yhwx

Tyrphanax said:

DominicCobb said:

The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.

To go back for a second: I really don’t like this wording because it worryingly reflects the attitude of the world right now. Complacency is scary, and we’ve given up so many rights as it is because of it. Nobody would say this about freedom of press or any of our other rights, but because some people don’t like guns, it’s okay to give that one up. I’m not down with that.

Sometimes we have to give up things that were accepted as needed before. It’s part of life. It’s part of a country’s history.

dahmage said:

Tyrphanax said:

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

sure, lots of great reasons for it historically, but even if we still elect dangerously insane senile old white men, guns won’t help us against that.

I kinda addressed this with Dom earlier, and again I don’t like going into this realm very deep, but I really don’t like the idea of just throwing my hands up in this incredibly hypothetical situation and saying “Well, nothing I can do” as their gestapo or whatever does whatever it wants.

This is the problem with our modern politics: It’s based to much on feelings.

Your feeling that you’re showing right now will never materialize, at least in America. If we’re at the point where we have the Gestapo, there are much bigger structural problems in our society that we should have fixed earlier.

So can we solve the perceived need for guns in a way that you don’t need the damn gun, but can still feel safe / kill animals?

I don’t need the gun (I’m not even a hunter) like I don’t specifically need a car or a bottle of whiskey or a bag of chips or a can of coke… but as a free person, I have the right to have all or none of those things at my leisure (but I’d never mix the first three, haha).

I think you know FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech. In that speech, he described the freedom from want. I know you’ve said you’re not a big liberal, but I do think that you think that the government has the right to make certain programs that give people the right to an adequate standard of living.

Wouldn’t having a limited number of guns be a similar sort of freedom? Sure, it’s taking away you’re freedom to want a gun… but it also might give a freedom to life.

Instead of calling it Chopped, they might have to call it Ricochetted.

Tyrphanax said:

dahmage said:

Guns shouldn’t be a right.

but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.

Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)

All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…

I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee).

Wrong.

It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.

It was necessary back then. It’s not now.

Our pitiful little guns would never be able to hold a fight against any modern military.

Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.

Bad arguments.

First, you say that we haven’t all been murdered yet because of guns. Well, of course we haven’t! Whoever said that’d happen?

Secondly, you make a tired slippery slope argument. Nobody is going to ban knives. What is the purpose of a gun other than to kill (whether that be a human or an animal) in this modern age? Knives have more usage than to kill.

Slavery is in the DNA of the country. We got rid of that eventually.

moviefreakedmind said:

TV’s Frink said:

moviefreakedmind said:

SilverWook said:
With the foot in mouth bug that’s been going around here lately, you could have gotten a temp ban.

Really, without a warning? It’s Duracell, he was obviously just being weird, not racist.

Really? He wasn’t obviously being anything in my mind because I had zero idea what that was supposed to mean.

I didn’t really know what his purpose for it was, but it was obviously weird. Knowing Duracell, there was no reason to think it was racist.

Agreed.

Is the phrase “pull the trigger” (as in, to do something) offensive?

We might need imperialscum to evolve its language.

Up Ur Brass.

I paid for my own thanks, thank you very much.

Brass Thread.

Sure, Richard has acne. No problem there.

imperialscum said:

dahmage said:

imperialscum said:

dahmage said:

imperialscum said:

dahmage said:

prove it

You are the one making false accusations based on your dysfunctional memory. In a civilised world, one is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.

come on, you clearly edited your post. stop insulting me.

Not for what you implied.

citation needed

The Truth, vol. 5, no. 10, page 1

Is that a secondary source?

CatBus said:

Jeeze I’m out for a bit and Warb’s back and husezni’s not. Guess I really am going to eat those minstrels now.

We’ve all had delusions of grandeur.

I’d say it’s more than fine, but it definitely does not suck.

TV’s Frink said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

In other news, the president continues to be an ass.

Technically, this isn’t news.

Hey, if cable news has taught me one thing, it’s not just that everything is news, but in fact everything is BREAKING NEWS.

BREAKING NEWS: Forum Member ‘Frink’ Makes Anti-Media Gibes

It was a pinky swear.

I’m pretty loyal to American grammar rules, but I had no idea it was spelled “judgment” here.

I’ve seen people raise violent video games as an issue. I think that’s a red herring. First of all, all countries have access to violent video games, and yet we are the only country to have this problem. That clearly suggests to me that suppressing violent video game would do nothing for the problem of gun violence.

Second of all, I’m not sure where the line is drawn for especially violent video games. The vast majority of video games tend to have some violence in them.

In other news, the president continues to be an ass.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/puerto-rico-trump-hurricane.html

WASHINGTON — President Trump ventured on Tuesday to a storm-ravaged American island territory where residents have felt neglected by their government, telling local officials that they should be proud that, so far, only 16 people are known to have died in Hurricane Maria.

“Sixteen versus in the thousands,” Mr. Trump said, comparing the storm’s certified death toll to the 1,833 killed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. “You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud.”

It was a well-worn routine for a president on his fourth visit to a disaster zone in two months: a pep rally-like briefing with officials in an aircraft hangar, a quick drive past twisted houses and uprooted trees and a brief, friendly encounter with victims of the destruction.

And like his earlier travels, it had its peculiar moments: He also gently tossed rolls of paper towels into a crowd that gathered to see him at Calvary Chapel, outside the island’s capital, San Juan.

This time, however, Mr. Trump flew into a different kind of turbulence. Over the weekend, the president lashed out at the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, after she complained that the federal response in Puerto Rico had fallen short of the responses in Texas and Florida. She was not mollified after meeting him.

“The first part of the meeting was a public-relations situation,” Ms. Cruz said in an interview with CNN about the briefing she attended with the president. While she said the White House staff was helpful and receptive, Mr. Trump’s communications style sometimes “gets in the way.”

“I would hope that the president of the United States stops spouting out comments that really hurt the people of Puerto Rico,” she said, “because, rather than commander in chief, he sort of becomes miscommunicator in chief.”

In case you didn’t see it (which you probably didn’t), Warbler is unbanned now.

This particular Tuesday has been particularly mixed.

You were all faceless voices to me yesterday… now you’re just voices with faces.

TM2YC said:

Granted, my knowledge of the US Constitution is minimal but doesn’t the old-timey phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” translate to “A well run military, is necessary to the security of a free country”. Who would disagree with that? (except dictators).

The courts.

The course have decided that the “militia” part is irrelevant to the meaning of the amendment. It’s just an introductory phrase, say the courts.

Does it say somewhere else that “free state” specifically means “the right to state militias” and not as it reads?

Our Constitution is pretty vague, so resolving a lot of the vagaries is left to the course.

Don’t mass shootings happen almost every day? Far from rare.

What is the right time to have this conversation, if not after shootings, where people are most engaged in the issue?