Gun Legislation, Crime, and Events

[mtutiger]

14 minutes ago, buddha said:

was there a better alternative than beto?

he seems like yesterdays news and his gun stance seems like it wont fly in large parts of texas.  at least with the people i talk to in texas.

Honestly, probably not.

I wouldn't say he's treated as "yesterday's news" here, he can still generate a crowd and attention when he shows up to places, it's just a different environment in 2022 and a different race. If he were running with Trump as POTUS, it'd be pretty competitive... but thermostatic blowback is a real thing these days... means more than ever before.

His gun stance? On the margins it hurts, although its probably overblown some. But in a state the Dems haven't won a statewide race in since 1994, marginal hits do matter.

Edited May 27, 2022 by mtutiger

[1776]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

 

This is what happens when the American flag becomes a politicized object. The hijacking of the American flag for political advertisements of any persuasion pisses me off. So here we’ve got the American flag being used, simultaneously mind you, as a prop for a back and forth on police support and police critique. It’s stupid and disrespectful. 
My comment is not directed toward the person posting the picture here.

[Tigeraholic1]

All my righty FB friends are doubling down on "You can't take my guns!".

Another thing floating around I have seen is the weapons the shooter bought. They are high end AR's with special barrels and high end optic scopes. The video I saw stated that the guns are special order only and take 3-4 months to deliver after ordered because they are only built to order. How did this kid A. Get the funds B. Get the weapons so quick. They basically are saying it was all a setup and the deep state trying to force 2nd amend, blah, blah blah.

[pfife]

hopefully you told them to grow up while laughing at jokes about them being drunk, like adults do

[Tigeraholic1]

1 minute ago, pfife said:

hopefully you told them to grow up while laughing at jokes about them being drunk, like adults do

C'mon man you are a good dood. I just don't know why you went all hall monitor on the Buddha.

[pfife]

7 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

C'mon man you are a good dood. I just don't know why you went all hall monitor on the Buddha.

Why did you go hall monitor on me?   All I did was link to another post from this website.   There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  There's a "share" link on every post, and it's commonplace for content from other websites to be posted here.

I'll remember that in a string of clearly immature posts from him, you literally laughed, and only called out me.   You made the choice to display that judgement.   You can use it as proof of how drunk I wasn't.  Reap/sow.

You think it's good for this forum that people lie right to your face and say that Steve Kerr's presser was about basketball?   You think it's good for this forum when people lie and say you went to lunch with them when you've never seen the MF'er before in your damn life?

Go ahead.  Love it.  But I know that you know it's fucking hot garbage.    

Edited May 27, 2022 by pfife

[chasfh]

17 hours ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

 

The sad thing that occurs to me is that it might be only foreign journalists who can effectively ask this question and stick with it when the politicians deflect.

I think part of it might be the access issue. Deflection works on American journalists because they have to think about a long game in which they have to protect access to Washington insiders for themselves and their news employers. Access is a must-have for them: If access is withheld from them, their effectiveness as political journalists reporting to Americans is severely damaged, and their employers have to mend fences to regain that access. Foreign journalists don't have really to worry about that: access is a good thing for them and a strong nice-to-have, but in the end, they can always report on American politics back to their country without having access to Washington insiders.

[Tiger337]

24 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

All my righty FB friends are doubling down on "You can't take my guns!".

Another thing floating around I have seen is the weapons the shooter bought. They are high end AR's with special barrels and high end optic scopes. The video I saw stated that the guns are special order only and take 3-4 months to deliver after ordered because they are only built to order. How did this kid A. Get the funds B. Get the weapons so quick. They basically are saying it was all a setup and the deep state trying to force 2nd amend, blah, blah blah.

I have learned that those guys will believe anything if it fits their political agenda.  I know people who in real life are generally friendly, reasonable people, but when the topic turns to politics they become nutty. 

[mtutiger]

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The sad thing that occurs to me is that it might be only foreign journalists who can effectively ask this question and stick with it when the politicians deflect.

I think part of it might be the access issue. Deflection works on American journalists because they have to think about a long game in which they have to protect access to Washington insiders for themselves and their news employers. Access is a must-have for them: If access is withheld from them, their effectiveness as political journalists reporting to Americans is severely damaged, and their employers have to mend fences to regain that access. Foreign journalists don't have really to worry about that: access is a good thing for them and a strong nice-to-have, but in the end, they can always report on American politics back to their country without having access to Washington insiders.

I dont know enough about what is done in foreign countries, but in general, our media tends to demand very little accountability for politicians and access is a factor in that.

I can't get over how it is expected that we get comment from AJ Hinch after every Tiger game yet that isn't a reasonable expectation for policy makers among the general populace.

[mtutiger]

28 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

All my righty FB friends are doubling down on "You can't take my guns!".

Another thing floating around I have seen is the weapons the shooter bought. They are high end AR's with special barrels and high end optic scopes. The video I saw stated that the guns are special order only and take 3-4 months to deliver after ordered because they are only built to order. How did this kid A. Get the funds B. Get the weapons so quick. They basically are saying it was all a setup and the deep state trying to force 2nd amend, blah, blah blah.

Everything can be financed these days:

 

[pfife]

"It couldn't have actually happened b/c someone wouldn't buy what they can't afford" is a pretty awesome argument.

[mtutiger]

43 minutes ago, 1776 said:

This is what happens when the American flag becomes a politicized object. The hijacking of the American flag for political advertisements of any persuasion pisses me off. So here we’ve got the American flag being used, simultaneously mind you, as a prop for a back and forth on police support and police critique. It’s stupid and disrespectful. 
My comment is not directed toward the person posting the picture here.

100%. I hate it as well.

[Tiger337]

I dislike it too. I also dislike American flag clothing.  People think it makes them look patriotic, but it seems disrespectful to me.  

Edited May 27, 2022 by Tiger337

[Archie]

2 hours ago, 1776 said:

The Uvalde response can’t get enough scrutiny. It was a total cluster. It has been reported that a father that was trying to move toward the school perimeter was tasered. One of the moms trying to go beyond the police line was cuffed. All while a massacre was in progress.The parents were pleading with the cops to please act. 
WSJ is reporting the killer stood outside for 12 minutes shooting at a funeral home located across the street from the school prior to entering the school building. In days and weeks to come I have a pretty good feeling this is going to be a really ugly conversation around the response to this travesty. It needs to be. 

They are supposed to release a timeline about this today that is reported to be down to the second.  We will see.  I haven't said anything about them so far but it does look bad.  I can't imagine being one of those parents outside hearing the gunshots inside and believing the police are doing nothing.  If I were them I would have done anything I had to to get to my child. It wouldn't have been good for anyone trying to stop me and probably me either but I would have put my life on the line to get to my child.  A couple of people were able to get in the school including the border patrol agent.

[pfife]

i'd imagine that released timeline will be totally trustworthy

[mtutiger]

Unbelievable 

[chasfh]

 

I've been thinking more about what Abbott said, that he considers the shooter to be "pure evil".

"Evil" is a handy term to use in cases like mass shootings because for a lot of people, "evil" is code for "Satan". That's because evil, like its antithesis "good", is a religious concept, not a behavioral concept. The religious people who still make up the strong majority in this country believe that "good" and "evil" are personality traits endowed by supernatural beings which control our behavior. God makes us do good; Satan makes us do evil.

So those people who believe this was an act of evil, specifically, seek to portray mass shootings as a spiritual failing, not a physical or social or policy failing.

This has huge and obvious implications for gun policy in America.

If we have a strong belief in the presence and power of "evil"—if we believe that there is some supernatural being who is the source of all evil, a being who influences evil and leads people to act in an evil manner—well, then, there's nothing we can do to stop it. Whatever power we might have must pale against the power of this supernatural being. So, all we can do in reaction is to wait for the evil to happen, and then shoot down or lock up the bad guys driven by the evil, and trust that those bad guys will eventually receive their truly just punishment after they die.

That is, in fact, the exact policy that civilizations have been following for centuries, and which many—including the United States of America—still employ today.

On the other hand: if we believe that people act in a certain way for a reason—whether it is a physical problem such as brain damage or mental illness that leads people to do really bad things for no apparent or logical reason; a systemic failure that creates an incentive to behave badly; and /or a policy failure that makes such weapons so easy and convenient to obtain—then we can fully embrace the idea that we can do something to stop this behavior by changing the systems, and then actually undertaking the hard work to do so.

The key difference is that in the former case, the only way to combat the problem of mass shootings is to petition really hard to the Supernatural Being of Good to defeat the Supernatural Being of Evil, and to touch the hearts of men to be good. You know—thoughts and prayers.

With the latter case, the way to combat the problem is to apply scientific rigor and analysis to understand the physical problems that lead to inexplicable bad behavior, to understand the systemic problems that lead to warped incentives, or to understand how policy failures enables one to easily carry out this act, and then test and improve the methods to combat these things that lead to the behavior.

In the former case, we push off the responsibility of change to beings we trust but cannot interact with, and simply wait and hope for results. In the latter case, we take on the responsibility for change unto ourselves and undertake the hard work to make results happen.

That's the policy consideration at hand, as it relates to mass shootings.

So what's it going to be? Do we carry on with the traditional policy of reacting to acts of evil with thoughts and prayers? Or should we try something else for a change?

[mtutiger]

2 minutes ago, pfife said:

i'd imagine that released timeline will be totally trustworthy

It'll take the feds getting involved for anything trustworthy to come out of this.

[pfife]

5 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

It'll take the feds getting involved for anything trustworthy to come out of this.

yep Brandon will have to fix yet another gop mess

[Archie]

Abbott isn't evil and the guy writing that is more evil than Abbott for saying that. Disagree with someones politics doesn't make them evil.  The killer was evil.  How could someone do what he did and not be evil.

[Tiger337]

Common sense gun laws which will not prevent responsible gun owners from having guns:

(1) Must be 21 and over to purchase gun.

(2) Must serve in military for at least a year to purchsase a gun. 

(3) Very strict background checks

(4) If you have any kind of criminal background, domestic abuse history or have threatened anyone with violence, you don't get to own a gun.  

(5) Severe penalties for selling guns to people who don't meet the above criteria.  

(6) Severe penalties for possessing a gun without meeting the above criteria.  

(7) Must go to regular training to learn/practice technique and safety.  

(8) There would also be limits on the number and types of guns people would be allowed to purchase.  

[ewsieg]

9 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

It'll take the feds getting involved for anything trustworthy to come out of this.

Ultimately that might be needed here.  Within a few days we should have a basic idea and it still seems like no one has a clue.  A timeline I heard today indicated that within 4 minutes of him entering the school they had him confined to a room and were in contact with him.  Even if that turns out to be true and they thought they had a hostage situation at that point, still so many other questions.  

[ewsieg]

3 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Common sense gun laws which will not prevent responsible gun owners from having guns:

(1) Must be 21 and over to purchase gun.

(2) Must serve in military for at least a year to purchsase a gun. 

(3) Very strict background checks

(4) If you have any kind of criminal background, domestic abuse history or have threatened anyone with violence, you don't get to own a gun.  

(5) Severe penalties for selling guns to people who don't meet the above criteria.  

(6) Severe penalties for possessing a gun without meeting the above criteria.  

(7) Must go to regular training to learn/practice technique and safety.  

(8) There would also be limits on the number and types of guns people would be allowed to purchase.  

I think there could be some bi-partisan support for most of this even if there was some slight modifications to it. What about this

Either 3a or part of 4) checks include social media review

and

9) For any of the above reasons you are denied a gun, you are automatically put into some mental health program.

[mtutiger]

Wow

[chasfh]

12 minutes ago, Archie said:

Abbott isn't evil and the guy writing that is more evil than Abbott for saying that. Disagree with someones politics doesn't make them evil.  The killer was evil.  How could someone do what he did and not be evil.

So because you believe the kid was evil, and based on what you read in my post—assuming you read it at all—you would agree that because they are evil, there's nothing we can do to stop mass shooters, and all we can do is kill them after the fact, and pray to god to touch men's hearts so they won't become mass shooters in the first place.

Does that pretty much sum it up?