Can you, at least, see why this phrasing concerns some of us?
That may put the gun lobby in the same position as the Cult of Norquist (i.e. “They can’t be rationally negotiated with, so we just have to roll over 'em”).
You make it about you when you put your individual gun rights above the lives of 26 kids and teachers, not to mention the 30,000 other people killed by guns this year. Statistically, there are going to be another 30,000 gun deaths in the coming year, including who knows how many senseless killing sprees of innocent people, and you still think your precious gun rights are more important than their lives. That’s the very definition of you.
And let’s be clear about what’s meant by “gun control”. If you’re afraid of your guns being taken away from you, please turn off Fox News and stop reading NRA pamphlets. There’s absolutely no chance of that or anything close to it happening, despite what the fear-mongers want you to believe. As a supporter of the Second Amendment, you should know that. At the very most, you’ll have to “suffer” one or two more restrictions, like maybe longer waiting times or smaller limits or something like that. Do you think you can live with that if it helps save innocent lives?
You got me there. I don’t know about North Korea, Syria and Bangladesh. But how about these…
*As news of the tragic shooting at a school in Newtown, Conn., rippled across the globe, Mari Lolarga found a candle in his home in the Philippines and lit it in honor of those who died.
“I wanted people to understand that while we may not be Americans, we too are parents who care deeply for our children,” the father of two said.
From Haiti to Pakistan, people said they were shocked at the apparent targeting of children and expressed helplessness that they could not do more to stop the violence.
“May Allah give courage to all families to face it bravely, may the souls of those angels rest in peace,” said Ghulam Murtaza, an elementary school teacher from Pakistan.
In Lithuania, a teacher identifying herself as Veronika commented: “I send all my love and prayers to the families. It is all I can do from so far away, but my heart is now in Newtown with all the affected people. God bless them all.”
And in Haiti, Frisnel Oxine said he could barely read the news reports for crying. “I also have a girl of 6, and I just imagine she could have been there,” he said. “We used to travel to the U.S. and wanted (her) to stay for school.”
In Port Said, Egypt, Maggy Hamada spent hours glued to CNN in her home, growing increasingly depressed and sympathetic toward the families left bereft.
“… I guess it’s a wake-up call for America because they tasted a bit of what the other countries in the Middle East go through every single day.”
Lisa Garnier from Canada said she and her husband were so devastated by the news they both sat down and cried.
“What else would your reaction be?” Garnier asked. “It doesn’t matter where you were. Anyone who heard it had to take a moment to sit down. It’s horrible.”*
And that doesn’t mention official condolences from the Prime Minister of Australia, an impromptu shrine set up by Russians at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and a memorial in India that I know of.
Still think it’s just another incident?
As shown above, shooting six-year-old kids to death is news.
That isn’t worth a serious response.
The NRA deserves to be screamed at. Calm reason doesn’t work. Thirty thousand gun deaths a year doesn’t stop them from trying to sell even more guns and influencing elections for that sole purpose. Mrs. Lanza was a poster mom for the NRA’s propaganda, and look what happened. Their position is indefensible, and that’s why they’re not showing their face these days. Their bully pulpit has finally been ripped from their cold, grubby hands.
The NRA doesn’t sell guns.
That’s like saying Norquist doesn’t sell low taxes.
Like Obama didn’t kill bin Laden, and Truman didn’t drop the bomb.
Lame point on semantics is lame.
Then please accept that we will give your irrational screaming temper tantrum all the time and consideration it deserves.
Calm reason doesn’t work? :dubious: Calm reason is what resolves issues and creates civilization.
While NO normal, decent person alive on planet Earth today wants to see children slaughtered, you can’t possibly think that for America to emulate Pakistan in any aspect of child safety or welfare would be a positive step forward, can you?
Children are routinely targets of slaughter in Pakistan and Afghanistan (suicide bombers, primarily) and the relative likelihood of an American kid getting murdered by a psychopathic stranger has got to be 100x less likely than what it would be for a Pakistani kid.
I disagree with this. The best case is what you call the worst case.
We have gone through this before. Gun control was mainstream in much of the country a half-century ago, around the same time the death penalty was abolished and the EPA instituted. This was a modern Western social democracy at one point.
And then the madmen trashed it.
The gun rights movement is just another aspect of the anti-modernity movement that Wm. F. Buckley knit together, right alongside banning birth control, opposing socialized medicine, putting “inferior Negroes” to death on spurious grounds, gutting environmental law, and opposing social democracy generally. The gun nuts are the same people as the anti-contraception maniacs, the white supremacists, the “free-marketers,” and the anti-environmentalist backlash.
The previous generation assumed that progress would proceed peaceably. But the best long-term way to defeat the rabid right in the USA’s federal democratic system is to defeat them militarily. This is what the abolitionists had to do. It is what we or our children will have to do. And time is short. The madmen still have their hands on the tiller and will not permit us to stop the destruction of our economy by climate change.
They have already set their terms, long ago. Cold dead hands. I do not ask those terms to change. I ask only an acceptance of those terms from those of us who made the mistake of thinking this reform–any reform–could stand without being enforced by bloodiness worthy of U.S. Grant and Wm. Tecumseh Sherman.
Again: you can compare priorities here, but if you want to comment on someone’s personal failings or mock them, take it to the Pit.
Eh, getting off-topic. Rant at me here.
Do you mean “Spoken as a lazy..” or “Speaking as a lazy…”?
I have fired a handgun. In fact I took pistol in college. But, like so many other things, all we have to do is to go back to some reasonable controls. Not that many of us felt oppressed when assault weapons were actually banned. Registration, like we do for cars, might be nice, as would background checks and waiting periods. Hell, we have keys for our cars, to make them harder to steal. Something like that might be nice for guns also.
It strikes me that when we talk about tax policy the right keeps saying things like raising taxes on the rich won’t solve the problem by itself - as if anyone ever said it would. It seems a lot of this discussion has the gun lovers screaming that we want to ban their precious toys. Or that even if we did, there would still be some murders. It keeps them from having to respond to policies like registration, bullet control, and background checks.
There was an interesting article in the Time today about the town. For quite a while people in the area have been disturbed by the sound of automatic or semi-automatic fire. There are unlicensed ranges because the licensed ones have waiting lists. An effort, led by the Police, to keep gunfire away from homes was soundly defeated by a mass of gun owners. And there is a gun advocacy group in town - might be an industry group.
Plus, it seems that the killer and his mother went out in the woods to shoot her weapons - she may have taught him how to use the gun that killed her.
It will be interesting to see of the town passes some reasonable regulations now.
Former Congressman Joe Scarborough has been shaken to his senses:
If you think that was irrational screaming, you have a pretty low threshold for it. I will accept that calling it that gives you an out from responding. If you want to see a real screaming temper tantrum…
Now, do you still think your gun rights are more important than more innocent lives? Do you think Obama wants to take away all your guns?
I repeat: It hasn’t with the NRA. Tell them, not me. They have a lot more influence when it comes to creating civilization.
That quote was about reaction to the shootings; it isn’t advocating anything, nor did I quote it for that purpose.
Do you know what the word “semantics” means?
Here is the NRA store. They do sell, I see, an air soft revolver and the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. If you can find any firearms for sale by the NRA, please point them out.
Otherwise, I’ll be forced to conclude you don’t really know what you are talking about or you are knowingly just making shit up.
Pardon me while I open an American History textbook…
[Three hours later, finally able to breath after a dozen laughing jags from looking at the way Americans have used calm reason on problems.]
I’m likening Sandy Hook to Stonewall. It took the calm reason of a riot to motivate a community that thought that change could never occur into forming activist groups that spurred - over the course of a generation - a revolution in attitudes.
I’ve seen the evolution of the NRA from a group that supported the Gun Control Act of 1968 to one that lobbies against any legislation of any kind. The 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act was in fact blowback to the stronger provisions of the 1968 Act. I’m not completely familiar with the politicking in 1986 but I think that the machine gun ban, which was put in as a last minute amendment, was a mere sop to appearances since it effectively did nothing at all. Which is the opposite political takeaway to what some are saying, that it proved that gun control nuts will ban even weapons not involved in crimes.
In some ways the NRA parallels the union movement. Having won virtually all the basic requirements, unions have been forced by political logic to improve their hand and demand greater and greater concessions. This overreaching has undermined public support for them. If you’re not old, you probably can’t remember how strong unions used to be in a time when mass public opposition would have been unthinkable, even unAmerican. The NRA has won too often and now settles for nothing less than absolutism. That’s politically unstable as a position.
And it gives cover to politicians. NRA supporter and A rater Senator Joe Manchin is now talking about controls.
I’m not saying anything will come of this in the near future. The NRA effectively lobbied to death even mild provisions about unlicensed gun dealers after Columbine. Nothing happened for a while after Stonewall either.
The future always wins, though. And the NRA is the past. Use your calm reason on that equation and see what answer it gives.
Please. The NRA exists to sell guns. That’s where the money is. You’re being intentionally obtuse by pointing to their official store.
Everytime there is a shooting tragedy, gun sales go through the roof. Happened again this week. Then those manufacturers turn around an reward the NRA for keeping all its members in a blind panic about gun registration and limits on high capacity magazines. Wait three months, then repeat.
Then it shouldn’t be hard for you to provide something besides your assertion to show that is the NRA’s raison d’être. Follow the money, show me the money, all those cool movie phrases. Or, is this just something you mystically know?