Have we become used to or immune to mass shootings?

[fargon]

Either that or another reason to do it.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The NRA is the most potent human rights organization on the face of the Earth.

Briefly, thus: you have those rights, human, civil, or however characterized, that despite any degree of force, fraud, injustice or propaganda militated against them, you yourself can enforce. With the whole of the people having enforcement's wherewithal, the individual need not often do very much very often to enforce his liberties, which I am assuming are as necessary to the individual as oxygen. Three hundred million pairs of hands make light work. That's also about the number of guns in the US alone. It may barely be enough for the need.

Yet, there are those who would remove the means of enforcement from our hands, tutting and telling us we shouldn't be trusted to look after our own liberties, or resist crime, or follow the adult responsibility inhering in keeping lethal force under our personal control. They adduce all manner of excuses and rationalizations -- but the point is these people are tyrannical. It is worthwhile to stop them and stop them hard.

Some nondemocratic persons will squall in distaste at the prospect -- but they're actuated by a notion that only a state, or in autocratic wacko extremism, a ruler, an El Lider, has a right to act. They seem uncomprehending of the fact that a State strictly speaking does not have rights, but interests. Rights are really for persons.

The NRA, the GOA, the JPFO all understand how rights are gotten, and how you retain rights -- despite having a fraction of the youth, misled through their inexperience, marching against human rights in these days. They've had that in other nations that ground human rights to powder in times past; you can call up the list of those names and years in your own mind. Trying to "stand up to" a human rights lobby is going to land you in monstrous trouble, and in theory can get you prosecuted for conspiring to deny others their civil rights under the appropriate Federal law. As more than a few Democratic good ole boys got, there where old times are not forgotten, look away.

[Griff]

Nope. The NRA now represents force against reason.

[Griff]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/m...ype=collection


This is a good read.

[Undertoad]

No discussion of it here; so have we become used to or immune to vehicle attacks?

[glatt]

It's looking like it, unfortunately. The last time I was in a crowd, I found myself thinking about how I was vulnerable to a vehicle attack and powerless to do anything about it if something happened.

[Undertoad]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...sian-1.4632435

[A post the killer might have sent] referred to the "Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger." Rodger was the 22-year-old California man responsible for a deadly rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., that left six people dead and a dozen more injured.

In a video posted ahead of that 2014 attack, Rodger raged about a number of women turning down his advances, rendering men like him "incels," a term used by some groups to mean "involuntarily celibate."

Bluff said Minassian didn't seem to have a core group of friends and remembers him being mostly "sort of in the background" rather than at the centre of a social group.

"I remember seeing him probably just walking down the halls, usually by himself, or in the cafeteria by himself," he said. "My memory is not perfect, but certainly, it would not be, I don't think, a misstatement to say that he wasn't overly social.

Cellphone video posted to social media on Monday afternoon shows a man stepping out of a white van with a damaged front end that is stopped on the sidewalk. He steps into the line of fire a police officer who has his weapon drawn and can be heard yelling, "Kill me" and gesturing at the officer to shoot him."

The Toronto driver is clearly one of the "rage against being" types of killers, ala Dana's JBP video. Hatred for being itself and a desire to take revenge for the outrage at it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Griff

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/m...ype=collection


This is a good read.

Excellent, Griff!!
I remember getting to the speedshop where I worked the counter after my day job. a wall to the right hid a half door where I'd turn to get behind the counter. Where I got there a black man in camos shoved a 1911 in my belly and growled.
It only took a few seconds to realize he was a friend, who worked for the Post Office, a DI in the Army Reserve, and was fucking with me. But those few seconds were a long long long time.

What bothers me now is the antigun crowd has become just as rabid as the hard core gun nuts. They've been recruited from the city kids who don't know guns from shinola. There is no reasonable discourse, just fer me or agin me on both sides.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

No discussion of it here; so have we become used to or immune to vehicle attacks?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

What bothers me now is the antigun crowd has become just as rabid as the hard core gun nuts. They've been recruited from the city kids who don't know guns from shinola. There is no reasonable discourse, just fer me or agin me on both sides.

If gun control people were as rabid as the NRA, quite a few gun control laws would be passed easily. There are plenty of gun control laws that are quite popular, but there are few single-issue (to use your term ,"rabid") gun control voters.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I think the antis are just as rabid, but not one issue.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I think the antis are just as rabid, but not one issue.

Not even close. There was no need for gun laws until NRA, et al starting pushing bigger guns, big magazines, and hardware that has no purpose but to kill people. Only then the the majority finally realized how ridiculous all that gun fascination was.

If the resulting and necessary up-swell did not exist, then gun owners would be buying M79 grenade launchers and 155 millimeter howitzers. Since the NRA has only one purpose. Lobby to increase gun sales. The NRA is a lobbyist for the gun industry.

Why did the NRA get research into gun violence banned? Resulting knowledge would harm sales. Selling hype, myths, and fear further increases sales. We all need 100 round clips.

Even bump stocks were good for business - approved of by the NRA until Las Vegas happened. NRA remains on the fence for banning those. Fearing it might harm sales.

[BigV]

Briefly, thus: you have those rights, human, civil, or however characterized, that despite any degree of force, fraud, injustice or propaganda militated against them, you yourself can enforce.

Briefly, bullshit.

You and I have rights, irrespective of how well-strapped we are, not, *emphatically not* because either of us is armed. We enjoy those rights because of our shared respect for our rule of law.

Having a gun does not grant you any rights, it doesn't even protect your rights. Only that shared respect for law protects you and your rights. When you lose those rights, when they've been stolen from you by violence, the gun hasn't saved you, and if that violence came from the muzzle of a gun, it was the lack of respect for the rule of law that created the opening through which they were lost.

No amount of firepower "you yourself" can muster can "enforce" your rights. Somewhere, someone has a bigger gun and smaller scruples. Where is your puny <strike>gun</strike> god now? Your rights, and mine, are like the right of way at stop sign. You can't seize the right of way, you can only have it yielded to you. If you assert and I assert, only conflict results. I suppose this is where you draw and fire; win! Unless I draw first.

Maybe you really don't understand that such a dispute over rights is solvable, only solvable by laws. If so, hit the books, you have a lot of catching up to do. If you're really just pretending, then your willful ignorance is the problem you need to address first.

[Flint]

[DanaC]

@ Flint: Ikr?

[Griff]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...ntent=20180423

Interview with James Shaw.