Why attack Sikhs?

I disagree. That's like saying Muslims tolerate Muslim extremists, therefore they should apologize for 9-11.

 

... I was trying to point out the absurdity of blaming republicans for a nut-job.

 

i was being facetious, man.

 

jesus. i've made a series of posts that should, if you read them, make it clear what i'm talking about when i talk about conservativeland---it's populist conservative **ideology** which is not the same thing as individual people who happen to identify as conservative. and i've made it quite clear what it is about that populist conservative **ideology** that i see as normalizing racism in general.

within this, there's another problem of the republicans systematically preventing even passive monitoring of the explicitly neo-fascist/racist/militia right.

then there's the question of gun regulations. apparently, once we move here we enter a zone densely populated with straw men. like redux said above, the first political question, like it or not, is whether levels of gun-related violence in the states are acceptable. i do not think they are. from there, utilitarian logic would apply, and were there to be new regulations imposed, would follow from balancing such gun-related prerogatives as there are following on the 2nd amendment as over against a reduction of violence. perhaps it's not surprising that the gun folk cannot enter into this argument at all on these grounds---it places them in the position they're really in, which is rationalizing violence at the social level. much easier to pretend there is no social level and rattle on about individual rights.

and, btw, i have no made any particular suggestions about what controls would make sense to me. i think they should be harder to get. i think there should be way fewer of them available and fewer in circulation. because i don't see any rational argument for increased violence as a social good.

this massacre....another massacre...simply highlights these problems.

so that's maybe the 5th post that's said the same thing in response to the same misreading-based objections.
--- merged: Aug 11, 2012 at 3:07 PM ---
0--and a more direct connection: the republicans are in bed with the nra, which has shifted very far to the right. the nra opposes all gun regulation, seemingly, based on an rigid and profitable interpretation of the second amendment. the republicans, in turn, seem to largely do the bidding of the nra in this area. it's clear that there's a relationship between guns and gun-related violence in general. lax regulation contributes to the availability of the guns that are involved with gun-related violence. this massacre is an instance of gun-related violence. it's not that hard.

 

I don't have a lot of fight left in me.
rb, you can say what you have to say and it will be taken apart and reconfigured to satisfy the needs of an argument that is reactionary and, essentially, fantastical. I would like to understand how debating limitations to a 'hobby' - that is collecting and shooting 'inanimate objects' - can lead to such powerful, absolutist objections. I can only imagine that what we are talking about is not a 'hobby' involving 'inanimate objects' but rather something like...a way of life that implies power and control over one's environment. A way of staving off fear and powerlessness. To me, when ideas have to be couched in words and phrases that minimize their cultural and symbolic power, then the people who are doing the couching are being deliberately disingenuous. And why is that? If it's all so normal and right? Sounds to me like a new label on the same old bucket of bullshit.

 

I dont know how to respond further to the straw man argument comparing guns to cars or the unproved assumption that gun suicides/ family shootings resulting from easy access to guns at a person's weakest moments of destructive behavior wont prevent some deaths.
--- merged: Aug 11, 2012 at 5:42 PM ---

I guess you should be thankful that the "original intent" crowd that know the framers wanted unrestricted access to weapons arent pushing to restrict voting to white men of property only.
--- merged: Aug 11, 2012 at 6:04 PM ---

I blame Republicans for pandering to extremist groups that promote hate and that, even indirectly, may contribute to pushing the "nut jobs" who share their beliefs, over the edge.

Groups like the Family Research Council and their leaders who have suggested that gays, by their very nature, are pedophiles and a danger to your children or that Islam is a cult of violence, not a religion, and has no First Amendment protections.. .and if not stopped will impose Sharia law on the country.

 

Firearms were designed with one purpose -- to maim or kill.

And no right under the Constitution is absolute. I am open to understanding why you might need multiple semi-automatic weapons in your home? Isnt one (or even two or three) per adult enough?

But even if you feel that need. What is wrong with reasonable, sensible regulation like requiring gun sellers to report (to ATF) the multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons like an AK 47 in the same manner as they are already required to report multiple sales of hand guns? How would that constrict your rights?

 

how would that prevent crime? even the nuttiest of nutjob can only shoot one gun at once.

Specifically how would that have prevented the Sikh shootings? You are proposing a change to the rules governing rifle ownership when rifles are rarely used in attacks (though it does happen). This last attack was conducted with a pistol only.

I own multiple semiautomatic firearms exactly because one isn't enough... There is no such thing as a do-it-all weapon and I have different guns for different purposes.

 

I get that now as well and feeling the same.

I keep looking for a sliver of an opening where there might be some agreement on sensible regulation and it is just not possible. Instead, it is just more of the same baseless argument that nothing proposed would make a difference in lessening gun violence.

NRA fear mongering is evidently too much to overcome.

 

hah, and to think what they need to fear is folks like me when we crack the whip with our blood-curdling liberal gun control legislation.

oooh. scary. i would fear me, too, 'cause i got power.
wonder-working power.
(i've had that hymn stuck in my head all day...it's finally come to some use)

 

Last Friday night, there was vandalism (pellet-gun shots) on a mosque in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove. No one was injured, and someone has been charged for shooting on the outer wall of the building as people prayed inside.

This was just days after Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh delivered a town hall speech on the “real threat” of radical Muslims in the U.S. “trying to kill Americans every week.” Walsh made these comments in a nearby community:

Coincidence between Walsh's ignorant remarks and the vandalism several days later?
--- merged: Aug 13, 2012 at 10:36 AM ---
But maybe its no big deal. Just an air rifle or pellet gun.... a very statistically low way to cause property damage or injury.

 

Yeah, putting a baseball through a window would cause a lot more visible damage than a .177 or .22 air rifle.

The issue, however, is demented thought process behind why it's okay to point a half-gun at said target.

It is a big deal. White kids pointing finger guns at brown people with "funny hats" is how it all starts.

 

I agree with you.

My cynical "no big deal and statistically low" comment was more a delayed response to cyn's earlier observation, "the very idea that someone will go apeshit and start shooting up everyone is statistically low, lower than other ways of death..."

​

 

Meh, I pretty much stopped following this thread when the pro-gun crowd started off on the whole self defense thing. It's unpossible. Like taking off your pants at a dinner party. Anyway, the whole Chicago plinking issue isn't that it was a pellet gun over a brick or that nobody got dead... but that someone here in 2012 thinks someone's choice of divine metaphysical superhero somehow matters. Jesus 'n Allah are squaring off in heaven, Jethro!

Again, "religion is all it takes for good people to do bad things."

 

yeah, but you say this sort of thing is a matter of religion in itself, then you attribute it to something essential, like maybe the exclusivity of these communities, which enables you to act as though it's everywhere always the same---which it isn't----and to dodge the question of whether there are larger political contexts that make such things more likely--which there are, i think. it's the same move as acting as though a gun is just an inanimate object and moving from there to characterize any form of regulation as directed at the object. which is goofy.