The NRA has touted the treaty as "The UN attempting to disarm American citizens so they (yes, the collective UN) can invade" because their main supporters are insanely paranoid morons who love being armed.
*sighs, turns over "DAYS SINCE LAST MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA" sign to 0*
- Thread starter Charlie Don't Surf
- Start date
Because the NRA is run by the guns industry and they make an increasingly worrying amount of money selling firearms overseas, ether under legal contract or through an illegal 3rd party guns smuggler ala Lord of War. Sometimes the US government indirectly arms forces in this way too, mostly for conflicts it can't openly engage in (see Iran/Contra) which is probably why the Republicans and their masters wanted it killed. Mind you, it's not JUST Republicans that act this irresponsibly (see Operation Fast and Furious).
Basically, they pulled out because it's a tool of US foreign policy to arm sides in conflicts and US companies see a lot of profit when this happens.
Oh, I don’t doubt that the gun-makers would be unhappy at a drop in their gun shipments, and that gun execs are going to gun-promote their gun businesses to as many gun buyers as they possibly can. But, leaving aside for a moment the ethics of whether or not gun manufacture is really the kind of business one should deliberately try to grow, the fact that they staged this spectacle regarding an INTERNATIONAL treaty at the annual meeting of the organization purportedly created to promote/protect DOMESTIC gun ownership just makes no sense to me, the same way it would make no sense to me if CBS spent the Super Bowl halftime show announcing that Ronaldo was going to retire and threw him a big going-away celebration.
--Patrick
It's Trump. If it made sense, we'd be in the Bizarro universe.
I’m used to Trump doing things that make no sense because he’s an incompetent boob who habitually succumbs to the temptation to follow whichever impulse echoes the loudest in his head. This feels planned...not by Trump, of course, but I don’t know who exactly deserves the blame, and that is the part that worries me.
—Patrick
Dave
Staff member
Guess the shooting at the synagogue today doesn't count since ONLY one person died.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/27/us/san-diego-synagogue/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/27/us/san-diego-synagogue/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/
yeah, that falls under that only-in-America term, "a minor shooting incident"
There is currently an active shooter at UNC - Charlotte.
Edit: Shooter in custody. 2 dead, 4 wounded.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uncc-active-shooter-reported-today-live-updates-2019-04-30/
Edit: Shooter in custody. 2 dead, 4 wounded.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uncc-active-shooter-reported-today-live-updates-2019-04-30/
This thread is just an exercise in how well we all know each other's opinions and personalities.
And how well we can troll one another, it seems.
“If you are ok with guns, then it automatically follows that you must be ok with murder.”
“If you are not ok with guns, then that must be because you hate freedom.”
“There are no other options.”
All of us have our own opinions on this subject, opinions we are each quite comfortable with and are unlikely to change (for whatever reason), and everyone (who isn’t new) knows it, so I feel like this thread usually ends up being less about intelligent debate and more about, well, sniping.
And I’m-a just say that if it is decided one day that this thread (or any other like it) must needs be culled in order to preserve the peace, well, then so be it.
—Patrick
The "Gun Religionists" from one end or the other, and 'Reasonable People That Are Fucking Tired Of The Extremists Ruining Rational Discussion"
The "we have to hold this metaphorical gun to the gub'mint's head because reasons" is a crock of shit, and to keep trotting out Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as justification to keep hosing down the country with guns is disingenuous. You haven't seen Australia or Western Europe fall into dictatorships, have you?
Don't bother answering. I know nobody's going to change their minds. And the usual suspects who disagree will either pick apart my comments looking for fallacies or simply move the goalposts again.
Don't bother answering. I know nobody's going to change their minds. And the usual suspects who disagree will either pick apart my comments looking for fallacies or simply move the goalposts again.
Setting all gun debate aside, between the USA, Austria, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Turkey there's plenty of countries with semi- or would-be dictators at their heads, and many other countries like France and Belgium have ever-stronger left- or right-wing extreme parties trying to take control. Unless you were being rhetorical, I'd be inclined to say "yes we have".
People have forgotten the wars and are too selfish and short-sighted to care. People are scared - by both sides - into hopelessness (either migration or the climate- we're doomed and it's too late now for normal measures!) and we're so inundated with propaganda - again, from both sides - that it's impossible to see reason. We're going downhill fast and it'll get worse before it gets better.
At the risk of moving the goalposts myself, those have been in recent memory or still are dictatorships. So I wouldn't consider them compared to the usual suspects west of the old Iron Curtain.
"minor shooting incident"
I'm pretty sure school shootings have reached the point where kids are just going to start rushing the shooters. I hate the idea, but much like 9/11, once you realize shit is worse than you thought, you're going to say fuck it, if I'm going down, I'm taking the bad guy with me so he can't hurt anyone else.
Yup. We've so failed as a society that we're teaching grade schoolers how to treat bullet wounds and to rush shooters, because that's something they're going to have to deal with. #ARE WE GREAT AGAIN
That shooting at the STEM school this month did have one fatality and yes it was a kid who rushed one of the shooters to give his classmates time to run & hide.
That's why I brought it up. It was actually a group of them and several others got shot.