Billy_T wrote:

WV,

As mentioned before, a focus on guns doesn’t prevent a focus on all kinds of other issues. We can deal with many things at the same time, and that’s the norm.

That said, to me, cars are quite different from guns, in a host of ways. But this one is key: They are designed to transport people safely from one place to another. They are not designed to kill, though they do sometimes. Guns, OTOH, have one purpose: to kill. They can’t take you to market. You can’t eat them. You can’t drink them. They’re designed to kill. Cars aren’t. And when people do kill others with their cars, it’s virtually always accidental. People intentionally use guns all the time to kill, or rape, or kidnap, or overthrow democratically elected leaders, etc. etc.

Also, whipping up a frenzy of fear and paranoia, so more and more people buy guns — the right’s speciality — helps corporate capitalism. A lot. Placing common sense, public safety regulations on guns would actually hurt their bottom lines. In a small way, it’s fighting corporate capitalism, while at the same time saving lives.

Btw, I’m in favor of reducing speed limits too. Not sure what the science tells us is the ideal. But, yeah. That’s an excellent idea.

——————

Well, i know that cars arent designed to kill, and guns are designed to kill/protect.

But i dont see how that matters, if one is simply looking at “how to save the most lives”.

What would save more lives — lowering the speed limit to 45 or
regulating semi-automatic weapons on a federal level ?

I have no idea, but it would not surprise me if the answer
was lowering the speed-limit to 45.

just seems to me there are all kinds of ways to save lives,
beside regulating semi-automatic weapons — how come we dont focus
on those other things? I mean, if the fundamental-core-point is to ‘save the most lives’.

I am trying to figure out what bugs me about these gun-debates….I suppose my leading edge feeling/thot has something to do with the fact that I question/wonder whether all the energy/focus/attention on this issue is worth it. I wonder/question whether there aren’t a lot of other regulations that would ‘save more lives’ — but instead ‘we’ focus on semi-autos. … i dunno..

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waterfield wrote:

WV:

You ask why don’t we regulate more in the area of auto safety. We do and it has reduced the number of annual deaths. See the attached article and graph comparing the declining auto deaths with gun deaths. The analogy doesn’t work for another reason: cars are not designed to kill. Guns are.

http://www.vpc.org/regulating-the-gun-industry/gun-deaths-compared-to-motor-vehicle-deaths/

I understand your position of the horrors of Capitalism. You’ve made that loud and clear and I agree on many of your arguments but most certainly not all. No biggie. However, my point was limited to what I consider the silly fear mongering the NRA continues to use-and lots of people buy it-that-in its most simplest of terms- someday the government’s storm troopers will break your door down and demand a Sophie’s choice-your guns or your children? That’s it.

—————-
Yes, we regulate auto-laws, but we could regulate them even more. We could drop the speed limit down to 45 mph. That would save thousands of lives. We dont do that. Why not?
And why dont we have a big nasty confused heated emotional ‘debate’ about lowering the speed limit down to 45 mph? Again, it would save thousands of lives. More than regulating assault weapons? Maybe?

I’m not sure what my point is 🙂 I think it has something to do with what humans focus their attention on, and how and why humans focus attention on this and that issue.

And yes, we disagree on Assault-capitalism, and yet we do agree on lots of sub-issues,
and the importance of a good OLine.

How’s the weather out there in California? Its nice here in the East.

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waterfield wrote:

WV: “well that’s you.”

That’s correct. I honestly do not believe the government is about to come knocking on my door at any moment to take away my “freedom”. Maybe you do WV but I sincerely don’t. Those that do are simply paranoid IMO. And I feel sorry for such people because the cynicism robs them of any possibility of a satisfying life-at least in my opinion….

——————-
Do i think the US Government (who or whatever ‘that’ is exactly — Reps? Dems? Obama? Trump?) is gonna come and take everyone’s guns? Highly unlikely. Possible at some point down the road? Oh, Maybe, i dunno. There’s a gazillion possible futures. But in my lifetime? Nah.

I got no problem if big-nasty-assaulty guns are regulated. But i dobbt it would do much good, and I think its a minor issue.

But again, I have zero emotional investment in this issue… How many people die on the road because Americans wanna drive 70 MPH? We could save thousands of lives by lowering the speed-limit to 45 or 50. Why dont we do that? Why dont we spend all this gun-debate energy on lowing speed limits and saving thousands of lives?

The big super-killer is corporate-capitalism. Thats where my mental energy iz. How bout we regulate Assault-Capitalism more 🙂

———–
http://www.businessinsider.com/more-gun-stores-in-america-than-grocery-stores-2012-12
There Are 15,000 More Gun Stores In America Than Grocery Stores
——————

How Many Guns Are There in America?

“…lion. And the estimated number of guns in America is . . .
Three-hundred-and-forty-seven million. That’s the 2012 figure. It represents roughly one gun for every man, woman and child in America (not counting so-called undocumented Americans). Diving a little deeper . . .”

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Fear always wins out in these situations. I am not saying the fear
is ‘unjustified’ either. I am just saying fear is always underneath all the ‘2nd Amendment’ arguments. You probably dont see it that way, but thats how i see it.

Anyway, thats almost always how things play out after a big murder — more guns sold, not less.

Course the issue isnt really guns at the moment its “guns that can kill a lot of people real kwik-like.” Blah blah blah

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zn wrote:

wv wrote:

I think that sums up your view (and many others) accurately. I dont view your notions as ‘alien’ just different than mine. Your view is dominant here in WV, btw.

First off I live in Maine. There’s more deer than people here and we actually have hundreds of square miles of wilderness. Hunters are a norm. I remember a case where a hunter who accidentally shot a woman in her own yard because he thought he saw a deer got off on a jury trial. The speculation was that hunters are so common that he got the support, not the family of the woman he killed. Plus I grew up in Manitoba, near western Ontario, which is a sportsman’s paradise, and my father and all my uncles and cousins were and are avid hunters. I knew about rifles before I knew about bicycles (my father had an old 30-odd-6 [.30-06]…same rifle Hemingway used. Friends of mine hunt. Heck I bet friends of mine online hunt, or have always been around it like for example ag or SD). I sometimes have full grown enormous white-tail deer in my own backyard (along with red foxes and wild turkeys). Ever seen a full glory white-tail? I mean the big ole magnificent Last of the Mohicans bastards. Yeah, backyard.

I have no hostility toward the hunting world, none.

Second, here’s what’s alien and you tell me if you feel the same. The idea that the 2nd amendment represents freedom, and therefore any effort to control guns is actually an attack on freedom itself.

I didn’t say that view was uncommon. I said the thinking behind it does not compute. Does the thinking behind that compute to you? I didn’t say you don’t hear it a lot. Of course we hear it a lot. But does it compute to you?

Does it make legal, rational sense to you that the 2nd amendment is taken as representing democracy and freedom?

AND on top of it, is THAT how you see the gun control debate? That it is a choice between freedom and safety? In other words, the “freedom/safety” dichotomy does not apply to national security issues and surveillance or the like, but to whether or not people have unrestricted access to weapons? Do you accept that argument?

And in terms of our own priorities, well, gun control debates are not going to get rid of economic inequality, lower the stranglehold corporate oligarchy has on democracy, defuse racism or sexism (both of which at their core are related to class), resist climate change (btw I live near the ocean), increase the democratization of news and information, end american neo-imperial domination of parts of the third world, eliminate homophobia, and so on.

But as long as we’re here, granting there are many other things to discuss too, might as well do the topic justice.

My reasonable view of gun control includes this: advocates of restricted access are quite simply NOT the opposite of the view that the militia amendment represents democracy and that any efforts to restrict access opposes freedom.

Similarly, when someone says, whoever believes Jared Goff is a worthy pick hates the Rams, I don’t believe the opposite of that. To me, that whole way of framing the issue is just not reasonable in the first place. I don’t believe that rejecting Jared Goff means you hate the Rams, or embracing Jared Goff means you love the Rams…I simply don’t participate in that way of framing the issue at all. It’s not that you’re blue and I therefore am orange, it’s you;re blue and I drink coffee and don’t think colors have anything to do with it either way.

And it is a reasonable challenge to say to someone, can you even name the opposing viewpoints accurately? Or do you honestly believe that someone who does not share how you frame it thinks the OPPOSITE of you? Because the latter is a blindspot.

No the various advocates of gun control, with their various beliefs, do not think the 2nd amendment has anything to do with “freedom” either way.

Here’s my own position on gun control. It is a completely irrational topic (I share that with Zooey). Those who believe it has something to do with freedom either way have no basis for that. It’s just a crazy belief that infected the USA, like for example the belief that gays and transgender people are an abomination before god. BTW when my father the hunter moved to the USA he thought american ideas about guns were so over the top that he gave his rifles away to canadian family. He just wanted nothing to do with those beliefs and attitudes. And in canadian terms, he was a conservative and in fact he resented the fact that Nixon was made to resign and looked upon my little high school anti-war activities with a very cold eye. So that’s sort of my background on this.

My view on gun control is that it is reasonable to discuss controls and restrictions. It’s no different than cars. When people say to me I am choosing against freedom, I regard that whole view as no different from religious ideas that make no sense to me. So I have been told that it is wickedly sinful not to abominate gays, and I have been told that a more or less pragmatic idea about regulating access to weapons means I hate freedom. Well no I don’t think either thing.

And real debate means everyone gets to speak their mind, including bnw, and including me.

…

==============
Well i dont have time to address all that, plus i dont write long posts anyway 🙂

I’m leavin to go camping in a few minutes. Maybe float in the water, eat some cicadas, lay in a hammock. That sort of thing. Probly wont take a gun, but I’m goin inta southern wv with a Bernie sticker on my car, so I might decide to take a gun.

Anyway, I disagree with bnw, but his view doesnt seem all that irrational to me. Its ‘alien’ to you but to me, its a reflection of fear. And to me the discussion gets interesting when people are able to articulate their views on what exactly that fear ‘is’ and whether that fear…justified or unjustified or somethin else. I mean, I understand this fear people have of ‘the coming dystopia’. I dont agree with their gun-love in response to that fear…but I’m more understanding about it than others.

And again, i just dont get emotional or particularly interested in this issue. Speeding kills more Americans, i bet. Who wants to talk about speeding?

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bnw wrote:

Those that support the 2nd Amendment want freedom. Those that don’t support the 2nd Amendment want perceived safety. I see no middle ground.

———–
I think that sums up your view (and many others) accurately. I dont view your notions as ‘alien’ just different than mine. Your view is dominant here in WV, btw.

My own summary of my view is… the 2nd-amendment/gun-control ‘debate’
is like… Frodo and Sam arguing about whether the local werewolf should be permitted
to have a crossbow…meanwhile Sauron
is in Mordor planning to destroy the biosphere and middle-earth.

…ok, maybe thats a bit confusing…but thats my view
and I’m sticking to it.

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zn wrote:

…Gay Muslim…

The carnage in Orlando has shaken my very core, but after my experiences traveling throughout the Middle East as a gay man (open in some countries, fully closeted in others), I cannot say I am surprised. Any identity I have ever claimed now lies exposed as a wound that will never heal. Saying “gay Muslim” seems like a reason for damnation.
I’ve spent the last decade of my life making two films. The first, A Jihad For Love, is about the lives of gay Muslims throughout the world. The second, A Sinner In Mecca, dealt with my own personal journey and my effort to reconcile my faith and my sexuality in Islam’s holiest places, surrounded by people who would sooner see me publicly beaten, thrown off a cliff or beheaded.
These are strange times. It is a season of Islamophobia in America, where Donald Trump whips up xenophobia with a tweet. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s attacking a religion that’s already at war with itself. Muslims like me have fought hard not to become casualties…

——————-

These stories about christians or muslims who remain ‘of the faith’ but want to
‘reform’ their particular Religion/superstition…always leave me smiling…and sighing.

I mean, yes, I am in favor of humans reforming their fairy-tales
and making them less patriarchal, less bloody, less racist, less homophobic, etc.

But yet…I wish-ta-god they didnt need their damn infantile fairy-tales
to begin with.

What a planet. Fairy-Tales and Corporations are gonna be the death of us all.

And tornadoes. The weather people are saying we may have tornadoes around here
this evening. I just hope they are not radical-islamic tornadoes.

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Billy_T wrote:

Also, WV,

That fear people have? Where does it come from, and what (and whose) purpose does it serve? The most obvious source is the Gun Industry. Whip up fear, in any way possible, through the NRA, the GOP, Hate Radio, craven Democrats, etc. etc. . . . and you get a huge increase in gun sales — as in, profits for billion-dollar corporations. Since we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that more guns means more death and injury, those people who live in fear, including the poor, are being radically hurt by this steady stream of propaganda.

————————

Well, walk around on the street like a poor person sometime. The street of a city at night. In a poor neighborhood. Kinda like Chris Long did. Then ask “what purpose does fear serve” and then wonder if its only the gun industry thats whipping up irrational fears.

I work with the poorest of the poor everyday. I hear their stories of life on the street. (And this is just a little town in WV). Their fears are justified. They cant rely on the police or the middle-class-folks safe in their homes or behind their gates.

I see too many wealthy pundits on the media acting like there’s nuthin to fear. Really?
Try going out in the city the way the poor have to.

At any rate, I just dont care about gun control. I’m not against it, I’m not for it. Its just not an issue I’m gonna spend brain-energy on. Corporate-Capitalism has created a dangerous hell-hole for a lot of poor people — if they wanna get guns, fine by me. If the Government bans assault weapons fine by me. The gun issue pales in comparison to the “corporate-capitalism is mass-murdering the biosphere” issue.

Im a mono-maniac on the corporate-capitalism issue, BT. I just am. I know hundreds of folks are gonna get shot in amerika every year coz of mean-guns. And banning assault weapons might save some of those folks. Not all, but some. (cause the legal weapons can kill a lot of folks too, and weapons are easy to modify, etc, etc)

As you know though, corporate-capitalism is killing all life. How bout we ban corporate-capitalism. Its a tad worse than an assault weapon — itz an assault-ideololgy 🙂

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• This reply was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by wv.

Mackeyser wrote:

I call the gun people’s bluff.

Pull the guns and let’s see what happens. Let people go on “stabbing rampages” and we’ll see what the deal is. Not that I want that to happen, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing the kinds of devastation we see regularly with guns.

Let’s do it. Let’s call the bluff.

Cuz I call bullshit. Total and complete bullshit.

This isn’t a debate or an argument. It’s complete and utter preference.

A segment of the population wants something and that something results in the senseless deaths of a lot of people. It’s time for that to end.

But I’m with you, WV.

If we overthrow the corporate-capitalist stuff, it’ll be so much easier to deal with issues like this…

=======================

Mack, people are afraid. Lots of real, palpable FEAR out there in the land.
Fear of being attacked, raped, mugged, humiliated, emasculated.

That fear aint going away. Its getting worse, as society continues to crack
and disintegrate, and the rich get richer and the rest get more vulnerable to “street
crime.” The gun mania is a side-effect of corporate-capitalism.

That fear is not going to be trumped by ‘reason’ or logic. Thats why MORE guns are gonna be sold after this latest murder-spree, not less. More.

The kindergarten murders didnt lead to any gun-control and this wont either.
And the next wont either…

Too much real fear out there.

Did you ever see the Louie CK episode where Louie is bullied by a tough guy?
Louie’s character is humiliated by this ruffian in front of his date while they
are in a diner. If you’ve seen that show, you will recognize what the gun-control folks are up against. That was a fictional episode of course, but it hit on a fear
that is at the bottom of the American male soul. Until people feel safe, they are not
gonna change the laws.

Just my opinion, but i dont see any change coming from this latest massacre. Cept more fear, and more gun sales. Heck i bet half the people that survived that thing will go out and buy guns now.

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bnw wrote:

I’m from Tennessee the land of unlawful search and seizure. What? Just one gun? A musket?

———–

I agree with you, btw, that political-folk will always want to twist the science.
The various interest-groups on the liberal-side may very well twist the science findings one way. And the rightwing-interest-groups may very well twist the science in a different direction. But I dont blame ‘science’ for any of that. Science is just science.

So, lets not ban science just because one group or another might twist the findings.

Instead lets work for an educated public that can understand science on their own.

Ok, thats my last word on the gun-shit. I’m way more interested in building a revolution to overthrow corporate-capitalism. I cant be bothered by band-aid issues 🙂

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zn wrote:

zn wrote:

Ex-Wife Says Orlando Shooter Might Have Been Hiding Homosexuality From His Family

Enh.

This one is all just speculation.

.

============

Yeah, agreed.

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Mackeyser wrote:

What do we know?…
7) We’re all insane. Whether it’s Climate Catastrophe or this cycle of mass killings or institutional dysfunction (corporate or governmental) that allow for water poisoning in Flint, MI or Hoosick Falls, NY or umpteen other examples of entities where people in charge felt it was okay to put other people at risk for their own gain, be it monetary, power or something else. We’re all insane because we really COULD solve all of these problems, but as a citizenry, we’ve decided in absentia that solving our problems just isn’t that important. We can always point to systems and people at the top and some “other” and KNOW they are the cause of our collective demise. It may even be true. It doesn’t change that for the most part, we as a citizenry acquiesce to most of this garbage which the masters are all too happy with.

8) If we want the world to change, we have to BE the change. That’s not just a slogan. If we want grace, we have to be graceful. If we want peace, we have to be peaceful.

In light of all of this and likely other things I’ve missed, it would be all too easy to give in to sarcasm and pessimism. I won’t do that. …

—————
Well Mack, weve been discussing “how the people got this way” for a decade now.

I have a book I leave on a table close to my front door. I have to pass it to go out the front door. It’s called “Dont Blame the People”. I glance at the title everyday before i leave the house. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it dont.

Sometimes I remember the system shapes, moulds, creates these…’voters’ we are surrounded by. …I’m not sure if knowing that is a blessing or a curse though….I mean…what can we DO about an entire, omnipresent, white-noise of a system….What can we do?

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“….The last and most obstinate of the impediments in the way of forceful
political dissent is what Walter Karp understood to be the
“corrupting consolation of cynicism.” Karp employed the phrase
to describe the attitude of mind adopted by a generation of American
intellectuals responding to the Wilson administration’s harsh suppression
of unlicensed speech during and after World War I. Finding themselves
suffocated by a climate of opinion in which dissent was disloyalty
and disloyalty a crime, a good many independent-minded and once
outspoken citizens acquired the habit of looking at the national political
scene from the point of view of spectators at a tenement fire or a train wreck.
As compensation for their loss of a public voice, they retired to a library or
a lawn party and there contented themselves with private and literary
expressions of anger and disgust. Language served as an end in itself,
the imagination a vehicle for escaping reality rather than a means of
grasping or apprehending it.
The attitude is one that ive encountered often enough in myself to
recognize in other people — not only among the card carrying members of the
country’s various intellectual guilds but also among the well-to-do gentry
content to leave the business of government to the hired help. Our schools
teach marketing instead of history, and the prosperity of the last thirty years
has encouraged a disdain for politics on the part of people who imagine
liberty is an asset inherited at birth — together with the grandfather clock
and the house on the lake — rather than the product of hard and constant
labor….Lewis Lapham

—
another locus of this theme of the decline that shows up as pseudo renewal, is
the work of Don DeLillo, particularly his novel White Noise. The book is literally
a masterpiece, portraying as it does a busy commercial culture that Is riddled with
purposelessness and paranoia. …the central character Jack Gladney, a college
professor…stops in a shopping mall and thinks to himself: ‘I realized the place was
awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loud-speaker
and coffee making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all,
a dull unlocatable roar, as if some form of swarming life just outside the range of
human apprehension. M. Berman quoting D.DeLillo’s novel.

“The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies,” he thinks to himself
appreciatively, after checking his bank balance at an ATM. “The system
was invisible, which made it all the more impressive…”

This notion of invisibility — of no one in this glorious new age of corporate cyberglobalism
being to blame because the system is not really located anywhere (but everywhere)
— is important for an understanding of the present crisis of American culture
M. Berman quoting D.DeLillo’s novel.

—

“…Because the schools serve an economic system rather than a
political or philosophical idea, they promote, not unreasonably
, the habits of mind necessary to the preservation of that system,
which is why an American education resembles the commercial
procedure that changes caterpillers into silkworms instead of
butterflies. Silkworms can be turned to a profit, but butterflies
blow around in the wind and do nothing to add to the wealth
of the corporation or the power of the state. “ L.Lapham

I’m not sure anything quite typifies what the Republicans have become,
more than the law they created barring scientific research.

I mean….just pause…and think about that.

Does anything say “Republican” more than that?

And i own a gun.

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bnw wrote:

wv wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

And yet Trump will benefit by convincing frightened people that this is just another part of the holy war and that the answer lies in building giant walls around our country.

And it won’t solve this problem.

—————-
Well if the majority of American citizen-voters thinks ‘like that’
and want Donald Trump to be President of the United States — what does that say about America, and how did those voters get ‘that way’ ?

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Provide proof that Trump has said he wants to put US citizens in internment camps! The real question is what does that say about those who won’t vote for Trump that they would fear monger such an outcome?

—–

I dont know anything about Trump talking about internment camps, but he shoots from the hip constantly, so: A) it wouldnt surprise me if he said it, and B) I wouldnt take him seriously if he did talk about it.

I know you like Trump. You are entitled to like Trump.

My own thing is to lump Trump and Hillary together. I see them both as
reflections of an electorate that has been propagandized to the point
we get voters thinking the are wasting their votes if they DONT vote
for the corrupt-corporate-puppet-warmongerer, or
the billionaire talk-radio-Republican.

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His main point was — the D will be fast and fine if we stay healthy.

I, agree, to state the fairly obvious.

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