School Shootings

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure, sure, I;m part of the problem and you're not aiming your gun at the wrong people. 

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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...s-gun-laws

I'm aiming logic.  Big difference.

I understand why you think so, but lets try to conceptualize the absurdity of the situation some other way.  If their were a mayonaise wedge issue..in us politics, an organization like the nra would exist to put up videos of some nutter talking about the clenched fist of justice around our sacred mayo...or we'd all end up in the gulags.  If you make mayo illegal, they will shout the same crazy shit harder.

Because people -not- having mayo is the only thing that could make their dog and pony show even more effective.  Win win, for them.  

Expending effort or political capital to address them is a massive waste of your time and whatever legislation you might cobble together under pressure.  The real gun lobby..meanwhile, has bipartisan support.  If you got rid of the mayop nutter nra..you'd have to -start- the fight against a much better lobby on that actual issue, rather than wedge maintainers.  All the while, it;s not like we have to deal with either to address our problem.  It;s not as if laws aren;t on the books at the fed and state level that broadly control guns.

We don;t enforce them. Too busy kicking out bad hombres for bad tail lights and locking up potheads. Murica.

[Foxaèr]

Your word salad is not impressing me, especially since mayo is a horrible condiment.

[The Grand Nudger]

Isn;t it, though?  It should be banned..not that bans ever worked on guns any more than they would on mayo.

[Foxaèr]

Australia is making it work, perhaps we should ask them how they did it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Long story short, we're stuck in this nightmare scenario where theres a divide between what we wish could be and what we know might happen..and with some loon steady yelling crazy shit at us we focus on that as a problem we might be able to do something about, but the problem of the nra and the problem of guns are not the same problem, though I strongly feel that dealing with our gun problem will deal with the nra problem in ways that trying it the other way around just won;t and cant.

Get rid of the wedge, get rid of the harpys who depend on it;s maintenance for their very reason to be.

(that article I linked you was from two months ago - they created an nra by making it work...unsurprising, really, since people who exploit wedge issues need a wedge to exploit)

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-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand speaking of what australia made work.  Wasn;t a ban.  It;s licensing.  Check the categories of licensing, you'll find that they;re very permissive towards everything that americans want to keep their guns for.  The only thing that;s tough is handguns and semi-autos (barring semi-auto shottys, theyre in the easy category).  

Maybe explaining that to people, rather than railing against the mayo loons...would help?

[ignoramus]

Guys, the truth is, I can get a gun tomorrow if I wanted one.

My question, is why do I want one I'm not an avid hunter. I have no other reasons to need to have one.
I do what the Jones' do.

At the end of the day, they're just not part of our culture. Guns are something we see at the movies and on tv.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

People are probably tired of me pointing this out, but the nra doesn;t feed this issue, ultimately.  If we entirely got rid of the nra we'd still be in this bind.  You;re hoping that the whackos that allow them to be political kingmakers can be overcome.  GL with that.

Watch NRA TV on cable. They beat the drum of murder and sedition hard.  Today they had an evangelical ranting that "God's getting tired of this! We need to take back the heartland of America, and we may have to fight for it!"

[The Grand Nudger]

@Igno
Most americans feel the same way.

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Watch NRA TV on cable. They beat the drum of murder and sedition hard.  Today they had an evangelical ranting that "God's getting tired of this! We need to take back the heartland of America, and we may have to fight for it!"

Selling that wedge.  Truth be told, they rely on opposition more than guns.  It;s the specter of folks like Kit that the nra loonies swear that gods patriots will have to fight -against-. If they couldn;t drum up that shit, they couldn;t solicit funds for the service. Cynically, thats part of why they say crazy shit, to get a response that can fuel the paranoia complex.

[brewer]

It might be interesting if the shooter(s) started targeting businesses, government buildings, NRA, politicians homes, churches, ................. not to kill, but to get attention.

Bet there would be a real discussion then. 

Isn't this the kind of thing that happened in the 70's? Sad when property trumps people.

[Rev. Rye]

Sometime last November, after the Texas First Baptist shooting, I posted this:

Let's face it; the way I see it, the Republicans have something of a vested interest in keeping mass shootings going. If we have people killing each other with assault rifles, it's a sign of moral decay within America. And, naturally, since the Republicans are all about crowing about moral decay, they can claim they have the cure: the agenda they've already been pushing. And, of course, since restricting sales on guns would likely have an effect on the number of civilian gun massacres America sees every year, it's in their best interest to keep the train rolling, and if they can keep things going by shifting the conversation elsewhere and blame anyone but themselves, it makes it all the better for them. Or it could just be that several jackasstic lines of thinking within conservative thought (such as it is) are converging to create a situation where they just keep happening, the people in power do to something refuse to do anything, and they can just pat themselves on the back for it.

I don't think they're actively orchestrating (or worse, fabricating, because that current trend in conspiracy theorism is fucking stupid, especially when you consider that it's arisen at a time where it's virtually impossible to fake something on this order without being swiftly exposed) these mass shootings, but, seriously, if the Republican Party really did have a vested interest in exploiting massive tragedies like this, that they use them just so they can further their own agendas and sell that as a way out of this, would they be behaving any differently than they are now?

The sad thing is that, at this point, the biggest problem with this line of reasoning is that the Republicans even have an agenda beyond turning America into a Social Darwinist hellhole. Maybe Pre-Trump, it'd be to create a theocracy that's equal parts Gilead and Galt's Gulch, but at this point, they don't seem to even have an endgame.