Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

"You should know the facts of that incident before you run out and prescribe some law that you claim could have prevented it," he told Fox News.

just lmao at any Republican saying this with a straight face

like that Trump tweet...didn't Trump himself roll back a regulation preventing mentally ill people from buying guns?

The tweet is perfectly apropos, in terms of Trump appealing to his true base, cops and bootlickers.

Yeah I am going to show this to my students tonight. It shows how toxic to our society the NRA is and how it started.

from the transcript: (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/gunned-down/transcript/)

NARRATOR:
It formally happened in 1977 at the NRA Convention in Cincinnati. As they got down to business, there was a showdown, hunters and sportsmen versus gun rights activists.

CBS NEWS:
[May 21, 1977] The National Rifle Association convention in Cincinnati went into overtime last night, a stormy all-night session. When it was over, some dissident members had taken control of the 400,000-member organization. What it means is even stricter support for the right to bear arms and against gun control.

i've read quotes from parents at the school itself who said they don't think gun control is the answer, they own guns and don't want anyone taking them away

well sorry guys i owned many packs of tareytons and i felt it was fundamental to my freedoms to be able to own those tareytons and smoke them in restuarants and clubs but that right got taken away and you know what it's way better this way so sometimes you just gotta suck it up and admit you've been a fucknuckle, and if you can't admit that then it doesn't matter cause it's happening anyway with or without you

I'm all for full repeal of the second amendment, but it seems like one constructive tack to take in the interim is to do everything possible to convince gun owners that the NRA is an organization of psychotics.

that assumes gun owners would have a problem with that tho

i mean a lot of them seem happy enough with trump as president

Yeah, I was just thinking of how good a job we've done at convincing them to not vote against their own interests for decades.

If you repeal the second amendment, wouldn’t this become a state issue? I don’t know if that’s the best outcome. Wouldn’t you need to pass a law around possession and enforcement too? I don’t know anything about law. I need a V(il)ox(or) explainer.

well sorry guys i owned many packs of tareytons and i felt it was fundamental to my freedoms to be able to own those tareytons and smoke them in restuarants and clubs but that right got taken away and you know what it's way better this way so sometimes you just gotta suck it up and admit you've been a fucknuckle, and if you can't admit that then it doesn't matter cause it's happening anyway with or without you

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand)

ha - the problem is we have a constitutional right to bear handguns, according to the Heller decision, not to smoke Tareytons.

i mean a lot of them seem happy enough with trump as president

There’s a crazy number of gun owners. I don’t know if it’s possible to say they have any form of unified voice (regardless of what the NRA claims).

Repealing the 2nd Amendment is the best democratic option we have. With the courts packed with Republican judges and the ruling in DC v Heller it’s unlikely that any other gun control laws will stand until the constitution itself is changed.

what about dismantling the NRA?

more xxp. Why do I try to post from my phone on the underground train

more xxp. Why do I try to post from my phone on the underground train

Either way, limiting guns will not happen in this country, any more than we will get universal healthcare. We know or at least deeply suspect the solutions we need, but it just won't happen because Americans are by and large stupid/uneducated, contrarian, reactionary, self-defeating, hateful, hurtful, intellectually incurious and so on.

we need a pvmic-style thread just for posts this lib.

i do think pervasively violent/cruel entertainment is an expression of our malaise but i don't think it contributes any more than 50 other minor phenomena we're also stuck in a feedback loop with.

I don't think many gun owners realize how extreme of an organization the NRA is.

They see the NRA Museum and NRA Freedom Days at Bass Pro Shops, where they buy their shotguns and shells for their annual hunting trips. They see the NRA decal on the back windshields of their neighbors. For most of them, I'd bet they view the NRA as benign as the makers of Yeti coolers. And when they get the startling flyers in the mail and wonder "Why would Elizabeth Warren want to take away my hunting rifle? What next, my fishing pole?"

The Second Amendment is problematic, but it's not the main problem. No one ever says, "They'll take my freedom of speech away only from my dead cold fingers!" No one ever says, "They'll take my freedom of assembly only from my dead cold fingers!" But you've got this massively-funded, well-oiled organization who chant KILL OR BE KILLED, KILL OR BE KILLED at every chance.

What it's going to take to get any progress is to successfully paint the NRA as what it is: A terroristic organization that holds no sanctity of life.

that is why i asked about how about we start by dismantling the power of the NRA?

Absolutely. But I didn't say I knew how!

Yes, as many have said, discrediting and diminishing the NRA is important. But only as a means to an end / “interim milestone” as we say in the bureaucracy

yep

Feel like pushing for the repeal of the Second Amendment is a lot like voting for the Green candidate for president. Your position will be buried underneath opposition from both sides of power.

Here's another apples to oranges comparison: You have about as much chance confiscating 310 million guns as you do deporting 10 million illegal immigrants.

If you live in America and likely to die before the 22nd Century, you may as well try your hardest to get your fellow citizens to keep their guns responsibly. More checks. No more gun shows. Better record keeping. More limits. More taxes. Etc.

Ugh, just ugh.

Simple rules like: people who are domestic abusers prohibited from keeping guns.

Samantha Grady was in her Holocaust class with her best friend Wednesday afternoon when they heard two shots fired outside the door of their classroom in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

there has to be a way to open your heartbreaking human-interest story about a school shooting which doesn't use the startling phrase 'holocaust class'

a big part of the issue is that the NRA is such a unique lobbying organization, in that they are dead set at opposing literally *any* measure of compromise on gun control and are willing to straight up tell their members that a ban on bump stocks is just a few short steps away from door-to-door confiscation of hunting rifles/forced enslavement. so better jam those phone lines now! I can't think of anything like it - imagine tobacco lobbyists demonstrating full-throated opposition to a law making it illegal to blow smoke into a baby's face, arguing that actually if we forced babies to smoke from birth, they wouldn't have such a hard time handling secondhand smoke.

there's no compromise with these people - they still recite the "evil people are evil, they will commit crimes and kill no matter what" line as though it's tattooed on their skull, which is funny because these are the same types who think a 3000-mile border wall is a GREAT idea, and in fact the only thing that can truly make America great again right now. I say give each kid his own nuclear warhead when he or she turns 18 - only the truly evil ones will use them, and if they're evil criminals, who's to stop them from detonating the planet???

"a big part of the issue is that the NRA is such a unique lobbying organization, in that they are dead set at opposing literally *any* measure of compromise on gun control and are willing to straight up tell their members that a ban on bump stocks is just a few short steps away from door-to-door confiscation of hunting rifles/forced enslavement."

not trying to bring up any moral equivalence or whatever but pro-choice activists take such an uncompromising stance too, no?

oh boy
why go there?

Wtf? I don't remember I time when owning a gun was illegal xp

Ugh, just ugh.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, February 15, 2018 10:03 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't even know why i clicked on one of the videos in this link w/ the shooting footage but what the FUCK is nbc doing by adding suspensful music like this is a goddamn thriller?? what the fuck?

tv news is entertainment iirc

pro-choice activists aren't a powerhouse lobbying organization though. plus I don't really feel like it's the same goal - they want to make abortions safe and legal, while the NRA stands vehemently opposed to not only gun control but any gun safety measure as well. I remember hearing they lobbied against the fingerprint scanner because they were afraid lawmakers might make it a requirement for future guns to be outfitted for one (plus they'd presumably hurt the resale value, etc. etc)

Anti-choicers constantly bringing up abortion as a barter to mass murder from guns drives me nuts. Not saying that this argument was made here but each time I see it (which is plenty) I want to stab myself in the uterus.

I was wondering about the efficacy of protesting NRA beneficiaries with giant bloody posters of shot children and names of victims. Probably someone would shoot you.

Let's arm everyone with guns and then let the mental health safety net (which btw we've slowly poked more and more holes in over time) catch the dangerous ones. (PS -- we didn't make the net very large so it's easy to go around and past it unnoticed, right to the school and /or workplace on the other side.)

I'm not an anti-choicer, I just wanted to counter the incorrect claim that the NRA is unique in its uncompromisingness.

The NRA is not unique in its lack of compromise. It's also not unique for being an organization of people. I don't see how bringing pro-choice activism into this argument is at all useful.

If you repeal the second amendment, wouldn’t this become a state issue? I don’t know if that’s the best outcome. Wouldn’t you need to pass a law around possession and enforcement too? I don’t know anything about law. I need a V(il)ox(or) explainer.

― Allen (etaeoe), Thursday, February 15, 2018 9:36 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, you would need to pass all kinds of laws probably - but passing all those laws and making them stick is currently impossible because of the way the second amendment has been transformed through radical gun-activist interpretations over the last few decades. repealing the amendment is just a step towards being able to do anything at the federal or state level.

it does have its own thread, fwiw: Repeal the Second Amendment

only way 2nd amendment repeal would work is unilateral top-down disarmament: military, police, Paul Blart, Wal-Mart, etc. any form of repeal where a cop can own a gun and regular citizens can't isn't going to work for obvious reasons

Yeah, the state having a monopoly on force is not going to work for anyone.

Plus, the only way to enforce repealing the 2nd amendment would be for the government to literally go door to door and take everyone's guns away. Talk about prophecy fulfillment.

“not trying to bring up any moral equivalence or whatever but pro-choice activists take such an uncompromising stance too, no?”

This is the craziest fucking thing I’ve read today.

Saw this: "It’s been 8,008 days since the UK had a school shooting. The United States has had 18 since January 1st."

it was the Dunblane massacre that precipitated tighter gun control laws in the UK, and the result was...

i didn't read all the recent posts but re the video game / violence link it should be pointed out that violent video games almost certainly reduce crime. iirc it's not clear whether that's bc it's an outlet for aggression or, (imo), more likely bc if you're playing video games you're busy not doing violent stuff. (nb this is also why when there's a big action film released there are fewer crimes committed - bc a lot of the young males who commit the crimes are watching a flick and not drinking / partying + subsequently making bad decisions).

cf https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18045578

hey america, you're doing it wrong

student loans
health care
mass killings

compared with other industrialized countries your problems are OFF THE FUCKING SCALE

Dude we know okay, take a back seat

Way things are going, I will myself be shouting that shit at the US from the outside soon enough.

Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman who killed at least 17 people at a Florida high school on Wednesday, trained with a white-supremacist group, its leader told the Anti-Defamation League. Jordan Jereb of the Republic of Florida told ADL that Cruz had participated in at least one training exercise near Tallahassee area, carpooling with other ROF members from south Florida. ADL reports the group describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/nikolas-cruz-trained-with-florida-white-supremacist-group-leader-says