I don’t hunt.
The two most interesting points I’ve read have been:
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Perhaps this moment, in your history, isn’t the best for taking everyone’s guns, (and I am rabidly anti gun!), due to the very nature of the power structure currently inhabiting the big White House. You perhaps have never been so close to true tyranny. Who can say the time is not approaching for that 2nd amendment to finally pay dividends?
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Take all the guns. From everyone. ALL. When they bitterly object, bitch, moan, protest, send them ‘thoughts and prayers’. If it’s good enough for parents of dead children, surely it will satisfy people losing hardware!
The problem there is that the usual retarded “patriotic” gun nuts are typically on side with that particular tyranny rather than opposed to it…
I hate to sound like Dr Phil, but the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, so, no, he can stay out of politics, please.
The reason that republicans with a shred of conscience are leaving is that they know that the billionaires and special interests now dominate their party. The Republican party is wholly on the right wing (and increasingly the unhinged version of the right wing) payroll. They’re essentially employees and the donors sign their checks by giving them campaign cash and funding propaganda that supports them and their causes. If they step out of line even once, then they get a target on their back and they get primaried.
The gun lobby isn’t just a lobby. Led by the NRA, it’s increasingly part of a larger, more complex movement that appeals to right wing rogues who envision a society run on private power, and there’s definitely a place for firearms and a less-regulated firearms industry in that kind of world. They know that the majority of people who get screwed by their designs on power, and that people will eventually realize that they’re getting screwed. And when they do, they’re going to be angry and they’ll demand justice - sometimes not so politely. So in this realm, there’s definitely a growing market for private thuggery, er, security.
Concurrently, the gun rights movement also speaks to the growing paranoia among those in rural America over a country that is increasingly controlled by people in large cities and who do not look like they do. The gun lobby is quietly associating itself with fringe movements that cater to white supremacy and aggression against federal authority.
We both wanted to be grammatically correct 
This. And yet, the NRA and “sovereign” assholes, and the Right, fight it.
I like the irony and sarcasm of that.
Do they have a conscience? I don’t think so. They don’t want to be seen “losing” and they (some of them) may be worried about being implicated in whatever Obstruction charges come up. Or maybe their masters with the money are telling them to GTFO.
Who knows, but it sure isn’t conscience. As for aggression against legitimate authority, just look at the “white folk heroes” known as Cliven Bundy and his traitor scumbags. And, we have Nazis openly marching.
Part of the problem with the gun rights debate is that it’s perceived largely as an urban problem. The people who are most crucial in terms of forcing a pivot on gun policy are whites in suburban and rural communities that tend to vote republican and embrace ‘Merikun’ culture, which includes embracing the value of gun ownership. It’s not their problem; it’s a problem in cities that are unruly and don’t get enough Jesus in their system.
I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. A lot more children, a lot more innocent people are going to die. But at least we’ll have nice vigils to give us the warmth and fuzzies.
Sure. We’ll have lost of nice “thoughts and prayers” shows of fake sincerity and fake concern, as the body count continues to rise.
Were you alive in the 1860s? How do you know Gen. Sherman? Is your other name Methuselah?
It should also require a federal (not state because that’s inconsistent bullshit) criminal back ground check, and a federal check for mental issues. It can be paid for by removing the Trump “tax break for very rich folks”.
This type of delusional thinking is exactly why the Second Amendment needs to be repealed. As I’ve repeatedly said, I’m not against gun ownership by most responsible law-abiding people, and I’m not in favor of gun abolitionism or bans etc.
But we need to stop facilitating and encouraging these masturbatory fantasies of personal gun ownership as some kind of “protection” against “tyrannical rule”. A gun is just a practical although dangerous tool, like a car or a chainsaw, and wouldn’t be much more use than a car or a chainsaw in actually protecting anyone against real tyrannical rule by a modern government with modern armed forces.
This Second-Amendment ideology of gun ownership as something inherently heroic in its own right, where a firearm is your sacred badge of belonging to the liberty-loving good guys who will in some misty imagining fulfill their patriotic destiny by bloodily defeating the tyrannical bad guys, is at the core of our pathological gun culture.
Remove the Second Amendment and its sacred-firearm ideology, and legal gun ownership will eventually return to being mostly a harmless hobby of sensible people following sensible safety precautions. It may interfere with some people’s personal action-hero fantasies, but a society of grownups needs to stop treating those as more important than the lives of children and other innocent victims.
Jesus Fucking Christ, are you trying to pull a Creotard “How do you know? Were you there?” gambit to cover for your own lack of basic historical knowledge?
33 Dead, 130 Injured in China Knife-Wielding Spree (from 2014, as if that means anything. But you know, it’s the Dope where anything from the past allegedly loses validity. Just ask Kimstu.)
Do you think the body count would have been higher or lower had he had an AR-15, or even a 9 MM semi-auto pistol, with a dozen spare clips?
Cool! Let’s compare the frequency of mass knife attacks in China with the frequency of mass shooting attacks in the U.S. of A.! And, while we’re at it, let’s tally up the dead body count! Starting in 2014- Go!
This is bound to prove something useful, eh Starving Artist?
Where “he” is a group of (at least) five guys.
CMC fnord!
Are you people purposely avoiding the point, or is it just reflex?
Very well put.
The embrace of delusional thinking is being encouraged by entities who are profiting from the aberrant fantasizing. The AR-15, in particular, has been marketed through advertising specifically aimed at the insecure: