Re: Happiness is a warm gun
It is all so depressingly familiar -another mass shooting, another denial by people such as Rafael Cruz that guns are a problem. There is this article in The Daily Beast, which does add a little more profle that has been clarified in the Trump years and associated events, but as I don't live in the US I can't be sure if there is still no realistic prospect of meaningful gun control laws, or is it now for the individual States to act? Is it not ironic that Rafael Cruz's arguments about Black people with guns becoming 'the great fear' are almost exactly what was behind the first gun control laws in the US that followed the Civil War and the fear that freed slaves would rampage across the South?
"There have been seven gun massacres in seven days, but congressional Republicans are staying the course of claiming that passing any kind of gun-control legislation “would do nothing to stop these murders.” It’s a message that they’ve paired, for good measure, with the road-tested racist tactic of stirring up white delusions of Black criminality among their base. The message is, essentially, guns don’t kill people, Black people do — so be sure to lock and load.
...Senator Ted Cruz, the biggest congressional recipient of gun lobby dollars at last count, went on TV this week to pin mass shootings on BLM because—I’m still confused by the racist math here—white people are worried that roving bands of Black civil rights protesters are “going to come into the suburbs and raid people’s homes.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gop-rule-w...090601142.html
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Massacre in Texas. America Responds.
"We don't need gun control. We need to return to God" -Marjorie Taylor Greene.
"We know already fool. It's a transsexual illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos. It's apparently your kind of trash" -Paul Gosar [tweet deleted two hours after being posted].
Steve Kerr -Slam. Dunk. Life-0, Death- 50.
Steve Kerr Comments on the Tragic Shooting in Uvalde, Texas - YouTube
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Hot in Houston. Hot shots to gather and pray, and sell as many lies and excuses as they can. Maybe Boris Johnson will zoom in from No 10 Downing St, to offer them advice on how to treat Democracy and the people with contempt.
"Mr Abbott has been a strong proponent of loosening any and all restrictions on firearm ownership during his time as Texas’ governor and recently signed into law a bill that eliminated state background checks for firearm purchases and allows anyone old enough to own a firearm to carry it without any training or need for a permit.He has also signed legislation prohibiting Texas law enforcement officers from cooperating with any federal investigation into violations of federal firearms laws."
National Rifle Association convention in Texas is still on despite school massacre (yahoo.com)
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Are guns valued more than the lives of Children in the US, in Texas?
"Staffing schools with police officers is not the answer either. Since 1998, the government has invested over $1bn to increase police presence in schools; according to one study only 1% of schools reported having police officers on-site in 1975 but by 2018, about 58% of schools reported having a police presence. There were already armed school district police officers at the school in Uvalde and they did not stop the shooter, who was wearing body armor. A sergeant with the Texas department of public safety told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “there were several law enforcement that engaged the suspect, but he was able to make entry into the school”.
If guns made people safer, then the United States would be the safest place in the world. How many more children have to die before the right accept that the answer to bad guys with guns is not good guys with guns, it’s getting rid of guns."
Who are the right blaming for the Texas shooting? Trans people, immigrants and victims’ parents | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Another American half-wit who can't make the connection between selling weapons of war to teenagers, hell, anybody, who then goes to war against children, Black people, Asians, hell, anyone.
And he wants to go to Congress! To protect the right of every American to buy weapons of war - adios, America!
Aaron Rupar on Twitter: "Herschel Walker's solution to school shootings involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media." https://t.co/WAi7a4mwgz" / Twitter
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Pull the trigger, and the Confederacy of Dunces lines up to prove they are brainless morons
Congressional Representative Lauren Boebert-
“When 9/11 happened, we didn’t ban planes,” (actually, the US did, albeit temporarily)
Lauren Boebert’s bizarre defence for no gun action: ‘After 9/11, we didn’t ban planes’ | The Independent
Senator Susan Collins
“Although we are still waiting for more details, it is hard to believe that someone who would do this was not severely mentally ill. Congress should look at enacting a yellow flag law based on the one we have in Maine, which has due process rights and also involves a medical professional in the decision.”
-Or you could just stop selling battlefield weapons to citizens, be they sane or mentally ill -as for the 'Yellow Flag' -see the remarks on His Holiness Governor Abbott below.
Senator ¡Hola Rafael! Cruz
“Heidi and I are lifting up in prayer the entire Uvalde community during this devastating time and we mourn the lives that were taken by this act of evil.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz receives sharp backlash for comments in wake of Uvalde school shooting | The Hill
-Will they say prayers at the NRA this weekend? Probably. Will the NRA and Rafael decide the time has come to stop selling battlefield weapons to lunatics? Nah...
Governor, His Holiness Gregory Abbott
Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the Uvalde school shooter had a "mental health challenge" and the state needed to "do a better job with mental health" — yet in April he slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz receives sharp backlash for comments in wake of Uvalde school shooting | The Hill
'Lord, let they servant now depart in peace...'
Senator Bill Cassidy
-Yo, Hogs in Louisiana don't got rights?
GOP Senator Offers Untamed Response To Question About Assault Weapons | HuffPost UK U.S. News (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Stavros
It is all so depressingly familiar -another mass shooting, another denial by people such as Rafael Cruz that guns are a problem. There is this article in The Daily Beast, which does add a little more profle that has been clarified in the Trump years and associated events, but as I don't live in the US I can't be sure if there is still no realistic prospect of meaningful gun control laws, or is it now for the individual States to act? Is it not ironic that Rafael Cruz's arguments about Black people with guns becoming 'the great fear' are almost exactly what was behind the first gun control laws in the US that followed the Civil War and the fear that freed slaves would rampage across the South?
"There have been seven gun massacres in seven days, but congressional Republicans are staying the course of claiming that passing any kind of gun-control legislation “
would do nothing to stop these murders.” It’s a message that they’ve paired, for good measure, with the road-tested racist tactic of stirring up white delusions of Black criminality among their base. The message is, essentially, guns don’t kill people, Black people do — so be sure to lock and load.
...Senator Ted Cruz, the
biggest congressional recipient of gun lobby dollars at last count, went on TV this week to pin mass shootings on BLM because—I’m still confused by the racist math here—white people are worried that roving bands of Black civil rights protesters are “going to come into the suburbs and raid people’s homes.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gop-rule-w...090601142.html
Democrats and Republicans are both highly confused about LEGAL Black gun owners.
https://blackgunownersassociation.org
https://www.blackgunownersmagazine.com
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrFanti
Forgot one more.....
https://naaga.co
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrFanti
None of your links illuminate your claim. And, as I am sure you know, the first laws introduced by States and the Federal Govt to limit gun ownership were intended to prevent Black people from owning firearms, both before the Civil War and after it, when there was a fear that freed slaves were about to go on the rampage across the South....which never happened. The first link has a discussion of firearms and militias and how the law has moved backwards and forwards in States, but with Black people fundamental to the arguments for control.
The very racist history of gun control - The Boston Globe
Black Gun Ownership: From Negro Militias To Black Armament : Code Switch : NPR
The second major limitation on gun ownership in the California Republic was a response to the parade of legal weaponry by the Black Panthers in Oakland -say thanks to Ronald Reagan and the NRA for 'protecting' Americans from the Panthers....
The NRA Supported Gun Control When the Black Panthers Had the Weapons - HISTORY
Can Black Americans also be mass murderers? Sure. So take away the guns.
NRA, Trump, Abbott: Mental Health....how can you determine the mental health of an 18-year old buying battlefield weapons if there are no background checks?
NRA, Trump, Abbott, Rafael -Arm the Teachers! -So if the gunman enters a classroom and shoots the teacher first, then what?
Security on Site! There was security on site. They failed. Is anyone from the police to the Governor's office going to resign because of this failure?
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Can evil be explained? Not according to the men who think the solution to gun grime is more guns. In fact many efforts have been made to explain it, outside of the religious/theological concept of evil as a violation of God's Commands.
Cognitive therapy and theory may help, as the link tries to do. It may be that the shooter has a perception of the world that is not shared by wider society, and thus when he decides to resolve his issue(s) by attacking society, the natural response is a blank rejection without any further explanation. There is both a cognitive failure and a moral failure, and it may be both perpetrator and victim who are failing to understand the process taking place.
It could be that a young man is convinced he is important, but cannot reconcile his grand perception of himself with wider society's apparent indifference to his status. Unable to reconcile competing perceptions that cause him pain, the young man decides to prove how strong and powerful he is by transferring his pain onto those who are weak and defenceless. The standard triad of murder emerges: The motive is self-satisfaction, the justification of the self; the means is the weapon that he uses, the opportunity provided by the congregation of weak and vulnerable children in a small space that he can control.
What, to the observer can appear to be an act of mindless violence, may in fact have a logical cause and aim, when seen from the perspective of the man with a gun. In other cases, if the shooter is convinced that Black people are the cause of America's ills, 'taking them out' is a logical means of solving a problem, with the rider that being convinced 'only he' can do it, gives more weight to the selfish aim of liberation. It may be that those shooters who kill themselves, realize in then moment of carnage that their actions have achieved nothing, and lacking any broad value system to self-correct, choose to self-destruct.
Whether or not a person is 'born evil' or made evil may be where the research is limited -how the person is raised, in what environment, with what degree of socialization must be factors.
But to wish away bad acts as bad acts without any further explanation is laziness, just as to call for even more guns to solve a problem made worse by guns is irrational and a denial of freedom in its most basic form.
The analysis is here-
Frontiers | The Cognition of Severe Moral Failure: A Novel Approach to the Perception of Evil | Psychology (frontiersin.org)
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Stavros
None of your links illuminate your claim.
They all do.
If you can't see it, then I can't explain it.
Bottom line to summarize is that the Black American population is not a monolithic group that many think we are.
And...
Both Dems and Repubs like to make decisions for us - instead of letting us think and sort things out for ourselves.
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MrFanti
They all do.
If you can't see it, then I can't explain it.
Bottom line to summarize is that the Black American population is not a monolithic group that many think we are.
And...
Both Dems and Repubs like to make decisions for us - instead of letting us think and sort things out for ourselves.
You wrote "Democrats and Republicans are both highly confused about LEGAL Black gun owners." but your links are websites with general information rather than discussions of whatever the confusion is you refer to.
I have never said or implied Black Americans are a 'monolithic' group, but even you must be aware that in general terms, the majority of Black Americans who vote, choose Democrat candidates, and that this is the reason why the Republican Party has a long record of denying Black citizens the vote though various measures, while just this year re-districting in some States has aimed to dilute the Black American vote where, geographically, it enables the election of Democrats. And they don't even hide their intentions.
The key issue here is not about Black and White anyway, but whether or not any American of any colour or identity, needs to own a weapon of war of the kind used in mass murders. I heard someone from Texas say quite simply that he needs a battlefield weapon for 'self-defence', which makes one ask, 'defend yourself from whom, or what?'. Or it could be that in fact, these people want these weapons for offence rather than defence, for that time when they believe they will not be fighting to 'take back' their country at the ballot box, but on the streets, armed and dangerous.
And you know who will be in their crosshairs. It is you.
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
Mo Brooks -'We need guns when it's time to take our country back' -meet Carol Anderson, who argues the 2nd Amendment was designed from the start to give White people the guns they need to put down rebellious Black people, and remove Federal controls on firearms....
Rep. Mo Brooks Says We Need Our Guns So We Can 'Take Back' The Nation (yahoo.com)
Carol Anderson: The Second Amendment is anti-Black – Center for Public Integrity
"The Second": Carol Anderson on the Racist History Behind the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms - YouTube
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
He was only, 24 hours from Tul-sa...but he can't resist promoting policy failure when the evidence doesn't suit his perverted view of the world he lives in-
Gun control, as the link shows, works, just as the ban on assault weapons that was introduced during the Clinton Presidency resulted in a decline in deaths from battlefield weapons, but expired in 2004. Democrats are divided on what should be a no-brainer policy, or maybe terrified of taking on the bogus arguments used about the 2nd Amendment- the right to bear arms? What in any definition, is a 'Well organized militia'? One crazy dude with an AR-15?
You would think men and women of intelligence would not be paralysed by policy failure, but until a Tory MP (Tobias Ellwood) today called for the UK to seek membership of the EU Single Market, Brexit was a non-negotiable policy, in spite of the damage it has caused. Thus from this clown in Congress, with a big red hooter and shit for brains-
"“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year,” he said. “Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri.“So something has happened to our society. I go back to abortion, when we decided it was OK to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks."
GOP Lawmaker Manages To Blame Abortion For Mass Shootings (yahoo.com)
They got the death penalty in Missouri? Sure do, coz they valu life so much...
Missouri | Death Penalty Information Center
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
So the Party of Trump's war against freedom enters a new phase-
"The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York state law requiring applicants for a license to carry a gun outside of their homes to have a “proper cause” to do so, saying it violated the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The 6-3 ruling in the case is a major victory for gun rights advocates who had challenged New York’s restrictive law, which makes it a crime to carry a concealed firearm without a license.
It also represents the Supreme Court’s biggest expansion of gun rights in more than a decade — and casts doubt on laws in eight other states and the District of Columbia that restrict concealed-carry permits in ways similar to New York."
Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law on Second Amendment grounds (cnbc.com)
I don't know if Sullivan's Law was as effective in deterring gun crime in the state of New York as some think, it is a separate issue. What I find difficult to comprehend is the that the Court claims the law violated the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution which makes no reference to individuals, but to 'a well organized militia' -perhaps at some point a Jurist can define what a 'well organized militia' might be, because I struggle to think it means a spotty 18-year old who lives with his mum, or a dad of three living in Yonkers, or Bonkers as the case may be.
Below is the link to an abstract and then an article by Robert Leider published last year. The key issue is a key element of the argument justifying the Liberal Democratic state that has its origins in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan of 1658 where it is argued that the citizen should surrender to the State a degree of Liberty in return for the State defending the citizen. It was subsequently elaborated on culminating in Max Weber's early 20th century argument that by definition, the modern state must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Thus Leider takes on the Monopoly argument to argue that a decentralization of force that gives individuals guns is both a practical means of securing the citizen, and a Constitutional right.
Leider offers three reasons,
1) that law enforcement 'still enforces law below desirable levels'- in other words, armed citizens can compensate for the lack of law enforcement;
2) there is a mismatch between Public Duty and Private Rights. I find this confusing, but this is what he says-
"While providing effective law enforcement is a public duty, it is not a private right. Individuals, thus, have no effective claim that the government adequately enforce the law or protect them against unlawful violence. And any attempt to create such a private right would create profound separation of powers concerns. Consequently, self-help and private law enforcement are the best remedies when governments undersupply needed levels of police protection. "
3) get this -"even if the “government” has a monopoly of force, it does not follow that government officers are the only ones in whom the government’s monopoly may be vested" -in other words, law enforcement can be decentralized to the citizen because the Officers of the govt might not be good at their job.
His conclusion is just as breathtaking -"the article concludes that the individual right to bear arms still has relevance for public defense and security." But when the 2nd Amendment was framed, a 'well organized militia' was conceived as an addition or even a replacement for the Continental Army that fought the British, which Washington wanted to disband. It was thus conceived in terms of a 'Militia' rather than an Individual, and to combat external invasion of the United States rather than local law enforcement where the citizen doesn't have it, for whatever reason.
Thus, there is an argument that the Police Department can be 'defunded' or just shut down, and law enforcement be the task of armed citizens, whether they form a militia or not; and one also can see how such men and women would not just take up arms to defend their property and their neighbourhood, but use it to attack the Federal Government of the USA if they define it as a 'tyranny'. And is it ironic or deliberate, that such people, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Three Percenters, prefer to parade around with battlefield weapons rather than Midnight Specials?
So, gun law in this sense creates a separation of powers that Leider claims he wants to avoid, by reducing the need of the State to maintain its monopoly or violence or the use of force, but in doing so, also creates the potential for force and violence which undermines the authority of the State, thus enabling a form of Anarchy barely mitigated by the assumption that the rule of law will prosecute men and women who use guns against the law, for example by killing people -unless they can mount the Rittenhouse 'Self-Defence' argument.
And still no definition of 'A well organized militia' -or a debate on the precise nature of guns and ammunition in the 21st century,.
Leider's abstract is here-
The State’s Monopoly of Force and the Right to Bear Arms | Antonin Scalia Law School (gmu.edu)
The full article is here-
viewcontent.cgi (northwestern.edu)
Re: Happiness is a warm gun
A brave move, an urgent measure, and one that has attracted legal complaints like flies on a jam sandwich. But where is the moral argument that asks how much longer gun advocates are going to stand by while children are born who never get to ten years old because they have been shredded by a bullet, or two, or ten?
We have been here so many times before, but it never gets better. Is there no hope at all that even limited measures to restrict the carrying of weapons of death in public can be passed -does it really undermine anyone's freedom to leave the gun at home?
A US governor tried to ban guns amid ‘relentless’ violence. The lawsuits followed swiftly | New Mexico | The Guardian
