Well, you know, if you’re going to be *factual *about it…
Sorry, it looks like I was misinformed about the Palin graphic.
I respectfully disagree. Oh, people are certainly outraged about a mentally ill person buying a gun with ease. I do not think that the crosshairs and this guy’s reading list are getting in the way of regulating guns though.
Regulating guns is a non-starter. It’s not on the table. It’s not up for discussion. Full stop. There are no distractions. It’s just not a conversation that can even be brought up.
If a few mentally unbalanced individuals get access to a gun and shoot up some folks - I’m afraid that is the price you’re going to have to pay for your country’s second amendment worship.
We get nuts like this in Canada, too, even without a second amendment, so arguably it’s a consequence of not banning private firearm ownership outright.
I don’t think such a “cure” is merited, myself, but mileage, vary, etc.
I respectfully disagree right back at you. This particular situation is so abundant with outrage that it only barely needs to be discussed in second amendment terms. Just have a system for super-fucking hardcore red flags.
The red flags shouldn’t have been raised at the gunstore, rather they should have littered- no, choked Tucson, Arizona and the south west in general. Red flags should have blocked the sun- this guy should have had to have his crazy in the shade.
Shit, give away a voucher for one free mental evaluation to every student who gets suspended from college for acting mental. Make it SOP for whoever looks at gun application to check out the candidates Youtube account: Jared Lee Loughter= denied. If you’re a public figure making an appearance, find some security trained to notice people who look eerily like Travis Bickle.
I don’t think Kilborn has any pull at all on the left. He’s not a nobody, but he’s a former TV show host who’s widely agreed to be a pompous jackass without regard to agenda. The Daily Show was so different when Kilborn was hosting that it was basically a different show, and at the time it did not play any kind of significant role on the left. That happened because of Jon Stewart. Kilborn did say something stupid about Gov. Bush in August 2000, but I’m not convinced this speaks to anything about rhetoric on the left today.
In case you didn’t see any of my posts about this in other threads, I’m not convinced that anybody on the right should be blamed for the shooting. We haven’t heard too much about why this guy thinks he did what he did, but we know he’s crazy and doesn’t appear to have much of an ideological orientation, and in the end this says more about healthcare for mentally ill people than it does about political discourse. All the ‘Second Amendment Remedies’ shit was irresponsible irrespective of what happened this weekend. So you’re being asked to defend some things unreasonable, but the stuff about Angle speaking in metaphor or this post about ‘the host of Daily Show,’ which was ill informed to the point of being very misleading, does not help you.
Yes and when I listened to rock music it made a satanist and it made my kid commit suicide and too much violence on TV made Dylan and Eric go nuts and video games like Grand Theft Auto make kids into terrorists.
If you don’t believe those statements then you can’t believe that Sarah Pain-in-the-Ass or Blen Geck had anything to do with this.
The UK has guns banned outright, and even so we still get shootings. Unless you think you can somehow prevent criminals selling guns, there’s always going to be a way for people to get their hands on them if they’re obsessed. And shit, even if you come up with that perfect system, then people will just start reading up basic chemistry and make a bomb. You cannot legislate for acts of mad violence.
And as a complete outsider, I’ve got to add that the behaviour of the American left here really is looking pretty shitty. Much as I loathe Palin, this whole shtick of trying to blame her/Beck/Rush/whoever for the actions of this nutter is just a ridiculous piece of opportunism. How about trying to be a bit classier than your opponents, rather than resorting to the same awful lows of trying to smear them with anything.
I agree. The problem isn’t that America has idiot politicians. Every country has those.
It’s that America arms its idiots. It’s time-- past time-- that America realized that its militias are insufficiently well regulated and that the correct remedy is a repeal of the Second Amendment.
In 2007, after the Virginia Tech massacre, some Aussies asked me if it would lead to stricter gun control in the States. No, I said. Not enough Americans give a fuck. Here we are, less than three years later, and another crazy jackoff has killed a lot of people. What do the Americans do? Have a circle jerk about FUCKING SARAH PALIN and whether or not some other stupid bitch’s “rhetoric” was over the line. I’ve got news: it’s not rhetoric at all BECAUSE SHE MEANT LITERALLY SHOOT YOUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS WITH A GUN IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR WAY and a blind bastard all fucked up on glue could see it.
It took four pages of this he said she said bullshit before somebody, timidly, tentatively, gently poked at the edge of the real problem. It makes me want to vomit.
Really? When was the last time the UK had a politician assassinated? Or do you mean school shootings?
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I want ABSOUTE PROOF THAT SARAH DID IN FACT INCEITE THIS NUT CASE. IF SO,
THEN LETS GO TO COURT. I LOVE HER. BUT IF SHE IS GUILTY, THEN TO TRIAL
SHE SHOULD GO. OR WHAT EVER IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
OTHERWISE, STOP TRYING TO SPIN THIS MESS, AND GET TO THE REAL FACTS OF THE CASE. ALMOST ALL OF YOU HERE HATE HER, FINE WITH ME.
BUT IT’S NOT YET TIME TO START TO LOOKING FOR A ROPE AND A TREE TO HANG HER. THE AZ. POLICE HAVE NOT EVEN GOTTEN CLOSE TO WHAT REALLY WENT ON.
THEY DON’T IF THERE WERE TWO SHOOTERS OR MORE. BUT YOU ALL SEEM TO HAVE THE CASE SLOVED. WILL THAT IS THE WAY OF THE DEMOCRATS. :rolleyes:
The last time somebody tried to kill a UK politician it was an improvised mortar strike with homemade mortars
The last time the UK had a psycho gunspree was last year. We had two in fact, a bumper year, but Raoul Moat is a good example of a person who managed to get his hands on a gun illegally.
Raoul Moat: 2010 Northumbria Police manhunt - Wikipedia
Nice, I’ll be sure to re-use that bit.
You any idea how hard it is to wipe spittle off the inside of a monitor?
Sauce for the goose and all that…
Gary has forgotten about the Lib Dem MP who was killed with a sword.
Damn Highlanders, I say we ship them back to their planet before they fuck around with our ozone layer.
Glenn Beck releases email from Palin , who is predictably playing the victim card:
Meanwhile, another kook arrested for making death threatsagainst a Democratic US Senator from Colorado:
You’re gonna need a bigger [DEL]boat[/DEL] [DEL]gun[/DEL] transit.
CMC fnord!
So because someone made a youtube video with content not approved of, they can’t buy a gun. Alluring in it’s simplicity but I suspect devils lurk in the details. What if it’s a parody video? You can’t prove it isn’t. And one free mental health evaluation? You mean if I want to buy a gun, all I have to do is be sane enough for an hour to convince some public health official that I get the “Can Buy a Gun” stamp on my license? Oh my. Far too challenging.
I’d say the best you could do is put restrictions on people diagnosed with a certain mental disorder or two, but that gives access to medical records. Probably just as much a non starter as even suggesting gun control would be.
Any better ideas?
An interesting thought, but any politician would have the benefit of percieved authority which video games and music lack. Also most video games take place in a clearly fictionalized world. Glenn Beck certainly bills himself as both an authority and an expert. Just ask him. He and Palin also discourage people from trusting other media outlets, creating an echo chamber.
While I do see your point that denying the influence of one thing could prevent you from asserting the influence of another, I feel that it’s an apples/oranges comparison. Do you agree or disagree?
I’m not going to say that Sarah Palin is responsible for these shootings. She’s not.
I’m not even going to say that she incited these shootings. Legally she didn’t (though I’ve always had an issue with rules laid down in Brandenburg and think case of that nature needs to be revisited).
I just have two questions for those defending Sarah here:
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Do you believe that Sarah Palin, in order to target specific individuals, put crosshairs on her website?
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Do you feel that Sarah Palin’s reaction and response to this tragedy was appropriate?
That’s it. Two simple questions. Feel free to elaborate however you wish, but yes or no to each question will suffice.