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Jun 18, 2015 at 10:47 am
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1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
1101 East Pike St. Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98122
Good to know.
None of these are a sure fix, but they would help. But the NRA looks at measures like these the same way pro-choicers look at second-term abortion bans; as disingenuous, and a slippery slope, where their 2A rights are being chipped away a little at a time.
How can we convince them they're wrong?
You're going to have to troll harder.
I'm the resident liberal gun-nut unicorn around here and I'm not taking the bait.
Anyway. We're not going to ban hand guns in this country. Not in our lifetimes. We could make hand guns much, much, harder to get and certainly have more restrictions on carrying them around and much harsher penalties for people who violate gun laws. We need to prevent people from amassing arsenals. We could do that. It won't be easy. But it can be done.
And generally bans don't work in cultures that want the things banned. We had bans on weed, smack and coke. That didn't work. Prohibition doesn't work.
We have to change the culture to feel they don't need guns and we have stop glamorizing and fetishizing them. And with entities like the GOP, the NRA and Fox news around, that's a tough battle.
But it should be pointed out that this guy is mentally ill. If it's not already, extreme fear of "others" - especially when it manifests itself in the way it has with him - should be classified as a mental illness and the people who suffer from it should be institutionalized and given help. Why are we letting crazy people run around, let alone get firearms?
So clearly, it was about religion, not racism.
The fact that so many Americans want/have/tolerate guns in their environment is puzzling to everyone else, but it does indicate that it's more than entrenched in the culture, so it'll be hard to root out. The GOP, the NRA and Fox News sure don't help, but they're merely encouraging a mentality that was established a long long time ago. The NRA wouldn't even have been created if that weren't the case.
I remember there was ONE guy, one in the whole town, that used to come into my grandfathers barbershop when I was a kid who wore six-guns. All those old timers, WWII combat vets, used to mercilessly mock him and call him Wild Bill and shit. People that walked around with guns were freaks back then.
People may've had rifles in their trucks for hunting. But nobody carried hand guns around and nobody stockpiled guns. This is a recent phenomena.
It wasn't like it is now. This paranoid fetishizing of - let's say it - military weaponry - was deliberately and methodically created by the gun industry and gun lobby. It wasn't there when I was a kid. It's not as deeply rooted - historically as the Republicans and Fox News want's you to think.
The gun lobbies realized sportsmen would only buy a couple of really well made rifles and shot guns and that was it. After the Vietnam war, which lasted a decade, all these arms manufacturers got used to pumping out semi-autos and realized they could sell them to the civilian populace. And what with all the racial anxiety in the country they, along with the GOP, CREATED the paranoid gun nut. They didn't really exist to the degree they exist now.
Since my father was in the service I've lived overseas. We lived in the UK. We lived in central and south America. We lived in Germany. Lot's of other countries people own guns. Hunting guns. Even in the UK.
I was just in Italy last week, in a town called Varenna. I walked with two of the caretakers who talked about hunting and both of them owned shot guns for fowl and rifles for boar.
People in other countries do own guns. Just not HAND GUNS. And they don't feel the need to pack them around.
The real catastrophe in all of this will be the fact not a fucking thing will change with how we deal with guns or race in the US...not one fucking thing. We can be walking knee deep in the blood of innocent black people and victims of being 2nd Amendmented to death and nothing will change...nothing.
"Put simply, having or wanting a gun is just not generally considered a sign of a psychologically healthy individual." Maybe for your average city-dweller.
I'm a staunch liberal, an atheist, a polyamorist, and also own a few rifles and shotguns. I use these to put deer meat and waterfowl on the table, and that's much cleaner, better, wholesome-er, more sustainable meat than you can get at some Whole Foods or other fru-fru fakery outlet.
Both of my kids are learning archery. Under my close watch, the older one - 9yo - is learning how to shoot a .22LR safely and to shoot it well. The 6yo will too, when she's old enough. I know - crazy, right? I MUST be crazy!
Hardly any of my friends are hunters, but they still seem to enjoy my company. They also like to stick around for dinner.
I did not say that wasn't the case. I merely said that those people no longer have friends. (And for the literal-minded, yes, that was an exaggeration... but a small one.)
Outside of the U.S., I don't know of any culture (even though I grew up in the woods with loads of hicks around) where teaching you're 9 yo to shoot a .22 is NOT considered crazy and irresponsible (and most often totally illegal). Everywhere I've been, they'd send child protection services to your door.
" Gun ownership IS a mental illness. "
You're both kidding right? Either that or you're trolling. See #19, who nailed it. I grew up in Colorado; same deal.
In Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France and Italy many rural people still hunt game. Owning a shot gun or two is still completely common. And yes, they "have friends."
What we're talking about in this country is an entirely different gun culture. A culture of insecure intimidators who need to throw their weight around and act tough.
It's entirely different than the original sportsman gun culture that exists world wide.
But city folks wanting a gun? Or anyone, anywhere, wanting an automatic, semi-automatic or military grade weapon? That's just dumb and crazy.
As for this person's sanity, what is wrong with us as a society that someone who would do what this guy did not be considered insane? It's one thing to kill someone in the heat of the moment, or in the course of committing a crime, but to have the mindset that you have to take out a bunch of people in a church or a mall or a movie theatre or a school is in my estimation insane behavior.
That's precisely my point: nowhere else in the countries I've been to could someone who describes himself as a staunch liberal and an atheist also own guns. Weird, crazy people that you want to avoid at all costs are the ones who own guns. (Again, since you seem to be a bit slow to understand: that's what people think OUTSIDE THE U.S.)
The question is: why is it not so in the U.S.? And even though tkc @ 19 provides an interesting explanation as to how it became this bad, it doesn't change the fact that Americans loved guns long before the Vietnam War. Even some hippies had guns, for fuck's sake!
But CVD, as much as I enjoy your musings on this forum - and you are so frequently the smartest, most astute kid in the classroom - I have to say that there are many more times that I've felt vulnerable in the urban backwaters of Seattle than in the outlying rural areas - but perhaps that's why I'm a Country Mouse and you're a City Mouse. Viva le difference!
Also, a point of detail -- many, many hunting rifles and shotguns are semi-automatic and semi-auto does indeed have some points of merit when hunting (some drawbacks too). But automatic and military-style - AR-15s, AK-47s - yeah that's just stupid SPC (small penis compensation). No legitimate need for that shit.
But of course, gun enthusiasts will seek out and find gun enthusiasts everywhere they go, and interpret that as evidence that everything is ok with them.
Did you ask? Were you there during hunting season?
Also, I'm reasonably sure that Canada, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, etc. have plenty of liberal atheists that value putting venison/moose/reindeer/etc. in the family freezer. Maybe not too many in the cities, and probably quiet about it unless asked. It is possible even here in the USA to own a gun - even teach a kid to responsibly use one - without being part of the Krazy Kristian Gun Fetish Culture. It's possible.
Back in my day, it was mostly gas theft and stuff like that, along with the occasional coyote-in-the-henhouse type thing, but even back then one of my elderly bachelor farmer Great-Uncles was beaten to death by some toughs who broke into his farmhouse looking for money (He had a gun, but he was too old to be much of a threat with it)
Seattle, on the other hand, is the Disneyland of cities. In all my time here, I've only felt threatened maybe once or twice - and that was when I was representing the city as an employee.
I lived in the UK for five years. I've been pheasant hunting there as recently as 2002.
http://www.highadventurecompany.com/engl…
But here's the thing: Why can't we get these sick individuals BEFORE they decide to go on killing rampages? This guy will go to jail and either be executed or put away for life. Not that he's any sort of prize, but perhaps if he had been at least institutionalized or put on meds prior to this happening those people he killed would still be alive today.
The hunting I have done in Europe (and ironically ONLY in the UK), if you can call walking around the country side not shooting anything "hunting," was with a chef not a "gun enthusiast" to get fowl for a particular meal.
As in Italy the hunters I know there are good liberal - in fact leftist -restauranteurs who hunt wild boar for their restaurant in Volterra.
You may want to entertain the thought that your experiences are likewise tainted by your own POV.
Everywhere I've gone, I've seen the same phenomenon. That includes France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, as well as friends from countries I've never been to, like Ireland, Australia and South Africa, who told me the same thing... None of my very few friends whose fathers hunted, whatever country they were from, ever did themselves. As for my friends from Latin America - who are rather numerous - not a single one of them ever had a gun in their home.
So is yours, I would say.
I don't own a gun. But I've lived in Europe. I'm 53 years old. I lived in the Uk from 1969 to 1975. Right outside of Cambridge in a little village called Isleham and in Mildenhall. Lots people there hunted fowl. It was common.
I go to Europe every year. I was in Switzerland, France and Italy up until last week. I was in a small town. I talked to two random people by chance both of whom hunted. Not sure how that's possible in your scenario. I'm not some magnet for gun people.
And I know plenty of people in Italy and France who own sporting guns who occasionally hunt mostly to stock Agriturismo restaurants. Is it a growing trend? No. But it's not unheard of or unusual in rural areas people don't freak out about it at all and all I can say your experiences are extremely narrow.
All I want to leave you with is this: There is a vast chasm in cultures between sporting or hunting culture and the paranoid culture promoted by the modern NRA and American gun nuts. They are not the same. In fact the NRA used to be about hunting and gun safety while hunting when I was a kid and only became lunatics after the the gun manufacturers took it over and created the insanity you see today.
Somebody put a lethal weapon in his hands, and somebody put lethal ideas in his head, and so it goes.
There are hunters who are careless, sloppy, disrespectful. There are plenty who are not. Be mindful of sweeping generalizations, they tend to weaken the proponent's argument, not strengthen.
Of course he's mentally ill. He had a gun. Gun ownership IS a mental illness.
Ahahahahahaha!!
Okay, Fnarf. I'll take the bait on this one.
Here's your quote:
"Gun ownership IS a mental illness."
You're saying that I don't have a right to defend myself or my children against a violent deranged attacker with equal force.
That notion in itself is the worst kind of example of liberal elitism.
Fine, I'll rephrase it.
Fnarf is saying that no free man or woman in the United States has the right to defend themselves, their families or their children against a violent deranged attacker with equal force.
He essentially stressed that, for home and personal safety, having a big gun shows the person from a far distance to not mess with you. When you have a handgun in the back of your pants or in a jacket, it's sneaky and more often than not means murder, not protection.
I will admit that, as a woman and a social worker who lives in the city and deals with some pretty rough/high/just plain mean people, I've thought long and hard about getting a handgun for my purse, something tiny that I can shoot with little recoil. I just don't know if I could live with killing someone though. I've always leaned more towards stun guns, cause it would be very hard to accidentally kill someone (or myself) with one.
The Confederate flag was flown by an attempted country that seceded because they were being told they couldn't own slaves anymore. The American flag, regardless of what you think of the country today, was formed on ideals of freedom. The Confederate flag was founded on "Screw you, if you won't let us have slaves, we'll make our own country."
Here and on the comments elsewhere, people have made comments about how it's not about racism, it's about his mental illness. But I haven't heard anything about him actually being treated for mental illness. Are people assuming he's mentally ill because he murdered nine people? And if so, why weren't people immediately assuming the Boston terrorists were insane? Or the 9/11 terrorists?
It's clear that from his words before, during, and after the murders that he is racist. His murder of nine people was a hate crime and an act of terrorism. DYLANN ROOF IS A TERRORIST. Is he also mentally ill? Perhaps. But from the current evidence, no more mentally ill than any other murderer.
this is the best time in the history of this country to be a black person, and black people still have it worse off than just about anybody, except maybe indians, but their aren't many of them left for some reason.
at least black children don't need national guardsmen to protect them from 'good amerikkkans' like the little rock nine did, nearly a century after slavery ended.
she's a grand ol flag she's a high flying flag
That said, I think there's a difference between a flag that represents an entity trying, and sometimes failing, to change and one that represents an entity (or a faction of the aforementioned entity) defined primarily by its resistance to change, that seceded from the union to which it belonged because it was being asked to abjure a nakedly racist institution.
You needn't respect either one - it's all so much fabric, in the end - but it's disingenuous to pretend there isn't a difference.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I thought they were insane. Who would do such a thing, especially for some dumbass religious/political reasons? It's as crazy as that pilot who flew that plane into a mountain, or The People's Temple, or the Waco or Ruby Ridge people.
understandable?
i've never seen an apple tree grow only one apple. i've never seen an apple that doesn't eventually rot
you can cut off branches and the tree still grows. you cut the tree down when you no longer like what it produces or it dies and falls. what do you plant in its place?
some people think the tree is so great they try to plant one just like it in a place it cannot grow. some people are happy with rotten apples and would force you to like them too. while others would like to pick fresh apples from the tree
I'm glad you have endless time to sling metaphor online; I hope it doesn't mean you are wallowing in unemployment, or lack intimacy or hobbies. I, for one, have a few too many expectations and obligations to meet in the real world to weave pointless analogies.
Our institutions fly the U.S. flag because we are the U.S., whatever we may think of its past policies or the legacies that grew therefrom. As we are not the Confederacy, even in those states that were once part of that rogue entity, opposition to it is not fundamentally hypocritical.
Spending much more energy than that explaining why we should hate all flags associated with our nation equally, because slavery, sounds like a great pastime for the comfortably indigent.
let's drop the metaphors since you don't understand them
answer me this. when has the killing and disenfranchisement of black people, or indians, or mexicans or poor 3rd world nations not been done by the united states of uhmerica?
the social structure has changed only a little. private citizens are no longer allowed to own people. state imposed segregation is now illegal.
white people killing black people in the south used to be a regular occurrence long after slavery ended and the confederacy was disbanded, black people weren't allowed to eat at the same establishments as white people, they weren't allowed to use the same bathrooms or water fountains as white people. lynchings of black men for whistling at a white woman.
now in 2015 the cops chase down unarmed black people and kill them in custody because they looked at the cops a little too long, like eddie gray, treating him like he was an escaped slave. now in 2015 a dickhead racist guns down 9 people in a church like it was the 1800's, or the 1960's, assassinating people like they were MLK.
it's staring at you, right in your face but you're wearing the flag like a blindfold with your hands over your ears singing the national anthem.
i bet hitler had wished he had come up with a saying as eloquent as 'manifest destiny'
Yes, the Confederacy was the bad fruit of the original endeavor that we call the United States of America, which was already the brainchild of white property-and-slave-owners. I GET your tree metaphor; it wasn't that deep or elusive. That it didn't get me where you wanted me to be doesn't mean I missed the point, or even that I disagree with the point; it means that from that point, I see a different way forward. If we can change enough to stop selling humans as property and end (most) state-imposed segregation, I would like to think we can continue to do better. The American flag doesn't deserve any special consideration to my mind, but it represents a still-changing, still-malleable system; the Confederate flag, by definition, does not.
since you get my metaphor of the tree and since i can only assume you know that trees still grow even after fruiting you would understand that as malleable and changeable a living system is compared to rotten and degraded ideas you would understand that the foundation determines what grows next out of the social fabric of that symbol. the apple tree doesn't suddenly start growing coconuts.
a president got assassinated for freeing people. that's as frozen in time as the confederate flag. just as all the past actions done under the american flag are frozen in time. those things cannot change.
the saying, learn from the past or be destined to make the same mistakes. from what i have learned things done in the name of the usa have been, enslavement, genocide, murder, war, and it continues. no matter how much you would like to see the usa as a beacon of hope and change the government will fight to keep the status quo as long as it can. and the status quo is enslavement, genocide, murder, war.
$600,000,000,000 for the military. the government hides behind it's language and interpretations but the receipt says it all.
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/upl…
I don't expect an apple tree to produce coconuts. I only hope it will produce better apples. After all, one could argue that all nation-states produce apples, that militarism and genocide lie at the dark heart of advanced culture as surely as do art and philosophy. Modernity, in all its gore and glory, was built on rape, murder, and lies. How we process and, dog willing, amend that legacy is a complex matter best served by ... Well, by anything other than this increasingly pointless banter.
America is no beacon of hope. I may be, or I may be able to offer my effort and aptitudes to a collective endeavor that can serve as one.
Be well. Do good work. I, for one, have run out of time for this sort of distraction.
you brought up apples, but i derailed this 'argument' you seemingly have given yourself the authority to direct by USING THE SAME ANALOG YOU BROUGHT UP but putting my own twist on it.
you're right your banter is pointless, which is why i'm so confused as to why you keep saying you don't have time for it yet continue to dribble on.
you are one confused puppy
anyway. lets hope all the military weaponry that police forces are amassing around the country are used to stop terrorists instead of terrorizing people, which the government has a long history of doing.
they won't be using water cannons and attack dogs like they did on the members of the civil rights movement 50 years ago. they'll have MRAPS and machine guns