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  1. #41
    Hung Angel Platinum Poster trish's Avatar
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by dreamon View Post
    In regard to the assault weapons ban, the 2013 Washington Post article you linked does say,

    A University of Pennsylvania study concluded that these loopholes undermined the 1994 law's effectiveness. (That study also found that the law appeared to have little effect on gun violence, not least because assault weapons were used in just a small portion of gun crimes.)

    So true, the ban was not very effective in stopping gun crimes in general. However, the chart I posted above from the 2018 Washington Post article you also linked DOES show that the ban was effective in decreasing the number of mass shootings and ‘gun massacres’. So yes, the ban was effective. The 2013 article indicates that it could have been more effective. We know from the Australian model (and a multitude of others) just how effective gun regulation can be.

    Another good article by the way. Thanks.


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    "...I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize."_Alice Munro, Chaddeleys and Flemings.

    "...the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way". _Judge Holden, Cormac McCarthy's, BLOOD MERIDIAN.

  2. #42
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    I have just seen a clip from a speech the President gave to the Conservative Political Action Conference in which he says the murder of an American citizen by another American citizen is an acceptable action. No mention of the rule of law, no mention of context, the potential for mistakes, panic attacks, just a fantasy drawn from a Hollywood movie in which the good guy shoots the bad guy. The rule of law no longer matters, the rule of the gun is all. If I were an American, I would suggest this statement alone robs the man of any respect, and would expect him to resign in disgrace or be impeached. At what point does the law matter more than the hysterical, ill-considered rant of a political amateur? But there you have it, more guns, more confrontations, more deaths, more injuries, more misery. He sat there in the White House with his arms folded as the students and relatives of victims from Parkland tried to explain reality to him, but that position said it all: I don't care.


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  3. #43
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Oh, and don't forget the Russians, who may have been filtering money through the NRA to help elect their chosen one...are the ones who bray the loudest about being true patriots the ones who took foreign money in their campaign against the American Hillary Clinton?

    Activists are demanding the National Rifle Association (NRA) reveal if it received donations from Russia, after it was reported the FBI is investigating whether a Kremlin-linked Moscow businessman channelled money to the group’s campaign to help Donald Trump win the election.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8225581.html

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/nra-...ommentary.html


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  4. #44
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    A few days after the Russian-backed President said it would be a good thing if 'gun adept teachers' murdered Americans, a former infantry officer with service in Iraq and Afghanistan has offered a set of practical reasons why this is a bad idea, not a good one-
    Anyone who tells you that arming teachers is a solution is clueless. It’ll cost kids’ lives. Teachers need to be teaching, not training to fight. But they’re up against weapons of war. And that’s on us.
    http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/opini...icle-1.3835411

    Meanwhile there has been strong reaction to the speech made by Wayne LaPierre of the Russian-backed NRA as the organization loses special deals for its members with car hire firms, hotels and such like. LaPierre has responded by describing the boycott movement as 'cowards', but just as he claimed in his speech to the CPAC that the opponent of gun ownership are not just opposed to the 2nd Amendment and 'freedom' they want to introduce 'European socialism' into the US.

    But here is a curious thing: two incidents in the UK -Hungerford in 1987, Dunblane in 1996- led to major changes in the law:

    In the wake of the 1987 Hungerford massacre, in which one lone gunman killed 16 people, Britain introduced new legislation -- the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 -- making registration mandatory for owning shotguns and banning semi-automatic and pump-action weapons.
    Within a year and a half of the Dunblane massacre, UK lawmakers had passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain, giving the country some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world. After both shootings there were firearm amnesties across the UK, resulting in the surrender of thousands of firearms and rounds of ammunition
    https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/17/w...ons/index.html

    But was this European Socialism in action? No, as the Prime Minister in 1987 was Margaret Thatcher, and in 1996 it was John Major, though for all I know LaPierre reckons Maggie was a socialist. Consider the odder fact that the Republican Party, which used to be one of the most vocal and severe critics of the USSR, has apparently become obsessed with the strength and purpose of a man who joined the Communist Party of the USSR in his youth, spent most of his career as a young man in its dreaded KGB, and even, when posted to Dresden (based at -believe it- No 4. Angelikastrasse) was involved in an early version of cybercrime at its most basic level -stealing the western technology the USSR did not have-

    There is little information about Putin's specific tasks in Dresden, but specialists and documents point to several assignments, including recruiting and preparing agents. The work likely involved Robotron, a Dresden-based electronics conglomerate, which was the Eastern Bloc's largest mainframe computer maker and a microchip research center.
    At the time, a major KGB effort was underway to steal Western technology. The Soviet Bloc was so far behind, according to a German specialist, that agents at Stasi headquarters often preferred to work on a Western-made Commodore personal computer rather than on their office mainframe.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...agov/putin.htm

    It is a moot point- is Putin a Communist? He has made all the right noises on markets, but has strengthened the State at the expense of many of the Oligarchs he witnessed looting the country in the 1990s. He has remained loyal to the KGB, admitting it made mistakes in the past but not denouncing its record overall. His buddy in Kiev, Viktor Yanukovich was also a Communist, after a youth of petty crime (the two may go together), which does make one wonder what it is that suddenly turned these Cold War Warriors into puppies of the other President.

    The answer is money, and lots of it. And there you have the true test of loyalty. A Russian-backed President who re-tweets claims the Parkland students articulating an alternative vision for the USA are 'actors'; the head of the Russian-backed NRA railing against those who would take away his 'freedom' as 'European Socialists' while pocketing the dollars sent to his organization by a old-style Russian socialist. When people in power will do anything for money, politics has been replaced by commercial transactions; when barter becomes the means of exchange in international relations, something fundamental has been challenged: for those Americans, it is nothing less than the Constitution to which they claim loyalty, when that loyalty can in fact be exchanged for money. If this is corruption at the highest level, is it not also a betrayal of what it means to be an American?

    I ask because I am not an American. I live in a country which, even though it has too many guns, has a more sane approach to firearms, and where the claim the Leader of the Opposition was a Soviet Spy who told the Soviets what Margaret Thatcher had for breakfast (not muesli, allegedly), has been exposed as fiction. Some things you can make up, others cannot. So why are people so terrified of telling the truth about money, especially when it is 'their own'?

    Follow the money, and you will get to the truth.


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  5. #45
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun



    This is an old advertisement of the NRA, released I believe about a year ago when there were a lot of Trump protests. I was wondering if someone could put into words for me what is so objectively creepy about what is said and depicted. If not, just view it as a good example of why companies do not want to be associated with the NRA and why they should be shunned.


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  6. #46
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    I was wondering if someone could put into words for me what is so objectively creepy about what is said and depicted.
    Here's my feeble attempt to explain what is disturbing about it:

    Beyond of course promoting paranoia, anarchy, civil unrest, and exploiting deep divisions in society doesn't this sound like fascist propaganda being used to vilify a common enemy? Anyone defending the NRA should have to explain why this isn't just an affront to human decency and cross a red line for what is acceptable.



  7. #47
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    Here's my feeble attempt to explain what is disturbing about it:

    Beyond of course promoting paranoia, anarchy, civil unrest, and exploiting deep divisions in society doesn't this sound like fascist propaganda being used to vilify a common enemy? Anyone defending the NRA should have to explain why this isn't just an affront to human decency and cross a red line for what is acceptable.
    It is not so hard to understand: you need to be armed if you are to fight a tyrannical government that is opposed to your freedom, that wants to take that freedom away. The NRA protects your right to be armed. How a tyrannical government is defined, how freedom is defined is of course the key, but you need only watch that video to get a sense of who is most likely to be the target. And now you know why 'they' need guns, and why the NRA can be considered a 'terrorist' organization that, when the time comes, will justify an armed insurrection against a democratically elected President and Congress if the people have names like Jefferson (no, not him), Castro, al-Aziz, Chung and Bernstein. It may be hysterical now, and they have their Russian-backed con-man in the White House, but even he may be about to flip on the age limit for purchasing weapons. The difference now compared to the 19th century is that the demographics over the next 25 years suggest 'white America' is going to be eclipsed, numerically by Americas of different origin, though there is no evidence to suggest they are any less America than Bud or Chuck from Alabama.


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  8. #48
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    It is not so hard to understand: you need to be armed if you are to fight a tyrannical government that is opposed to your freedom, that wants to take that freedom away. The NRA protects your right to be armed. How a tyrannical government is defined, how freedom is defined is of course the key, but you need only watch that video to get a sense of who is most likely to be the target.
    This is definitely true but I think what makes it worse for me is that NRA backers and Republicans currently hold all of the cards in government. So while they claim to be arming the public against a "tyrannical government" and are promoting insurrection, they control the levers of power and are pretending to be powerless against all these forces.

    It's in part an exercise in feigned victimhood, where they're only pretending to be a grassroots movement (they only have 5 million members out of 300 million people so they are a concentrated minority interest) but in reality could not be more entrenched and well-financed. And yes, there is a very strong message of "we're white and Christian, watch out for all these scary people with darker skin who are violent and/or dishonest."


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  9. #49
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Don't make the mistake of not giving the Devil his due, the Devil isn't protected by the Constitution, the Devil IS the Constitution, and the Devil is in the details.
    Put the first and second amendment in a box and voila, out pops Pierre LaPierre.
    While trained Police Officers cower behind their cars in Florida, Montana Schoolchildren are safe and sane because they grew up on Fox TV and religiously fire and clean their guns.
    All the NRA does is Lobby for guns, their only natural competitors are sissies and Elites, and if their message sometimes sounds like a blunt force instrument, that's no mistake, that's music to the people who belong.
    If the Democrats use their future Political Capital on gun control, the Republicans would use it just like Obamacare, and rally their troops in the midterms.
    It's crazy.



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  10. #50
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    It's in part an exercise in feigned victimhood, where they're only pretending to be a grassroots movement (they only have 5 million members out of 300 million people so they are a concentrated minority interest) but in reality could not be more entrenched and well-financed.
    I suppose it is an odd situation where a small lobby appears to have such extensive support in Congress, more so than many worthy causes. I looked up referendum US to see if it can be done, and although there is no provision for a nationwide referendum on a single issue, the 21st Amendment that repealed the 18th (Prohibition) in 1933 was the outcome of what I think is called a 'state ratifying convention'. It raises the question, if the repeal of the 2nd Amendment was put to 50 states in a special convention, would the overall vote be for repeal or retain? I don't expect it to happen, but it seems to me that as the 2nd Amendment is at the core of the argument on gun ownership there can not be a proper national debate if the arguments are only presented by the NRA and some Democrat politicians. The argument needs to be addressed more broadly across American society, for otherwise how can anyone know what the average American thinks about the issue?



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