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Post by Marshall on Aug 5, 2019 8:17:22 GMT -5
I noticed a piece in Friday’s Washington Post saying that bullet proof backpacks are a popular item for the new school year. Oooh. That's real sad. Saw the stories on the Chicago shootings. Same old gang warfare in bad neighborhoods. A car pulls up to Douglas Park; rolls down the windows; opens fire. Gun battle ensues. 75 rounds fired. 7 people killed. Horrible, for sure. I've been to Douglas Park for work some years ago. Very nasty neighborhood. Even during daylight. Whole different animal from the Walmart shooting. This was a gang turf war. Certainly awful for the innocents caught in the cross fire. But it's a different problem.
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Post by patrick on Aug 5, 2019 9:47:52 GMT -5
Some random thoughts after reading this thread:
The argument that current gun control laws are ineffective is irrelevant, they are DESIGNED, for the most part, to be ineffective. The gun lobby works hard to punch huge loopholes in any laws regulating guns. This is no argument that laws closing those loopholes will be ineffective.
No law is totally effective, yes, criminals will always break laws. But there is no immigration policy that will stop ALL illegal entry, yet the current administration insists on spending hundreds of billions of dollars and huge amounts of manpower to try to stop it. If you're going to throw up your hands at enforcing gun laws, then why are we still enforcing immigration laws? Or laws against selling meth, or speeding in school zones, etc.?
It is not true that private ownership of fully automatic weapons like the Thompson submachine gun is banned. You can get one. You will spend thousands of dollars on fees and taxes, etc. and you will have, as Bill Maher says, the ATF so far up your ass they can taste your lunch, but you CAN own one. So why is it that fully automatic weapons aren't everywhere on our streets? Because the laws have made them rare and difficult to obtain and own. We can do the same with other categories of guns and accessories.
The notion that the government is going to go kicking in everyone's doors to confiscate guns is nonsense, a paranoid fantasy peddled to other paranoids. If possession of a center-fire semiautomatic rifle required a Federal license, like machine guns or silencers, and carried heavy penalties if caught in violation of the law, then a lot of people will just not bother and their guns will be turned in or destroyed. Those who keep their regulated guns will eventually have to pass them on to someone else, and THOSE people will have to decide if they want to go to the bother. The number of regulated guns will decrease.
The fact is that Americans tend to follow the law and we have the police to deal with the others.
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Post by aquaduct on Aug 5, 2019 9:52:25 GMT -5
The fact is that Americans tend to follow the law and we have the police to deal with the others. Which ironically, is exactly why the idea of more gun control inevitably fails.
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Post by Marshall on Aug 5, 2019 9:56:16 GMT -5
. . . , so far up your ass they can taste your lunch, . . . , cool phrase.
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Post by brucemacneill on Aug 5, 2019 9:57:40 GMT -5
Just remember, the police are reactive. You'll be OK once they get there but others will die waiting for them to respond. I was surprised at the El Paso shooting because Texas is pretty much open carry but apparently the Walmart is a "Gun free zone", therefore a soft target. May your zone stay safe and if it isn't may you live long enough for the police to respond. Around here that would be at least 20 minutes.
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Post by patrick on Aug 5, 2019 10:01:31 GMT -5
The fact is that Americans tend to follow the law and we have the police to deal with the others. Which ironically, is exactly why the idea of more gun control inevitably fails. So you're in favor of open borders? Incidentally, if denying weapons to people to stop them from killing doesn't work, why are we, as a country, trying to stop Iran and N Korea from getting nukes? After all, nukes don't kill people, people kill people. Same concept, different scale.
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Post by brucemacneill on Aug 5, 2019 10:06:32 GMT -5
Which ironically, is exactly why the idea of more gun control inevitably fails. So you're in favor of open borders? Incidentally, if denying weapons to people to stop them from killing doesn't work, why are we, as a country, trying to stop Iran and N Korea from getting nukes? After all, nukes don't kill people, people kill people. Same concept, different scale. Perhaps because the Iranian and North Korean leadership matches the profile of mass murderers.
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Post by aquaduct on Aug 5, 2019 10:07:45 GMT -5
Which ironically, is exactly why the idea of more gun control inevitably fails. So you're in favor of open borders? Incidentally, if denying weapons to people to stop them from killing doesn't work, why are we, as a country, trying to stop Iran and N Korea from getting nukes? After all, nukes don't kill people, people kill people. Same concept, different scale. No to both. You're dancing around the issue with irrelevance. You're the one with the proposal you want me to agree to. So give me a good reason.
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Post by theevan on Aug 5, 2019 10:39:48 GMT -5
Whatever you might try to do with guns, it's still peripheral. Go ahead. But that's not the heart of the problem.
Some will describe the heart of it as psychological. Others, societal. I'd call it spiritual. In any case, the killer is the problem. The weapon, along with circumstances, plan, skill, etc determine how lethal.
Going after the guns first strikes me "do something, do anything!"
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 5, 2019 10:44:52 GMT -5
A detailing of two dozen people who have committed violent acts, who then attributed their behavior to the idiot who just referred to Dayton as Toledo: talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-ravages-of-trump-violent-attacks-carried-out-in-his-name"Attacked interracial couple Daniel Rowe attacked an interracial couple in August 2016 after seeing the pair kiss. An African-American man suffered a stab wound to the abdomen in the attack. During his arrest, Rowe reportedly confessed to officers that he stabbed the couple, saying “I’m a white supremacist” before saying he wanted to “go to the next Donald Trump rally” and “stomp out” Black Lives Matter protesters." Read on if you have the stomach for the hate that this moron has fomented.
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Post by brucemacneill on Aug 5, 2019 11:01:58 GMT -5
A detailing of two dozen people who have committed violent acts, who then attributed their behavior to the idiot who just referred to Dayton as Toledo: talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-ravages-of-trump-violent-attacks-carried-out-in-his-name"Attacked interracial couple Daniel Rowe attacked an interracial couple in August 2016 after seeing the pair kiss. An African-American man suffered a stab wound to the abdomen in the attack. During his arrest, Rowe reportedly confessed to officers that he stabbed the couple, saying “I’m a white supremacist” before saying he wanted to “go to the next Donald Trump rally” and “stomp out” Black Lives Matter protesters." Read on if you have the stomach for the hate that this moron has fomented. Most important line in the link: "Crusius does not invoke President Trump in his manifesto, or in social media posts uncovered as of this writing."
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 5, 2019 11:15:40 GMT -5
A detailing of two dozen people who have committed violent acts, who then attributed their behavior to the idiot who just referred to Dayton as Toledo: talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-ravages-of-trump-violent-attacks-carried-out-in-his-name"Attacked interracial couple Daniel Rowe attacked an interracial couple in August 2016 after seeing the pair kiss. An African-American man suffered a stab wound to the abdomen in the attack. During his arrest, Rowe reportedly confessed to officers that he stabbed the couple, saying “I’m a white supremacist” before saying he wanted to “go to the next Donald Trump rally” and “stomp out” Black Lives Matter protesters." Read on if you have the stomach for the hate that this moron has fomented. Most important line in the link: "Crusius does not invoke President Trump in his manifesto, or in social media posts uncovered as of this writing." Two dozen other criminals specifically did invoke Trump. But this shooter didn't, so I guess we ought to give Trump a cookie.
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Post by Russell Letson on Aug 5, 2019 11:22:54 GMT -5
At what point does characterizing demands for some kind of solution or amelioration, however incremental or imperfect, as "do something, do anything!" amount to "Don't do anything--it's hopeless"? Strikes me as a version of forced choice/false binary. If, as most people realize, the problem is complex--part individual, part social, part political--then solutions will necessarily also be complex, since no single, simple fix is going to address all of the parts.
We eventually recognized that "cancer" is not a single disease with a single cause, and that prevention and cure will necessarily address the complexities of the generating mechanisms and the particularities of the affected tissues. (I welcome correction from medical Soundholers.) With mass killings, a bunch of components are pretty clearly identifiable, and one of them is the easy availability of high/easy-kill-rate weaponry. We have already determined that explosives and poisons of various kinds are not to be available to the general public, and nobody in his right mind is going to approve of private ownership of, say, ground-to-air missiles or mortars or claymore mines. The middle ground, occupied by full-auto firearms, armor-piercing ammo, high-capacity magazines, and such, is where it gets challenging to devise regulations.
But such regulations, and the protocols that would enforce them, can be devised--and have been in other nations that have not become authoritarian hellholes. I am not comfortable with guys walking around with loaded AK- or AR-style long guns or barely-legal short-barrel semi-auto shotguns slung on their backs. Any more than I would be if they were carrying swords or spiked clubs. The argument that any asshole can run his car onto the sidewalk is a distraction and a derailment--if he's big and strong enough, he can just choke me to death while possible rescuers try to pry him off me. (Actually, gangs of cops have done this more than once, except that nobody dares to intervene, lest they get the same treatment or worse.)
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Post by aquaduct on Aug 5, 2019 11:52:03 GMT -5
At what point does characterizing demands for some kind of solution or amelioration, however incremental or imperfect, as "do something, do anything!" amount to "Don't do anything--it's hopeless"? Strikes me as a version of forced choice/false binary. If, as most people realize, the problem is complex--part individual, part social, part political--then solutions will necessarily also be complex, since no single, simple fix is going to address all of the parts. We eventually recognized that "cancer" is not a single disease with a single cause, and that prevention and cure will necessarily address the complexities of the generating mechanisms and the particularities of the affected tissues. (I welcome correction from medical Soundholers.) With mass killings, a bunch of components are pretty clearly identifiable, and one of them is the easy availability of high/easy-kill-rate weaponry. We have already determined that explosives and poisons of various kinds are not to be available to the general public, and nobody in his right mind is going to approve of private ownership of, say, ground-to-air missiles or mortars or claymore mines. The middle ground, occupied by full-auto firearms, armor-piercing ammo, high-capacity magazines, and such, is where it gets challenging to devise regulations. But such regulations, and the protocols that would enforce them, can be devised--and have been in other nations that have not become authoritarian hellholes. I am not comfortable with guys walking around with loaded AK- or AR-style long guns or barely-legal short-barrel semi-auto shotguns slung on their backs. Any more than I would be if they were carrying swords or spiked clubs. The argument that any asshole can run his car onto the sidewalk is a distraction and a derailment--if he's big and strong enough, he can just choke me to death while possible rescuers try to pry him off me. (Actually, gangs of cops have done this more than once, except that nobody dares to intervene, lest they get the same treatment or worse.) Again, tell me specifically what you want to do and how it will improve my life or that of the people I know. And curing cancer is an entirely different ball game. Primarily because it's a one sided question with no downside to folks who don't have cancer. That's the fatal flaw of the politically progressive, all blow and no go.
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Post by billhammond on Aug 5, 2019 12:13:15 GMT -5
Meanwhile, two more victims have died in the hospital, raising the El Paso toll to 22.
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Post by millring on Aug 5, 2019 12:16:11 GMT -5
This does not echo Trump. This echoes the Democratic candidates.
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Post by theevan on Aug 5, 2019 12:45:00 GMT -5
At what point does characterizing demands for some kind of solution or amelioration, however incremental or imperfect, as "do something, do anything!" amount to "Don't do anything--it's hopeless"? Strikes me as a version of forced choice/false binary. If, as most people realize, the problem is complex--part individual, part social, part political--then solutions will necessarily also be complex, since no single, simple fix is going to address all of the parts. We eventually recognized that "cancer" is not a single disease with a single cause, and that prevention and cure will necessarily address the complexities of the generating mechanisms and the particularities of the affected tissues. (I welcome correction from medical Soundholers.) With mass killings, a bunch of components are pretty clearly identifiable, and one of them is the easy availability of high/easy-kill-rate weaponry. We have already determined that explosives and poisons of various kinds are not to be available to the general public, and nobody in his right mind is going to approve of private ownership of, say, ground-to-air missiles or mortars or claymore mines. The middle ground, occupied by full-auto firearms, armor-piercing ammo, high-capacity magazines, and such, is where it gets challenging to devise regulations. But such regulations, and the protocols that would enforce them, can be devised--and have been in other nations that have not become authoritarian hellholes. I am not comfortable with guys walking around with loaded AK- or AR-style long guns or barely-legal short-barrel semi-auto shotguns slung on their backs. Any more than I would be if they were carrying swords or spiked clubs. The argument that any asshole can run his car onto the sidewalk is a distraction and a derailment--if he's big and strong enough, he can just choke me to death while possible rescuers try to pry him off me. (Actually, gangs of cops have done this more than once, except that nobody dares to intervene, lest they get the same treatment or worse.) You missed the part where I said go ahead, do something about guns. I'm just saying fine, but that's still pecking around the periphery. At least Alan went straight at the real problem.
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Post by brucemacneill on Aug 5, 2019 12:47:16 GMT -5
Most important line in the link: "Crusius does not invoke President Trump in his manifesto, or in social media posts uncovered as of this writing." Two dozen other criminals specifically did invoke Trump. But this shooter didn't, so I guess we ought to give Trump a cookie. IMHO, the problem is that you have the world ass-backwards. Most of our news media assisted you in that. Believe it or not, racism existed before Trump. Trump actually palled around with black guys. Trump used to be a Democrat even. Trumps actions haven't been racist, they're anti-Democratic party policies mouthed by people who happen to be minority raced. He doesn't think much of Bernie or Biden either and they happen to be white. You are suffering from the TDS virus spread by media that has equated all things bad with Trump. Whatever happens bad, they find a way to tie it to Trump. In the El Paso case, the media tied it to Trump but the shooter never did. TDS virus allows you to overlook reason. You have my sympathies but not my support in your efforts to make Democratic Party policies sound good. They don't regardless of who talks about them or their race or ethnicity. We're working on a vaccine for TDS but most Democrats wouldn't take it if there was one. We hope to be able to release it by Nov. 2020.
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Post by aquaduct on Aug 5, 2019 12:51:03 GMT -5
This does not echo Trump. This echoes the Democratic candidates. Progressives have been controlling the political narrative and process for so long they no longer recognize when they've wandered off the pier into the impossible. How else do you explain stuff like this and the Green New Deal?
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Post by casualplayerpaul on Aug 5, 2019 12:55:58 GMT -5
Two dozen other criminals specifically did invoke Trump. But this shooter didn't, so I guess we ought to give Trump a cookie. IMHO, the problem is that you have the world ass-backwards. Most of our news media assisted you in that. Believe it or not, racism existed before Trump. Trump actually palled around with black guys. Trump used to be a Democrat even. Trumps actions haven't been racist, they're anti-Democratic party policies mouthed by people who happen to be minority raced. He doesn't think much of Bernie or Biden either and they happen to be white. You are suffering from the TDS virus spread by media that has equated all things bad with Trump. Whatever happens bad, they find a way to tie it to Trump. In the El Paso case, the media tied it to Trump but the shooter never did. TDS virus allows you to overlook reason. You have my sympathies but not my support in your efforts to make Democratic Party policies sound good. They don't regardless of who talks about them or their race or ethnicity. We're working on a vaccine for TDS but most Democrats wouldn't take it if there was one. We hope to be able to release it by Nov. 2020. Please. From the original article: Slammed black suspect’s head into door frame
Frank Nucera, the police chief of New Jersey’s Bordentown township, was indicted on federal criminal charges in November 2017 for allegedly committing a hate crime after he slammed a handcuffed, African-American suspect’s head into a metal door frame.
After the assault, which occurred in September 2016, Nucera was recorded as saying that “Donald Trump is the last hope for white people.”
Nucera is reportedly fighting the charges to trial.
One of a couple of dozen criminals who sight Trump as their inspiration. These are facts. You can look them up. Trump racism inspires racist acts. It's not remotely complicated. The man foments hate. Find one violent criminal, anywhere, who has ever expressed their criminal inspiration as being, say, Barack Obama. Then get back to me about Trump Derangement Syndrome.
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