The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Cloud_Strife]

What? By «a pretty big right», do you mean the right to own assault weapons and not having proper checks before people can buy them?

Cause it seems like a very trivial little right that currently just exists for people who wants to have fun shooting guns, when hundreds of millions of people live perfectly prosperous, liberal and democratic lives without that right... We even get to own and shoot guns, within certain limits.

America has already decided that dead toddlers, children, teenagers, people in general, are an acceptable price to pay for their murderous toys, or at least the politicians have.

 

[Cutlass]

What is so bad about hanging out in the park at one in the morning? I would like not getting shot in either the WalMarts (well, former WalMarts here) and the park at one in the morning.

It's not that it's bad, in and of itself. But in the inner city the only people who do it are members of street gangs. It's not safe for people using it in the conventional sense that it was built for.

 

[El_Machinae]

It might not even be that. The headline called it a playground. While accurate, it was not evocative of the underlying story. Making normal assumptions based on the headline would lead someone to false ideas. Ideas worth correcting

 

[uppi]

It's not that it's bad, in and of itself. But in the inner city the only people who do it are members of street gangs. It's not safe for people using it in the conventional sense that it was built for.

Ah, ok, that is important context. I am used to inner city parks where the risk of drowning is much higher than getting shot. Even or I guess especially at one in the morning.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I guess we're going to see videogames, Hollywood and long coats blamed for this, anything to avoid mentioning the elephant in the room.

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1836949580

 

[Lexicus]

antifa is a terrorist organization tho apparently

 

[Cloud_Strife]

antifa is a terrorist organization tho apparently

And more of an existential threat to the GOP and Republicans than the Neo-Nazis are.

Why it's almost as if...

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm a member of a gun rights forum. The posts that get the most likes are either ones that make fun of that kid Hogg, and also the ones that suspect that it's a false flag operation

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What is so bad about hanging out in the park at one in the morning? I would like not getting shot in either the WalMarts (well, former WalMarts here) and the park at one in the morning.

There's nothing bad about it, but I myself find it much easier to maintain an alert level in a park at one in the morning than it is to maintain it while shopping at WalMart.

 

[Estebonrober]

I'm a member of a gun rights forum. The posts that get the most likes are either ones that make fun of that kid Hogg, and also the ones that suspect that it's a false flag operation

Double false flag operation today. Yes that version of events is all over the place already.

 

[innonimatu]

I've gotten so used to seeing news about these shootings that it took days to bother opening a story. What struck me was that the murderer was wearing ear protection. What kind of people goes into mass murder concerned about preserving his hearing?

These people actually expect to live on, to gloat and celebrate what they did! Like the norwegian scumbag a few years ago. It is very different from your typical old times terrorist attack.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I've gotten so used to seeing news about these shootings that it took days to bother opening a story. What struck me was that the murderer was wearing ear protection. What kind of people goes into mass murder concerned about preserving his hearing?

These people actually expect to live on, to gloat and celebrate what they did! Like the norwegian scumbag a few years ago. It is very different from your typical old times terrorist attack.

Dude there is a website where Texas residents are pledging that if they can get on the jury they will find him not guilty no matter what is presented as evidence. They are not only planning to live, they are planning to be set free. The guy is being hailed as "the first hero of the second civil war" in certain circles.

 

[abradley]

OK, say congress outlaws gun ownership, who will turn in their guns?

Who won't?

 

[abradley]

Dude there is a website where Texas residents are pledging that if they can get on the jury they will find him not guilty no matter what is presented as evidence. They are not only planning to live, they are planning to be set free. The guy is being hailed as "the first hero of the second civil war" in certain circles.

Link would be nice.

 

[Arwon]

This was written just prior to the 2016 election, looking at the mechanics of violent radicalisation, and the interaction of illiberal electoral movements with said radicalisation. It ended with a prediction that turned out to be correct.

In other words, Trumpism is very likely a kind of gateway drug for some people for violent extremism. It offers an ideational set of preconditions off of which the radicalizing individual can spring.

But Trumpism doesn’t simply provide—like certain Islamisms—an ideational platform on which radicalization can take place. It also provides key aspects of the crucial social networks for very large numbers of people. Nazis and white supremacists have always been able to find each other online, but unless you visited their particular corners of the web, they had very little way to reach you. They were a relatively small group of people speaking almost entirely to themselves.

Trump has changed that. Now white supremacists and alt-righters are a small group of people in a giant stadium, doing the wave in the bleachers with Sieg Heils. Everyone in the stadium gets to see them, particularly because the Trump campaign often puts them on the Jumbotron by retweeting them or refusing to repudiate them. Notoriously, in January, Trump retweeted a message from a user with the Twitter handle “@WhiteGenocideTM,” a reference to a widespread white supremacist meme. Later in the campaign, Trump also refused for days to conclusively repudiate David Duke’s endorsement of his candidacy.

What’s more, if you follow Donald Trump’s own Twitter feed, you inevitably get exposed to a steady diet of the hardest-core white supremacists as they fawningly reply to him. Even if you don’t follow Trump, you see those people attacking the journalists and commentators you do follow. And if you attend Trump’s rallies or watch clips of them online, you can find other Trump supporters chanting slogans like “Jew-S-A.” A recent video shows one rally attendee in Cleveland coaching another through calling reporters members of the “Lügenpresse”—a Nazi phrase meaning “lying press.”

So all of a sudden, huge numbers of people are potentially subject to the influence of peer groups they didn’t even know they had. More perniciously still, the radicals get to approach this very large new audience through the cleansing lens of an apparently mainstream political candidacy and party. That Trump supporter taught to shout “Lügenpresse” presumably didn’t know that he was screaming a Nazi slur; he was just following Trump’s lead, and the lead of those around him, in jeering at the “dishonest media.”

How big is the amplifying effect of Trumpism for white supremacy? This week, the name David Duke was trending on Twitter as a result of Duke’s appearance at a debate for a Louisana seat in the U.S. Senate. When he announced his Senate bid in July, Duke explicitly linked his candidacy to the Trump campaign, saying that he had been inspired to run by Trump and was “overjoyed” to see Trump “embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years.” As of December 2015, the white supremacist website Stormfront was upgrading its servers in response to its “steady increase” in traffic driven by Trump’s then-new prominence on the national stage. Its traffic, we regret to report, currently outperforms that of Lawfare by a factor of several times.

There’s a simple measure for whether our basic theory here is, in a general sense, right: If it is, we will see a significant spike in white supremacist violence over the next few years. The Trump campaign has provided a baseline undemocratic ideation to hundreds of millions of people and also provided a platform through which extremists, both violent and non-violent, can recruit and cultivate. If our collective understanding of the process of violent radicalization is correct, the result will be blood.

 

[Socrates99]

OK, say congress outlaws gun ownership, who will turn in their guns?

Who won't?

Nobody is outlawing gun ownership. Only a tiny minority is even advocating that.

 

[abradley]

Freedom ain't free. I think we should thank these brave their souls for laying down their lives in defense of the Second Amendment.

What is the 2nd amendment?

 

[Birdjaguar]

What is the 2nd amendment?

Words on a page written over 200 years ago by men who could not predict the future.

 

[abradley]

Words on a page written over 200 years ago by men who could not predict the future.

Does that include 'Freedom of speech'?

 

[Arwon]

I wouldn't worry too much about losing guns. The US has clearly collectively decided periodic random massacres are an acceptable price to pay.