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Post by spoon on Oct 1, 2015 23:02:37 GMT -5
So much of the pro-gun movement seem to be based on fantasy. Folks imagine that they'll be action movie stars who take down an evil government Turner Diaries-style. Never mind that the gun lobby has the government on a leash. Never mind that rational people who care about human life can back gun control.
I saw someone some crazy fake statistic on Twitter. It claimed that the United States had the third-highest murder rate in the world. But then it went on to allege that if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, D.C., and New Orleans (which it said were the four cities with the strictest gun control), the U.S. drops to the fourth-lowest murder rate in the world. That's so ridiculously implausible for so many reasons, but people are favoriting and retweeting it. The spread between the highest and lowest murder rates in the world is really big. For those four cities to have such a large effect in a country of over 310 million people, the numbers would have to be astonishingly unbalanced. Essentially, it would have to be blindly obvious that very few people are ever murdered outside those four cities. And Chicago is big, but those aren't such dramatically large cities to have such an effect. New Orleans is only the 50th city in the U.S. Chicago murder rate is lower than places like Memphis and Kansas City, but it gets bashed a lot because connecting crime to Obama's hometown activates the dog whistle. NYC is one of the country's safest big cities nowadays, and it has strict gun laws.
I think one of the biggest problems with politics in the country today is that large swaths of the public have terrible critical thinking skills. They'll believe ludicrous stuff if it fits their pre-conceived notions.
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Post by The Captain on Oct 2, 2015 6:25:00 GMT -5
So much of the pro-gun movement seem to be based on fantasy. Folks imagine that they'll be action movie stars who take down an evil government Turner Diaries-style. Never mind that the gun lobby has the government on a leash. Never mind that rational people who care about human life can back gun control. I saw someone some crazy fake statistic on Twitter. It claimed that the United States had the third-highest murder rate in the world. But then it went on to allege that if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, D.C., and New Orleans (which it said were the four cities with the strictest gun control), the U.S. drops to the fourth-lowest murder rate in the world. That's so ridiculously implausible for so many reasons, but people are favoriting and retweeting it. The spread between the highest and lowest murder rates in the world is really big. For those four cities to have such a large effect in a country of over 310 million people, the numbers would have to be astonishingly unbalanced. Essentially, it would have to be blindly obvious that very few people are ever murdered outside those four cities. And Chicago is big, but those aren't such dramatically large cities to have such an effect. New Orleans is only the 50th city in the U.S. Chicago murder rate is lower than places like Memphis and Kansas City, but it gets bashed a lot because connecting crime to Obama's hometown activates the dog whistle. NYC is one of the country's safest big cities nowadays, and it has strict gun laws. I think one of the biggest problems with politics in the country today is that large swaths of the public have terrible critical thinking skills. They'll believe ludicrous stuff if it fits their pre-conceived notions. It's not just that they have terrible critical thinking skills, but that they refuse to do any sort of investigation to confirm or refute the information they are ingesting. A quick trip to the Google with the search "2015 US City Murder Rates" would show that of the four cities you listed, only two were in the top 20 (Detroit at 7 and New Orleans at 9, although East Chicago, IL is on the list at 15). If one were just looking at raw numbers and not rates, both Chicago and Detroit are on pace for fewer than 500 murders (and not all of those are gun related) for 2015; this took just another couple of seconds to rework my search phrase to locate as well. We live in an age of the Like, the Thumbs-Up, the Favorite, the Retweet, and the Swipe, where one's approval can be given with just the push of a button and with no thought behind it. Everything is about the soundbite, and if it can be fit into 140 characters, that's even better, because it's less that has to be read before determining if it is Like-worthy. Kids are being trained that if it takes more than a few minutes to read or watch or listen to, it isn't worth the effort, so their ability to process larger amounts of data is diminishing. It's not a Left-Right, Liberal-Conservative thing either, but an American thing: lazy, disengaged, and looking for instant gratification, so if someone takes more than a few seconds trying to get their point across, the majority of viewers have already moved on to the next beep on their phone. |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Oct 2, 2015 7:56:29 GMT -5
The NRA is big on having lots of "good people" carry guns so that they can take care of "bad people" with guns. Since Oregon allows open-carry and has very few restrictions on concealed-carry, you'd've thought that someone on campus would have come to the rescue. Or maybe the NRA's thesis is a mite off. Oh, and Dan -- it's so insensitive to politicize a moment like this. It now appears that a crime victim was shot by one of those responsible gun owners who are going to save so many lives. I own guns. My sons all shoot. But the NRA is so far round the bend that it's ridiculous. This sort of thing is a huge fear I had when Wisconsin passed concealed carry. The more people who have guns, the more the streets are going to turn into the Wild West with unqualified people opening fire. |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Oct 2, 2015 8:00:19 GMT -5
O-o-o-oh, I read your previous post too hastily. You're so right. Just reading a book on the Big Red One at Omaha Beach, and everything you say about the differences between combat, which these kinds of mass shootings clearly resemble, and shooting at a silhouette of a "bad guy" are vastly different. It will be interesting to watch LaPierre wriggle his way around this scenario. In 1999 four NYPD officers fired a totally of 41 shots at Amadou Diallo. He was unarmed and the police were all within less than 15 feet of him. They hit him 19 times. Which means over half their shots went astray...and he clearly wasn't shooting back. And they were trained in gunfire situations. That's the thing. Gunowners and the NRA want everyone to think they're in some video game. They're expert shots and there aren't innocent bystanders being killed. When the truth is that expert shots can miss over half the time WITHOUT someone shooting back at them. And anyone who had been around Diallo would almost certainly also be dead. And this incident shows what happens when even trained professionals start shooting. If the police miss over half their shots, why does some yahoo with a sidearm suddenly think he's a marksman? |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Oct 2, 2015 8:06:17 GMT -5
Jesus. Another damned mass school shooting. At least this time around I'm pretty sure I've already cleansed my Facebook feed of "friends" whose first pearl-clutching response to any & all such atrocities is to worry that leftist meanies will seize on them as a pretext to violate the uber-holy 2nd Amendment & take away their god-given guns. That actually happened in the immediate aftermath of the Charleston, S.C., church shootings 3 1/2 months ago. There are times when I just don't think it's possible to even attempt a dialogue with certain individuals. As the saying goes, you can't argue with crazy ... & I would amend that to assert that you can't discuss crazies' idees fixes with them in a respectful manner, either. Once they've started down that slope, it seems to me that that sort of thinking (using the word loosely) has every good chance of leading to suspicions that Sandy Hook was perpetrated by sinister gun-grabbers. News this morning appears that he was targeting Christians, for whatever reason. According to Yahoo News, he lined up his victims and asked if they were Christian. If they said yes, he shot them in the head. If they said no or didn't answer, he shot them in the legs. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 8:18:14 GMT -5
In discussion that followed the S.C. church shootings in June, an acquaintance of mine here (via FB) let me know that his wife never answers their door without making sure she's armed. They do not live in some urban hellhole, or even the Alabama equivalent, but rather (from what he's said) in the country, more or less. At least the woman in question has a military background, as does her husband (who works in IT on the AFB [an annex of the one I'm at] nearest me), for what little that's worth.
Living with that sort of trepidation at all times ... I can't imagine. Living with constant depression is bad enough; switching that out for (or laying it on) genuine depression ... I repeat: I can't imagine. Or rather, unfortunately, I can: All I have to do is look at the mass-shooting headlines of the last several years.
Overcoming that sort of mindset is, I suspect, not something that (a) all the calm, respectful discourse in the world &/or (b) any sort of legislation can effectively address. I don't believe that particular bell can be unrung; that time passed years, maybe decades, ago.
It seems to me that the NRA & other gun cultists have the nation & the culture they want, pretty much. Or at least they're a lot closer to having it than their opponents are.
I'm hardly the first to speculate that genuine gun control won't happen until & unless congressmen start regularly falling victim to bullets. But I don't think even that would do the trick so long as so many of them are the concubines of the NRA.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:04:22 GMT -5
News this morning appears that he was targeting Christians, for whatever reason. According to Yahoo News, he lined up his victims and asked if they were Christian. If they said yes, he shot them in the head. If they said no or didn't answer, he shot them in the legs. Ah, a psycho-killer with purpose. That's so much better than the random ones.  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:15:20 GMT -5
Supposedly, his online dating profile expressed a dislike for organized religion while professing an affinity for Wiccans/pagans. And identified him as a Republican.
WTF?
Since he's dead & stuff, is it OK if I call him a nutjob? I know how easily people here get offended.
Edit: Let's just say he had some interesting ideas. Better?
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 2, 2015 9:26:32 GMT -5
Supposedly, his online dating profile expressed a dislike for organized religion while professing an affinity for Wiccans/pagans. And identified him as a Republican. WTF? Since he's dead & stuff, is it OK if I call him a nutjob? I know how easily people here get offended. Edit: Let's just say he had some interesting ideas. Better? Plus he was fascinated by the IRA (the Irish guys, not the gummint boys.) It's a, er, unique little Venn diagram he mapped out for his personality, isn't it? Lunatics ain't always logical. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:27:39 GMT -5
News this morning appears that he was targeting Christians, for whatever reason. According to Yahoo News, he lined up his victims and asked if they were Christian. If they said yes, he shot them in the head. If they said no or didn't answer, he shot them in the legs. That's from the Father of one of the Victims, and the Right has seized on it to declare it was an "attack on Christians" No, it's not.. he shot EVERYONE regardless of their answer. and if you actually see the quote the Father said (who's Daughter was shot in the back by the way), when one person said "yes, I am a Christian" the shooter's response was along the line of: "then in a few moments you'll be with your holy Father". . or something very similar. Which means, if true, the nutjob thought he was doing a "kindness" of some sort to Christians. . not singling them out. |
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Post by The Captain on Oct 2, 2015 9:37:16 GMT -5
News this morning appears that he was targeting Christians, for whatever reason. According to Yahoo News, he lined up his victims and asked if they were Christian. If they said yes, he shot them in the head. If they said no or didn't answer, he shot them in the legs. That's from the Father of one of the Victims, and the Right has seized on it to declare it was an "attack on Christians" No, it's not.. he shot EVERYONE regardless of their answer. and if you actually see the quote the Father said (who's Daughter was shot in the back by the way), when one person said "yes, I am a Christian" the shooter's response was along the line of: "then in a few moments you'll be with your holy Father". . or something very similar. Which means, if true, the nutjob thought he was doing a "kindness" of some sort to Christians. . not singling them out. I have a lot of respect for you, but just no. This guy was anti-religion, per information gathered from his social media presence. He targeted Christians for death. Shooting someone in the leg is a lot different than putting one between their eyes in terms of expected survival rate. He didn't think he was "doing a kindness" for them; he was removing them from his world. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:41:58 GMT -5
nope. . shooting is shooting. .and there isn't any corroboration that where they were shot was tied to an answer.
without proof of what was done? The Right doesn't get to claim "targeting Christians"
if proven otherwise, I'll change my opinion, but from what evidence I have heard thus far? Nope, EVERYONE was targeted.
(this is a Gun Control/Mental Health issue. . not a "targeting a specific group "hate" crime")
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:47:52 GMT -5
I haven't studied the reports by any means, but I gather that at least a couple of people have corroborated the executing-Christians-wounding-others scenario. Which doesn't make it true. For all I know, there was also corroboration for the completely fantasized account of the Columbine victim who allegedly was killed after confirming to the shooters that she was a Christian.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:53:00 GMT -5
and that's where I'm coming from on this. I absolutely admit I could very well be mistaken, and am willing to change my opinion if proof comes from other sources. but thus far it's all spinning off of one source (that I've seen), who is a very religious man, who claims his Daughter told him this as she was going into surgery. I'm kinda on the same fence on the Hero who was shot 5 (or 7, depending on which story you read) on his Son's Birthday, while trying to block the door. There is no doubt he acted heroically, but thus far, it seems the story is coming only from his Family and what they claim he told them. (the two broken legs do imply he was shot in the legs tho, don't they?). but yeah. .early info often proves to be unreliable. . which is the main reason I'm such a skeptic nowadays at things like this  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2015 9:56:12 GMT -5
Even if it turns out that didn't happen, no worries -- he can still get a best-selling book out of the deal if he plays it right. It worked for the mother who, uh, imagined her daughter's declaration of faith got her killed at Columbine. Probably plenty of people, the wishful-thinking (I guess) mother included, still believe that happened.
*sigh*
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