School Shooting in Connecticut

  On 12/18/2012 at 7:52 PM, Obel said:

Yeah, good point. Well made.

 

As soon as a guy attacks a school with a basketball by aggressively lobbing it at the kids heads and killing them I'll be sure to join the anti-basketball brigade too.

flol

  On 12/18/2012 at 7:52 PM, Obel said:

Yeah, good point. Well made.

 

As soon as a guy attacks a school with a basketball by aggressively lobbing it at the kids heads and killing them I'll be sure to join the anti-basketball brigade too.

No suprise there...you're the type who would

get some sleep tigers

  On 12/18/2012 at 6:36 PM, RandySicko said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 6:34 PM, joshuatx said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 5:37 PM, RandySicko said:

Guns are not designed purely for killing... this is a misconception I can't stand.

 

Right To Own Handheld Device That Shoots Deadly Metal Pellets At High Speed Worth All Of This

 

Guns don't kill. People kill. They are spot on with the 'shooting deadly metal pellets at high speed' part though... that is correct.

This is the first time we're in agreement. (no really)

So that post was snarky, but that said I really can't find myself opposing bans to assault rifles, large ammo clips, even handguns in general at the moment. I have this internal quasi-libertarian demon, in the form of Hunter S. Thompson with a huge revolver in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other, telling me that there is no fucking reason a citizen should be prohibited from enjoying the thrill of firing a utterly over-the-top weapon on their private property. But for now - I think our populace could do with some regulation on firearms. Perhaps the fervent "2nd amendment" idealists would be less committed if the U.S. wasn't a military superpower with a vast and well-armed domestic police force, but ironically many of them are quite pro-military/law enforcement to begin with.

I remember this part of Shane was often referenced by the NRA back in the 90s:

http://youtu.be/vKqdoRBid5E

There's a sense of caution and self-restraint I feel isn't emphasized enough at the moment. Maybe I'm just filtering it out, or maybe it's just not being highlighted, but it's the attitude that "a gun is a tool" that seems too absent at the moment. I know it's been touched on in this thread, but not explored much further. There's a naivety and ignorance to the idea that strict gun control will solve America's problems with gun violence, but equally (and arguably more dangerous) idea that an armed civilian populace would solve the problems too. When I think of gun control being too overzealous, I'm worried about people note being able to have hunting rifles or one self-defense weapon to protect their home - not bans on AR-15s or open-carry/concealed carry rights.

It's like what lumpenprol said earlier:

  Quote

The interesting thing to me is that there seem to be two kinds of people: those for whom a world without guns sounds heavenly; and those for whom it sounds terrifying. I'm firmly with the former group, and find the latter group hard to understand.

  Iain C said:

Lol, when did I say I was a liberal? Or that I was tolerant of all?

 

"America is a frightening country for someone as left-wing as I am. I have renewed respect for people like Awepittance who are politcally active here in the face of absolutely obscene hostility"

so here we have you admitting to being very left-wing which most people... use a word... what was that again? oh yeah- "liberal", to describe. 2nd we have you sympathizing with another left wing person because of all of the hostility they have to face. awwww :( those big bad untolerant conservanazis ruin your time over here? nice attempt at weaseling out this, but, well wtf do i expect, it's your fucking avatar.

in debate you can either try to listen to the other side's opinions and come up with a rational counter-argument, or you can act like an asshole. but for liberals like YOU (and i'm specifying because not all act childish like you, maybe it's the 'turds in your skull'), you want to think that you can act like an asshole, say anyone who is your 'ideological enemy' should be dead, then go around talking all this shit about how tolerant you are and how hostile the other side is. it would be funny, if it weren't so disgusting. YOU are part of the problem. everything is getting more and more polarized which probably suits the elites just fine. meanwhile people like you are doing everything you can to increase that polarization. in your posts you accuse lots of people of being racist, another thing pretty common with liberals. you sure are against hate huh? racism is hate, and hate is bad, right? but here we have you- you're probably the kind of guy who if presented with two options:

a) being able to word your points so well that all right-wingers who saw it switched to your point of view

b) being able to rid the world of all right wingers outright

you would fucking choose b.

and you talk about racism and hatred. you are such a fucking disgusting, hate-filled hypocrite of a human being.

  On 12/18/2012 at 1:31 PM, Iain C said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:03 AM, LimpyLoo said:

I wish we lived on a planet where everyone was a buddhist.

 

Yes, if only we lived in a Buddhist-majority country like Sri Lanka where there is no violence.

That's clearly what I was thinking. Thanks.

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:01 PM, joshuatx said:

There's a naivety and ignorance to the idea that strict gun control will solve America's problems with gun violence

There's also empirical evidence in favor of the idea.

the 2nd amendment clearly stipulates assault rifles

what a trainwreck

I very much doubt that Iain C is a liberal. From what I remember of his posts, his political views emphasise the collective as opposed to the individual (running parallel with liberalism's emphasis on individual freedoms), his dislike for the state in any form (liberalism either tends to go for a night watchman "necessary evil" state that enables negative freedoms or Keynesian enabling state that supports positive freedoms) and a disdain for meritocracy. These are key points to liberal ideology and seeing as I can't see any correlations here, I think this is why he challenged MisterE towards being called a liberal.

Besides the point, are back and forth ad hominem attacks really going to make progress on preventing tragedies like this? There's a community of families who have just had their children murdered. Surely we can hold back a bit and actually discuss measures to prevent this happening rather than piss up decent discussions in the thread by trying to troll each other? Sorry if I seem like an interfering arse, it's just these types of discussions always wind up in mainstream politics before the next sensationalised news item comes along and everyone forgets these tragedies happen. Thus nothing changes and we just wait for the next horror to come along before we discuss the causes and go round in circles, which I find incredibly frustrating.

/last post

EDIT: Didn't realise other people posted before me, seems my thoughts are kinda irrelevant now...

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:11 PM, MisterE said:

  Iain C said:

Lol, when did I say I was a liberal? Or that I was tolerant of all?

so now you are going to try to deny that you're a liberal? first of all, you didn't have to say it, here in this thread or anywhere. it's pretty plain to see. 2nd, just to catch you in a half assed attempt of a lie, i glanced at your posts, and between what looked like several hundred accusations of people having 'turds in their skull', i saw this:

"America is a frightening country for someone as left-wing as I am. I have renewed respect for people like Awepittance who are politcally active here in the face of absolutely obscene hostility"

 

so here we have you admitting to being very left-wing which most people... use a word... what was that again? oh yeah- "liberal", to describe. 2nd we have you sympathizing with another left wing person because of all of the hostility they have to face. awwww :( those big bad untolerant conservanazis ruin your time over here? nice attempt at weaseling out this, but, well wtf do i expect, it's your fucking avatar.

 

in debate you can either try to listen to the other side's opinions and come up with a rational counter-argument, or you can act like an asshole. but for liberals like YOU (and i'm specifying because not all act childish like you, maybe it's the 'turds in your skull'), you want to think that you can act like an asshole, say anyone who is your 'ideological enemy' should be dead, then go around talking all this shit about how tolerant you are and how hostile the other side is. it would be funny, if it weren't so disgusting. YOU are part of the problem. everything is getting more and more polarized which probably suits the elites just fine. meanwhile people like you are doing everything you can to increase that polarization. in your posts you accuse lots of people of being racist, another thing pretty common with liberals. you sure are against hate huh? racism is hate, and hate is bad, right? but here we have you- you're probably the kind of guy who if presented with two options:

a) being able to word your points so well that all right-wingers who saw it switched to your point of view

b) being able to rid the world of all right wingers outright

 

you would fucking choose b.

 

and you talk about racism and hatred. you are such a fucking disgusting, hate-filled hypocrite of a human being.

Thank you MisterE for saying something that needed to be said. If there is any point to having discussions about such issues as Gun Control or Israel/Palestine, it would be to test your own understanding of truth. This involves removing personal attacks and replacing them with logic based refutes. And normally I find it simple enough to ignore personal attacks so that they end up just being dead air, but we are all human. We should also criticize this type of behavior because they are the aggressor... their intent is to do nothing but make the discussion polarized and emotional. This is a problem with humanity in general, some take disagreements in a topic personally and some rely on making the disagreements personal to avoid substantive progression/flow. Lain C is the prime example of this as just earlier he told me in chatmm that my death "is actually one of the best things that could happen to society." It's not everyday that other people even sarcastically say something like that. So please cease and I will say no more about this. I enjoy heated discussions immensely but it annoys me to no end when the topic gets sidetracked (like it is now, my fault sorry, won't say anything else on this) because of hateful and twisted attitudes. I can disagree with someone strongly about a topic and still appreciate them as a human being.

yep.

we could post some extra animal pics

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:22 PM, encey said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:01 PM, joshuatx said:

There's a naivety and ignorance to the idea that strict gun control will solve America's problems with gun violence

 

There's also empirical evidence in favor of the idea.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

  Quote

Violent crime and gun-related deaths did not come to an end in Australia, of course. But as the Washington Post’s Wonkblog pointed out in August, homicides by firearm plunged 59 percent between 1995 and 2006, with no corresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides. The drop in suicides by gun was even steeper: 65 percent. Studies found a close correlation between the sharp declines and the gun buybacks. Robberies involving a firearm also dropped significantly. Meanwhile, home invasions did not increase, contrary to fears that firearm ownership is needed to deter such crimes. But here’s the most stunning statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn’t been a single one in Australia since.

 

 

 

I also stated there's equal, arguably greater, naivety to maintaining an armed populace. My reason for stating that has a lot do with a detached attitude a lot of fervent anti-gun activists push. I still find them less alarming than those who think owning powerful guns in large numbers is even remotely logical or warranted.

While I feel there are too many factors that would make such a dramatic drop possible in the U.S. is the same amount of time there is nonetheless a good chance it would start a positive trend. Places like Chicago, where gun control measures have had little effect, have far more substantive reasons to cite beyond "gun control not working" and I think it points to the need for national reform, not regional efforts. Thanks for the link, I had no idea Australia experienced such a decline - fascinating and encouraging, I wish more people would come across that fact.

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:11 PM, MisterE said:

.

Lol if you think left wing = liberal.

I maintain that anyone who has placed primary focus on Gun Control over Primary Focus on the socialization of psychological healthcare for every person and the general conservative attitude of "fuck yourself" is doing a disservice to the community.

Gun control is a secondary issue. It's important, but absolutely secondary. Empiracle evidence supports this.

I promise that if you look at countries with these 2 factors:

socialized health care or health care situation

gun control

always the socialized health care will be a better guarantee for less shootings

So for me, I skip over absolutely every post about gun control. It's a tired debate. I still don't agree with arguments against ownership of guns, personally. I see bigger problems in the long run. However, I am a "conspiracy theorist" (or maybe just somebody who reads the fucking news..)

I think more energy should be devoted to socialized health care for mental health, the media, and education. All energy devoted toward the gun control debate should be re-routed towards those problems.

If it's just becasue you think there is a better chance of "winning" the gun control debate, I think this is a decent response. But still, there is a false sense of accomplishment that comes. Though I do agree that all of these goals are interrelated. So maybe increased gun control would create a mentality that would be more willing to do socialized health care.

I've just had a minor revelation. We, us, humans, need to see these goals as being interrelated. Instead of seeing gun control and health care as two separate goals, we should see all of it as part of one major consciousness shift. Whenever we call for gun control, we are really also and primarily calling for greater consciousness and awareness. When we come together and agree on this problem, we are elevating ourselves as a whole toward further goals.

Maybe we need to stop being so fragmented with our interests, and instead have primarily consciousness rationality intelligence compassion and artistic freedom as our main interests as a whole. We need to see our fragmented stances and splits in opinion as being One, or of a common goal, which is human happiness. I've just been noticing that people are constantly in disagreement because their views split in idiosyncratic ways (everyone has an opinion, and the more specific you go, the more likely you are to disagree).

The downvote is the symbol of our generation. Because the more specified you are, online, the more individual, the more cut off. And since people focus on the negative, they will always see what they disagree over what they agree with. The more you write, the more nuanced and intellectual your argument, the more likely there will be a disagreement, which can throw off the whole enterprise. Less is more, except less ain't shit anymore.

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:41 PM, goDel said:

yep.

 

we could post some extra animal pics

bear arms

and bear feet too

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:51 PM, vamos scorcho said:

So for me, I skip over absolutely every post about gun control. It's a tired debate. I still don't agree with arguments against ownership of guns, personally. I see bigger problems in the long run. However, I am a "conspiracy theorist" (or maybe just somebody who reads the fucking news..)

On one hand, you have a point.

On the other hand: *emits loud groan*

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:51 PM, vamos scorcho said:

I maintain that anyone who has placed primary focus on Gun Control over Primary Focus on the socialization of psychological healthcare for every person and the general conservative attitude of "fuck yourself" is doing a disservice to the community.

 

Gun control is a secondary issue. It's important, but absolutely secondary. Empiracle evidence supports this.

 

I promise that if you look at countries with these 2 factors:

socialized health care or health care situation

gun control

 

always the socialized health care will be a better guarantee for less shootings

 

 

 

So for me, I skip over absolutely every post about gun control. It's a tired debate. I still don't agree with arguments against ownership of guns, personally. I see bigger problems in the long run. However, I am a "conspiracy theorist" (or maybe just somebody who reads the fucking news..)

 

I think more energy should be devoted to socialized health care for mental health, the media, and education. All energy devoted toward the gun control debate should be re-routed towards those problems.

 

If it's just becasue you think there is a better chance of "winning" the gun control debate, I think this is a decent response. But still, there is a false sense of accomplishment that comes. Though I do agree that all of these goals are interrelated. So maybe increased gun control would create a mentality that would be more willing to do socialized health care.

 

 

 

 

 

I've just had a minor revelation. We, us, humans, need to see these goals as being interrelated. Instead of seeing gun control and health care as two separate goals, we should see all of it as part of one major consciousness shift. Whenever we call for gun control, we are really also and primarily calling for greater consciousness and awareness. When we come together and agree on this problem, we are elevating ourselves as a whole toward further goals.

Actually this is one of the most sensible posts I've seen in my half arsed skimming of this thread

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

America's healthcare, diversity, media and culture definitely play a bigger part in this issue than simply gun availability. The guy in Norway was able to kill almost 100 people, but that's just 1 compared to the many more serial killer/mass murder/muderers America has. Fact is, if someone wants to kill a bunch of people they will figure a way, the cure is to rid people of that kind of twisted psychological state through education, healthcare and corporate media (news shouldnt be profit driven). Our government needs to do a better job of looking at facts, so for instance treating the drug problem as a health issue not a criminal one. It's been shown to decrease drug abuse, it's a fact... our drug war has shown to do the opposite... hell the drug war probably in of itself causes a lot of the gun related crimes in this country.

Thanks Iain C

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:55 PM, LimpyLoo said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:51 PM, vamos scorcho said:

So for me, I skip over absolutely every post about gun control. It's a tired debate. I still don't agree with arguments against ownership of guns, personally. I see bigger problems in the long run. However, I am a "conspiracy theorist" (or maybe just somebody who reads the fucking news..)

 

On one hand, you have a point.

 

On the other hand: *emits loud groan*

I did change my mind by the end of the post, to a certain degree. I think mid-post my stance on the issue shifted toward something else, though I chose to leave it as it is, because sometimes "witnessing" a change in mentality, as it happens, in the phenomena of writing, can be instructive.

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:54 PM, joshuatx said:

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:41 PM, goDel said:

yep.

 

we could post some extra animal pics

 

bear arms

 

 

and bear feet too

LOL

that bear gives a nice effect when scrolling through this thread. it almost saves a thread when a bear like this swims through it.

Ima gonna save it and post it every time a thread needs saving from imminent drowning.

  On 12/18/2012 at 8:57 PM, Iain C said:

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

i agree that society needs 'hairapy'

But it's possible the correlation between socialized healthcare and lower gun crime is not the full story,

and socialized healthcare is simply a symptom of a healthy empathetic society.

i dont think theres any amount of therapy, healthcare, or sympathy that alters the fact a miniscule portion of the population are just evil, nasty fucks.

maybe in this case he was depressed or whatever, but there really are people born with a brain that takes enormous pleasure in hurting, controlling, and killing other people.

  On 12/18/2012 at 1:22 PM, Obel said:

Do I understand this correctly, do the anti-gun control folk really believe in the whole "I need my guns for the inevitable government overthrow" thing? Or is that just convenient NRA rhetoric that they adopt because in reality they're just attached to their shooty guns?

Good question. I'm sure there are plenty of nutters who buy guns in case they're inclined to prepare for armed insurrection, as well as for the "Zombie Apocalypse". People who literally buy into this nonsense are delusional, IMO.

And as far as being attached to one's gun goes, I'd personally value the company of another human being or a pet more.