20 dead in Orlando gay club shooting

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I'd love to have a system like they have in Japan where people are able to own guns, so long as they can prove they're responsible enough to be entrusted with a deadly weapon. The problem we're having is that irresponsible people don't want regulations that will prevent them from owning guns, and there are too damn many irresponsible people.

From an interview with a Japanese detective

“You have to bring your rifle in every year for inspection. You have to pass a drug test. You can’t have a criminal record. A doctor has to certify you’re mentally and physically healthy. You have to actually go to the firing range and show that you can use the weapon. If you have any sort of issue, we’re going to take away your firearms,” Detective X said.

Fairly similar to our system.

Japanese have always restricted who can possess weapons except for a few war years.  Before the start of the modern era only samurai could carry weapons.  They got guns very late.  Consequently they have a different mindset about guns than the typical American might have.

The interesting thing is that before the Revolutionary War the British made no attempt to restrict guns in the Colonies.  It was only after the slavers revolted that the issue of guns came up.  The newly minted Big Wigs weren't too keen on letting the riffraff have guns since they had used them so successfully during the war.  But the slavers wanted gun ownership guaranteed for them so that they could shoot and slaves that dared try their own revolution.  And since the plantations were isolated from population centers they got the Second Amendment written and adopted.

After the Civil War the racists passed a lot of Jim Crow laws that restricted or denied black people the means to possess guns.  They went wild passing all kinds of gun control laws that were meant to be applied specifically to black people.  That mindset is still applicable today but the anal retentives are doing their damnest to seize all guns from common people.  Basically they just want the Slave Patrol thugs to have guns.

[Silver]

The only people who should have guns are the ones in the military.

I honestly believe that problems only progressed due to the fact that the Supreme Court made the erroneous decision that any fucking idiot could own a gun.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My uncle took me out to teach me shooting at age nine. He taught me respect for the weapon, taught me to never point it at someone I didn't intend on killing. Taught me that every gun is loaded, taught me that I held the power of life and death in my hands -- "Boy, this will kill anyone on that end. Is that what you want to do?"

I'm not unusual in that regard. I know there are dipshits who use guns for compensation and swagger, but there's a hell of a lot of media bullshit in your verbiage, it seems to me.

Even here, advocating for gun rights, I don't own one myself, so it's not about chest-thumping or anything, your overbroad generalization aside. Poison the well all you want, but there's water down there too, your stereotypes notwithstanding.

Perhaps I was being too broad, when what I meant to do is point out the very different culture surrounding guns in the US as opposed to elsewhere. I didn't realize I still needed the caveat that I'm not trying to speak sweepingly about an entire group of people- I thought I'd been here long enough that it's clear I try to account for nuance in my positions- but I guess sometimes I do. Some Americans, not all.

That's sort of the problem with trying to politicize an object, I suppose: the act of doing so warps the culture around it so that a certain stripe of citizen, say, takes walking into a supermarket with an assault rifle strapped to them to be patriotic, rather than just sad. I've seen people walking around in shirts that joke about shooting advocates for gun control for being "pussies," I have this kind of right-wing person as an uncle now that I've married Luckie, I'm really not just plucking this stuff out of nowhere.

I'm sensitive to this sort of thing because I'm in the middle -- I think gun rights should be protected from extremists on the left, and I think the public should be protected from the extremists on the right. There's no avoiding politicizing this discussion, but there's very certainly a good goal in not alienating those who may see some but not all of one's points.

I think that treating individuals as individuals rather than [your favorite lump here] is probably a good idea; it works for me. I am able to avoid baseless assumptions (which I will admit being prone to at times because of garb or appearance), and if someone honestly disagrees with me I have a better chance of chaging his or her mind. That goes for all issues, not just this one.

Especially in a public forum, caveats are useful. They allow for nuance to inform the conversation.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If only the Western didn't more or less die out just as the genre as a whole really started to embrace the moral ambiguity inherent in the whole enterprise.

Indeed. The old simplistic shit ont only made the movies predictably crappy, it also impoverished a culture when it could have moved it along.

Unforgiven is brilliant precisely because it challenges the viewer to think his own way through things.

[Regina]

Hot off the press...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/...er-omar-m/

http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/13/orland...ating-app/

He was low key a regular at Pulse and a gay dating app user.

So fucking shocked. Really, I'm not one bit. Anyone who claimes to be straight but is so obsessed with homosexuality is obviously compensating for something. Obviously felt threatened that seeing too many gays living truthfully was going to drag it out of him.

Wow I really feel for this asshat's wife as well as the victims, she must be really going through it all right now.

[Silver]

Hot off the press...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/...er-omar-m/

http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/13/orland...ating-app/

He was a regular at Pulse and a gay dating app user.

So fucking shocked. Really, I'm not one bit. Anyone who claimes to be straight but is so obsessed with homosexuality is obviously compensating for something. Obviously felt threatened that seeing too many gays living truthfully was going to drag it out of him.

Wow I really feel for this asshat's wife as well as the victims, she must be really going through it all right now.

I was informing people at work that he was struggling with his sexuality. It is unfortunate that he allowed his religious beliefs to inform how he went about dealing with it in the end.

Religion needs to just fucking die already.

[Regina]

The thought had crossed my mind already but I'd seen no proof. I do firmly believe you have to be battling an inner sexuality struggle to be so obsessively anti-gay. That pastor someone posted yesterday is a closet queen as well. Why the fuck would you care if you're straight? 95% of homophobia is about suppressing your own urges and insecurities, wheter related to sexuality, gender or both.

[ApeNotKillApe]

Why else do you think these pastors are always so obsessed with sex.

[The Grand Nudger]

Religion died 2k years ago, in the west.   We gave up on the nuanced religious narratives which expressed central and defining human traits, as we saw them - and went with some just-so stories about the proper holes to stick a penis and what bad words can't be said.   We seemed to think that this was more serious and pressing, at the time.

[Marsellus Wallace]

I think my approach is becoming more suitable everyday.

KILL ALL THE MUSLIMZZZZ, AND NUKE THAT FUCKING BLACK BOX IN MECCA.