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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The reason why we need to find out this guy's motive is simple: We need to find out who he's working for, or what inspired him.
Leviticus 19:34I don’t know what you’re hearing elsewhere but what you seem to be trying to introduce seems to be either generic “Democrats are bad” statements with no substance or detail, or wildly hypothetical “what if the democrats did this?” statements with no connection to real world actions.
I’m all ears for actual complaints about things democrats do, but you don’t seem to have any, you seem to just have an emotional dislike of the Democratic Party and a bunch of hypothetical fears about stuff democrats aren’t doing.
You keep saying bad things about democrats, getting asked if any democrats have actually done or suggested that and then going radio silent, it comes across as if you’re just making shit up that has no connection to reality.
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Large segments of America are very wild and very lawless, it’s a big sort of why the US has such a huge gun-culture, because they are on their own, they haven’t actually tamed the frontier.
I don’t live in a country where anyone has a reasonable fear of bear attack or violent home invasion, but in the US such fears can be real.
Edited by Silasw on Aug 3rd 2019 at 11:54:17 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBut don't pull the "Americans are gun-obsessed lunatics" in the US politics thread, please. We're not. We know there's a problem. We're trying to fix it. Telling us that we're okay with it is quite frankly insulting.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.(this also works as response to ![]()
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Well, no. You're fighting a healthy majority of the mass shooters by fighting white nationalism, yes. But not 100% of them. It's an approach that's basically just treating the symptoms. Stomping out white nationalism only works as a permanent solution if you assume that they are the only reason anyone ever has or ever will commit a mass shooting.
To be clear, by all means, stomp them out. They are, as a group, evil to the core and the hammer of law should hit them hard. All I'm saying is that that's priority #2, not priority #1.
Which, to be brutally honest, is sort of a feeling I get every time gun control comes up around here.
Edited by Gilphon on Aug 3rd 2019 at 8:25:00 AM
@Jovian: From another foreigner, it absolutely looks that way to me. Anytime we point the obvious connection between lack of gun control and mass shootings, tropers switch the discussion to ideology, as if extremism is always the reason or doesn't exist in other countries.
Edited by Grafite on Aug 3rd 2019 at 1:28:49 PM
Life is unfair...![]()
If the goal is to prevent mass shootings in the USA, then it makes sense to crack down on what is looking more and more like the leading cause for them in the USA.
Heck, law enforcement agencies have known for years that white supremacists are one of the biggest threats in the USA. The FBI recently admitted that a lot of the arrests they've made in the past year were connected to white nationalism.
Anyway, it's not like it's impossible to handle both issues at once. This is not an "either-or" situation.
Edited by M84 on Aug 3rd 2019 at 8:27:14 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedThe whole “gun culture is weird and gross” thing also feels like it forgets that the US isn’t the only country with a strong gun culture.
But either way, combatting mass shootings is primarily about motivation. Mass shootings are a tiny fraction of gun deaths. We need gun control, but we need it to reduce the close to a hundred gun deaths a day that happen in the US, the majority of which are suicides and single-victim homicides.
They should have sent a poet.Charles, i.e. me, should also state that he is for gun control. He would love to outlaw private gun ownership of anything but rifles as sporting equipment and even then they should maybe only be at lodges you can pick up and after extensive checks. Also, store handguns at stores for target shooting at most (even then you could do that with bb guns).
However, he is pressing that there's something uglier and that white nationalism, misogyny, and ideological terrorism is behind these things.
You can impede the terrorists by removing their guns but the ideology is a bigger issue in my mind.
I hope that clarifies my position.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 3rd 2019 at 5:35:27 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
Please don't pretend like most opposition to gun culture is due to it's weirdness. I hate it because it has led to an enormous amount of preventable deaths, which is not found in other developed countries with stronger gun control laws. That's all.
Is it gun culture that’s causing the deaths, though? Because like I mentioned, quite a few other countries have strong gun cultures. Given that, I’d say it seems more likely the reactionary/libertarian streak in US politics that opposes gun control that’s the issue.
Most Americans support gun control. Most gun owners support gun control. I wouldn’t be so quick to claim gun culture is the direct cause of gun violence.
They should have sent a poet.
x7 What M84 said. There are multiple ways we can beat back the threat of domestic terrorism. Fighting white nationalism is one method, which will be remarkably effective, but there is no reason we can't enact others while fighting white nationalism, and frankly I'm tired of people on either side acting like governments can only do one thing at a time.
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Please don't put words in my mouth. Absolutely nowhere did I imply that fighting white nationalism is a thing we can't or shouldn't do. I did, in fact, explicitly say that it's a thing we can and should do.
What I did say if that if your goal to be prevent mass shootings, stamping out the ideologies that lead to them should be your second priority, while your first should be making them physically harder to carry out.
Of course nobody here has said they're against gun control, but you have jumped to my throat for saying 'it's crazy the people don't seem to see that the best way to prevent mass shootings is the way that every other country has effectively prevented mass shootings'.
Edited by Gilphon on Aug 3rd 2019 at 9:24:09 AM
I feel the opposite. Gun control is good but it'd be much more effective long term and easier to go after the ideologies than essentially run into the opposition you get from people who are not necessarily the enemy but feel targeted by it.
Even if I think their defense is stupid.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.You're putting words in my mouth. What I said was I'm tired of people acting we can't do two things at the same time, which your whole "fight domestic terrorism first before you get to white nationalism" arguments imply.
White nationalism is the biggest cause of domestic terrorism in America. Cracking down on it will therefore do away with much of the domestic terror attacks happening in America. That does not mean we cannot crack down on other causes while we do this. There is no reason to make fighting white nationalism a "Second priority". One.
Two, stop acting like we don't know that strict gun control will lead to far less mass murders. We know this. However, you seem to be downplaying how big white nationalism is as a motivator for these shooters. Everyone in this thread knows that we need strict gun control laws at the federal level, but we also know that stamping out white nationalism as much as possible will also reduce the number of mass shooting considerably (and again, we can do these things at the same time, there is no reason to go after one first and another second). Your insistence that we don't understand that our lack of gun control laws are one — one — cause of these frequent shootings, and your comments that we all seems like a bunch of crazy gun nuts to you, are coming dangerously close to carrying the arrogant connotation of "I know your country better than you do".
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Aug 3rd 2019 at 9:48:48 AM
i'm tired, my friendIn the sense that Trump has been fostering a climate where white supremacists are legitimized and shielded, then yes he's correct to blame him.
I don't think O'Rourke is a good presidential candidate but one thing I will give him is that he has always been very upfront about racial justice and the marginalization of women (particularly women of color), something that many other white male politicians are not so good at.
You seem to be blatantly ignoring the bit where I've explicitly and repeatedly said that that's not what I'm trying to imply. And now you're accusing me of putting words in your mouth when I point out that you seem to be ignoring that bit.
Saying one thing is higher priority than another does 'not mean that both things can't be done at the same thing, and to suggest it does is a borderline malicious misinterpretation. It's a matter of which one gets more resources and manpower allocated to it, and stuff like that. To suggest that my argument imply that gun control should get 100% of the resources and fighting white nationalism gets none of it until we're done with that is completely putting words in my mouth. Because that would, of course, be an utterly idiotic thing to suggest and I've repeatedly clarified that I'm not saying that.
What, exactly, is the point of this argument? I'm pretty sure that we're all on the same side on this issue.
My musician page

Like, 15 mass murderers in a relatively small community is a totally unacceptable figure. Heck, 15 mass murderers in an entire country is a totally unacceptable figure. And crucially, it's not an inevitable figure by any means.
Edited by Gilphon on Aug 3rd 2019 at 7:50:31 AM