There is a truckload here. I will offer some initial, off-the-cuff thoughts/responses.
I do not think most people are advocating that placing more restrictions on gun ownership/possession is all that need be done. I certainly am not. It is a multifaceted problem. It seems, though, that you are the one who is saying that it is a single-solution issue âthat if this country stops or at least greatly mitigates its excessive dependence on medication that the problem would be solved. Moreover, you also seem to implicitly be arguing that the prevalence of guns is not even part of the problem. That stance seems counterintuitive and, from my perspective, inescapably wrong.
You argue that other western countries have more restrictions on firearms because those countries do not have the equivalent of our Second Amendment. This makes no sense to me. These countries have enacted these restrictions. Yes, if they had the equivalent of a Second Amendment, they would not be able to enact some of these restrictions, but that does not mean they had no choice but to enact the restrictions. Obviously, they thought it wise to enact these restrictions. And the statistics speak for themselves.
You maintain that the excessive dependence on medication is a uniquely American problem and that it is this dependence that has resulted in the mass shootings. I would not disagree that America has an excessive dependence on medications, more so than other countries. That does not mean, however, that other countries do not have citizens/residents suffering from mental illness, isolation, lack of community. A difference is those so suffering do not have as ready access to guns as do those similarly inflicted in this country. Your refusal to even acknowledge this is puzzling.
You ask, what has changed? Since when? Since the advent of the Second Amendment? Some later time? Much has changed. Firearms have become much more sophisticated. More people can be killed quickly by a shooter using a firearm like an AR-15. There was a federal ban on âassaultâ firearms from 1994 to 2004, when it was not renewed, so gun laws have not remained unchanged, Social media plays a significant role, in my opinion. A good number of these mass murderers left social media trails. Criminal studies have long recognized the domino effect of what are labeled as copy cat crimes. It is a troubling phenomenon. Lockdowns? I assume you are talking about COVID âlockdowns.â We have not had lockdowns since when COVID first emerged in early 2020. Our society has opened up quite a bit since vaccinations became available in early 2021. Yet the mass shootings have continued. In fact, they have been escalating. I also would point out that other countries experienced more severe lockdowns. How about Italy in 2020? Why did mass shootings not occur there as a result?
You are twisting yourself into knots to avoid acknowledging that the unique American obsession with guns is part of the problem. It is the most glaring difference between America and other western countries.
Agreed - you make many good points here.
My time is restricted to go through it all and submit my responses - overall you make good points but here are horses needing feeding.
I get your point that the USA is obsessed with guns, or a portion of the population are. Sure.
The first thought that comes to me around this and pertaining to a way forward is this - the howling around gun control does not serve your purpose if it is gun control you want, or at least better screening of weapon owners.
Find another way.
It's ;like when you are say visiting somewhere with your small kid, who has become obsessed with some toy that has to be left behind when it is time to depart.
Yanking the toy away and then getting into a screaming match with the toddler over the toy is counter-productive.
So what do you do?
Offer something else in its place, or hype some activity that will be an incentive to leave the new toy and look forward to the next adventure - I am sure you get my drift here.
Easy, smooth, hassle-free....
Your leadership, who might be incompetent but are not stupid, ggtting up behind the sticks and telling you to join the chorus for disarming gun owners and separating them from their rights as citizens surely should make you wonder why they are doing exactly that, knowing full well it would only serve to have you all at each others throats all over again?
Your Second amendment is there to ensure that your other rights as citizens are protected. You are the only country AFAIK who have these rights set out as God-given, not as benevolently allowed you by the government. That is a profound and fundamental thing. We know that what the Government gives the Government can take away.
You are not in that situation - your rights are God-given, whatever that may mean to you.
Ask yourself - why does your leadership continually want you hating on each other? What are they afraid of?
Why are they afraid of yourself and your fellow Americans in unity?
Why do they seem to want the isolated and depressed to remain in that state? Lip service is paid to mental health, mental health, mental health....but little is done to get the population healthy, physically active and unified with some sense of common purpose.
Why is that?
I appreciate the time it took to respond to my post - and you make good points worthy of consideration. I have to go hump haybales.....
In closing, former Congresswoman Leiutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard (D - Hawaii) gave an address at the most recent Western Conservative Summit that you should pay attention to.
She should have been your 2020 Presidential candidate AFAIC
You have probably never heard of her.
There is your problem in a nutshell.
Here it is...... I gotta go
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Jun 10, 2022 - 7:13pm
Jiggz wrote:
I have been out and about in the countryside for a few days....late response duly apologised for and all protocols observed etc....I do think it it a uniquely American problem of relatively recent manifestation. for years your society functioned well, with gun laws as they are.
So, what changed?
. . .
There is a truckload here. I will offer some initial, off-the-cuff thoughts/responses.
I do not think most people are advocating that placing more restrictions on gun ownership/possession is all that need be done. I certainly am not. It is a multifaceted problem. It seems, though, that you are the one who is saying that it is a single-solution issue âthat if this country stops or at least greatly mitigates its excessive dependence on medication that the problem would be solved. Moreover, you also seem to implicitly be arguing that the prevalence of guns is not even part of the problem. That stance seems counterintuitive and, from my perspective, inescapably wrong.
You argue that other western countries have more restrictions on firearms because those countries do not have the equivalent of our Second Amendment. This makes no sense to me. These countries have enacted these restrictions. Yes, if they had the equivalent of a Second Amendment, they would not be able to enact some of these restrictions, but that does not mean they had no choice but to enact the restrictions. Obviously, they thought it wise to enact these restrictions. And the statistics speak for themselves.
You maintain that the excessive dependence on medication is a uniquely American problem and that it is this dependence that has resulted in the mass shootings. I would not disagree that America has an excessive dependence on medications, more so than other countries. That does not mean, however, that other countries do not have citizens/residents suffering from mental illness, isolation, lack of community. A difference is those so suffering do not have as ready access to guns as do those similarly inflicted in this country. Your refusal to even acknowledge this is puzzling.
You ask, what has changed? Since when? Since the advent of the Second Amendment? Some later time? Much has changed. Firearms have become much more sophisticated. More people can be killed quickly by a shooter using a firearm like an AR-15. There was a federal ban on âassaultâ firearms from 1994 to 2004, when it was not renewed, so gun laws have not remained unchanged, Social media plays a significant role, in my opinion. A good number of these mass murderers left social media trails. Criminal studies have long recognized the domino effect of what are labeled as copy cat crimes. It is a troubling phenomenon. Lockdowns? I assume you are talking about COVID âlockdowns.â We have not had lockdowns since when COVID first emerged in early 2020. Our society has opened up quite a bit since vaccinations became available in early 2021. Yet the mass shootings have continued. In fact, they have been escalating. I also would point out that other countries experienced more severe lockdowns. How about Italy in 2020? Why did mass shootings not occur there as a result?
You are twisting yourself into knots to avoid acknowledging that the unique American obsession with guns is part of the problem. It is the most glaring difference between America and other western countries.
Clearly. Who's going to protect those kids from a disgruntled teacher?! I'm thinking backpack, lunchbox, lap top, ammo box (small) and gun for every kid...
Clearly, the only way to solve this country's gun problem is to arm every single human.
The suggestion that teachers pack a hand gun is absurd and dangerous.
Clearly. Who's going to protect those kids from a disgruntled teacher?! I'm thinking backpack, lunchbox, lap top, ammo box (small) and gun for every kid...
Kinda makes sense. The US gun/self-defence entitlement ain't goin' nowhere so firearms might be a good pick for an economy headed into recession, and a stock market that still has a ways to decline. I have not looked carefully but would guess that firearm sales are reasonably recession proof.
It also makes sense to the extent that investors would rationally anticipate increased gun purchases prior to new restrictions (if they are ever introduced).
The suggestion that teachers pack a hand gun is absurd and dangerous.
If, as it appears from your posts, this is more a uniquely American problem due, in your estimation, to a over-medicated populace, why do you think almost all other âwesternizedâ countries have way more restrictions on gun ownership/possession?
I have been out and about in the countryside for a few days....late response duly apologised for and all protocols observed etc....I do think it it a uniquely American problem of relatively recent manifestation. for years your society functioned well, with gun laws as they are.
So, what changed?
Increased isolation and loneliness and mass medication of the populace. and a crappy diet becoming more and more the norm.
Other 'westernised' nations (nanny states) have way more restrictions because they have never had a Second Amendment equivalent in their founding documentation. So there was no backstop to disarming the population. That does not mean the people are happier than you nor that their future is in any way better than yours.
And, I get that you would like to see the Second Amendment scrapped and binned altogether and your country become another nanny state, but that does not answer the question of what changed, nor does it prohibit the truck being driven into crowds etc.
What changed?
Answer the question.
I think the misfits and the troubled feel more and more isolated, because you no longer have a sense of community and it is harder for people to feel as if they belong to a community or a larger group.
Even a church goes a long way towards solving this but your country has effectively removed that as a connective element. The cry goes out and rings long into the small hours about 'mental health!, mental health!', but you weren't an insane society in the past - so what has changed, that is primarily in America and not in other countries?
The troubled go to their doc and get....radical psychotropic drugs - profits to big pharma and their captured politicians, sure - but a heavy heavy toll on your society. That's a relatively recent thing (like from the 70's or 80's or whatever).
You tweak your back one day lifting a shopping bag from the trunk because you have no core or ab strength coz you are 200 pounds overweight and haven't moved your body since you finished school, and you go to the doc and...you get serious, trippy, addictive fucking painkillers!
And you take them!
Are you nuts?
No, you are hypnotised by your TV.
I heard an interview with a doctor a few days ago - he sounded Jamaican or Caribbean but it was on an American news source - and he predicted something like 400 mass shootings in the USA this year as a result of those lockdowns that you all loved so much ie...increased isolation.
We will see.
Its in your country so doesn't really affect me.
But it might affect you.
I am surprised that the main remedy here seems to be the gun law thing.
I thought you would be more invested than that, and tend towards focusing very intently on potential causes other than those given you by your media.
I really would have thought you would be more invested, or more concerned. than that.
As I have said - trucks and crowds, acid, whatever....hey, poison in water supplies?
Dave is seemingly quite alert to possible incidents as he and P go about their lives - it's not a bad thing. Good for you, Dave. I have lived my life since 1986 just like that. Always looking for the threat. I can tell you that it becomes mighty tiring - always being 'ON'.
But it isn't normal and shouldn't be necessary in a civilised society - and if the population is disarmed, will you then have to focus your energies on avoiding crowded sidewalks or pedestrian crossings or drinking only water that you have purified yourself?
How tiring...
Gun control will not solve your problem, despite what your political leadership and media sources say.
Instead of being used as an issue to unite your country and society, it is being used, as often happens, against you and as a means to divide you further.
Do none of you find it odd that I could post some Tweet about one or other issue and be bundled up by one of your 3 letter agencies probably within hours, but I could go to the same agencies with a written manifesto saying I want to go and commit some crazy mass shooting, and they would let me back out onto the street to go right ahead and do it?
I am paraphrasing here, but many many of your mass killers have records, files etc and are known to your agencies.
It makes me think that the crazies are begging to be stopped before they do something, but basically nothing happens. Isn't that odd to you?
How many of the shooters are known, have been questioned, have been arrested, have been reported.....but nothing is done.
Doesn't that make you wonder?
You don't think maybe it is intended to keep you all at each others throats, hating on each other because they wear red and you prefer blue, and to keep you in a state of fear and borderline hysteria?
It is pretty sad to watch, actually.
And - having said all that, I think that as a result of the increase in the drug-addled and socially isolated that populate your society, as a result of the massive division that you have allowed to happen to your society, I do think that there should be background checks on the competence and mental and medical capacities of new gun owners, and I suspect that most responsible gun owners would agree with me.
However, you have allowed and voted for your government institutions to become so politicised, that they can't be trusted to adequately weed out the drugged up, depressed psychotic prospective gun owner from a prospective gun owner who think differently to you and might support a different candidate to you, so yeh...there will be no pushing that turd back up the poop chute.
You are done.
Your country is fucked - you voted for it and now you get to enjoy it - so, have fun.
What did your TV tell you to do today?
Who did your TV tell you to hate today?
May as well take a pill and chill out...hook up that HFCS intravenous drip, and wait for the end....watch some more TV while it approaches.
What a waste of a once fine, proud and competent nation.
Your ancestors who jumped out of LC's onto the beaches of Normandy are not proud of you.
Maybe the pendulum has swung too far in pain management. Opiate addiction isn't the worst thing in the world (until you supply dries up).
My mom's old neighbor got hooked on Oxy. One day he went to the pharmacy and they denied to refill his script. He lost it (had a bad temper to begin with) flew into a rage, got in his car and tore out of the parking lot head on into a mother and kid coming down the road. He died and so did the mom. He left behind a wife, son in high school.
He was released on May 24 after having back surgery and had been complaining about back pain. A week after being released, he goes and kills the surgeon who operated on him (and others), presumably because of the back pain. The kicker: he bought the semi-automatic rifle he used that morning.
.
Seems to me this scenario presents an argument for a waiting period of, say, at least three days between arranging purchase and obtaining the firearm. A waiting period may not stop a person like this guy from acting on his grievance, but a âcooling off periodâ possibly could prevent at least a few of these. And what is the downside? It seems to me that anyone who has an âurgentâ need for a gun right away is likely to be someone who intends to use it on someone. That urgency, if expressed or otherwise made known, should be a red flag in and of itself.
Maybe the pendulum has swung too far in pain management. Opiate addiction isn't the worst thing in the world (until you supply dries up).
Location: 543 miles west of Paradis,1491 miles eas Gender:
Posted:
Jun 2, 2022 - 2:33pm
ScottFromWyoming wrote:
steeler wrote:
He was released on May 24 after having back surgery and had been complaining about back pain. A week after being released, he goes and kills the surgeon who operated on him (and others), presumably because of the back pain. The kicker: he bought the semi-automatic rifle he used that morning. . Seems to me this scenario presents an argument for a waiting period of, say, at least three days between arranging purchase and obtaining the firearm. A waiting period may not stop a person like this guy from acting on his grievance, but a “cooling off period” possibly could prevent at least a few of these. And what is the downside? It seems to me that anyone who has an “urgent” need for a gun right away is likely to be someone who intends to use it on someone. That urgency, if expressed or otherwise made known, should be a red flag in and of itself.
