Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun. Not more guns. Nor the NRA. Not their stooges in Congress holding us in thrall. Nor public outrage over dead kids, dead neighbors, dead friends. Certainly not voters who have demanded common sense gun legislation for years.
Congressional Republicans, Senate Majority leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan, 'open carry' hooligans and thugs, Christian fundamentalist gay bashers, and the North Chinalina legislature … all have blood on their hands.
Up yours, America! Land of the free, home of the knave.
Well in fact it was the cops - good guys with guns and more who stopped it. Something to think about the next time we portray them as bad guys.
ReplyDeleteI think that at this point it's clear that this was not a crime against Gay Floridians but against what radical Islamic State people think is American values. As bad as we are we don't compare to thise grisly monsters at war with civilization as we know it. Relentless enemies of all other religions, all other cultures and their attacks are world wide. We've only seen a bit of it here.
I have to ask what common sense means, because there are so many conflicting definitions I have no idea what it means. I'd conjecture about what kind of common sense can withstand the rage of ISIS but I don't think there's an answer there. If we can deny someone their civil rights and the protection of the Constitution because he's Muslim, this isn't a country I can live in. Besides the rest of the world with draconian gun laws suffers worse under their assault and we can't blame French laws for Charlie Hebdo massacre or any of the rest of them. REally if someone with a spotless background, who gets fingerprits checked against federal and state databases and passes background checks can't get a job as a security guard or a cop what do we have to defend here? certainly not liberty.
From Paris to Moscow to Bali, they have had far worse than we have and it's time to put the moth eaten flags and faded signs away. On the news last wee, it was announced that 2015 had the lowest rate of gun crime here in Florida in 40 years - that despite the hyperventililating about licenses to hunt children and the rest of the hyperbolic hodgepodge. This is not a story about a fictitious crime wave. It's not about American hompphobia, it's about a war and all over the world it's being lost.
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DeleteComment deleted and reposted above.
DeleteRightwing media has been drumming up bathroom bullshit for months. Fundamentalists have been upping the ante on rhetoric and hate speech. There is a point beyond which the adrenaline rush catches up with the cacophony and clamor, the fuse that triggers the bomb that unleashes the terror. The massacre in Orlander resembles an impulse crime, rage boiled over, a Jihadi afterthought dialed on 911 after the fact.
ReplyDeleteNumbers are our only defense against panic and hyperbole. I'm so disgusted with lines like "Sandy hook proved that it's OK to kill our children" and that's more mild than some of it. No one seriously seems to have a rational approach to guns, just bits of observations, divorced from the numbers, misstatements of fact and an axe to grind.
DeleteSome sententious Bozo just appeared on MSNBC insisting that the AR-15 uses a "large bore, high caliber bullet." In fact it's .22 caliber and the cartridge is the smallest caliber used by any military in history. It was very controversial when introduced in the 1960's because of its small size. The cumulative effect of all this nonsense is large and the result is bad thinking, fear, panic, hysteria and misdirected fury. There is no way a rational, informed discussion about guns can be had in America and when good ideas arise, they're immediately shot down - pun intended. Some jerk on Facebook just insisted that the "steady rise" in murder rates will result in mass slaughter and sure, since the tide is up a foot here this morning, by nightfall I'll be underwater.
Isn't it funny that the "conversation" in other countries under heavy ISIS and Taliban and Qaeda attack is so different? How many mass shootings and bombings around the gun-controlled produce this American self-pity? Isn't it funny to have Liberals essentially arguing that Muslims shouldn't have guns? Do I want to hear any more about Florida's allegedly lax laws including open carry without permit? Something that's laughably untrue. Does anyone care about the lack of correlation between our anti-gun shibboleths and actual crime? Sorry, it's more than motivated reasoning, it's nearly a fugue-state propped up by an endless progression of made-up stuff to shore up the crumbling buttresses.
I have been trying to have a discussion about limiting firepower by reducing magazine size, but hardly anyone knows what I'm talking about in this vast see of bullshit.
And of course the more we drift out into that sea of fear and loathing, the more the boys at the NRA open the champagne and high five each other.
Hmm, I seem to have replied to a post that isn't there any more,
DeleteA deeply disturbed individual killed 50 souls and wounded 53 others. Horror and terror of a magnitude heretofore unseen in the USA. We all fear more is in store.
ReplyDeleteTrying to get my head around this act of terror, to understand. For me simple answers just aren't doing it right now. Need more information.
And Captain, you make valid points. As more comes out on this total nut job the more it looks like extremist Islamic influence at work.
ISIS seems to have claimed him, but I don't know if that's a guarantee or what.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe terrorists or self-serving psychopaths (or a certain presidential candidate who is indistinguishable from a terrorist or psychopath). I prefer to sift through the facts and form my own conclusions.
DeleteYes, me too. One of those conclusions is that domestic gun control has no effect on Islamic extremism. Ask the French and a host of other countries Another is that our most dearly held beliefs are rendered nugatory by facts, yet strengthened thereby. Another is that the conviction that one's mission is just is the cause of much that is neither just nor true. Another is that nobody listens to anyone or anything outside their chosen religious or political bubble. Another is that the failure of plans, systems, safeguards strengthens belief in their efficacy. We are all like the addicted gambler, doubling down as he loses his shirt.
DeleteNow if anyone wants to talk about legal ways of limiting the firepower of the private citizen I'm available, but I've had enough of the rage for rage's sake and the stink of herring is overwhelming.
The latest accounts of the shooter being a "regular patron" of subject club changes the narrative. Not Jihad or "radical Islam" or ISIS or even homophobia offers adequate explanation. The term is "reaction formation" does.
ReplyDelete