BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 02:04 PM

The thought of 300,000,000 second-hand guns flooding onto the world market is horrendous.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 02:07 PM

The fact is that those who own guns legally and are not involved in other crime *rarely* shoot anybody.

Well then, I guess they really don't need them for protection after all, despite what the NRA fear-mongers say.

And of self-righteous ones (say Tea Partiers, militia members, far-left zealots, etc.), the percentage appears to be truly minute.

Oh, well that's OK then, innit? As long as they only kill a "minute percentage".

Alsouggest you take a look at the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hate Map" so you can revise your estimate of that "minute percentage".

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 02:08 PM

In Britain how much reduction in weapon ownership was obsolescence over the centuries combined with regulation ? US of A - I think you should ban ray-guns now.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:03 PM

"Keith thinks that outlawing guns wont stop bad people from having guns."
As crimes in general are not prevented by laws, perhaps we should consider abandoning all laws   
"This shooter didn't have criminal intent "
I should imagine Joe meant that he wasn't killing people in order to carry out a crime - what he did was a criminal act in itself, but his intentions are immaterial anyway - he was obviously 'not the full shilling', nor was he, as far as we know, part of a master plan - he was a hatred-driven, delusional fanatic apparently acting of his own volition - plenty of them about.
Whether he will be tried a a criminal remains to be seen
Incidentally;
"There are more registered guns in circulation in the UK than there is homosexuals."
There are 1.8 million registered gun owners in Britain - it is calculated that there are 3.8 'out' homosexuals - nobody can even guess hw many closeted ones there are.
Your maths are worse than mine.   
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:12 PM

Someting else I find "horrendous." is the fact that
"Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii," they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:"
FACTS
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:24 PM

We had an armed population in Britain as I outlined,

No we did not.
No comparison.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:30 PM

The "Hate Map" is worth consulting, but I see nothing about shootings, much less about self-righteous, politically motivated massacres.

http://www.splcenter.org/hate-map#s=NE

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:35 PM

Selections from Roof's online manifesto:

http://news.yahoo.com/suspected-killer-dylann-roof-s-racist-manifesto-surfaces-154324556.html

So much for the right-wing claim that it was a hate crime "directed against Christians."

Also of interest:

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/jacquielynn-floyd/20150619-first-baptist-dallas-pastor-robert-jeffress-gets-an-f-in-history.ece

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,Derriick
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 03:54 PM

Maybe not the sophisticated that arms that many american settlers had but was it not the law that every able bodied man had to practice archery at one time? Surely the bow men kept their weapons at home and used them to supplement the pot now and then.
Many Americans do not own guns, some on the other hand have an arsenal which rivals the local Sheriff in both numbers and fire power,far in excess of the need for simple self protection.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:17 PM

No Jim, please concentrate.    I said there are more registered GUNS in the UK than there are homosexuals.

3.48 guns per 100 of the population.....1.5 homosexuals per 100 of the population.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:20 PM

> far in excess of the need for simple self protection.

But now you're using logic.

Some people just like to own, look at, display, and handle legal firearms. It's their hobby.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:26 PM

> 1.5 homosexuals per 100 of the population.

That figure seems to me to be off by a factor of ten or more. Are you sure it's correct.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:29 PM

@ Lighter: And of self-righteous ones (say Tea Partiers, militia members, far-left zealots, etc.),

Well, Lighter, the Hate Map in question may not list self-rghteous Tea Partiers, but is sure as heck lists militias, far-right zealots & "etc." (- eg: lotys of white supemecist groups or KKK groups for example) all toting plenty of firearms.

Such groups and/or members thereof HAVE committed quite a few murders in the past, and in all likliehood will do so in future.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:42 PM

Lighter...latest huge study from ONS.


here

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,Derrick
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 04:47 PM

Lighter,
Apart from the possibility of their guns falling into the hands of criminals those people are less of a worry to me than the doomsday preppers,conspiracy theorists and other extremists who have such assemblies of weapons

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 05:42 PM

Australian comedian Jim Jeffries has a great bit on how insane US gun culture looks to the rest of the world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL8JEEt2RxI

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 06:10 PM

He hit all the good points I could think of except I think of nukes instead of drones.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 06:51 PM

We must talk. I keep a stack of notebooks I write passing thoughts in. Here are a couple of those thoughts on this subject.

* It was the best and worst of times for civil rights. a camera still can not capture all the systemic tortures of racism.

* A kid who fails 9th grade twice is not smart enough to go to that particular church and ask for that pastor and do and say what he did. He had help. The worst kind of sick deranged help there is.

1.
You who pray for forgiveness and redemption after suffering another genocide hear me over the sobs. Do not equate forgiveness with violence aimed at black people whose blood soaks and stains the ground of America.

2.
You the silent racist who will not look at or talk about race. You have helped steal every place of safety from every black person. You never raised your voice to even protect a child.

3.
You the violent racist, you have stolen every now and future from people who are a pile of bones a mile high and growing.

4.
You who deny your racism, you have stolen every advantage and privilege from your color afforded you by the institution of racism around you no matter else you have earned for yourself.

5.
You who is fractured by racism whether you know it or not, you can begin to learn.

6.
You the black victim of 1,000 cuts of every kind may never trust a white person. This might punish yourself and them out of pure habit.

7.
You whose eyes are open are the best hope for the blind if they are ever to cross the street.

8.
You may be confused as to what is appropriate. You may simply ask.

9.
You should remember that it takes more than 20 seconds to consciously see anyone beyond your shortcut unconscious stereotypes of questions like friend or foe, competent or not. Quirky artists take even longer to truly see.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 08:11 PM

"I said there are more registered GUNS in the UK than there are homosexuals."
And I said there are 3.8 million "out" homosexuals compred to 1.8 millin registered gun owners - thanks to "good, tolerant" people like yourself, we haven't the slightest idea of how many homosexuals there are - twice that number, five times, ten times - we don't know.
THe fact that one individual may own ten guns is immaterial - there are 1.8 million registered gun owners - what on earth is your point and what does it have to do with what I wrote?
I suggest a cold bath might be in order - your latency seems to be getting to you (again)
In the end the "need" to own domestic guns has S.F.A. to do with security and more to do with a predatory market with an access to the ears of politicians - pretty much the same as the international arms industry.
Big business would sell bags of cyanide to schoolkids if they thought there was a market and if they could get away with it - take a peek at the tobacco industry's record of selling cigarettes to children (if they can't do it at home - there's always the 3rd World).
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 11:12 PM

The NRA justifies evil in the name of presumed 'rights'... partly for pure monetary reasons, but also because they have convinced themselves that they 'need' them. Very few need them... hunters, ranchers who protect livestock, and law enforcement.

That kid in S. Carolina didn't need one... but he was legally able to get one because he was not a felon. Now he IS a felon. It doesn't help much to shut the barn door after the horse is gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 Jun 15 - 11:43 PM

"It doesn't help much to shut the barn door after the horse is gone."

It does if there are other horses in the barn.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:45 AM

Lighter says: There are tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners.

My experience is that people don't usually buy guns for hunting or for target practice. They buy guns for "protection" - that is, to shoot a person if that person poses a thread to them. I've never had a "bad guy" point a gun at me. I have had "good guys" point guns at me at least three times, and I was not a threat to them on any of those occasions.

I want trained law enforcement officers to make decisions about "protection," not frightened people whose judgment is affected by their fear.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 04:34 AM

Joe, if a "bad guy" had pointed a gun at you, you probably would not be here now. (Which would be our loss.)

And I have to assume that none of the three morons who drew down on you was planning a massacre, or was threatening you for some racist or political reason.

They may have been paranoid, but they were clearly not lusting to kill. Otherwise they'd have shot you. Those moments were rightly terrifying, yes, but not evidence that legal gun owners are generally dangerous. How many times have gun owners *not* aimed a weapon of any sort at you, or even thought of doing so?

And the three didn't shoot at you when you "left them alone."

Or did they?

The point is simply that, while a few are close to the edge, the vast majority of the tens of millions of legal gun owners are normal, law-abiding people. Focusing on their gun ownership in general won't solve the problem of mass shootings.

I'd like to hear how the problem could be solved. Realistically, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 08:15 AM

Oh dear. I got a very positive response to a couple of posts I put up the last time but ∞+ we got on to this topic; that time about how more effective drug protection might solve your probs!

Not wanting too much to blow my own trumpet: but ♬♩here we are again, happy as can be♩ --
,.,.,.,.
Subject: RE: BS: Ban anti-depressant drugs, not guns
From: MGM·Lion - PM
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 02:00 AM
The either-or nature of the title of this thread sums up what your trouble is over there. You will tie yourself in knots to find any out from the self-evident fact that YOU HAVE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR DESTRUCTIVE & DYSFUNCTIONAL GUN LAWS.
If you don't believe me, just look at all the arguments, from too-many-guns-out-there-already-to-possibly-ever-control
to got-to-have-one-in-case-I-ever-just-happen-to-meet-a-psycho-who-has-one that all the thousands of threads on the topic already are full of

Like here ~~ oh, it isn't the availability of the guns, it's the fact that someone who owns one might just be on meds which encourage him to go out & kill people with it that is the trouble.

So we can leave the gun laws alone & just make sure that nobody can get at the drugs.
Well, that's all right then.

♫Oh when will you ever learn...♫

From: MGM·Lion - PM
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 02:10 AM
And if you don't believe me, just look again at that table on that other ongoing thread of #s of deaths over a year by gunshot in various nations -- all in one- or two-figures except for the US, which is in the 2000s -- an unspeakable disgrace to your otherwise great and rightly-widely-respected nation...

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 09:07 AM

> DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR DESTRUCTIVE & DYSFUNCTIONAL GUN LAWS.

Fine, but what exactly?

I'd also remind you of the "War on Drugs." Drug laws became draconian in the 1960s. In Texas, for example, you could (and would) get five years in State Prison for being in possession of *one* marijuana cigarette.

Then there was the education campaign: "This Is Your Brain on Drugs": the image of a frying egg.

Now, forty years later, drug use of all kinds is nearly as widespread, and marijuana has even been legalized in two or three states.

For some people, guns are a drug. Tighter laws, while certainly desirable, will not stop all shootings, and they absolutely will not stop massacres by lunatics.

Confiscate the guns? Impossible for both practical and Constitutional reasons.

Collect all the guns? Very few people will turn them in. Why would they? (Nor will *criminals* and the *paranoid* turn them in - exactly the people we're most concerned with.) A law demanding that guns be be turned in would be unconstitutional, and, as some of us have observed over and over again, the Second Amendment will not be repealed (and probably will not be significantly modified) short of a vast sea-change in politics, psychology, and society.

Roof had been charged with felony drug possession. That should have prevented him from buying the gun in a gun store.

It is not clear just where he bought it, but if it was from a private owner, no background check was required.

Now *that* law certainly does need to be tightened. It was absurd from the beginning.

Maybe it will happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 10:22 AM

Stop production, progressively restriction ownership leading to a ban as in Europe, and the government buy them back for more than their value. When only the bad guys have them life will be simpler for body-camera wearing armed law enforcement officers.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:11 AM

I'd like to hear how the problem could be solved. Realistically, of course.

Here Ya Go, Lighter:

11 myths about the future of gun control, debunked after the Charleston shooting

Another mass shooting, another round of arguments about why gun reform is doomed to fail. Turns out, most of those arguments don't hold up to scrutiny.


Article Here

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:21 AM

NY TIMES   Magazine
White Terrorism Is as Old as America [EXCERPTS]
By BRIT BENNETT    JUNE 19, 2015

My grandmother used to speak of Klansmen riding through Louisiana at night, how she could see their white robes shimmering in the dark, how black people hid in bayous to escape them. Before her time, during Reconstruction, Ku Klux Klan members believed they could scare superstitious black people out of their newly won freedom. They wore terrifying costumes but were not exactly hiding — many former slaves recognized bosses and neighbors under their white sheets. They were haunting in masks, a seen yet unseen terror. In addition to killing and beating black people, they often claimed to be the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers.

You could argue, of course, that there are no ghosts of the Confederacy, because the Confederacy is not yet dead. The stars and bars live on, proudly emblazoned on T-shirts and license plates; the pre-eminent symbol of slavery, the flag itself, still flies above South Carolina's Capitol. The killing has not stopped either, as shown by the deaths of nine black people in a church in Charleston this week. The suspected gunman, who is white and was charged with nine counts of murder on Friday, is said to have told their Bible-study group: "You rape our women, and you are taking over our country. And you have to go."

Media outlets have been reluctant to classify the Charleston shooting as terrorism, despite how eerily it echoes our country's history of terrorism. American-bred terrorism originated in order to restrict the movement and freedom of newly liberated black Americans who, for the first time, began to gain an element of political power. The Ku Klux Klan Act, which would in part, lawmakers hoped, suppress the Klan through the use of military force, was one of America's first pieces of antiterrorism legislation. When it became federal law in 1871, nine South Carolina counties were placed under martial law, and scores of people were arrested. The Charleston gunman's fears — of black men raping white women, of black people taking over the country — are the same fears that were felt by Klansmen, who used violence and intimidation to control communities of freed blacks.

Even with these parallels, we still hear endless speculation about the Charleston shooter's motives. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina wrote in a Facebook post that "while we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we'll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another." Despite reports of the killer declaring his racial hatred before shooting members of the prayer group, his motives are inscrutable. Even after photos surfaced of the suspected shooter wearing a jacket decorated with the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa and leaning against a car with Confederate-flag plates, tangible proof of his alignment with violent, segregationist ideology, his actions remained supposedly indecipherable. A Seattle Times tweet (now deleted) asked if the gunman was "concentrated evil or a sweet kid," The Wall Street Journal termed him a "loner" and Charleston's mayor called him a "scoundrel," yet the seemingly obvious designations — murderer, thug, terrorist, killer, racist — are nowhere to be found........

The Complete Article is well worth reading.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:22 AM

> Stop production, progressively restriction ownership leading to a ban as in Europe.

Sounds great, but politically and constitutionally impossible.

This is not like Civil Rights, where the necessary laws were largely in place but going unenforced. The law of the land since 1789, with few actual restrictions, is guns for all non-felons.

A repeal of the Second Amendment cannot occur without enormous popular pressure.

There will not be much pressure, because the average voter *is very likely to be a law-abiding gun-owner,* NRA or not.

Think of Prohibition. It required a Constitutional Amendment, which is not an easy thing to get passed. It was enforced by local, state, and the federal government. But it was repealed because enforcement was impossible, and the public was demanding the return of its right to drink as much booze as it wanted.

A buy-back would have a beneficial but very limited effect. People with multiple guns would not be likely to sell all of them. If guns were scarcer, a few gun massacres might be prevented, but they will not go away. And as soon as another one occurred, even fewer guns would be turned in, and the right would trumpet another "bankrupt left-wing policy."

(BTW, in most states if any gun is used or even displayed in the commission of a crime, the penalty is significantly increased. This seems not to have had much effect on criminals' use of guns. The people we're talking about *do not care* about the law. That's why so many of them repeatedly wind up in jail.)

Anyway, every massacre leads to a significant spike in gun sales, as more citizens begin to feel they need a gun for self-defense.

So, yeah, offer a buy-back, and see what happens. And close the damned "private sale" loophole.

Better than nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:23 AM

Yes Greg.
If you can trawl up a page that agrees with you, your case is proved.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:24 AM

Lighter -- for clarity: the 'drugs' refd in that thread to which I was posting 3 yrs ago were not illegals, but prescription meds - 'anti-depressants' was in the thread title. I take your points. Please believe I don't think it would be easy. But there seems to an outsider to be a dreadfully shoulder-shrugging complacency about the situation; and an acceptance of helplessness which seems unworthy of the nation which is the acknowledged world leader in so many ways. You admit that one specific law was broken & "needs tightening" -- and add, a bit helpless-soundingly, "Maybe it will happen".

Maybe? Maybe! Doesn't that sound maybe just a little bit pathetic? Surely the greatest country in the world can produce someone capable of making it happen: and all these other things that, you appear to accept, need doing to stop you all killing one another like there was no tomorrow.

Honest, USA: Don't come over so helpless and hopeless. Not good enough -- Must do better! "Yes we can" needs to be the watchword. Or else stop flaunting yourselves as so great!

Believe me, from a genuine wellwisher who loves the USA, has had some wonderful times there, and had nothing but friendship and kindness from all my American friends and cousins and in-laws ——


≈Michael≈

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 11:33 AM

From NYTM linked above.

"This is the privilege of whiteness: While a terrorist may be white, his violence is never based in his whiteness. "

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:00 PM

Yes Greg. If you can trawl up a page that agrees with you, your case is proved.

Amusing, Keith. And sickening - YOU dare talk about "trawling up" with your history of eminent, living, tabloid-writing, available in bookstores, & etc. cut-and-paste bullshit? Go fuck yourself.

What I posted were FACTS to support THE case, not MY case, idiot.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:04 PM

"This is the privilege of whiteness: While a terrorist may be white, his violence is never based in his whiteness. "

Read the ENTIRE PARAGRAPH and the one before & the one after it, idiot, and you might begin to have a clue what the author is saying - and its NOT what your extraction of a single sentance seems to say.

Assuming, of course, that you CAN read.....

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:23 PM

'Sounds great, but politically and constitutionally impossible.
The law of the land since 1789...A repeal of the Second Amendment cannot occur without enormous popular pressure.'
.,,.,.

Oh, stop being pathetic & pressurise. "Impossible" & "cannot" are not words to be used to legislators. Remember when universal or female, suffrage "could not" happen; the slave trade" could not" be stopped; the death penalty "could not" be abolished. Whether all these things that "could not" happen, yet lo·&·behold! did after all, all turned out to be improvements, is another question. But what they had in common was that it was so widely believed, and proclaimed, that they couldn't happen -- TILL THEY DID.

Now, for god's sake, get pressuring and bring about all these things that "can't happen", till you have sorted out those bloody intolerable gun laws, which so profoundly disgrace you!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:30 PM

The law of the land since 1789, with few actual restrictions, is guns for all non-felons.

Only according to a particularly tortuous interpretation drawn from the sentance in question.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 12:30 PM

"It does if there are other horses in the barn"

Yes.. excellent point. I will refrain from other metaphors about the obvious need to do something.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 01:48 PM

The real reason Americas need guns:
GUN LOBBY FINANCES

GUN INDUSTRY PROFITS

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 01:52 PM

I found the full text of his manifesto in a couple of minutes.

There's not a crazy expression in it. And nothing very unfamiliar. He's just extremely committed to an ideology which is fairly mainstream in white America. The only reason there are any African-Americans left alive is that almost all armed-to-the-teeth white bigots are also gutless couch potatoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 02:00 PM

It's not "fairly mainstream", and the rest of that paragraph is complete bullshit, Jack. How long have you actually lived here in the US?

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,#
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 02:27 PM

Social media has opened the door for wing-nuts all over the world to espouse philosophies of one sort or other. The copyright on stupidity isn't owned by the US of A alone.

The difference I note over the past few years is how frenetically the pace of events is moving. There are many people posting to this thread who fail to mention or even allude to the scope of the social engineering being done to us all. Austerity placed upon the poor in the UK, the blaming of other races in the US, the singling out of Muslims in Canada, and so many people buying into this crap fed to us by the media. The News is not our friend.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: DMcG
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 02:52 PM

"Very few people need guns... Hunters... "

I wonder how many need to hunt.
If they want to hunt for sport I would not dress that as need myself.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,#
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 03:04 PM

Here we go round the mulberry bush . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 03:10 PM

What you posted were just opinion...

Gway, kid, ya bother me!

          -W.C. Fields

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST,#
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 03:22 PM

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."

W. C. Fields

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 03:49 PM

3 people killed by the Boston terrorist with a pressure cooker. He was accused of using "weapons of mass destruction".

9 people killed by the Charleston terrorshit with guns and all the usual suspects are making excuses for him. They might disapprove of his methods, but sure as hell his aims.

Why I left the Cat.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 04:41 PM

> Surely the greatest country in the world can produce someone capable of making it happen.

You would think so. But I don't see anybody who has the nerve or desire to do so. Part of it is cowardice, but part is an awareness of the facts. I have recorded a number of these already. You mistake awareness of what is practically impossible with shoulder-shrugging.

You'll recall that after the Connecticut school massacre, there were resounding cries for significant new gun laws. In the event, no such laws were enacted. What did happen was that gun sales went sky-high because of a rumor that "Obama is going to use the shooting as an excuse [sic] to outlaw gun sales."

Tens of millions of *voters* want guns. And they are determined to keep the guns they have. And criminals and psychopaths of the kind we're discussing don't give two hoots in hell about the law. If no more guns were to be produced, there would still be plenty of illegal guns to be had and plenty of legal guns to be stolen.

There used to be a familiar bumper sticker that said "God, Guts, and Guns Built America." Many people believe this to be literally true, and the that the three ideas are inseparable.

When I was in public grade school in a large,liberal city, long before the era of mass shootings, we were taught that the intention of the Second Amendment was rwofold: to deter foreign invasions, and to thwart and federal turn toward despotism. In the last resort, the people would be armed and could protect themselves.

Besides the perceived need for self (and more usually family and home) defense, the idea that personal firearms will protect our freedoms from a theoretical rogue government or Chinese invasion is taken very seriously - though not quite as seriously as the idea that the government may one day collapse and it will be every man for himself.

So far, I've not heard more than whisper in the media about any new measures in the wake of the Charleston massacre. And that mere whisper came from the President, who acknowledged in almost the same breath that Washington politics have made real gun reform virtually impossible.

In a democracy, the majority gets what it wants. And it wants guns.

When I wrote my representatives in the wake of the Connecticut massacre that we needed tighter gun laws, I got bland, noncommittal form letter from one, a polite refusal from another, and a near blistering rebuff from the third, who said he'd "never lift a finger" to "prevent families from defending themselves."

Do you see the picture more clearly now?

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 05:52 PM

Guest (3:49), you obviously haven't "left the Cat"and playing "my favorite atrocity is worse than yours" is senseless. Killed with guns or improvised bombs, murdered outright instilled with fear and forever changed both physically and mentally--it's ALL evil. Each separate individual hell isn't easier to live with than any others.

And it will keep on happening until we at least LOOK for solutions that are based on reality and not political ideology.

Jim and Keith, do you ever consider NOT wrecking threads with your personal issues?

NOT HERE--NOT THIS TIME

I wish you would consider not ruining threads for your own personal turn-on, but that's pointless. Neither of you (nor a tiny number of others) is capable of thinking about the greater good or even whether you make yourselves look completely ballistic.

And GUEST,# is right when it comes to "the crap fed to us by the media" and everything else he said. I can't speak to anywhere else but the USA, but it feels like we're being conditioned to feel hopeless. We have the news-story-du-jour that's hammered 24/7 by networks that aren't, for the most part, about news. Our TV shows are about crime, cops, forensics, inane 'reality shows', or they're re-boots of some semi-successful series, because creativity is (it seems) frowned upon. Just about the best, most honest news we can get is from Jon Stewart, a comedian. Misinformation and complete bullshit is propagated by formerly reliable sources because (I assume) it's more interesting and so gets better ratings than spin-free reporting. And meanwhile, Republicans cut spending on education, food stamps, women's programs, they try to harm voting rights, any attempts to prevent psycos from getting guns, all the progress unions have made, and... oh, there's the whole killing-the-planet thing.

I don't know if the devaluation of life and the popularity of highly reported murder is a cause or an effect, but I think we need to focus on what we can do something about.

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 06:13 PM

"Do you see the picture more clearly now? "
.,,.
I take this question to be addressed to me, Lighter, as it concluded a response to a quotation from my last post.

More clearly? No -- for I have seen it perfectly clearly all along --

and an astonishingly ugly picture it is too. I wonder any self-respecting family can choose to decorate their home with it & bear to live with it on the wall!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Charleston - dare we talk about it
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Jun 15 - 06:28 PM

In a democracy, the majority gets what it wants. And it wants guns.

Sorry, Lighter. Wrong.

Guess you didn't bother to read the artical noted at 21 Jun 15 - 11:11 AM. Why let mere facts interfere with a good rant?