Adam Lanza's Attack Took Less Than 5 Minutes

[Pogo]

For the first bolded part, I disagree completely on "who started it" (addressed in the Bob Costas bit above). Once "culture" was perverted into something having to do with "legislation" --and keep in mind this was two weeks before Newtown and didn't even refer to a mass shooting-- that's where we went onto the wrong foot. The side of the gun-concerned were immediately put on the defensive for positions they hadn't even voiced. I can't emphasize this enough; it was a crucial starting point for phony debate points. And once Newtown happened it was like Disingenuous Debate Spring Traning had given way to the regular season.

On the second bolded part, all I can say is . It's about damn time we got over the bullshit and into the issues.

I would have to look at the timeline to get the ‘who started it’ sequence down but I am not going to. I will simply concede the point because I don’t care who started it (and I imagine that you really don’t either tbh but I could be wrong on that) because no matter who started the conversation on the wrong track, it is still on the wrong track. Both sides are equally responsible for this and whoever was the reactionary is really meaningless as long as we all keep reacting instead of looking for real solutions.

To put this in simpler terms: when children start deflecting, adults don’t follow, they correct and steer the conversation to where it belongs. Other children follow and exacerbate.

Certainly it's not a new idea to throw legislation at the problem, and it's not a new idea that the NRA will immediately lobby to water it or douse it before it starts, and it's not new that Congressional debate and resistance will ensue so that time passes and the emotion of the moment gives way to more meticulous rationality. That's why I'm really not concerned about the whole legislative charade; it's not like we have no checks and balances. Ultimately I think we might agree that the legislative angle is irrelevant to the cultural issue.

I am concerned that that whole legislative charade, which is pushed by both traditonal "sides", and initiated as outlined above by the pro-gun lobby, serves to take our eye off the ball, which is the cultural background. Indeed I have no doubt whatsoever that that was the whole purpose of misrepresenting the issue in the first place--- to get the issue off the battleground of culture, and onto that of the legislative charade, where they had a much better chance. I was on another message board last year where I brought this angle up (gun culture, as opposed to gun legislation) and was attacked so vehemently for that suggestion that the pro-gunners lobbied to get me kicked off the board to shut me up. So this dynamic of censorship and deflection cannot be more obvious to this writer. It's an obvious nerve.

Ultimately this deflection into irrelevant legal areas balances itself like a pitcher of water; Dianne Feinstein may have one particular interest, but she's also one Senator with 99 colleagues to balance her. That will all take care of itself. It's theater. As theater is superficial, I just don't see much meaning in it, hence my ambivalence on that.

But meanwhile we've told ourselves that, depending on our position, we've either (a) passed legislation so we have no more mass shooting problem, or (b) defeated dangerous legislation that would have infringed on Constitutional rights. And neither one of those does a damn bit of good to address the next mass shooting, because we've allowed ourselves to be shunted off into addressing the symptoms, so that we don't have to be bothered with addressing the disease.

I.. cant…

You’re a poo poo head!

Damn, sorry. I was regressing because I can’t really argue with anything in that you posted here

I don’t think that my earlier statements and yours here are entirely at odds with each other though, just emphasizing a different part, that which is important to each of us. Where you don’t see the charade as important as the conversation on real solutions, I do mostly because I am not confident in the system checking itself. I have seen far too much legislation slip through because of an event (patriot act anyone?) that eroded proper heads and opposition. It is these times when people are willing to cede rights in failed ideas of protection that our freedoms disappear and never return. Each one is small and in the end not a whole lot of change in themselves but put together and they can equal a complete loos of rights. As Franklin stated:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I believe there is fundamental truth in that statement.

Excellent point on the PATRIOT act, yes, and that's quite the glaring exception. I guess I feel that, strictly speaking within the gun question, this balance will take care of itself. I suspect there's more energy and passion defending individual guns than there is defending individual rights. That's a whole 'nother issue that goes back to your point about premasticated sound bytes and issues degrading into media noise. Perhaps we can conclude that the NRA does a better job advocating for its position than the ACLU does.

 

[FA_Q2]

Part three of three

No question, human perversions are fascinating to those who don't share those perversions. But I don't think it's at all a waste of time to understand how they got to that point, definitely not. If that understanding, should we reach it, flags down a potential situation before it happens, then we have a filtering tool. Simply shrugging "oh well he was crazy" may be true, but it gives us nothing constructive to work with and ensures that the next time we'll be reactive rather than proactive.

To that question, somebody in this forum came up with a nice article that I keep trying to make time to get into for discussion but I'll post it again here for anyone else. If it's the kind of thing you're not interested in I'll be sorry to hear that, because it may (may) be a lead to what's happening to us. At the very least it asks the right question.

But to back up a bit and not to lose this point because I think it's vitally important, and should be obvious if we will acknowledge it -- that an Adam Lanza or a James Holmes or the guy in the Oregon mall or Klebold and Harris (etc etc etc) are not out for murder, clearly, because they could accomplish that with, say, a bomb or poison gas, which doesn't require one's presence in the moment, and which gives at least a chance of being somewhere else when the shit goes down and possibly not being caught (think Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or the anthrax mailer). Not only does a mass shooting inevitably result in either the self-inflicted death and/or incarceration of the shooter (not true of the terrorist bomber), but an actual terrorist attack takes meticulous planning, whereas random shooting, once the shooter takes his position, is random, targeting whatever comes into view. So these are not the same thing going on.

We call these guys 'mass murderers' but I believe that's a misnomer.What these mass shooters are after is personal carnage, and by that I mean the real, physical, visual experience of being able to watch helpless people, even kids, scream, run for cover and bleed from their wounds. They're not out for murder but for a perverse kind of power trip (and I think it's got everything to do with power). You can't get that kind of sensory feedback by poisoning the water or leaving a bomb for later while you get out of harm's way. I have no doubt the moment when they're strafing innocent people absolutely IS the payoff. As I remember Klebold and Harris were whooping with exhilarated delight as they inflicted their carnage.

This is why their weapon of choice is guns -- nothing can give the kind of sensory payoff --blood splattering, organ demolishing, long-distance range-- that a gun will. And it only ends when they know it must end, when they're outgunned and use their last shot on themselves; the goal of the "game" being to run up the score as much as possible before the clock runs out.

Crudely put but I do believe that's what's going on in those heads in that moment-- and is the real goal of what they're doing.
And that's why I keep getting back to the culture. Something in our culture is giving these perverts the idea that mowing people down would be a really cool thing to administer. And that, I believe, is the root of the tree that bears this poison fruit.

I understand what you are saying now. Good points, particularly the bolded/underlined part. I can understand what you are saying that there is something in the culture that gives them this idea BUT I don’t think such an underlying issue can be totally removed even if our culture was completely devoid of violence. Some people are simply crazy and want to do this type of thing. Then, exposure to our glorification of violence makes the event more likely.

Besides taking a good look at our culture I think that we need to refine our ability to discover and treat those that are truly insane. This is a really sticky situation because you can’t deprive people of due process but you also cannot let people that are intelligent and insane (as this person and most other mass murderers whether or not they are as you described or McVeighs) go untreated. They are going to exist no matter what we do.

Changing our culture though would go a long way as you suggest though. I have to admit that it makes me wonder sometimes. Our heroes are usually people like McClain. While we espouse a society of rights and freedoms, we idolize the type of person that would stomp all over those rights and watch movies where they actively do so all while causing the max amount of destruction and loss of innocent life to get the ‘bad guy.’ The sad reality though is that I enjoy this stuff myself. What to do, what to do…

Well this (bolded in appropriate red part) is what I mean by understanding what's going on in these heads. Only when we know what the problem is may we begin to assess where it comes from.

Agreed, you can't deprive due process and you can't legislate free speech either, as suggestions leaning on violent video games or movies might do -- if that's even a causal factor. I don't know who McClain is but I assume Rambo might be a cognate. It's true, we have a culture that gets its jollies from visions of destruction and carnage and death and a never-ending morality play on "good versus evil"; I can't explain that, but I strongly suspect it has the effect of both desensitizing us and warping (or expressing a warp already there) our collective psychology into an area where the sanctity of life has no meaning. I believe your term "idolize" in the bolded part hits the nail right on the head.

War is another example of the same thing; Jesse Ventura likes to point out that there has been no point in his lifetime when this country was not at war somewhere, and he was born in 1951. That should be more unacceptable than it is, but we make it into a football game where the enemy is possessed of no humanity whatsoever. And now with drone attacks we can detach ourselves completely. Bill Maher got fired from ABC for pointing this out, so we love to detach ourselves from the responsibility of respect for life, but we sure as hell hate to admit it.

I think it's got a lot to do with our propensity to see the world in a black-white good/evil dichotomy that fatally oversimplifies realities. That's my starting point.

Cultural issues are far deeper than throwing legislation around, no question, but as we agreed at an earlier point, every worthwhile solution starts with "me". I try to see the big picture; not the tree but the forest.

That article on masculine hegemony I actually got from a thread here-- it's right on the mark of where the examination needs to go, and yet it got so little attention that I can't even find it now. We'd rather flame each other about "you gun nuts" and "you libtards" and legislative theater. It's a path of less resistance. I'm guilty of this too as I should have developed my own participation in that thread and kept it alive, but there just wasn't the time. But if we believe in our culture we need to make the time.

Thanks for reading and hearing.

Thanks foe ‘speaking.’

<start un-needed explanation of McClain>
BTW, McClain is the main character in the Diehard series played by Bruce Willis. Rambo is similar but not as bad because Rambo is at least blasting ‘bad guys’ most of the time due to the fact that Rambo is usually on the front lines. Though this plays into another problem with the idolatry of war that I will get into in a minute as that is a whole other can-o-worms. McClain, if you have not seen Diehard, is a cop that essentially brings a warzone to the states fighting the bad guys. In most of the overblown scenes (including taking out a helicopter with a fire hydrant and a harrier jet by jumping on it, lol) we end up with MASSIVE damage to civilians and infrastructure not to mention the complete disregard of civil rights entirely. On that same vein, you see cops all the time breaking into homes and other places to gather ‘evidence’ in TV series. It always gets a chuckle from me that you are rooting for the person that is completely opposite to freedom but I digress:
</explanation>

Just to warn you, you’re getting me on a rant here so be prepared:
I have to emphasize the bolded part. As a member of the armed forces, this idolatry of war scares the shit out of me. We are embroiled in ever increasing wars all over the globe and people don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. Sure, we get complaints of Iraq and Afghanistan BUT no one seems to notice that we are EXPANDING our arm, not retracting it. It was the one major reason that I supported Bush the first time. He ran on a platform of reducing our foreign presence. I don’t blame him for not doing so as 9/11 changed a lot of things (but I do blame him for Iraq – that was epically dumb and was enough to end his chances for a second term) but the left had a valid criticism of the warlike right. That is until Obama came along and nothing changed. We are still expanding our military operations and still killing tons of people all over the planet. No one seems to even care. As you said, drones are exacerbating this because it removes us even more from the horrors of war.

I told my grandparents that Afghanistan worried me because no one was being killed on our side. This confused them, of course, but I mentioned that the country was in a bloodthirsty mood and without casualties Americans had no concept of the cost of war. The ‘other’ guys were being killed so no one really noticed a damn thing. I knew that this was going to cause us to go deeper down the hole, prosecuting more wars. Now, if you are reading this DO NOT twist my words to mean that I wanted casualties. I don’t BUT I could see what a painless war was doing – promoting the idea that we need more of it and I called it. Soon after we were in Iraq and now it was not painless. Later, Afghanistan started getting its own casualties but the problem is that American thought erroneously that we should prosecute a war without real costs. That is a terrible hole to fall in.

And to emphasize the point, Americans are tired of Iraq because we are seeing casualties and they keep talking about that. No one is mentioning all the other places we are at ‘war’ or countries that we are bombing. We don’t care that hundreds die, as long as they are not Americans. War is the most horrible thing imaginable. It is far far FAR worse than sandy hook. I am not trivializing sandy hook but emphasizing the horror that war is. It is necessary but should only be entered in when there is absolutely no options whatsoever. We enter into wars now on barely a whim.

Finally (to end the wall of text ) the two parties have essentially merged on this and that is even scarier than the missing realization that war is terrible. My grandfather is essentially a communist. He believes that all money should be taken by the government if they see fit and that we need much more regulation and control. He is fringe left to the extreme. My father is damn near an anarchist, believing that the government is the worst thing that can possibly exist and that regulation should simply cease to exist. He is as far right as it gets. When I told them that I supported Paul in the election they both said the same damn thing. I don’t care how nuts anyone thinks Paul is. It has no bearing on the point that they were unified in one area: they both wondered how I could support someone with his foreign policy. I mean, he said that Iran is going to get nukes and there is nothing that we can do! They both could not understand that I wanted less war.

No one want an end to the wars anymore, no matter how much they claim to. They really want an end to American casualties. That’s about it.
/end rant

 

[FA_Q2]

Excellent point on the PATRIOT act, yes, and that's quite the glaring exception. I guess I feel that, strictly speaking within the gun question, this balance will take care of itself. I suspect there's more energy and passion defending individual guns than there is defending individual rights. That's a whole 'nother issue that goes back to your point about premasticated sound bytes and issues degrading into media noise. Perhaps we can conclude that the NRA does a better job advocating for its position than the ACLU does.

Yes, the NRA does a far better job at their one issue than the ALCU but that is likely because they have ONE issue. ALCU has a lot and they, like the NRA as well, tend to lose their way as well attacking rights at times rather than defending them.

I don&#8217;t find the patriot act as the &#8216;one glaring&#8217; exception though. I find it as the most recent. I personally believe that there are a LOT and they tend to stick around damn near forever. It is why I am passionate about this and other rights issues.

With the gun issue though, it will take care of itself. Mostly because there are a lot of people like me that are willing to defend it no matter what horrible slurs are thrown around at us. You do have a point, we don&#8217;t need another person such as yourself for gun control but there are many needed for other rights that are being trampled on.

Oh, and when were you going to tell me you were related to jar-jar

Hear hear, well spake.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

You hate guns we get it.

People who value the 2nd and people who belong to the NRA are not monolithic. Not all people who support both are anti all gun controls

 

[idb]

You people continue to gloss over and ignore the central issue on things like Newton and the other mass shootings these shooters got the guns legally they had no criminal record or had been committed to a mental hospital. There were warning and danger signs from all of them but now way to get them committed without there consent until after they committed there crimes they will always be able to get hold the the weapon and magazine or clip they want either legally or illegally you want to stop or at least cut down on these type of crimes focus on getting laws that allow them to be committed and get the help they need before they do these horrible things.

So wouldn't the first step be to insist on records being kept of all gun purchases?

It won't prevent every incident, no...nothing can.
Even a 'good guy with a gun' can't prevent every gun crime.

No. It would not prevent any incident whatsoever. As a matter of fact, that entire effort would be utterly meaningless. HOW does a registry stop ANYTHING? What possible function can a registry accomplish?

In every case, if the gun that was used was legally purchased, the registry would do nothing other than identify that person had a gun. No change in the use of that weapon in a crime. If the gun was purchased or acquired illegally, it would not be in the registry under that person anyway. Again, no change in the use of it in a crime.

Essentially, registries do NOTHING whatsoever for combating shootings. The ONLY thing that a registry can be used for is attempting to find the person that committed the crime yet it is woefully poor in that field and would utterly fail. Registries add nothing to the process.

People come to the attention of the authorities for all sorts of reasons.
Both sides of the debate say that firearms should be removed from criminals and those with mental issues.
Once someone has been identified to be mad or bad a registry can be checked to see if they have legally purchased a firearm and the appropriate action taken.
The argument often put forward is that it won't prevent the illegal purchase of guns, which is true, but so what, that's an enforcement issue?
How else would you do it?

 

[idb]

Part three of three

I understand what you are saying now. Good points, particularly the bolded/underlined part. I can understand what you are saying that there is something in the culture that gives them this idea BUT I don’t think such an underlying issue can be totally removed even if our culture was completely devoid of violence. Some people are simply crazy and want to do this type of thing. Then, exposure to our glorification of violence makes the event more likely.

Besides taking a good look at our culture I think that we need to refine our ability to discover and treat those that are truly insane. This is a really sticky situation because you can’t deprive people of due process but you also cannot let people that are intelligent and insane (as this person and most other mass murderers whether or not they are as you described or McVeighs) go untreated. They are going to exist no matter what we do.

Changing our culture though would go a long way as you suggest though. I have to admit that it makes me wonder sometimes. Our heroes are usually people like McClain. While we espouse a society of rights and freedoms, we idolize the type of person that would stomp all over those rights and watch movies where they actively do so all while causing the max amount of destruction and loss of innocent life to get the ‘bad guy.’ The sad reality though is that I enjoy this stuff myself. What to do, what to do…

Well this (bolded in appropriate red part) is what I mean by understanding what's going on in these heads. Only when we know what the problem is may we begin to assess where it comes from.

Agreed, you can't deprive due process and you can't legislate free speech either, as suggestions leaning on violent video games or movies might do -- if that's even a causal factor. I don't know who McClain is but I assume Rambo might be a cognate. It's true, we have a culture that gets its jollies from visions of destruction and carnage and death and a never-ending morality play on "good versus evil"; I can't explain that, but I strongly suspect it has the effect of both desensitizing us and warping (or expressing a warp already there) our collective psychology into an area where the sanctity of life has no meaning. I believe your term "idolize" in the bolded part hits the nail right on the head.

War is another example of the same thing; Jesse Ventura likes to point out that there has been no point in his lifetime when this country was not at war somewhere, and he was born in 1951. That should be more unacceptable than it is, but we make it into a football game where the enemy is possessed of no humanity whatsoever. And now with drone attacks we can detach ourselves completely. Bill Maher got fired from ABC for pointing this out, so we love to detach ourselves from the responsibility of respect for life, but we sure as hell hate to admit it.

I think it's got a lot to do with our propensity to see the world in a black-white good/evil dichotomy that fatally oversimplifies realities. That's my starting point.

Cultural issues are far deeper than throwing legislation around, no question, but as we agreed at an earlier point, every worthwhile solution starts with "me". I try to see the big picture; not the tree but the forest.

That article on masculine hegemony I actually got from a thread here-- it's right on the mark of where the examination needs to go, and yet it got so little attention that I can't even find it now. We'd rather flame each other about "you gun nuts" and "you libtards" and legislative theater. It's a path of less resistance. I'm guilty of this too as I should have developed my own participation in that thread and kept it alive, but there just wasn't the time. But if we believe in our culture we need to make the time.

Thanks for reading and hearing.

Thanks foe ‘speaking.’

<start un-needed explanation of McClain>
BTW, McClain is the main character in the Diehard series played by Bruce Willis. Rambo is similar but not as bad because Rambo is at least blasting ‘bad guys’ most of the time due to the fact that Rambo is usually on the front lines. Though this plays into another problem with the idolatry of war that I will get into in a minute as that is a whole other can-o-worms. McClain, if you have not seen Diehard, is a cop that essentially brings a warzone to the states fighting the bad guys. In most of the overblown scenes (including taking out a helicopter with a fire hydrant and a harrier jet by jumping on it, lol) we end up with MASSIVE damage to civilians and infrastructure not to mention the complete disregard of civil rights entirely. On that same vein, you see cops all the time breaking into homes and other places to gather ‘evidence’ in TV series. It always gets a chuckle from me that you are rooting for the person that is completely opposite to freedom but I digress:
</explanation>

Just to warn you, you’re getting me on a rant here so be prepared:
I have to emphasize the bolded part. As a member of the armed forces, this idolatry of war scares the shit out of me. We are embroiled in ever increasing wars all over the globe and people don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. Sure, we get complaints of Iraq and Afghanistan BUT no one seems to notice that we are EXPANDING our arm, not retracting it. It was the one major reason that I supported Bush the first time. He ran on a platform of reducing our foreign presence. I don’t blame him for not doing so as 9/11 changed a lot of things (but I do blame him for Iraq – that was epically dumb and was enough to end his chances for a second term) but the left had a valid criticism of the warlike right. That is until Obama came along and nothing changed. We are still expanding our military operations and still killing tons of people all over the planet. No one seems to even care. As you said, drones are exacerbating this because it removes us even more from the horrors of war.

I told my grandparents that Afghanistan worried me because no one was being killed on our side. This confused them, of course, but I mentioned that the country was in a bloodthirsty mood and without casualties Americans had no concept of the cost of war. The ‘other’ guys were being killed so no one really noticed a damn thing. I knew that this was going to cause us to go deeper down the hole, prosecuting more wars. Now, if you are reading this DO NOT twist my words to mean that I wanted casualties. I don’t BUT I could see what a painless war was doing – promoting the idea that we need more of it and I called it. Soon after we were in Iraq and now it was not painless. Later, Afghanistan started getting its own casualties but the problem is that American thought erroneously that we should prosecute a war without real costs. That is a terrible hole to fall in.

And to emphasize the point, Americans are tired of Iraq because we are seeing casualties and they keep talking about that. No one is mentioning all the other places we are at ‘war’ or countries that we are bombing. We don’t care that hundreds die, as long as they are not Americans. War is the most horrible thing imaginable. It is far far FAR worse than sandy hook. I am not trivializing sandy hook but emphasizing the horror that war is. It is necessary but should only be entered in when there is absolutely no options whatsoever. We enter into wars now on barely a whim.

Finally (to end the wall of text ) the two parties have essentially merged on this and that is even scarier than the missing realization that war is terrible. My grandfather is essentially a communist. He believes that all money should be taken by the government if they see fit and that we need much more regulation and control. He is fringe left to the extreme. My father is damn near an anarchist, believing that the government is the worst thing that can possibly exist and that regulation should simply cease to exist. He is as far right as it gets. When I told them that I supported Paul in the election they both said the same damn thing. I don’t care how nuts anyone thinks Paul is. It has no bearing on the point that they were unified in one area: they both wondered how I could support someone with his foreign policy. I mean, he said that Iran is going to get nukes and there is nothing that we can do! They both could not understand that I wanted less war.

No one want an end to the wars anymore, no matter how much they claim to. They really want an end to American casualties. That’s about it.
/end rant

My grandfather is essentially a communist. He believes that all money should be taken by the government if they see fit and that we need much more regulation and control. He is fringe left to the extreme. My father is damn near an anarchist, believing that the government is the worst thing that can possibly exist and that regulation should simply cease to exist. He is as far right as it gets. When I told them that I supported Paul in the election they both said the same damn thing.

Conversations at your house must be damned interesting at times!!!!

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Who do you think you're talking to??? You've already lost credibility by calling me names. Why don't you go away and come back when you can behave like a big boy and not a spoiled brat???

Speaking of lost credibilitty...

An 'assault weapon' ban would not have stopped the Newtown shooting and will not stop another like it.
A "hi-cap' magazine ban would not have stopped the Newtown shooting and will not stop another like it.
Universal background checks would not have stopped the Newtown shooting and will not stop another like it.
Universal gun registration would not have stopped the Newtown shooting and will not stop aniother like it.
Universal licensure of gun owners would not have stopped the Newtown shooting and will not stop another like it.

Still waiting for your suggestions.

Really??? How do you know that?? You don't.

I've stated my suggestion many times. Very limited gun sales to only mature adults with a clean record. Actually I'd prefer to do what they do in the UK. No guns for anybody. But I would support limited sales.

I think the first amendment should only be given to mature adults which would keep you from having that right. So where do we stop with deciding who has what rights?
By the way do you know how to use a knife in a fight? I suggest you learn.

 

[Pogo]

So wouldn't the first step be to insist on records being kept of all gun purchases?

It won't prevent every incident, no...nothing can.
Even a 'good guy with a gun' can't prevent every gun crime.

No. It would not prevent any incident whatsoever. As a matter of fact, that entire effort would be utterly meaningless. HOW does a registry stop ANYTHING? What possible function can a registry accomplish?

In every case, if the gun that was used was legally purchased, the registry would do nothing other than identify that person had a gun. No change in the use of that weapon in a crime. If the gun was purchased or acquired illegally, it would not be in the registry under that person anyway. Again, no change in the use of it in a crime.

Essentially, registries do NOTHING whatsoever for combating shootings. The ONLY thing that a registry can be used for is attempting to find the person that committed the crime yet it is woefully poor in that field and would utterly fail. Registries add nothing to the process.

People come to the attention of the authorities for all sorts of reasons.
Both sides of the debate say that firearms should be removed from criminals and those with mental issues.
Once someone has been identified to be mad or bad a registry can be checked to see if they have legally purchased a firearm and the appropriate action taken.
The argument often put forward is that it won't prevent the illegal purchase of guns, which is true, but so what, that's an enforcement issue?
How else would you do it?

While mass shooters may be by definition insane, it seems to me this is still a reactive approach rather than systemic. The insane, like firearms, like violence itself, will always be with us. Running around to find them before they snap is playing a grand game of whack-a-mole. But change the underlying value system that glorifies the concept of strafing people with guns, and you extinguish the fire by cutting off its fuel supply. Then you can have all the insane; they just won't have that value system to go to when it comes time to manifest that insanity. They'll do weird things, even dangerous things, but they won't tend to culminate in Newtowns and Websters and Columbines and Virginia Techs and Auroras and Clackemases and Oaklands and Oak Creeks and Tucsons.


(Unrelated, just to continue the fire analogy-- yesterday the NRA was making noises about arming/training school personnel. Not only a grand scheme of slamming the global barn door after the global horse is out (another reactive rather than systemic approach) but plods on in this intellectually bereft idea that the way to counter guns is with ...more guns! -- an approach that, just by amazing coincidence happens to benefit the gun industries that fund the NRA (completely coincidental, I'm sure) and which has aptly been compared to trying to extinguish a fire by dousing it with gasoline)

 

[Pogo]

Excellent point on the PATRIOT act, yes, and that's quite the glaring exception. I guess I feel that, strictly speaking within the gun question, this balance will take care of itself. I suspect there's more energy and passion defending individual guns than there is defending individual rights. That's a whole 'nother issue that goes back to your point about premasticated sound bytes and issues degrading into media noise. Perhaps we can conclude that the NRA does a better job advocating for its position than the ACLU does.

Yes, the NRA does a far better job at their one issue than the ALCU but that is likely because they have ONE issue. ALCU has a lot and they, like the NRA as well, tend to lose their way as well attacking rights at times rather than defending them.

I don&#8217;t find the patriot act as the &#8216;one glaring&#8217; exception though. I find it as the most recent. I personally believe that there are a LOT and they tend to stick around damn near forever. It is why I am passionate about this and other rights issues.

With the gun issue though, it will take care of itself. Mostly because there are a lot of people like me that are willing to defend it no matter what horrible slurs are thrown around at us. You do have a point, we don&#8217;t need another person such as yourself for gun control but there are many needed for other rights that are being trampled on.

Oh, and when were you going to tell me you were related to jar-jar

Hear hear, well spake.

I had to look up Jar-jar too ... curious that science fiction characters (especially the bad guys) tend to speak in Shakespearian English, innit? For what it's worth, you'll find that linguistically I'm an archconservative. And proudly so, although I'm certainly not above invention.

Good point on the single-issue versus single-concept. I just tossed out an NRA observation in the last post -- they may be good at focusing on Constitutional issues but their solution proposals tend to bite the big one.

 

[Pogo]

Part three of three

I understand what you are saying now. Good points, particularly the bolded/underlined part. I can understand what you are saying that there is something in the culture that gives them this idea BUT I don’t think such an underlying issue can be totally removed even if our culture was completely devoid of violence. Some people are simply crazy and want to do this type of thing. Then, exposure to our glorification of violence makes the event more likely.

Besides taking a good look at our culture I think that we need to refine our ability to discover and treat those that are truly insane. This is a really sticky situation because you can’t deprive people of due process but you also cannot let people that are intelligent and insane (as this person and most other mass murderers whether or not they are as you described or McVeighs) go untreated. They are going to exist no matter what we do.

Changing our culture though would go a long way as you suggest though. I have to admit that it makes me wonder sometimes. Our heroes are usually people like McClain. While we espouse a society of rights and freedoms, we idolize the type of person that would stomp all over those rights and watch movies where they actively do so all while causing the max amount of destruction and loss of innocent life to get the ‘bad guy.’ The sad reality though is that I enjoy this stuff myself. What to do, what to do…

Well this (bolded in appropriate red part) is what I mean by understanding what's going on in these heads. Only when we know what the problem is may we begin to assess where it comes from.

Agreed, you can't deprive due process and you can't legislate free speech either, as suggestions leaning on violent video games or movies might do -- if that's even a causal factor. I don't know who McClain is but I assume Rambo might be a cognate. It's true, we have a culture that gets its jollies from visions of destruction and carnage and death and a never-ending morality play on "good versus evil"; I can't explain that, but I strongly suspect it has the effect of both desensitizing us and warping (or expressing a warp already there) our collective psychology into an area where the sanctity of life has no meaning. I believe your term "idolize" in the bolded part hits the nail right on the head.

War is another example of the same thing; Jesse Ventura likes to point out that there has been no point in his lifetime when this country was not at war somewhere, and he was born in 1951. That should be more unacceptable than it is, but we make it into a football game where the enemy is possessed of no humanity whatsoever. And now with drone attacks we can detach ourselves completely. Bill Maher got fired from ABC for pointing this out, so we love to detach ourselves from the responsibility of respect for life, but we sure as hell hate to admit it.

I think it's got a lot to do with our propensity to see the world in a black-white good/evil dichotomy that fatally oversimplifies realities. That's my starting point.

Cultural issues are far deeper than throwing legislation around, no question, but as we agreed at an earlier point, every worthwhile solution starts with "me". I try to see the big picture; not the tree but the forest.

That article on masculine hegemony I actually got from a thread here-- it's right on the mark of where the examination needs to go, and yet it got so little attention that I can't even find it now. We'd rather flame each other about "you gun nuts" and "you libtards" and legislative theater. It's a path of less resistance. I'm guilty of this too as I should have developed my own participation in that thread and kept it alive, but there just wasn't the time. But if we believe in our culture we need to make the time.

Thanks for reading and hearing.

Thanks foe ‘speaking.’

<start un-needed explanation of McClain>
BTW, McClain is the main character in the Diehard series played by Bruce Willis. Rambo is similar but not as bad because Rambo is at least blasting ‘bad guys’ most of the time due to the fact that Rambo is usually on the front lines. Though this plays into another problem with the idolatry of war that I will get into in a minute as that is a whole other can-o-worms. McClain, if you have not seen Diehard, is a cop that essentially brings a warzone to the states fighting the bad guys. In most of the overblown scenes (including taking out a helicopter with a fire hydrant and a harrier jet by jumping on it, lol) we end up with MASSIVE damage to civilians and infrastructure not to mention the complete disregard of civil rights entirely. On that same vein, you see cops all the time breaking into homes and other places to gather ‘evidence’ in TV series. It always gets a chuckle from me that you are rooting for the person that is completely opposite to freedom but I digress:
</explanation>

Just to warn you, you’re getting me on a rant here so be prepared:
I have to emphasize the bolded part. As a member of the armed forces, this idolatry of war scares the shit out of me. We are embroiled in ever increasing wars all over the globe and people don’t seem to give a rat’s ass. Sure, we get complaints of Iraq and Afghanistan BUT no one seems to notice that we are EXPANDING our arm, not retracting it. It was the one major reason that I supported Bush the first time. He ran on a platform of reducing our foreign presence. I don’t blame him for not doing so as 9/11 changed a lot of things (but I do blame him for Iraq – that was epically dumb and was enough to end his chances for a second term) but the left had a valid criticism of the warlike right. That is until Obama came along and nothing changed. We are still expanding our military operations and still killing tons of people all over the planet. No one seems to even care. As you said, drones are exacerbating this because it removes us even more from the horrors of war.

I told my grandparents that Afghanistan worried me because no one was being killed on our side. This confused them, of course, but I mentioned that the country was in a bloodthirsty mood and without casualties Americans had no concept of the cost of war. The ‘other’ guys were being killed so no one really noticed a damn thing. I knew that this was going to cause us to go deeper down the hole, prosecuting more wars. Now, if you are reading this DO NOT twist my words to mean that I wanted casualties. I don’t BUT I could see what a painless war was doing – promoting the idea that we need more of it and I called it. Soon after we were in Iraq and now it was not painless. Later, Afghanistan started getting its own casualties but the problem is that American thought erroneously that we should prosecute a war without real costs. That is a terrible hole to fall in.

And to emphasize the point, Americans are tired of Iraq because we are seeing casualties and they keep talking about that. No one is mentioning all the other places we are at ‘war’ or countries that we are bombing. We don’t care that hundreds die, as long as they are not Americans. War is the most horrible thing imaginable. It is far far FAR worse than sandy hook. I am not trivializing sandy hook but emphasizing the horror that war is. It is necessary but should only be entered in when there is absolutely no options whatsoever. We enter into wars now on barely a whim.

Finally (to end the wall of text ) the two parties have essentially merged on this and that is even scarier than the missing realization that war is terrible. My grandfather is essentially a communist. He believes that all money should be taken by the government if they see fit and that we need much more regulation and control. He is fringe left to the extreme. My father is damn near an anarchist, believing that the government is the worst thing that can possibly exist and that regulation should simply cease to exist. He is as far right as it gets. When I told them that I supported Paul in the election they both said the same damn thing. I don’t care how nuts anyone thinks Paul is. It has no bearing on the point that they were unified in one area: they both wondered how I could support someone with his foreign policy. I mean, he said that Iran is going to get nukes and there is nothing that we can do! They both could not understand that I wanted less war.

No one want an end to the wars anymore, no matter how much they claim to. They really want an end to American casualties. That’s about it.
/end rant

Is your father the son of that grandfather too? Assuming so, I wonder how much of that psychology is in play...

I wouldn't dream of twisting those words; I completely agree, particularly the part I put in red. I think one of our most courageous Presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us about exactly this on his way out the door, and we failed to take heed. He's said to have remarked "God help this country when somebody sits behind this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do". And since his time, no one has. That's a whole 'nother thread too.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaS2bRGS86c]George Carlin - We Like War - YouTube[/ame]

 

[idb]

No. It would not prevent any incident whatsoever. As a matter of fact, that entire effort would be utterly meaningless. HOW does a registry stop ANYTHING? What possible function can a registry accomplish?

In every case, if the gun that was used was legally purchased, the registry would do nothing other than identify that person had a gun. No change in the use of that weapon in a crime. If the gun was purchased or acquired illegally, it would not be in the registry under that person anyway. Again, no change in the use of it in a crime.

Essentially, registries do NOTHING whatsoever for combating shootings. The ONLY thing that a registry can be used for is attempting to find the person that committed the crime yet it is woefully poor in that field and would utterly fail. Registries add nothing to the process.

People come to the attention of the authorities for all sorts of reasons.
Both sides of the debate say that firearms should be removed from criminals and those with mental issues.
Once someone has been identified to be mad or bad a registry can be checked to see if they have legally purchased a firearm and the appropriate action taken.
The argument often put forward is that it won't prevent the illegal purchase of guns, which is true, but so what, that's an enforcement issue?
How else would you do it?

While mass shooters may be by definition insane, it seems to me this is still a reactive approach rather than systemic. The insane, like firearms, like violence itself, will always be with us. Running around to find them before they snap is playing a grand game of whack-a-mole. But change the underlying value system that glorifies the concept of strafing people with guns, and you extinguish the fire by cutting off its fuel supply. Then you can have all the insane; they just won't have that value system to go to when it comes time to manifest that insanity. They'll do weird things, even dangerous things, but they won't tend to culminate in Newtowns and Websters and Columbines and Virginia Techs and Auroras and Clackemases and Oaklands and Oak Creeks and Tucsons.


(Unrelated, just to continue the fire analogy-- yesterday the NRA was making noises about arming/training school personnel. Not only a grand scheme of slamming the global barn door after the global horse is out (another reactive rather than systemic approach) but plods on in this intellectually bereft idea that the way to counter guns is with ...more guns! -- an approach that, just by amazing coincidence happens to benefit the gun industries that fund the NRA (completely coincidental, I'm sure) and which has aptly been compared to trying to extinguish a fire by dousing it with gasoline)

I don't see it as reactive at all.
If we know where the guns are we can be proactive when needed.
It makes sense to me...and before anyone asks, I own guns.
In any case, from my reading of the politics, gun registration is a couple of bridges too far to gain traction.

While I also agree with your call to 'change the value system' - I've espoused it myself on this forum - this is a long term project.
What to do in the meantime?

 

[jon_berzerk]

I don't see it as reactive at all.
If we know where the guns are we can be proactive when needed.
It makes sense to me...and before anyone asks, I own guns.
In any case, from my reading of the politics, gun registration is a couple of bridges too far to gain traction.

While I also agree with your call to 'change the value system' - I've espoused it myself on this forum - this is a long term project.
What to do in the meantime?[/QUOTE]


you dont need a gun registration to be proactive when needed

since you will already know who you are dealing with

when the time comes

plus it would certainly would be of no benefit if the guns

had been illegally obtained

registration only serves one purpose

to know which and how many firearms a lawful citizen has

for an eventual confiscation

or "mandatory buyback" as the left likes to use as a term these days

 

[Rinata]

Trying to reason with gun nuts is an exercise in futility.

As your posts are devoid of reason, it is impossible for you to know this.

Case in point:

I hope laws are passed to stop the violence

Laws cannot stop violence.

Maybe not. But they sure can cool off you gun nuts.

 

[idb]

I don't see it as reactive at all.
If we know where the guns are we can be proactive when needed.
It makes sense to me...and before anyone asks, I own guns.
In any case, from my reading of the politics, gun registration is a couple of bridges too far to gain traction.

While I also agree with your call to 'change the value system' - I've espoused it myself on this forum - this is a long term project.
What to do in the meantime?

you dont need a gun registration to be proactive when needed

since you will already know who you are dealing with

when the time comes

plus it would certainly would be of no benefit if the guns

had been illegally obtained

registration only serves one purpose

to know which and how many firearms a lawful citizen has

for an eventual confiscation

or "mandatory buyback" as the left likes to use as a term these days

How do you know who you're dealing with without registration - I don't understand?

If the guns have been obtained illegally then an offence has been committed.
A law can't stop crime but that doesn't stop laws being needed - people still drive drunk, should DUI laws be scrapped?

I can't answer for your paranoia at the end of your post.

 

[idb]

I don't see it as reactive at all.
If we know where the guns are we can be proactive when needed.
It makes sense to me...and before anyone asks, I own guns.
In any case, from my reading of the politics, gun registration is a couple of bridges too far to gain traction.

While I also agree with your call to 'change the value system' - I've espoused it myself on this forum - this is a long term project.
What to do in the meantime?

you dont need a gun registration to be proactive when needed

since you will already know who you are dealing with

when the time comes

plus it would certainly would be of no benefit if the guns

had been illegally obtained

registration only serves one purpose

to know which and how many firearms a lawful citizen has

for an eventual confiscation

or "mandatory buyback" as the left likes to use as a term these days

How do you know who you're dealing with without registration - I don't understand?

If the guns have been obtained illegally then an offence has been committed.
A law can't stop crime but that doesn't stop laws being needed - people still drive drunk, should DUI laws be scrapped?

I can't answer for your paranoia at the end of your post.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Trying to reason with gun nuts is an exercise in futility.

As your posts are devoid of reason, it is impossible for you to know this.

Case in point:

I hope laws are passed to stop the violence

Laws cannot stop violence.

Maybe not. But they sure can cool off you gun nuts.

She comes back with a trollish reply. Do You have some vendetta against law abiding citizens? You just admitted you don't care about criminals

 

[eots]

Do any of you gun supporters see anything upsetting about this??? People like this Adam Lanza have to be stopped.

What is wrong in your mind? and how should he have been stopped? or how will you stop the next person that goes over the edge.

NBC says his home was stuffed with weapons,a real play on words,they had guns but hardly stuffed,so it appears there is an agenda,not just the news.

we should ban everything and stop them all..

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI-UL4a6N3s]Man Runs Over Teen, Then Gets Out Of His Car & Starts Swinging On People In His Lane! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkXMCN31bkY]Family Of Bombing Victims: Don't Parole Killer - YouTube[/ame]

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Do any of you gun supporters see anything upsetting about this??? People like this Adam Lanza have to be stopped.

What is wrong in your mind? and how should he have been stopped? or how will you stop the next person that goes over the edge.

NBC says his home was stuffed with weapons,a real play on words,they had guns but hardly stuffed,so it appears there is an agenda,not just the news.

How could Nancy Lanza have a legally purchased bushmaster that was sold too her between 2010 and 2012, when it is illegal to own or possess an assault weapon in the state of Connecticut that was manufactured after 1993? It was reported that the guns she bought were purchased at Riverview Sales in East Windsor Connecticut

 

[FA_Q2]

People come to the attention of the authorities for all sorts of reasons.
Both sides of the debate say that firearms should be removed from criminals and those with mental issues.
Once someone has been identified to be mad or bad a registry can be checked to see if they have legally purchased a firearm and the appropriate action taken.
The argument often put forward is that it won't prevent the illegal purchase of guns, which is true, but so what, that's an enforcement issue?
How else would you do it?

I see where you are coming at now. Ill concede the mentioned point above as that is a reasonable statement but I still do not support registration for guns and I will explain why.

First, the systems that are currently in place would fail to actually stop the problems we are having. The major shootings that have happened in recent memory were from people that are not diagnosed or did not have prior records. In other words, they would not have had any problems with a gun registry and it would not have help in these cases. Further, most criminals acquire their weapons through illegal means anyway so, again, I don&#8217;t see this as having any real impact on other gun crime as well.

Essentially, I see this as an infringement on a right. It is a tracking system put in place to track people that are not breaking the law and have not had any legal process. In order to track these people I personally believe that they have the right to a day in court. That infringement is simply not warranted when the realized benefits are not sufficient.

As you likely already know, I am naturally distrustful of the government in general anyway and this is yet another method to gain power and knowledge over the people that I don&#8217;t see the government needing. You would gain a positive in enforcement of those that become criminals/crazy that were not identified before that BUT how often do we get in that place where such an even would yield positive outcomes. Very rarely.

Do you not find that the tracking of legal citizens who have not committed a crime is against your right to privacy and to be simply left alone? Is that not important, even when approaching weapons and their ownership?

I would support an ID or designation on your ID that identifies you as a legal purchaser of weapons. Such a reality would not identify what you purchased, how much you purchased or even if you purchased anything at all but it would give a seller immediate and positive verification that the purchase was legal. In that light, there would be no &#8216;gun show loophole&#8217; because a personal seller would only need to look at your ID to identify that you were a legal purchaser.

BTW: I support voter ID for much the same reasons. I see the 2 as almost identicle.

Conversations at your house must be damned interesting at times!!!!

Oh, you have no idea! LOL. Family get together are hilarious as my father and I LOVE to talk politics (if my presence on this board were not evidence enough of that) and we always engage my grandfather. He gets so angry also, usually attempting to avoid the conversations altogether. We are really split, Me and one uncle being libertarians, my father an extreme right (but agnostic, go figure), my grandfather extreme left and my other uncle damn far on the left spectrum as well. I love to stir the pot to