When will guns be a campaign issue?

[OddBeMe]

[MrOracle]

Multiple people have used cars to drive into crowds, including crowds of children, leading to many deaths. Did we need to make cars a campaign issue?

The Boston Marathon bombers made bombs out of pressure cookers. Did we need to rush to enact new pressure cooker legislation?

Why not? The answer is simple: we recognize that cars and pressure cookers are tools that don't have any autonomy - they are only dangerous if HUMANS use them maliciously. Guns are exactly the same.

You can load a gun and sit in front of it for 20 years, and you'll be perfectly safe, because the gun isn't going to shoot you. It takes a human - one who is either ignorant, negligent, or homicidal, in order for that gun to cause harm - and it's really the HUMAN that's causing the harm. We don't blame Ford when someone drives an Explorer through a group of kids at a bus stop, right?

The mental health care system in the US - and in much of the world - is in a chaotic state - in many cases INTENTIONALLY so. Much of the industry is completely corrupt, often by drug companies who encourage doctors to put people on their often-experimental drugs - and to even use them for off-label purposes (prescribing these drugs for uses that they weren't intended or approved to treat) in order to sell more drugs. And you have a vast swath of doctors who are not operating medically but rather politically - as activists instead of doctors. It's not a surprise that trust in this system is at an all-time low.

We will likely find out that the kid who did this has a long history of being bullied in school, and that the school did nothing about it. We'll also likely find out that the kid was on medications that have known homicidal and suicidal side effects (almost every school shooting in the last 20 years meets these two criteria). But NO ONE is going to have any interest in addressing either of those issues, because they've had no interest in doing anything for the last 20 years of such events. Those are real problems that could be solved - but would not win any political points and in fact would place responsibility on the schools for things that happen in schools (such as bullying being systematically ignored) - and since these are government schools, well, we certainly can't make THEM responsible for anything.

Anyone who is prepared to give up their life - and given that most shooters end up dead, that's always an expectation - is certainly not going to let getting access to a tool stop them. They'll either steal a gun or they'll use something else, like a bomb.

When schools are wasting their time and energy prosecuting 10 year olds with solid plastic toy guns 2" long, rather than stopping the bullying that goes on in every school, you know that these government institutions have their priorities SO misaligned with the threats they're dealing with that it would be comical if the outcomes weren't so tragic. But, again, we wouldn't ever want to assign any responsibility there, would we? Much easier to blame tool than a person - tools don't have defense lawyers and political connections.

[OddBeMe]

Can we have the same regulation and registries for cars as we do guns?

[MrOracle]

No. Very specifically not. Cars aren't a constitutionally-protected item - guns are. And every single example of gun registration has inevitably led to gun confiscation. England. France. Germany. Canada. Australia. New Zealand. I could go on, but you can't name me a country where registration hasn't led to confiscation, because there aren't any examples of that.

You should also be very aware of the fact that the government very much enjoys selective enforcement. Criminals with long criminal histories routinely have gun charges dropped, and often even have murder, armed robbery, and similar charges significantly reduced, while law-abiding middle class citizens with no criminal record are routinely prosecuted to the full extent of the law and given max sentences, even in completely non-violent cases, with the specific intent of having grounds to deny their constitutional rights to own guns.

It's PRECISELY that kind of dual-class system that makes many people distrust the government and thus have zero trust in any kind of government gun restrictions. And that's EXACTLY why our founding fathers chose to recognize our right to own and carry guns and other arms for personal protection and, when necessary, to fight tyrannical governments. And these men know exactly what that meant, as they'd just finished fighting a very bloody war against their own tyrannical government.

[OddBeMe]

In that case only muskets are constitutionally protected.

[MrOracle]

So, you think the First Amendment protections only apply to the spoken word and hand presses, and not to websites or emails or social media? That's the exact same argument. Which is why the Supreme Court sided against that idea.

Again, these men just fought a war against their own government, and during that war, they used privately owned artillery pieces and even privately owned warships, among other things. They could have easily specified "muskets" if that's what they meant, but that isn't what they meant - and in other contemporaneous writings, they made it clear that the purpose was to maintain a parity with the government. They couldn't know exactly what progress would bring, but they wanted to make sure that regular people had access to whatever the government had.

[OddBeMe]

You’re the constitutional purist. Go by what our forefathers thought. They only knew of muskets.

[OddBeMe]

We’ve updated laws to restrict the first amendment. Public disorder, shouting fire in a crowded theater trope.

[lightbulb27]

should be and more often, they are core ideas and positions.

alanis morisette should write an ironic verse about that.

we should have controls and we do, but it will never be enough. Maybe we need more, open to that. problem is, criminals donot follow laws, black markets (just talk to the venzeulans in nyc getting guns through food packages), mistakes happen, kids are mischevious, and people can be warped or have bad days.

at least he is living is truth... it's a fact of life, and protecting himself... at least in the front, from bullets. will he do anything to help us... nope. he lets you keep your firearms and shootup the bad guys. just don't mis.

I see no protection from drone attack. Only a matter of time until there is a bomb drone attack assasination. then we can talk drone control.

[OddBeMe]

Alain’s doesn’t have a full grasp of irony. Lol

[SixFootSexy]

3-letter agencies have been manufacturing consent by orchestrating mass shootings in order for gun control to be even a topic of debate. An armed society cannot be easily subjugated and enslaved.

If you want to see how far the government will go, just look at the unlawful lockdowns. Look at Brazil banning X. Look at the mexican gangs taking over cities this month in Colorado.

Do you want to eat ze bugs? I don't. Hence, guns and the necessity to own them.

[OddBeMe]

You’re an idiot. White kids with personality disorders are committing mass murders. If not egged on by racist Trump.

[SixFootSexy]

Is that what the TV told you, @OddBeMe?

[goaded]

TV is never as accurate as what you hear through the fillings in your teeth!

[SixFootSexy]

@goaded I agree. Depends on if the fillings are made of mercury like what they did in Boomer dental work.

[Dargil]

They are now. Protection of the Second Amendment, a Constitutional Right is as important to Conservatives Systemic Infanticide (AKA Abortion), which isn't, is to Democrat/Communists.

[OddBeMe]

2a was exactly the same as Prohibition. Just fyi.

[Dargil]

How so?

[OddBeMe]

Prohibition was an amendment genius. So was its expulsion.

[exitseven]

Yes especially if they try and shoot Pressiden Trump again.

[OddBeMe]

Who’s they?

[Juxtapose]

It is a cultural issue. We have had guns for hundreds of years and did not shoot up schools.

[goaded]

You didn't have cheap semi-automatics until the 20th century and arms manufacturers didn't advertise or promote their military-style firearms to the general public, with an NRA more interested in selling guns than gun or child safety.

www.propublica.org/.../how-bushmaster-made-ar-15-into-best-selling-rifle-us

[Juxtapose]

No, you had cannons on merchant ships which were the height of military technology at the time. That would be equivalent to civilians now being able to arm their merchant ships with nukes.

[goaded]

Merchant ships didn't attack innocent people out of boredom or frustration. They almost never went near schools. You know you're not addressing the point, which is about individuals being encouraged to buy relatively cheap weapons that can be used to shoot dozens in seconds, with no consideration of responsibility.

[Juxtapose]

America has had gun clubs in schools well before these shootings started happening. It is cultural rot but yet you want to blame it on firearms. Why? Do you want to see America disarmed so it is helpless against its tyrannical government? Why are you purposely misplacing what the problem is?

[goaded]

Whatever the reason for people committing mass shootings, its the guns that make them possible. It's greed and lack of responsibility that has put military style weapons into people's hands, including children's. Hopefully the murder charges against the parent who placed the gun into the hands of the shooter who had already threatened to shoot up his school will catch other parent's attention. That boy was too young to be in a militia, and his social media posts were an obvious red flag, but the laws of the state failed the victims.

Yes, a hunting rifle may be semi-automatic, but it's obviously designed to shoot game, not people (and has smaller magazine sizes). AR-15s are designed for shooting people, yet you act surprised when that's what they're used for.

I could get an AR-15 in the UK, but I'd have to spend months if not years proving that I'm not going to use it on anyone.

[Juxtapose]

No, an AR-15 is not a military rifle. The civilian version doesn't even have full auto lol.

Russia and Japan both have strict gun control but vastly different crime rates. It is the culture, stop misrepresenting the issue on purpose.

[Juxtapose]

Yeah and in the UK they are fucking arresting people for posting online that it's okay to be white. Fuck the United kingdom.

[Juxtapose]

"The AR-15 isn't an assault rifle. It's a semi automatic gun. If a shooter used a semi automatic handgun with a 18 round magazine and carried 5 or 6 extra magazines with him he could do the same amount of damage in the same amount of time. Time to start taking responsibility for your own actions! It's the person not the gun!"

[goaded]

"Military-style", I said, "designed for shooting people", I said. Try arguing with what I actually say, rather than what you want to hear.

Nice to see you admit that US culture is more like Russia (only 10% lower murder rate) than anywhere sensible. That explains why you guys love Putin so much, and Putin likes the chaos you cause.

[Juxtapose]

First of all Russia has strict gun control and doesn't have numerous civil liberties we have but nice try.

Second of all, the second amendment is not for hunting or sports shooting. It is for the people to defend themselves against tyrannical governments.

[Juxtapose]

If anything the citizenry should have access to fully automatic weapons and other such things.

[goaded]

No, it's for STATES to raise a militia to defend the country from invasion by foreign powers. Under the control of their democratically elected government. Not individuals to start shooting the US military or cops. That's sedition.

[Juxtapose]

@goaded no actually the Supreme Court has ruled against you and they are 100% right. You do not need to be part of an organization whatsoever to bear arms.

[Juxtapose]

The second amendment is so the people can protect themselves against a tyrannical government that the founding fathers likely knew was inevitable even if far into the future.

[Juxtapose]

supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/

^^ it's straight up right there.

[goaded]

Once again, you're arguing against what you wish I'd said. I said that militia (not the cosplayers, the real, if obsolete, thing) is an armed force of citizens under the control of their lawfully elected civilian government.

Taking up arms against your government is sedition, at least while there are elections.

Speaking of which, what do you think of Trump admitting that Biden beat him in 2020?

[OddBeMe]

Nor did we have masses of children in one place where another child was bullied. Beyond that, murder rates in the 1800s are sparse because of lack of paperwork. But all evidence suggests it was shitty.

[Juxtapose]

@goaded lol America was founded on sedition against the British.

[goaded]

Yes, on the basis that they had no representation in government. You don't have that excuse today because you have peaceful, democratic, means to change your government.

Trump was always lying to you about the 2020 election, he just let it slip that Biden beat him, and they were planning this whole "stop the steal" bullshit for 2016, just look at the website Roger Stone created back then. https://archive.is/https://stopthesteal.org/

[Juxtapose]

@goaded no, not really.

act.represent.us/.../usa-oligarchy-research-explained

He "beat" him. He didn't BEAT him. Get it?

[goaded]

Trump: "I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, 'You would win. You can't not win.' And I got millions more votes than that and lost by a whisker".

Did you look at Roger Stone's "Stop the Steal" website from 2016? https://archive.is/OgRaS It's the entire Republican game plan that they've used since 2020, explained in 2016.

If you're talking about oligarchy, you're not wrong, except you keep voting for the side that makes it worse every time they've got power. Not just when they're in the majority, but blocking anything to do with getting big money out of politics or corruption.

Republican justices (because we have to call them that, since they've been confirmed against the advice and without the consent of nearly half the Senate) have decided that "gratuities" given to elected officials aren't bribes. So as long as the quo comes before the quid, bribery of elected officials is legal. Citizens United decided corporate money is speech, and confirmed that corporations are people.

Why not vote for the party that doesn't do that, at least as a start?

[Juxtapose]

You're talking about neoconservatives from the Bush era. Trump is in reality a moderate liberal and he is going to help modernize the Republican party.

And you don't know who I have voted for dude. I mostly voted for Democrats and third party political candidates for president until the Democrats lost their fucking minds and can't even tell me what a woman is anymore. I never registered for any party, thank fuck.

Donald Trump is going to be their first Republican I'm going to vote for as president.

[goaded]

Roger Stone, the one who nearly went to prison for obstructing justice on Trump's behalf, until Trump pardoned him, has been working for Republicans since Nixon. He's the one who organised the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000 to install Bush, and created the stop the steal website in 2016, intending to do the 2020 bullshit when Trump lost to Clinton.

The Heritage Foundation has been writing proposals for the Republican party for decades, their latest is Project 2025, but Trump implemented two thirds of the previous one in his first year as president. (Your oligarchy study has been debunked, by the way.)

It's the same party, with the same goals, it's just Trump exposed all their ugliness.

[Juxtapose]

What a bunch of bullshit, you don't even acknowledge that only a small minority of what citizens want becomes policy.

[Juxtapose]

Maybe if you keep saying project 2025 it will become real 🤣

[Juxtapose]

And if you click your heels while saying it enough, your president will be alive again.

[OddBeMe]

If you click yours your innate definitions of politics would matter for shit.

[goaded]

Project 2025 is real, it's been published by the Heritage Foundation, who also wrote something similar for Trump for 2017.

"One year after taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations from The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership.”"
https://archive.is/uOiJM

The amazing thing is that they thought it would be a good idea to publish it at all, that the general public would like what it says.

[Juxtapose]

I don't care much of what you think, only what you can prove @OddBeMe

@goaded Project 2025 is a scare tactic used by Democrats. In reality Trump implemented policies that made sense that just so happened to align with it. It's not batshit crazy FAAAR left so of course dumb progressives whine about it.

The accomplishments it lists that he did is not even bad either. It's a NOTHING burger.

[goaded]

That might make sense ("Project 2025 is a scare tactic used by Democrats"), except they're not just saying "this is what the right wants to do", they're pointing at 900 pages written by people closely associated with Trump saying what they want to do.

Including things like repealing the ACA, replacing tens of thousands of bureaucrats who know what they're doing with True Believers, who don't, eliminating the department of education, and making pornography illegal.

Then there's the whole "give me a billion dollars and I'll gut regulations so you can make hundreds of billions" to the oil companies (paraphrased), and that whole global warming thing.

[Juxtapose]

1. Trump does his own thing and they do not own him. He is a moderate liberal and is not some the super religious nut job. He was even for gay people getting together before it was cool.

2. I think that whole thing is good although the pornography thing is bullshit. Pornography is not going to be banned for adults.

3. Environmental regulations are providing the United States from harvesting it's natural resources. We're not going to be foolish like Germany.

[OddBeMe]

Bahahaha, Trump is for sale to whoever compliments him or gives him money to stay out of jail.

[goaded]

1. Of course they own Trump, he's on the hook for hundreds of millions in fines he can't pay.

2. You don't understand how fascism and religious extremism works; they won't stop with just taking away things you disagree with, they'll do the lot, and you won't have a vote any more.

3. The US is extracting more oil than ever before under Biden. More than half Germany's electricity generation was from renewables last year. Our trains run on electricity, they cover most of the country, and they're fast.

The water coming out of our taps doesn't even burn!

[Juxtapose]

1. He could liquidate his assets if he really needed to. People don't own him. He gave up his billionaire lifestyle to try and help Americans.

2. Trump is not a fascist or a religious extremist. Stop with the gaslighting bullshit.

3. Not really, no. Biden stopped the keystone pipeline.

[goaded]

People who are against pornography and abortion are religious extremists. Trump gleefully pointed out that he fulfilled their desire to cancel Roe. He's owned by them; without their votes, he's going to prison.

What do you mean "Not really, no"? Just look at the facts.
U. S. Field Production of Crude Oil (Thousand Barrels per Day):
June 2024: 13,214 (it never reached 13,000 under Trump).
www.eia.gov/.../LeafHandler.ashx

[Juxtapose]

@goaded Trump doesn't care if you look at porn and he left abortion up to the states.

"In Biden’s case, many of the dynamics that supercharged oil and gas industry profits during his presidency were not directly related to his administration’s policies: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a post-pandemic surge in travel demand and the proliferation of new technology that helped the US significantly increase its production of oil and natural gas all played a role, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service."

www.google.com/.../oil-industry-profits-under-biden

[goaded]

And next time, they'll ban abortion federally and redefine obscenity to remove first amendment protection from porn.

I don't see the point in your quote. It seems you agree that the fact is that the US is producing more oil than ever before. I didn't say anything about profits, but Trump's promised to gut regulations in exchange for money to get him elected, which will make the oil companies even more profitable.

[Juxtapose]

@goaded that's absurd.

There are too many regs as it is.

[goaded]

What kind of crazy people want their environment protected from greedy people who live a thousand miles away, right?

[Juxtapose]

@goaded I have seen how you Germans do it. Your trash is very complex to sort, the fucking bottle caps stay stuck to the bottle, you make wooden spoons and fork that have fucking toxic chemicals in them that make them worse for the environment and you guys don't hold the main culprits of pollution responsible. You only focus on Germany and even fuck up your own air conditioning while a lot of pollution comes from the same dirt poor countries with no environmental standards.

[Juxtapose]

If people are actually serious about the environment, they would develop technologies to clean it at a rapid pace and they would hold countries like India and China accountable through economic pressure.

[goaded]

You've been talking to your AfD friends. There won't be toxic chemicals in wooden cutlery in Germany. How do I know? Because there will be regulations to protect the consumer. That's what regulations do.

Has it ever occurred to you that not doing something that needs fixing is cheaper than fixing it after you've done it?

[Juxtapose]

@goaded except I already saw those wooden spoons and forks and they do have those chemicals in them.

The major polluters of the world are not going to be stopped by the efforts of the first world. You absolutely must invest in measures to technologically deal with pollution because it is an inevitability unless you subjugate the entire third world.. including China & India.

[Juxtapose]

The United States and Germany both could become carbon neutral today and it would not stop pollution issues. You would have to have the whole world on board and that's just not possible. So thus, we must deal with the aftermath using technology.

[goaded]

You could see the toxic chemicals in the single use wooden spoons, could you? I wonder why I find it hard to believe you.

Regulations mean that what you're pretending happens is illegal, which is why we have regulations - to protect the public.

[Juxtapose]

Go ahead and keep trusting your government sources then like a good stooge.

Many regulations are nonsensical and even counterproductive.

[goaded]

Of course they are. That's why massive polluters want to get rid of them, not to increase their profits at all.

[OtterMan68]

When the US finally values lives over guns.

[OddBeMe]

Boom

[Agape93]

When is it not a campaign issue?