Comments

1
OMG ! OMG ! Ban knives ! Ban Knives !

Or at least register them all and limit the amount of thrusts a criminal can use to kill someone !
2
So...what are you advocating? As stupid as extreme 2nd Amendment advocates can sound, they're nothing to the far left loony bin that finds all guns fearful.

They're a tool. That's all. They happen to be a tool every single adult citizen has a right to own in this country within the ridiculously vague umbrella of 'reasonable restrictions.'

Tell you what- you show me a direct link between gun ownership restrictions and lower homocide rates, and I'll listen. Until then you're just a standard issue liberal substituting emotion and belief in some utopian idea of how human beings behave for concrete reality.
3
It's time for another episode of EVERYONE'S favorite game show
STRANGER TROLLING BINGO!

Today's winning picks are:

Gun nuts!
Thee Olde Seconde Amendmente!
Suicide!
Assault weapons!
Apples and oranges!
You just do not care about X dead Y's!
Tautological tautologies!
Picking cherries!
I don't want to ban all guns but ... !
The NRA!

Beat a straw man for big bonus points!
4
Is this:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

The only post The Stranger is going to make about drunk drivers?

Where's the outrage against drinking alcohol, an unnecessary hobby that kills people?
6
@3 - That's funny, my list for gun nut trolling bingo would be:

GeneStoner
NancyBalls
5280
fairly.unbalanced
anonytroll

I'm already up to two. Seattleblues should be a wild card though, don't you think?
7
@4 - Um... those two topics have nothing to do with each other besides the fact that people die. You might as well ask why we haven't banned chemo therapy.

Since you brought it up though, drunk driving has been such a problem that groups such as MADD and SADD formed in outrage. Through their efforts, driving drunk became one of the worst offences one could commit while driving a car. Blood Alcohol limits were lowered. Minimum drinking ages were raised to 21 (You can vote but can't drink OMG TYRANNY). So as you see, sensible regulation was put into place to try and at least reduce the number of innocents kill.

There's no parallel with gun nuttery because the gun fantatics won't allow even basic, common sense regulations of firearms without going into fits. (please see any post by fairly.unbalanced)

Finally, alcohol's purpose is not to kill living things. The same can be said for cars and other forms of transportation. Again, no parallel to firearms because killing is their purpose.
9
Suicide is not a gun issue. It is a mental health issue.

Define the problem properly FIRST, and you will get better results fixing the problem.

Mental Health.
10
@9 - If we can heavily regulate how one buys cold medicine because it includes an ingredient used to make meth, it seems perfectly reasonable to regulate a major instrument of successful suicides.
11
Well, well, well. SB has put in an appearance! I wonder what his thoughts about voter-approved gay marriage are.

BTW, SB, nice racist comment. Organizing a klavern?
13
@2: THE CHOSEN ONE HAS RETURNED!
Good to see you again, old man! Rest assured, I've gotten along fine without you. GeneStoner is at once dumber than Loveschild, more racist than Sugartit, and more arrogant than you. I think he's some kind of genetically-engineered supermoron.
14
@4
"Where's the outrage against drinking alcohol, an unnecessary hobby that kills people?"

Because too many of The Stranger readers use alcohol.
Because too many of The Stranger readers drive cars.
Therefore there will not be any "debate" on what should be done because advocating limiting either of those activities would annoy too many of the readers.

It's all about the page hits.
16
@7,
And with ALL those alcohol regulations, 9,878 people died in drunk driving crashes in 2011

Whereas guns, with their lack of regulation, were used in 11,101 murders in 2011.

So even though alcohol is so heavily regulated, it STILL account for nearly as many deaths as gun murders do.

Not that anyone would know that by the abnormally large amount of coverage on guns on The Stranger compared to their (lack of) coverage of drunk driving deaths.

They're outraged, OUTRAGED!, by all the gun violence. So much so that they can't stop writing about it.

But drunk drivers? Who cares, right?

I wonder why that is... hmmmm.... why might that be? Oh, I know! It's because they hate guns and they love to drink. Emotional and inconsistent.

Drunk driving stat: (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration FARS data, 2012).

Gun murder stat: Hoyert, Donna L. and Jiaquan Xu.2012.โ€˜Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2011 - Selected Causes.โ€™ National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSS).Hyattsville, MD:US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control Prevention, Division of Vital Statistics,10 October.
17
Another day, another stupid post from Goldy, who sides with criminals against those who would defend themselves and others against them.

http://gunssavelives.net/category/self-d…
18
GeneStoner is at once dumber than Loveschild, more racist than Sugartit, and more arrogant than you. I think he's some kind of genetically-engineered supermoron.

I <3 you for this Venomlash.
20
@16 - Does that number count suicides? If it doesn't (and you specifically said murder so I'm thinking not), it's misleading.

The fight continues to reduce the number of people killed by drunk driving. Your argument seems to center around not trying to reduce the number of people killed by guns because people are still killed by drunk drivers. I find that logic asinine.

Also, don't smile ever again - innocents are dying somewhere, anywhere, and you should be ashamed of yourself for not doing something about it RIGHT NOW. That's how I feel about your whining that the Stranger doesn't cover drunk driving in the detail it does guns, the beacon hill library, the walking dead, and tim eyman.
21
@20,
Does that number count suicides? If it doesn't (and you specifically said murder so I'm thinking not), it's misleading.
Great point! Let's count ALL gun deaths and ALL alcohol deaths. Lessee...

All gun deaths in 2011: 31,672 (from the cdc's website)

All alcohol related deaths in 2011: They're not even exactly sure, there's so goddamned many of them, but it's up around 75,000 (also from cdc)

Alcohol kills more than twice as many people as guns. Holy fucking shit, right?

So why does The Stranger crank out dozens and dozens of "Gunz R Baaaaad!" posts and, um, one post about deaths from alcohol?

I'm actually not suggesting they start posting all the alcohol deaths. Fuck, if they did, there wouldn't even be room for anything else. I would suggest they put their gun fetish aside though. It's like they can't stop thinking about guns. Like closeted gays who can't stop talking about butt sex.
22
@21 - Except butt sex is good and gives good feelings to the participants.

That's generally not the way firing a gun at another person turns out.
23
@6

I'm mildly offended that you didn't include me in your Stranger Trolling Bingo.

I've been trolling hard here for months and I demand satisfaction! ;-)
24
@ 21, alcohol kills only when misused. Guns kill when used properly.

You have no legitimate way around this.

Since you say you don't care about guns personally, why have you made this your pet issue?
25
I'm not sure people's issue is with suicide? It's their life, if they wish to end it, let them end it. I do believe they should undergo treatment and counseling before this, to make an informed decision. But I assume given the high success rate of shooting yourself is better then a botch hanging attempt, which can often leave you paralyzed.

But yes, there seems to be a moral lacking of alcohol fueled deaths. Some of them even feed gun deaths, but if we're outraged by ever BOOMING healthcare costs caused by cirrhosis of liver, as well the high death tool... well, that would make us more morally rounded. And we need people like Goldy cherry picking issues calling hunters and responsible gun owners gun nuts.

Like the clip restriction. Go a head and restrict clip size, just don't touch my magazine size. Oh, don't know the difference? It's just like people who believe in creationism passing laws on science. Zero fucking clue on the issue!

I rather just enforce current laws with a universal background check and close the gun show loop holes. And give better mental healthcare. Hell, switch to a single player healthcare system in general to address the financial stress that people undergo.

Oh oh, and addressing the ever increasing wealth inequality and growing debt problem. Also make non-violent drug related crimes not a... crime. Regulate some drugs, but decriminalize others. Start better rehab system with education. Ahhh, things which just decrease violence and desperation in the US. Treating the cause rather the symptoms. Something that seems so beyond many people like Goldy and others here.
26
@24,

It's not guns in particular that I've taken issue with, it's the inconsistencies.

E.g., "I personally use drugs, so I'm going to support everything about them but I personally dislike guns so I'm going to oppose everything about them."

Both are unnecessary (recreational drugs and guns). Both are harmful. But they like one and dislike the other so they make inconsistent comments and posts (by "they" I mean both the Stranger staffers and many of the commenters here).

Why does this rag harp and harp and harp away on guns, but says nothing on drunk driving? I'm assuming they're against both? I'm assuming they want both reduced and/or eliminated? Why so much attention on guns and zero attention on drunk driving? That's a rhetorical question. I've already stated the answer above. That and they know: Guns = Page hits, Alcohol = nothing.

The Stranger staffers often call out stupid fucking credulous hacks. Maybe they should look in the mirror.
27
@ 26, I can think of other explanations for why The Stranger harps on this issue, and not drunk driving. For starters, drunk driving is something pretty much every American agrees on - it's bad. Even people who have driven drunk will say so. Further, it's an issue that has been addressed in every state and at the federal level. Adequately? Probably not. But people don't need to be persuaded to believing it's not a big deal.

Guns? Guns are to today's America as cigarettes and no seat belts were to the 50s. The Stranger is attempting to change minds there. If you agree with their position, then you can see that there's a need for harping about them. It takes a hell of a lot of harping to get people to think differently about things that we just accept as being the way things are.
28
@27,
Yeah, everyone agrees that drunk driving is bad, but everyone also agrees that shooting people is bad. The debate comes in with guns in general (and I'm bringing in alcohol in general). Some people think guns are fine, others don't, both have good reasons. Some people think alcohol is fine, others don't; again, both have good reasons.

A couple posts by the staffers about their dislike of guns would be fine, but they're going overboard. It's their paper so they can do whatever they like, but I admit I read it less because of it. They're becoming just as bad an echo chamber as fox "news" is.

As for changing people's minds? If that's their goal, they sure are being ham-fisted about it. They're not going to change anything.
29
@24
"alcohol kills only when misused. Guns kill when used properly."

So all millions of bullets fired by millions of gun owners that are not shooting anyone are because those people are not using their guns "properly"?

Nope.
You're back into the "guns are EVIL" mindset.
In your example the "properly" used guns are less than 1% of the guns out there and less than 0.001% of the bullets fired.
So maybe the problem is with your usage of the word "properly".
30
Lisping liberal ignorance in this thread....

Suicide is a mental health issue, not a weapon issue. Leave the law-abiding gun owners alone and go worry about re-defining marriage.

31
Gene, the problem with these ultra-liberals is that they live in some sort of fantasy world where Tinkerbell is going to come along, spread some fairy dust, waive her magic wand, and all evil in the world will suddenly and very magically vanish.

Don't try to tell them that it's not possible, and that they should be happy that all gun deaths in this country represent only a very small fraction of the gun owners here. They're incapable of processing that information. It bears too close a resemblance to reality.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.