The AP is a conservative controlled organization. The “liberal media” is a right wing phantasm. It’s being reported that this guy was paranoid about Obama taking his guns because it’s a fact. Deal with it. It’s not a conspiracy. Everybody that knows the guy is saying he had a bone up his ass about Obama coming to get his guns. Was that the reason he went berserk? Probably not as anything more than an aggravating factor. Trying to insinuate that the media is just making it up is childish, though. Even Fox News has been reporting on his Obama phobia. Drudge has a headline about it. It’s not a liberal media conspiracy. Grow up.
All of the victims in this shooting had guns. It didn’t do them any good, did it?
Rand Rover, you seem to believe that if you put words in my mouth–words I’ve never said–you’ve somehow proven something. Do you really believe that these are all new arguments?
This doesn’t seem the appropriate place to argue about the coherence of the concept of moral responsibility. My parenthetical recognizing your views on the matter was intended to avoid the hijack. But I’m happy to discuss it in a new thread if you like.
Please correct me if I mistranslante your post, paragraph by paragraph:
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I am not smart enough to rationalize my fervently held opinion, and the guys who usually do it for me aren’t around.
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I have a gun. Therefore I am tough. You do not have a gun. Therefore you are not tough. (Nevermind the logical inconsistency that we, the non-gun owners, are apparently not so terrified of the outside world that we feel the need to arm ourselves.)
3a. Guns are just like shovels! A tool!
3b. Blah blah blah Founding Fathers!!!
- I hope my giving money to one of the more despicable organizations in the country makes you feel bad, and look foolish. (“Haters” is nice too. I feel like I’m debating Bubba Sparxxx.)
5.Have a nice day. Or maybe fuck you. (Not really sure, don’t know Argent that well.)
And some one else trots out “I’m not going to debate this because it’s not Great Debates. So it doesn’t count.”
This is the level of discourse at the mighty SDMB? C’mon people. Argent is right; there are articulate, intelligent pro-gun members of this board. I would honestly love to hear from them (not to “kick their ass!!” but to, you know talk…) because they are NOT in this thread.
Sad day.
Oh yeah, I so need to grow up. Or maybe you just need to keep your brain turned on when you enter a thread about guns. I never said anything about any “liberal media conspiracy”, dumbshit. What I said is 100% true - there are plenty of times that major news media sources (even “conservative controlled” media) demonstrate bias against guns. The guy in this case very well may have ranted about Obama taking away guns - but media sources like the AP report it in a misleading way, insinuating he went on a shooting spree to “fight the man” or similar nonsense.
Which then leads to ignorant rants from leftist retards like the OP, and leads people like SuntanTigerTamer to make statements along the lines of “well all the major press says so, so that is the reason he killed these cops”.
Here’s the local Pittsburgh paper’s profile of the alleged shooter. Please educate us all how it is misleading and insinuating. Apparently, he was also a regular Stormfront poster, a NWO conspiracy theorist, and a fan of the Turner Diaries and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but I’m sure only leftist retards could possibly see a link between his beliefs and his behavior.
Note: Last bit is not in the linked article. It was on his best friend’s MySpace page before it was scrubbed.
This is an empirical assertion and you should accordingly be prepared to document the truth of your claim. Please do. For bonus points, explain why no enterprising media outlet would take a contrarian pro-gun stance to capture market share (q.v. the Fox News network).
I wasn’t in Pittsburgh on the day in question, and I don’t think you were either. Where should we get our information on the topic?
The “liberal” implication seemed pretty clear to me, but in any case, the allegation that the media is “anti-gun” is nonsense. The media loves guns.
I haven’t seen any such insinuations. Cite?
Cite for the media saying that was the reason? For that matter, can you cite that it WASN’T the reason?
Argent, I think you’re doing a commendable job trying to fight ignorance here, but in this case it’s a losing battle. Like religion and politics, you can’t change people’s minds about firearms on a messageboard.
People that hate guns or are scared of them don’t care that an AR-15 and M-16A2 are actually different guns despite looking exactly the same (The M-16A2 has burst-fire, the AR-15 is semi-auto only), and that only the M-16 is actually an “Assault rifle”.
They don’t care that automatic weapons are so rarely used in crimes in the US that their incidence is almost at the “statistical rounding error” level.
And they don’t want to think of shooting as a sport enjoyed by completely normal people- people who obey the law, pay their taxes, have families, friends, healthy social lives, and are generally well-adjusted, productive, and sane.
That’s why I think most of the shooters are staying out of this one. The other side of the argument don’t actually want to hear a contrary point of view, and there’s only so many times you can roll your eyes at the anti-gun crowd comparing firearms to penis substitutes before you start to compose a well-thought out reply, then think “Fuck it, no-one’s actually going to read it or acknowledge it anyway.”
That’s correct, which is why I’m done trying to argue; and I can’t blame the others for doing so as well. Let them wallow in their BS - I don’t want any part of it.
I know you didn’t aim the question at me, but I have to comment. It doesn’t make good business sense for the media outlets to take an overt stance, pro- or anti-gun. That will get one side pissed off and the other side satisfied. Instead, they’re much more insidious, just “stating the facts” in a way that seems to imply that the murderer’s gun advocacy views are somehow related to the story. That gets everybody fired up. The anti-gun kooks jump up and down and yell “See! See! Them gun nuts are dangerous!” The pro-gun kooks get all pissed off that the report seems to indicate that the police chief believes the gun-advocacy was part of the shooter’s motive. The media gets to keep going on pretending it is fair and unbiased and just presenting the facts, and all the weirdos get all fired up and tune in tomorrow to see what gets said next. Ratings ensue.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that has been released yet that indicates this guy’s gun advocacy views had anything to do with why he cracked. In fact, the more facts that come out, the more it looks like this guy was just cracked to begin with: self-mutilation, conspiracy theories, white supremacy, severe daddy issues. This guy wasn’t a gun-nut - he was a nut. Nothing about this story should give you any extra fear of the typical, intelligent, level-headed gun advocate.
So, you point me to sources that describe this person as an unstable, irrational loony bin who was dishonorably discharged from the Marines for assaulting an officer, and had protective orders against him and disorderly conduct on his record, and had recently lost his job…and on top of all that, immediately prior to the rampage he had been in such a heated argument with his mom that she called the cops…and you ask me to educate you how his pro-second amendment stance and fear of a gun ban wasn’t the likely motive for his snapping and shooting up some cops?!?
Think for yourself much?
The media loves guns in the sense it allows them to sensationalize any story involving guns, yes.
“Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn’t clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.”
Pretty clearly insinuating two reasons as his motive, IMO. And since it is not exactly uncommon for shooting rampages to be motivated by being fired/unemployed, what reason is there to include the second part if not for sensationalism and/or bias? Especially some news sources that are attributing it specifically to the second part in their headlines?
Major media only insinuate (or at least they try not to make overt claims they can’t back away from if necessary), whether on purpose or on accident through poor writing, etc. And I’ve never claimed it wasn’t the reason, either. I reiterate - keep your brain turned on in gun threads or you’ll keep misreading/misunderstanding what people are actually posting.
Shot to death is shot to death. “They” don’t care that automatic weapons are rarely used in crimes because it has nothing to do with any of their arguments. Only the kneejerkers who show up in every GC thread to point out that “six firearms do not constitute an arsenal” care about which weapons are being banned.
The firearms legislation that gets trotted out occasionally by Congress doesn’t make the anti-gun lobby any happier than it makes you.
Thanks for that. Been a while since I had a really good laugh.
Seems to have worked out well for those cops in Pittsburgh.
My point is that if The Government was to outlaw the guns that are most commonly used to kill people, then shotguns, .22 rifles, and 9mm handguns would be right near the top of that list, and automatic weapons would be at the very, very bottom.
Since I don’t live in the US, I’m not really concerned what laws the US Congress is passing in relation to weapons ownership in the US unless it’s something daft like wanting serial numbers stamped on ammunition that will directly affect me here in Australia.
Would you say that a golf player has an “arsenal” of golf clubs in their golf bag? Of course not. Shooting sports are the same. You need a different gun for different aspects of your sport. A $3,000 clay target shotgun is completely wrong for a duck hunter, and you can’t shoot a Vintage Service Match using a modern Remington .243 hunting rifle.
Yep, that nut in Tennessee who shot up the Universalist Church was a crazy man who couldn’t keep a job and that’s all there was too it. Didn’t matter if he had shelves of books by Hannity, Beck and so on and wrote a manifesto expressing a wish to kill Obama and the other liberals on Bernie Goldberg’s list of peope who are ruining America. Just a crazy man. Anything else is just crazy talk.
You said it yourself: he’s an “unstable, irrational loony bin” with a dishonorable discharge, a record, and protective orders against him. Yet it’s of no concern that he is able to buy and stockpile firearms. He was ticking time bomb who fell in with people that fed his paranoia and instability and filled his head with New World Order bullcrap about how B Hussein Obama’s stormtroopers were going to seize his guns. Sure, there’s rarely one single reason that sets off a spree killer, and this guy had enough stressors in his life that he probably would have gone off in some way sooner or later, but if he didn’t think the cops were coming for his guns, I seriously doubt that he lays an ambush for the police and shoots two in the head as soon as his mother opens the door.
How on earth did America manage to survive in the 1940s and 1950s when you could order guns through the mail, and every hardware store sold ammunition and every kid got a .22 for his birthday? And there were no background checks, and no Brady Campaign, and no waiting period. And you could park in the school parking lot with a rifle in your truck’s window, or even keep a rifle in your locker. And there were shooting teams in high schools and colleges. And yet - somehow - miraculously - unbelievably - there weren’t shooting sprees every month!
The goal of the NRA is simply to undo the damage that has been done to the 2nd Amendment over the years. As people move away from the country and into the city - as fewer people grow up hunting and shooting - as fewer people serve in the military (the citizen-soldier class is completely extinct because there’s no draft) the majority of Americans grow up with no familiarity with guns except what they see in Hollywood action movies. So they’re afraid. And they sign off on bullshit gun laws that DON’T DETER ANYONE who really wants a gun from getting one.
Guess what? It’s illegal to commit felonies. But felons still commit felonies. It’s illegal for felons to have guns. But they still get them. Meanwhile the only people who get screwed over by the gun bans are law abiding citizens.
By the way, I heard that this shooter in this latest incident was dishonorably discharged from the military. Wait…how was he able to get these guns then? I thought the law prevents people who are felons from obtaining guns? Waitaminnit - what’s that? You’re telling me the law doesn’t work? Duuuuurrrrrrrr…(head explodes)
Gun prohibition works about as well as alcohol prohibition and weed prohibition. How is this not obvious to people?
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It’s called a zeitgeist. It means that what was working fifty years ago does not necessarily work now.
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If fewer people are hunting and sport shooting and using guns for actual legitimate reasons, then shouldn’t it follow that guns should be better regulated? If the choice is to use guns for legitimate reasons, or use guns for illegal reasons, and less and less people use guns for those stated legitimate reasons, then WHY WOULD YOU FIGHT AGAINST MAKING IT DIFFICULT TO PURCHASE GUNS?
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Fear. It’s all you have and is the entire basis for your ideology. How’s that feel?
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I’ll wait for a cite re:his discharge, because I don’t feel like looking right now. BUT it doesn’t really matter, does it? The gun laws that have been passed have been fought tooth and nail by you and your ilk. Therefore, were it up to you, he would have had even EASIER access to weapons.
So you’re just going to continue spouting contrived bullshit rather than have to intellectually defend your position?
You said you were going away. Please do. You bring absolutely nothing to the table other than rote memorization of what someone else told you. Come back when you can actually explain why you believe what you believe, and or answer the questions that have been posed to you instead of moving the goalpost or reciting Wayne Lapierre’s latest ramblings.
Nothing in this story, or any other, makes me fear your typical (and I know that are in fact typical) intelligent, level headed gun advocates. But this group of people should have nothing to fear by the legislation of gun laws or the increasing of wait times for firearms purchases. My father hunts. He taught me how to hunt. That does not mean that I am willing to make the leap to saying that guns should be easy to get and/or that it is an inherent RIGHT to own a gun.
It is a privilege, and a dangerous one. Doing everything in our power to make sure that guns do not wind up in the hands of people unfit to posses them should be a priority of gun enthusiasts, too. These jerk offs give the typical gun owner a bad name…
Are we reading the same responses? What I’ve seen is Argent defending his position and people ignoring anything he says that makes him look like a reasonable person, because Guns Are Teh Bad and no-one could possibly want to own one unless they’re a redneck, paranoid loner, or underendowed.