBI is to blame for the disaster because they didn't trace the ip of a random trolly youtube comment reply. That's like the real problem here guys.

expanding brain: Hannity thinks the shooter's undiagnosed mental illness was the real reason (not white spremasy u sjw) And this is a few weeks after he justified budget cuts that hobble obamacare.... you know public healthcare that many americans were reliant on to receive even psychiatric help/therapy??? "MISSED WARNING SIGNS" his on-screen grub reads but what could have been done even if those signs were spotted were a mystery considering trump signed an executive order last year lifting obama-era restictions and making it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns.

universe brain: USA has still not had a serious conversation of easily available assault fucking rifles, let alone small fire arms. In Hannity's USA every man woman and child should have a gun and the FBI should literally trace every threatening shitpost on the internet to avoid some crazy asshole shooting up schools with something you can buy from wal-fucking-mart with home delivery.

then he goes on to talk about how it was the democrats and "the left" politicised the issue. Obviously the solution is to secure every fucking school in america like some prison/military installation and hire armed personnel to guard them. Let's guard small kids like we guard politicians, stars, abu ghraib etc. Let's flood every neighbourhood in america with gun-toting veterans who have been trained to gun down soldiers and terrorist groups. That's super fucking rosy and not paranoid at all.



so like..... buy more guns guys. don't cheapen this tragedy.
 
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tcr

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it enfuriates me the mental gymnastics that pro gun people perform to justify one of the highest gun-related deaths in the world and the second amendment. First it was "guns don't kill people, people kill people" then children started accidentally shooting themselves with legal guns. Then the rhetoric was "well a responsible gun owner would NEVER let their child get even close to their gun" yet people get locked up for having weed in the same house as a child because it's "irresponsible." Then the rhetoric changed to "it's a mental health issue not a gun issue," so what did right wing lawmakers do? They made it easier for people with mental illness to buy guns. As if that wasn't enough, the 2019 budget proposal also includes almost a half a billion dollar cut in funding to the National Institute of Mental Health. Now the rhetoric is that people need to have more guns in school? That more armed personnel need to be trained at a school to protect it from sketchy teenagers, and that 30k a year salary teachers should find the time for 6 hours a week to practice accuracy training with a gun so they can pretend cowboy shootout in a high stress environment. It's just so fucking sick that people out there don't realize that America has a problem. Cops already shoot innocents in the street every single day and abuse their force and intimidate law abiding citizens for almost the past 40 years if not more. Teachers already have biases against minority children going as far back as fucking preschool, subconsciously identifying black children overwhelmingly as "problem children". Do you guys really want to transition the school shooters from edgy bullied mentally ill individuals to the cops and teachers, the "caretakers" of the children?

fuck me to anyone paying actual attention the nuance of "gun debate" and the "complicated" question of how to answer it is so fucking simple. you can literally trace this outbreak of "muh guns" all the way back to the NRA, who helps gun companies like Smith and Wesson or Storm Ruger profit off of mass shootings. Oh how do they do that u ask? It's pretty simple actually. Every time there's a mass shooting, sensible people are like "hey maybe we should tone it down with the second amendment, after all we do have the highest gun deaths in America and have already had just 18 school shootings in 2018 so far" and then on the opposite side of the spectrum you have lobbying organisations like the NRA pushing the agenda that any gun legislation whatsoever is Satan influencing the minds of the populace to allow the guv'ment to take over, despite there being a clear middle ground between all the guns and no guns. They equate restrictions on bump stocks, limitations on sales, background checks, as a means for the government to "take your guns away." And its that simple repeated message of "take your guns away" that lead to boosted sales, because people fear that "this might be the time they actually take guns away so let me get this one before they do so I either have it or so I can fight back." Combine that with the propaganda of "good guy with the gun" and every NRA member somehow feels the need to cosplay like they're Clint Eastwood and transform the United States into a wild wild west remix where they can just gun down any bad guy. Then you happen to have the NRA donating and endorsing candidates for office, often an estimate of 3,000,000$ (three million) in donations to candidates that preach the NRA creed, incentivizing people to not EVER support gun legislation. After all why get rid of the cash cow lol. im so sick and tired of these insincere "thoughts and prayers" comments and the desensitization that has happened in this country in the wake of Sandy Hook. Something seriously needs to be done, and it needs to be more concrete than tweeting condolences and saying "now's not the time for gun debate." In my humble opinion, we can start by getting rid of the NRA and other for-profit killing lobbies, as they are no longer organizations that offer tips for gun safety and instead are just a blatant propaganda machine.

fuck this "don't politicize tragedies" bullshit because that bullshit argument can be extrapolated to fit literally anything. There's always a backing reason for something but the point isn't to spotlight crying families and use them as audio grabs to push an agenda, its to fucking fix a problem and stop violence throughout the country. No one cried "don't politicize tragedies" when 9/11 happened and say to the Patriot Act "you know now really isn't the time to talk about increasing mass surveillance and to stop terrorism." fuck me i'm just so pissed at this and the inability for my country to do something, anything because we're held back by a bunch of gun toting hicks who'd rather live a life of fear and an itchy trigger finger than to make it harder for problem people to acquire weapons. Australia is probably looking at the US right now like the older brother who used to be addicted to ketamine watching his little brother go through the same exact life struggles only unable to do anything about it. fuck guns and fuck violence
 
Holy shit I knew the NRA was pretty far gone but that video is way off the deep end. And yeah, the question of why the conversation on gun control hasn't gone very far isn't really a mystery to me and it's regrettable but I don't pretend to know enough about the issue to predict what specific measures would be most effective. If the CDC was allowed to fund research on gun violence that would certainly be a good start but the NRA's lobbied to block that for years.
 

termi

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it's too late over here to be doing like a Big Post or whatever so im not gonna do that but. why are liberals always focusing on the means with which school shooters etc commit their massacres rather than why so many people are apparently willing to go there and kill a bunch of people to begin with. we should be talking more about mental health and right wing extremism but that might lead to some Uncomfortable Truths about the system so i guess for the liberal elite it's a lot safer to do some lip service about how guns = bad, especially since y'all know you're never beating the gun lobby anyway.

oh and btw keep in mind that actual gun control is most likely to harm already marginalized communities. i know it's easy to get lost in emotion and simplistic utilitarian reasoning as to why a wholesale ban on guns is necessary but A: it's most likely not gonna happen anytime soon and B: it might not be as unquestionably good as you think. i'm not a gun nut by any means but i would say a reality where anyone can get a gun is preferable to one where cops have guns and no one else.
 

tcr

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it's too late over here to be doing like a Big Post or whatever so im not gonna do that but. why are liberals always focusing on the means with which school shooters etc commit their massacres rather than why so many people are apparently willing to go there and kill a bunch of people to begin with. we should be talking more about mental health and right wing extremism but that might lead to some Uncomfortable Truths about the system so i guess for the liberal elite it's a lot safer to do some lip service about how guns = bad, especially since y'all know you're never beating the gun lobby anyway.

oh and btw keep in mind that actual gun control is most likely to harm already marginalized communities. i know it's easy to get lost in emotion and simplistic utilitarian reasoning as to why a wholesale ban on guns is necessary but A: it's most likely not gonna happen anytime soon and B: it might not be as unquestionably good as you think. i'm not a gun nut by any means but i would say a reality where anyone can get a gun is preferable to one where cops have guns and no one else.
i think that this is largely directed at me so ill just respond anyway

its easy to say "the guns are the tool not the reason" but that human violence, and more specifically male-oriented troubles, are the reasons for mass shootings and the reason so many people are apparantly willing to go there and kill a bunch of people. I completely, 100% agree, that our culture, our society does not do enough to deter this behavior, and in some ways actively encourages it. However that sort of behavioural change, that is focusing on the "why" rather than the "how" can only be achieved in such a time. To change the way society works is a gradual and arduous task, and can't simply be passed into legislation and willed away by the people. Mental health / awareness or lack thereof is a huge issue in this country, and around the world for that matter, as are extremists' ideology and the promotion of fear and suffering that lead to these sadists. The "why" is important but it is in my humble opinion that the "how" is more important in the short term. It's all well and good to develop mental health awareness in this country and warp the way right wing extremism is instilled into children, but that sort of effort takes time. Are you willing to wait another 50-60 years, if not more, to sway American society? It took America next to 200 years to actually legislate that all people were created equal, and to this day non-whites are still discriminated against, and that is simply far more basic and moral than the topic of guns. This systemic problem will not be fixed by just gun legislation, by any means. However it can be lessened, the tools can be taken away. People will kill yeah but if its incredibly difficult to get your hands on an automatic / semi-automatic weapon then the killings will be less. It seems like you're hinting at the argument of "well gun legislation won't stop killings" when that isn't the point, as the point is to lessen it. Its a bandaid not a surgical procedure, and is meant to be temporary while we as a society actually figure out whats going on, whats wrong, why are there so many fearful and hate filled people in our country. And I think that the defeatist attitude of never being able to beat the gun lobby anyway isn't healthy for this sort of debate either, acceptance in wrongdoings simply because it is natural and powerful seems off coming from you of all people on this forum.

I think the reality of "cops having guns and no one else" is faulty and holds no weight. Its equivalent to "gotta have guns in case the government takes over" and failing to realize that your AR-15 or Smith & Wesson will fail to do anything against a militarized movement in the first place, and is little more than the equivalent of a safety blanket that upon second glance is actually filled with holes from moths. By this I mean that guns as a tool against the classes and police state are a flimsy defense in the first place, as in a reality where no civilian has guns it is far less likely for LEO to get away with their bullshit of "he had a gun." I did not really think about marginalized cases however, and I admit this to you and thank you for pointing them out, it seems I was speaking from a place of privilege where I do not nor will I ever need a gun.

That be said, that post was emotionally charged, and thus exaggerated with anger. I do not call for just a gun ban, I recognize that there are underlying elements behind american shootings, butterfly effects if those guns are taken away. My personal solution would be to do away with guns and to do away with the police state, start over or eliminate those concepts entirely, but I also live in a world where I believe that any material concept such as laws money etc are just restrictions and symbols that people place onto themselves and hope for the day that people can just wake up and live, rather than worry and stress, however naive some may call that. I do not think that a ban on guns is the only solution that should be presented, but is in fact one of many solutions when combined that could solve this societal flaw.
 

kilometerman

Banned deucer.
it enfuriates me the mental gymnastics that pro gun people perform to justify one of the highest gun-related deaths in the world and the second amendment.
American culture is significantly different to European culture, West European culture specifically. Because America comes from a history of fighting tyrannic governments, preventing and fighting for freedoms has been ingrained into the American psyche.
First it was "guns don't kill people, people kill people" then children started accidentally shooting themselves with legal guns.
The number of accidental firearm deaths has been on the decline in recent decades, and they now account for less than 1% of all unintentional deaths.
Then the rhetoric was "well a responsible gun owner would NEVER let their child get even close to their gun" yet people get locked up for having weed in the same house as a child because it's "irresponsible."
Guns are legal in the US, weed is not. Someone committing crimes is probably less responsible than someone who doesn't.
Then the rhetoric changed to "it's a mental health issue not a gun issue," so what did right wing lawmakers do? They made it easierfor people with mental illness to buy guns.
I don't know where these meme strawmans are coming from but they're pretty misleading. What I've heard from people I know is overwhelmingly the "a little bit of safety is not worth losing our fundamental freedoms." Also the Obama legislation you're referring to wasn't in effect when Trump got rid of it, so saying Republicans "made it easier for people with mental illnesses to buy guns" is misleading. The ACLU also presents a solid point on the concept of a law that would prevent (anyone) with mental health problems from practicing the Second Amendment:
"At the same time, regulation of firearms and individual gun ownership or use must be consistent with civil liberties principles, such as due process, equal protection, freedom from unlawful searches, and privacy. All individuals have the right to be judged on the basis of their individual capabilities, not the characteristics and capabilities that are sometimes attributed (often mistakenly)to any group or class to which they belong. A disability should not constitute grounds for the automatic per se denial of any right or privilege, including gun ownership."
Also misleading. The article you linked also mentions that the funding cuts are minimal compared to the massive injection into the Department of Veterans Affairs, may I ask would you say that Veterans are less at risk for mental health issues? The budget also:
"requests new investments to ensure more adults with serious mental illness receive Assertive Community Treatment, an evidence-based practice that provides a comprehensive array of services to reduce costly hospitalizations. The Budget also increases funding to improve mental health services for seriously mental ill individuals who are involved with the criminal justice system. The Budget maintains funding for the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant, which requires States to support services for first episode psychosis,which is vitally important to ensuring that individuals with serious mental illness receive appropriate treatment in a timely manner."
Now the rhetoric is that people need to have more guns in school? That more armed personnel need to be trained at a school to protect it from sketchy teenagers, and that 30k a year salary teachers should find the time for 6 hours a week to practice accuracy training with a gun so they can pretend cowboy shootout in a high stress environment.
Elaborate on who is saying this please. What I understand is that there's a push for one or two teachers in schools who are trained and have received extensive background checks to be able to conceal carry firearms, or have an armed security officer. The latter of which is not that unrealistic of a proposal as 43% of public schools already use security officers.
It's just so fucking sick that people out there don't realize that America has a problem.
A violence problem? A gun problem? Elaborate.
Cops already shoot innocents in the street every single day and abuse their force and intimidate law abiding citizens for almost the past 40 years if not more.
To say that "cops already shoot innocents in the street every single day" is a pretty hefty exaggeration. If you want to look at the numbers, only 68 unarmed people were shot by police in 2017. That's still tragic and we should ALWAYS prosecute officers who discharge their firearm in an unlawful or irresponsible manner, but trying to mislead people on the severity of the problem only boosts the credibility of said guilty officers.
Teachers already have biases against minority children going as far back as fucking preschool, subconsciously identifying black children overwhelmingly as "problem children". Do you guys really want to transition the school shooters from edgy bullied mentally ill individuals to the cops and teachers, the "caretakers" of the children?
That's pretty terrible to know but my understanding is that teachers (or trained security guards) wouldn't use their firearm unless there was another one present, not if a preschooler bites them as you are suggesting.
fuck me to anyone paying actual attention the nuance of "gun debate" and the "complicated" question of how to answer it is so fucking simple.
It's actually not simple at all. Gun control can be wildly effective or not effective at all. Chicago banned handguns and in the decade that followed, murders jumped by 41 percent. In 2013, Baltimore banned "assault weapons", high-capacity magazines, and enacted a fingerprint requirement for anyone trying to purchase a handgun. The murder rate skyrocketed. Turns that criminals don't follow laws. Who knew?
you can literally trace this outbreak of "muh guns" all the way back to the NRA, who helps gun companies like Smith and Wesson or Storm Ruger profit off of mass shootings.
The NRA is not mentioned once in this article.
Oh how do they do that u ask? It's pretty simple actually. Every time there's a mass shooting, sensible people are like "hey maybe we should tone it down with the second amendment,
Ah yes nothing says sensible like "we should degrade our most important freedoms even though the process we want to use isn't guaranteed to work and it gives the government more power and potential to become tyrannical".
after all we do have the highest gun deaths in America and have already had just 18 school shootings in 2018 so far"
I'll help you out here. 60% of gun deaths in the United States are suicides. You're thinking of gun homicides.
and then on the opposite side of the spectrum you have lobbying organisations like the NRA pushing the agenda that any gun legislation whatsoever is Satan influencing the minds of the populace to allow the guv'ment to take over,
Your expertly written analysis on the NRA's position on gun control clearly shows you are well-educated on this topic.
despite there being a clear middle ground between all the guns and no guns.
You mean like prohibiting automatic weapons made after 1986 from being registered, and putting extremely hefty restrictions on owners of all automatic weapons?
They equate restrictions on bump stocks, limitations on sales, background checks, as a means for the government to "take your guns away."
"The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations."
I need specifics on the other two things. What "limitations of sales and background checks" that are opposed by the NRA are you referring to?
And its that simple repeated message of "take your guns away" that lead to boosted sales, because people fear that "this might be the time they actually take guns away so let me get this one before they do so I either have it or so I can fight back."
And this is invalid reasoning to buy more guns why?
Combine that with the propaganda of "good guy with the gun" and every NRA member somehow feels the need to cosplay like they're Clint Eastwood and transform the United States into a wild wild west remix where they can just gun down any bad guy. Then you happen to have the NRA donating and endorsing candidates for office, often an estimate of 3,000,000$ (three million) in donations to candidates that preach the NRA creed, incentivizing people to not EVER support gun legislation.
You could at least put effort into your strawmans. Also as stated previously, the NRA has supported certain gun control legislations, you just refuse to accept them for some reason.
After all why get rid of the cash cow lol. im so sick and tired of these insincere "thoughts and prayers" comments and the desensitization that has happened in this country in the wake of Sandy Hook. Something seriously needs to be done, and it needs to be more concrete than tweeting condolences and saying "now's not the time for gun debate."
May I request your opinion on what specific legislation should be passed?
In my humble opinion, we can start by getting rid of the NRA and other for-profit killing lobbies, as they are no longer organizations that offer tips for gun safety and instead are just a blatant propaganda machine.
Advocating for more power in the hands of citizens is not exactly "propaganda" in the way we think of the word.
fuck me i'm just so pissed at this and the inability for my country to do something, anything because we're held back by a bunch of gun toting hicks who'd rather live a life of fear and an itchy trigger finger than to make it harder for problem people to acquire weapons.
I'm sure no one cares but if we're going by your rules than you probably shouldn't call people "gun-toting hicks".
Australia is probably looking at the US right now like the older brother who used to be addicted to ketamine watching his little brother go through the same exact life struggles only unable to do anything about it.
Fun fact, Australia is an island and is not
a) already filled with guns, many of which owned by criminals
b) large
c) bordered by a country with a significant organized crime system that would profit generously from a gun black market
fuck guns and fuck violence
Unless it's being done by a tyrannical government?

oh and btw keep in mind that actual gun control is most likely to harm already marginalized communities. i know it's easy to get lost in emotion and simplistic utilitarian reasoning as to why a wholesale ban on guns is necessary but A: it's most likely not gonna happen anytime soon and B: it might not be as unquestionably good as you think. i'm not a gun nut by any means but i would say a reality where anyone can get a gun is preferable to one where cops have guns and no one else.
This guy gets it and I'd like to applaud even though Im aware he's immediately going to disassociate with me in an insulting (and probably untrue) way.

[/QUOTE]
 

tcr

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American culture is significantly different to European culture, West European culture specifically. Because America comes from a history of fighting tyrannic governments, preventing and fighting for freedoms has been ingrained into the American psyche.
yeah because people personally relate to their great great great great great great great great etc grandfather fighting those stinking redcoats and that bloodthirsty drive and paranoia has passed down throughout generations like some bad inbred gene. I guess when your worldview is just america then you sometimes forget that european and other non-american countries have also had histories fighting tyrannical governments, such as Sweden vs Norway, the war that formed Bulgaria, The Irish War of Independence, The Belgian Revolution, The war that liberated the Dutch,The Three Italian WarsFor Independence, the war which granted Portugal independence from Spain, or Canada's role in World War One gaining it its independence from Britain.
but yeah america is the only country whos ever fought for their independence and freedom. What exactly makes america different again?
The number of accidental firearm deaths has been on the decline in recent decades, and they now account for less than 1% of all unintentional deaths.
the point of this sentence was to detail the changing rhetoric whenever anyone ever wants to talk about and address gun violence. its always something and never "the right time" to talk about gun violence.
Guns are legal in the US, weed is not. Someone committing crimes is probably less responsible than someone who doesn't.
hahahaha ok bud, tell that to the 18yos who can legally buy a gun and are deemed "responsible" enough to wield it but are also at the same time not responsible enough to drink. this completely ignores that the drug war has been a 40 year long propaganda effort to criminalize hippies blacks and democrats. I guess you're the type of dude to drive at exactly the speed limit, never jaywalk, never drunk beer before 21, and never violated a whole slew of other various random laws. If you think somehow smoking weed makes you "irresponsible" simply because the federal law is that it is illegal despite around 30 states legalizing it then i really dont know what to tell you
I don't know where these meme strawmans are coming from but they're pretty misleading. What I've heard from people I know is overwhelmingly the "a little bit of safety is not worth losing our fundamental freedoms." Also the Obama legislation you're referring to wasn't in effect when Trump got rid of it, so saying Republicans "made it easier for people with mental illnesses to buy guns" is misleading. The ACLU also presents a solid point on the concept of a law that would prevent (anyone) with mental health problems from practicing the Second Amendment:
"At the same time, regulation of firearms and individual gun ownership or use must be consistent with civil liberties principles, such as due process, equal protection, freedom from unlawful searches, and privacy. All individuals have the right to be judged on the basis of their individual capabilities, not the characteristics and capabilities that are sometimes attributed (often mistakenly)to any group or class to which they belong. A disability should not constitute grounds for the automatic per se denial of any right or privilege, including gun ownership."
so because the legislation hadn't gone into effect (until its intended date of december 2017) means that its absolutely ok for trump to just get rid of it? They certainly made it easier because if they didn't repeal it with the CRA then NEWS FLASH the law would be active today. whoooooaoaaaa mind blown are you just now grasping the concept of time my dude? And really? you want to side with the ACLU's rhetoric about judging based on the individual capabilites? With that logic you can't convict any potential terrorist because theyre just metnally disturbed people who haven't technically commited any crimes because you judge each and every person uniquely!
Also misleading. The article you linked also mentions that the funding cuts are minimal compared to the massive injection into the Department of Veterans Affairs, may I ask would you say that Veterans are less at risk for mental health issues? The budget also:
"requests new investments to ensure more adults with serious mental illness receive Assertive Community Treatment, an evidence-based practice that provides a comprehensive array of services to reduce costly hospitalizations. The Budget also increases funding to improve mental health services for seriously mental ill individuals who are involved with the criminal justice system. The Budget maintains funding for the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant, which requires States to support services for first episode psychosis,which is vitally important to ensuring that individuals with serious mental illness receive appropriate treatment in a timely manner."
sure a boost for military vets but fuck everyone else if you aren't a veteran you get to cope with your mental health issues!!!
Elaborate on who is saying this please. What I understand is that there's a push for one or two teachers in schools who are trained and have received extensive background checks to be able to conceal carry firearms, or have an armed security officer. The latter of which is not that unrealistic of a proposal as 43% of public schools already use security officers.
Who is saying this? For real?[/URL]NC state rep | Betsy Devos | Fox news is also pushing that story. Yeah and despite the Parkland shooting also having a security guard that failed to do anything, and its not the first time that security has failed to address any potential shootings. the whole concept of "good guy with gun" is so fucking flawed its ridiculous and I would ask you not to bring up such a stupid propaganda piece
A violence problem? A gun problem? Elaborate.
fuck you're thick
To say that "cops already shoot innocents in the street every single day" is a pretty hefty exaggeration. If you want to look at the numbers, only 68 unarmed people were shot by police in 2017. That's still tragic and we should ALWAYS prosecute officers who discharge their firearm in an unlawful or irresponsible manner, but trying to mislead people on the severity of the problem only boosts the credibility of said guilty officers.
uh nice doublespeak implying teh opposite of unarmed means they had a gun, but out of almost 1000 fatalities in 2017,[/URL]only about half had a gun and the rest had everything from unarmed to a toy weapon to a simple knife but hey i guess when you're a hammer everything else looks like a nail and the first step in any encounter is to shoot first ask questions later.
That's pretty terrible to know but my understanding is that teachers (or trained security guards) wouldn't use their firearm unless there was another one present, not if a preschooler bites them as you are suggesting.
yeah because the teacher firing back with all of their students in the same room is 100% safe because the good guy with the gun always wins. oh you're only just now realizing that you can't just challenge the school shooter to a duel western style in the hallway while all the kids watch from the windows, winner take all? In case you were too stupid to actually understand the point I was making with this sentence, the inherent minority bias in teachers and security officers (cops) only makes armed security and teachers at schools "safer" for the white majority, and even then not really because all it takes is one sketchy look at a police officer and you're fucked, i wasn't making the point that a preschooler is going to bite a teacher and in retaliation the teacher executes the child.
It's actually not simple at all. Gun control can be wildly effective or not effective at all. Chicago banned handguns and in the decade that followed, murders jumped by 41 percent. In 2013, Baltimore banned "assault weapons", high-capacity magazines, and enacted a fingerprint requirement for anyone trying to purchase a handgun. The murder rate skyrocketed. Turns that criminals don't follow laws. Who knew?
you mean city wide gun control doesn't work because people can lol just go to literally the next state over, often a 2 hour drive at best and legally purchase a firearm, and federal wide legislation would be consistent enough to work[/URL]as evidenced by countries UK, Japan, Germany, and Australia . keep living in this fear bubble where you think that the world is just full of bad guys waiting to fuck you up the minute you let your guard down.
The NRA is not mentioned once in this article.
fuck me if you can't read past the period and extrapolate every single sentence into its own entity and fail to realize that the depth and reason I mentioned the NRA profitting from mass shootings was literally the next fucking sentence.
Ah yes nothing says sensible like "we should degrade our most important freedoms even though the process we want to use isn't guaranteed to work and it gives the government more power and potential to become tyrannical".
ironic that ur worried about the government becoming tyrannical knowing your political views and aspirations in life. as if you owning an ar 15 suddenly makes you john wick and you have the ability to stand up to the government if it just decided "hey we're tyrannical now." you're deluded, get out of your ego for two seconds and realize that you are not, nor will any other gun toting hick be able to stand up to a militarized coordinated effort by the government.
I'll help you out here. 60% of gun deaths in the United States are suicides. You're thinking of gun homicides.
whew lad u sure got me!! my argument that the US is one of the leading death per capita nations in the world,[/URL]with a nation 10x more likely than other developed countries to die from guns and a gun murder rate 25 times higher than other countries is now irrelevant because 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides PHEW thank you for saving me from this embarassment. As if it really matters if a gun related death is suicide or murder when talking about gun control
Your expertly written analysis on the NRA's position on gun control clearly shows you are well-educated on this topic.
cherry pick an emotionally charged post more why don't you. not being "well educated" on a topic doesn't stop you from posting in every single thread does it?
You mean like prohibiting automatic weapons made after 1986 from being registered, and putting extremely hefty restrictions on owners of all automatic weapons?
oh you mean the same act that the only reason it got passed was because the machine gun ban was a last minute amendment in a bill that[/URL]also repealed a lot of the work done by the Gun Control Act of 1968? The same act that the NRA has opposed almost entirely since its inception, that the head of the NRA lobby even remarked that the NRA could "never forgive him for [supporting] it."
"He said, 'I want to do it. I think we have to do it.' So I said yes, and that was the end of the story. It passed, and as we learned immediately, an element of NRA, a very vociferous element of NRA ... determined that it just couldn't be that way," Cassidy says. "We couldn't give an inch. I don't think they ever forgave me for it."
"The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations."
funny because i specifically remember[/URL]the NRA outright opposing a law that restricted an item that was designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles but tbh i'm not delusional so i guess thats my excuse for not living in yuor reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years'_War
I need specifics on the other two things. What "limitations of sales and background checks" that are opposed by the NRA are you referring to?[/URL]
See below, but in essence universal background checks and barring of private off the record sales are what i was specifically referring to. oh what about[/URL]blocking terrorists from legally acquiring guns through a loophole? nah you'll find some way to twist that to support the NRA on the decision I bet. The fact is the NRA opposes most if not all (I have yet to find a single bill that the NRA has supported in the 20th century) gun control laws. just because the NRA supported gun control that one time the black panthers used their legally bought weapons to protest and got guns taken away for everyone in california doesnt mean that the NRA supports gun control. would love for you to pull out a law that had the NRA's backing 100%.
And this is invalid reasoning to buy more guns why?
if you can't realize thats its manipulation tactics that prey on the fearful and the entire agenda to promote gun sales is to play on that fearfulness then honestly i think you might just be a propaganda bot at this point
You could at least put effort into your strawmans. Also as stated previously, the NRA has supported certain gun control legislations, you just refuse to accept them for some reason.
the nra also opposes plenty of common sense bills as well, such as the most recent bump stock banning following las vegas because lol "muh 2nd amendment rights" or opposinguniversal background checks under the reasoning that "criminals wont submit so its a bad law" as if thats any justification for opposing any law ever. lol whats the point of even having murder laws....criminals wont submit ya feel?
May I request your opinion on what specific legislation should be passed?
Not sure if you just don't even read the content of the posts or you just cherry pick each sentence to get soundbites out of them, but I posted what I thought in literally the post before yours. Regardless, sometimes people are too deep with their heads in the sand so maybe if I type in all caps it can get thru your thick skull WE SHOULD PASS STRICTER GUN SAFETY LAWS, SPECIFICALLY LAWS THAT PROHIBIT SUCH FREE ACCESS TO GUNS THAT YOU CAN LEGALLY BUY FROM A PRIVATE VENDOR AT ANY AGE, MAYBE INSTITUTING A FEDERAL AGE LIMIT FOR EVERY SINGLE GUN SALE, LICENSED OR UNLICENSED VENDOR CAN BE A GOOD START BECAUSE RIGHT NOW THERE IS NO FEDERAL MINIMUM FOR THE SELLING OF "LONG GUNS" AKA RIFLES.
Advocating for more power in the hands of citizens is not exactly "propaganda" in the way we think of the word.
you very clearly did not watch either video if you do not believe that both are blatant propaganda, when the NRA, an organization about gun safety is politicizing this whole "fake news' debacle and pushing the "the only way you can be safe in life is to have this trusty AR-15, America's Favorite Rifle!"
I'm sure no one cares but if we're going by your rules than you probably shouldn't call people "gun-toting hicks".
what are you talking about "my rules"
Fun fact, Australia is an island and is not
a) already filled with guns, many of which owned by criminals
b) large
c) bordered by a country with a significant organized crime system that would profit generously from a gun black market
a) Australia was also "filled with guns" as you eloquently put it, with around one million guns being sold back to the Australian government, about a third of the entire gun population in the country. "Many of which are owned by criminals" care for a source for that blanket statement about the black market for guns? From my reckoning an overwhelmingly half of the guns in this country are owned by 3% of americans but I guess you'll imply that those are only the legal guns and the other 50% is all owned by criminals.
b) as if instituting waiting periods for getting guns, thorough background checks on anyone buying a gun, and a required stated reason for purchase, for which self defense is not a valid purpose for buying a semi-auto or automatic weapon in Australia is somehow dictated by the size of the country. Yeah the US government can't really just say "ok guns are illegal now hand them over" but that doesn't meant that common sense safety laws can't be enacted. "lol the US is too big"
c) ah the "mexico is full of criminals" argument again, as if the black market can only operate when borders are shared
Unless it's being done by a tyrannical government?
are you trying to misconstrue my argument and implying that I like and enjoy tyrannical government because i think guns are a bad thing for this country?
 
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Soul Fly

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it's too late over here to be doing like a Big Post or whatever so im not gonna do that but. why are liberals always focusing on the means with which school shooters etc commit their massacres rather than why so many people are apparently willing to go there and kill a bunch of people to begin with. we should be talking more about mental health and right wing extremism but that might lead to some Uncomfortable Truths about the system so i guess for the liberal elite it's a lot safer to do some lip service about how guns = bad, especially since y'all know you're never beating the gun lobby anyway.

oh and btw keep in mind that actual gun control is most likely to harm already marginalized communities. i know it's easy to get lost in emotion and simplistic utilitarian reasoning as to why a wholesale ban on guns is necessary but A: it's most likely not gonna happen anytime soon and B: it might not be as unquestionably good as you think. i'm not a gun nut by any means but i would say a reality where anyone can get a gun is preferable to one where cops have guns and no one else.
There is no reason these conversations cannot be simultaneous. However one solution is easier with immediate marginal benefits even at the potential cost of abstracted liberty from state power. In a utopian society with no Socio-economic inequalities and proper healthcare I don't think people will feel the need to shoot other people hence making the entire issue moot.

Your point about citizen/minority gun rights valid but only insofar that it cannot operate in a world where there is a capitalist entry barrier to gun possession giving privileged ingroups and capital-rich cartels an edge in monopolising violence. If you want evidence look at gun ownership rates race-wise and class-wise. Even your best case scenario is a fragile stability premised on mutually assured destruction. All that takes is one bad day to undo.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
 

GatoDelFuego

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Your point about citizen/minority gun rights valid but only insofar that it cannot operate in a world where there is a capitalist entry barrier to gun possession giving privileged ingroups and capital-rich cartels an edge in monopolising violence. If you want evidence look at gun ownership rates race-wise and class-wise. Even your best case scenario is a fragile stability premised on mutually assured destruction. All that takes is one bad day to undo.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
Huh? What do all these stats have to do with the privileged ingroups and class-based gun ownership claims you're making? It says a majority of gun owners are in rural areas (aka not where most rich people live) and gun ownership rates are negatively corresponded with education (meaning rich, educated people own less guns). And I wouldn't call the race statistics (40% of whites owning a gun to 25% of blacks) to say anything otherwise. What marginalized community is being kept from owning guns?

These statistics are awesome, though. Let's compare them with this article: https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/us/mass-shootings/index.html

40% of men / 22% of women own a gun, but mass shootings are almost always men. Why?

The pew article talks about the NRA. Kind of surprising that only 20% of gun owners are in the NRA. "Among gun owners more say the NRA has too much influence (29%) than say it has too little (17%)." Why is this? It seems that gun owners in general don't like the NRA. So...is the NRA's influence in congress causing mass shootings? I don't know

Going back to the CNN article: race. Whites commit 64% of mass shootings, blacks 15%, asians 9%. The article then goes on to say that white and black people's shooting rates are at parity with their population numbers, but asians are double their population percentage. What gives? Hispanic people, who I would wager most far-right people would characterize as Rapists and Drug Sellers, aren't even statistically significant on the mass shootings chart.

What I'm saying is, these statistics don't seem to match up with "the narrative". (see picture) I'm a cynical person, and I see articles like these as an attempt to capitalize on shootings. It's no different to the NRA robocalling every house in america to tell them to donate more money or the Big Gubberment is gonna take away their guns.


Continue down the CNN article: 61% is the minimum estimate of mass shooters that had a mental illness. That is pretty striking to me as a unifying factor in mass shootings. So how does this compare with "the narrative" this time? Can somebody convince me that this is not being caused by mental health problems?

it's too late over here to be doing like a Big Post or whatever so im not gonna do that but. why are liberals always focusing on the means with which school shooters etc commit their massacres rather than why so many people are apparently willing to go there and kill a bunch of people to begin with. we should be talking more about mental health and right wing extremism but that might lead to some Uncomfortable Truths about the system so i guess for the liberal elite it's a lot safer to do some lip service about how guns = bad, especially since y'all know you're never beating the gun lobby anyway.
So why aren't people talking about this post more?
 

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
Well you cannot conveniently draw parallels between two seperate binaries (rich/poor, urban/rural) to try call me out. At least try to provide analysis other than "typically". Wealth ownership patterns are far more complex than average cost of living which your assumption seems to be premised on. Have you forgotten about the "ignored" large swathes of white middle (not lower mind you) class stuck in the rust belt and in flyover cities who were instrumental to electing trump? Or is your claim that on average these Americans are less wealthy than say a black resident of 303 Baltimore or Inner city Chicago?
IDK. You might be on to something that legitimately challenges my statement, and if you are then you need at least basic thoroughness otherwise it comes across as pointless posturing.
What marginalized community is being kept from owning guns?
What marginalised community is kept from owning houses? stable jobs? adequate representation? I'm answering a question with a question, but in my defense your question works on a simplistic set of assumptions. If are looking for some blatant pre-civil rights signboard banning (BAN ME PLEASE)s or something then you are a little bit behind the game.

Other than that you raise some interesting questions. IDK what to make of gun happy Asians, nor do I understand how they are relevant to the frame of the conversation.
--

edit: I have already pointed this out before but since people seem more concerned with talking about mental health as if they are making some astute original contribution here's an honest one sentence recap:
It is absolutely disingenuous to say "why do we not focus mental health" post a mass shooting when Trump literally signed an executive order making it easier for people with mental illnesses to buy arms, and along with the GOP has been trying his best to gut obamacare which has been vital to helping Americans access therapy/psychiatric care.

At that point it becomes a convenient bogeyman to sidestep uncomfortable questions and criminal negligence rather than any genuine concern. I rather think there is no time more useless to talk about this. It's the worst kind of cruelty. If the only time you can really focus on mental health is when someone shoots up a crowd of people then I'd rather you not talk about it at all.

No one is making it an either/or between guns vs. mental illness. It is beyond stupid to read it as a zero-sum game.
 
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tcr

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I personally feel the idea of gun control vs mental health and drawing that binary is ludicrous, as if to say that one cannot happen if the other does. the two ideas are not mutually exclusive and to take one side as a talking point is not to automatically opt out of the other option, more often than not both sides need to be worked upon. It's just so much easier to break down ideas when you only have one talking point and can expand on that rather than focusing on the hundreds of reasons behind a society that encourages violence
 

Shrug

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tcr you're making good points. theyre all well-reasoned at their core. (though i'm sympathetic to robert alfons's critiques of gun control in places, which arent really a direct response to you anyway). but they're entirely superfluous. they dont matter. the core of the gun debate is not reasonable. guns are sacrosanct in america because a large portion of the population harbors fantasies of shooting black people. go on facebook, navigate to a local news page, find a clip on the knockout game or a protest of any sort or a minor property crime, and read the comments. you'll find people wishing dearly to shoot the perpetrators or drive into them with their car. this is not a rational response.

to avoid this post getting deleted on the basis of thin reasoning, lets look at gun control in california. when the black panthers obtained and carried guns, open carry was swiftly forbidden by ronald reagan. but a little more than a decade later, he was the first candidate endorsed by the NRA. what changed? after the ban, a complex legal artitecture was then erected to make black purchasing of guns very difficult. this is ofc made very clear by the behavior of the pro-gun legal minds, your scalias and so on. their go-to when citing when the right to bear arms can be infringed upon is if someone is a convicted felon, and one doesnt have to think too hard to connect a certain set of domestic programs begun with nixon meant to essentially criminalize blackness. the culture shifted towards an individual vigilantism - see the 1974 release of Death Wish as a primary text here. into this void the NRA stepped. I'm unsure if the slogan was in use then, but forgive me for taking license here: what could "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" mean, really? in history, this has never happened. no civilian has gotten the drop on an active shooter and stopped him. (if you find a case, do not wave it in my face. i do not care, and am deploying rhetoric to make the point that the occurrence is incredibly rare. thanks.) Allow me to submit that the ur-villian in the conservative mind are black people ("thugs") and the ur-heroes are themselves. make the substitution and realize that most bad guys are either deprived of guns or never intended to wield one in the first place, meaning the first "with a gun" is a flourish, a claim to parity and sentence parallelism. now you have "the only thing that can stop a black guy is a conservative with a gun". this accurately describes the conservative worldview. you can take this sentence and apply it to the shooting of trayvon martin and with it the castle doctrine as a whole, which also gained popularity during the reagan years. bernie goetz. the worship of the police. it's all there. in 1980 reagan also won the endorcement of a different group. it was the klan. the two arent really disconnected.

arguments are futile. you can propose common-sense restrictions. obviously there's no reason for anyone to own a gun that essentially cuts humans in half with a light trigger squeeze. or you can propose radical, infeasbile solutions. there isnt really a need for a militia in modern day america, so why have a second amendment? the first will be refuted by an appeal to malformed constitutionalism. the second is malformed constitutionalism, and if you try to cut the sickness of of the document it will just metastasize somewhere else, like a constitutional right to gun ownership in the first amendment, or through right-to-privacy like Roe. they'll fail because neither of these address the real problem, which is the psychic pleasure gun people take in imagining killing people they hate. sure this might not be all gun owners. there are some dudes who just like shooting targets. but i dont think that powers a political movement. race hate does.
 
There is large gap between "ban all firearms" and the terribly loose gun laws in the USA. Any citizen that is able to prove that he is knowledgeable, responsible, and stable enough to own a gun (and periodically keep proving this so that his privilege is not taken away), should be able to own a handgun.

There are a lot of issues with trying to enact strict gun control in the US, mainly the amount of existing firearms (both registered and unregistered). Making the official routes toward acquiring guns harder also puts civilians in more danger because people who want to use them offensively will not be stopped by not being able to get a rifle through official avenues.
 
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