Hey humanity. You know what would be nice? If we could just not shoot each other for a bit. Maybe just like spray-paint mean names on each other's garages. Or something. Do less.
I'm one of six FD medics assigned to support the police special operations team for a medium size agency in the National Capital Reigon. I've trained with Paul Howe, Pat Rogers, Travis Haley, Craig Douglas, and a number of other nationally recognized instructors, participated in live fire shoothouses as well as force on force training, and treated dozens of real gunshot wounds.[/quote] So you get dressed up in a $500 dollar multi cam load out and go to the tactical operator fantasy camp with the Travis Haley's of the world? That's "gunfighter" LARPing, bro. You could have just said I'm an EMT and have treated dozens of real (as opposed to fake) gunshot wounds and that would have been it. Throwing in all the other bullshit is tacticool rhetoric 101.
The reality is even with new gun legislation the gun violence problem in America won't get better for decades. Last I heard there are about as many guns in America as there are people, and with proper care their lifespan can be greater than a human beings and way beyond. Most people who favor more gun control hold their position out of irrational fear and know nothing about guns, hence why pretty much all of their ideas suck. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the US, yet it's one of the least frequently used in crimes. .38 revolvers on the other hand come close to the top of the list every year and I never hear any specific targeting of them. I think intelligent gun control and better enforcing of the rules we already have could lead to a noticeable decrease in gun crime over many years, but only of implemented on a national scale which won't happen anytime soon. And anyways the right to bear arms is important to keep our government in check, and with the NSA spying and the fed's blatant disregard for the public opinion recently I don't see how that can be argued. Really though, gun control completely ignores the primary reason there is so much gun crime, which is poverty.
How exactly does it keep the U.S. government in check? Do they have any reason whatsoever to fear their citizens? No. Citizens have guns. The government has laser-guided smart bombs and bunker busters. And the largest airforce and navy to ever exist. And the people that control those things are NOT on the side of the citizens. Americans can take comfort in their gun ownership, and they can say "come and take it" but if the government DID actually come to take them (which wont happen) then they would let them. Because one side can kill and/or incinerate you a thousand times over in one second or throw you in prison whenever it feels like it.
I kind of ride the fence in the gun debate, but I detest this as an argument against gun legislation. Lack of immediate results is a crappy reason to not take action. If there was moderate legislation that both sides could agree to (hahaha), that would reduce accidental guns deaths and heat of the moment violence... who cares how long it would take to become effective. Eventually it would make our country a safer place, and that's what is important.
Can we steer the conversation away from guns for a moment and discuss how the shooter was an avid player of video games as the Today Show just pointed out. (I was going to just let this roll and sit back and read that shit storm, but I guess I will just admit that this is sarcasm since it is the "other" hot button scapegoat the media latches onto in these situations)
Neither side takes it seriously. In one corner you have the NRA (which I am a member of), which refuses any gun legislation, period; no matter how reasonable or non-intrusive. In the other corner you have lefty wing-nuts like Barbara Boxer who made a laundry list of guns she would like to ban because they look scary, shockingly omitting the model she owns herself. So neither side really cares, its just another opportunity to flex some ideology and get some donations. The elections are only 14 months away after all. As for the shooter, he could have been my son.
At what point after starting the fighting in this terrifying scenario do the local, county, and state cops plus the FBI, ATF, and a host of other armed Federal Agents just forgive you for killing a bunch of them and say, "Hey, I think he has a point"?
I don't think the point is to win, the government would clearly win, but it would be a pyrrhic victory. The point is to make the idea of totalitarianism in the US a complete and utter nightmare.
Video Games are not an issue. They're an issue for stupid people, but not the reality-based of society. Because we all know that it was GTA Vice City that caused Vlad III to anally impale fifty thousand people.
Ehh I see where youre going, but those are bad examples as both nations basically replaced garden-variety dictators with extremist theocracies. Not much of an improvement.
They want that because of their religion. They don't have separation of church and state like democracies do. They cluelessly think they are in a cosmic battle they have no control over and that life on earth is an inconvenient speed bump. That's why a party such as shitty and stupid as the Muslim Brotherhood win elections. When somebody over there says god speaks through them, people listen to him without question. When it happens over here I chase them off my lawn with a bat.
My understanding is that the Brotherhood isn't a new phenomenon, they have been on the fringe in Southern Egypt and out on the Sinai. The further from Cairo they stayed, the less Mubarak gave a shit about what they did....so long as they didn't fuck with tourism and trade. When those retards got out of line and gunned down a tourist here or there, Mubarak would round them up and they would never be seen or heard from again. Once you know who started chirping about free democratic elections in Egypt, he and his advisors unwittingly opened pandora's box. He provided support for deposing Mubarak, who stabilized the area(whether you agree with Mubarak's methods or not, you see what the alternative in that region looks like). Since that time tourism has gone out the window and commerce is going out the window (if these morons sink a ship in the Suez, Egypt will find a new level of hurt). So, to some degree, I can understand why the military and the minority educated folks are stepping in. This country is headed in reverse in a hurry.
I would be remiss to remind you about the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars. The Opfor are basically in the stone age with Kalashnikovs and IEDs but have still managed t. As previously mentioned you don't go running into the face of a tank with a 1911. I should mention, any heavy armor can be defeated by any of three simple methods which can be made at home. Heating up the inside of the tank, using an IED, or melting a portion of the tank through the use of thermite. In any event here is how I feel about the people attempting to take my guns: "Lord, make my hand fast and accurate. Let my aim be true and my hand faster than those who would seek to destroy me. Grant me victory over my foes and those who wish to do harm to me and mine. Let not my last thought be 'If I only had my gun." And Lord, if today is truly the day you call me home Let me die in a pile of empty brass."
From HuffPost.com... <a class="postlink" href="http://huff.to/1f1PeRk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://huff.to/1f1PeRk</a>
[/quote] Ooh, gun poetry! Lemmie try: Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack see mugger, Jack give kick! Jack know karate, Jack know skill. Jack learned bullet quicker still.
Whose lobby is more powerful, Firearms or Pharmaceuticals? I don't necessarily take the same view as the author of this article. I don't necessarily know that the correlation equals causation here. I think it is safe to say that mental illness plays a big part in these events, whether or not there is a link between the drugs taken or not is another story.
I would argue Big Phrama has a more powerful lobby while firearms has a more active and rabid voter base. It wasn't the NRA campaign dollars that killed the AWB earlier this year. It was the millions of angry letters written to lawmakers from passionate single-issue voters. People who normally won't even come out to vote will drive to the polls on their lunch break for recall elections if it means keeping their guns.
For fuck's sake. What most of these shootings have in common is that the perpetrators are in NEED of heavy anti-psychotics. That article is written by some dipshit opportunist to expound their dipshit beliefs about the drugs and the psychological diseases they don't understand. At best this is very casual correlation. Fucking Jenny McCarthy write that? Read that shit then feel ashamed. Instead of having honest discussions about common sense gun control or the desperate, DESPERATE, national discussion and funding for public mental health works, this asshole wants to muddy the real problems for their own fallacious agenda. It's bad enough the former two points will barely see the light of day from a responsible public official or media personality. These people's brains have utterly betrayed them. Normal to them is a frantic, deluded and foggy sickness to us. I'd hazard a guess some of these folks (like James Holmes) could barely articulate his feelings in a language most of us could understand 100%. Because their brains just do not work. Imagine feeling confused about a woman and throwing drink on top of it. Now imagine that confusion on every little aspect of your life without the sedation of alcohol, but the all the volatility of it. There is a fundamental piece missing in their personalities either through biology or chemistry. If these people were medicated for bi-polar, schizophrenia, delusions they'd be too gacked out to shoot anyone let alone unbuckle their pants to piss. What the article also fails to mention is most of these people were *OFF* their meds. Which exacerbates their conditions even more. As for the article listing suicides and random acts of violence while on Ritalin or SSRIs, that is not necessarily the drug. There are side effects that produce those effects in a few people (there are the same side effects in every drug, listen to the commercials for cholesterol or boner pills), but suicide and random acts of violence are also intrinsic to their OUT OF CONTROL DEPRESSION. In no way should the hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people that benefit from these medications be punished by prohibiting them. Once again that argument goes full circle to this country having a serious deficiency in affordable mental public health avenues. We throw drugs on top of the problem because it's cheaper than infrastructure. We over medicate because it's easier than addressing other therapies.