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El Paso Shooting

Gameface said:
In a nation full of guns I think it's the only responsible thing to do.
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At this point I think its one of the few options on the table. You are right that gun rights aren't going away.

The right to bear arms isn't going away, and I'm not sure it should even as a person who has no real desire to own a gun. I think we just need to look at what is reasonable, and what does that right mean. That is what can be changed. Banning certain types of guns, and magazines.

With "military grade" weapons off the table, and a smarter more educated society we should curb the trend down some. I believe this won't stop the mass shooting, but it could decrease the amount of victims going forward.
 
I think it’s roughly a third of Americans own guns, another third are open to the possibility of owning at some point in their lives, and the remaining third have no desire to ever own a gun. Gun culture is pervasive but it’s nowhere near all-inclusive. The right to own is entrenched in the Constitution but it’s not mandatory. Probably best to leave those that don’t want to be a part of gun culture and their children out of it, at least in the sense of mandatory education in the schools, it would be way too divisive for a country that’s already divided enough.
 
I think part of this current epidemic is this idea that guns are good. That more guns are more good. That more of "us" who have guns is necessary to counter "them" who has guns. Often phrased as "good guys with guns" vs "bad guys with guns."

In that paradigm nothing matters more than getting more guns into the hands of the "good guys." And in that world, responsibility is not primary. Shooting when you need to shoot is the most important thing. Not hesitating, not second-guessing. Just shoot. If you're not sure, shoot. If you feel uncomfortable, shoot. If you have any possible justification, shoot.

Anyone who wants can tell me I'm making this up. I'm pro-gun. I hear this stuff all day long. They think it doesn't alarm me. They think it doesn't disgust me. They think I have the same bonner for killing "bad guys" that they have.

There is a fetish in the U.S. for "killing bad guys" and anyone who wants to deny it either isn't trusted enough by the pro-gun crowd, or they are lying. There is a fetish in the U.S. for killing bad guys. And the definition of "bad guys" just has to expand enough to let these people finally live their dream. Just tell them that the "media" is the bad guys. Let the blood flow.
 
Not a single ****ing person has taken on my arguments regarding the tactical advantages in these mass shootings of semi-auto handguns vs semi-auto rifles.

Not a single ****ing one of you.

If you want to argue about gun control I highly suggest to learn enough to have that discussion with me. If you're not willing to do that then you don't give a **** about gun control.

Bunch of fake *** bitches. Fake mother****ers. Pretending to care.

Go pretend somewhere else. You don't care about those dead people. You just want to win points in an argument about nothing.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
Same regardless. This isn’t the wild, Wild West.
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Not even close to the same. Not even close.

You want to make any kind of difference? Lean the ****ing subject. If you don't care to know the subject matter, shut the **** up.

Not a joke.
 
Gameface said:
There is a fetish in the U.S. for "killing bad guys" and anyone who wants to deny it either isn't trusted enough by the pro-gun crowd, or they are lying. There is a fetish in the U.S. for killing bad guys.
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This may seem like a trite observation. Just something I think about at times these days. How, growing up, the tv genre we call "westerns" dominated the airwaves. I still watch reruns of Gunsmoke. Good story lines. It was a heck of a long lasting show. Just the name is telling: Gunsmoke. And every episode introduced the same way. The good guy Matt Dillon, hand ready to draw, at one end of a dusty street. A bad guy, hand ready to draw, at the other end. Draw!!, to the sound of the theme music reaching a crescendo. The bad guy drops.

A gunfight. That is the classic image from "the old West", "the Wild West". I'm not sure a single episode did not see the good guy Dillon drop a bad guy to the ground in a gunfight. Almost every episode needed that moment: the good guy with a gun dropping the bad guy with a gun. The good guys always win, the bad guy always gets his. Shot dead.
 
Gameface said:
Not a single ****ing person has taken on my arguments regarding the tactical advantages in these mass shootings of semi-auto handguns vs semi-auto rifles.

Not a single ****ing one of you.

If you want to argue about gun control I highly suggest to learn enough to have that discussion with me. If you're not willing to do that then you don't give a **** about gun control.

Bunch of fake *** bitches. Fake mother****ers. Pretending to care.

Go pretend somewhere else. You don't care about those dead people. You just want to win points in an argument about nothing.
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I think you make a decent argument on effectiveness. But I think it a lot of these high profile mass shootings the spectacle really seems to be the goal, so in that sense I can see why the semi-auto AK/AR style guns are the choice.

Agreed that high capacity magazines are the easy place to start in terms of functionally limiting firepower.

And to our foreign visitors to the site, as someone who has grown up in more rural/gun supporting areas (Rosebud > South Dakota > Iowa > Texas) in my experience it's not exactly uncommon to see someone toting a semi-auto rife around, but isn't an everyday thing either, maybe a couple of times a year and always noteworthy.
 
Gameface said:
I think part of this current epidemic is this idea that guns are good. That more guns are more good. That more of "us" who have guns is necessary to counter "them" who has guns. Often phrased as "good guys with guns" vs "bad guys with guns."

In that paradigm nothing matters more than getting more guns into the hands of the "good guys." And in that world, responsibility is not primary. Shooting when you need to shoot is the most important thing. Not hesitating, not second-guessing. Just shoot. If you're not sure, shoot. If you feel uncomfortable, shoot. If you have any possible justification, shoot.

Anyone who wants can tell me I'm making this up. I'm pro-gun. I hear this stuff all day long. They think it doesn't alarm me. They think it doesn't disgust me. They think I have the same bonner for killing "bad guys" that they have.

There is a fetish in the U.S. for "killing bad guys" and anyone who wants to deny it either isn't trusted enough by the pro-gun crowd, or they are lying. There is a fetish in the U.S. for killing bad guys. And the definition of "bad guys" just has to expand enough to let these people finally live their dream. Just tell them that the "media" is the bad guys. Let the blood flow.
Click to expand...

This is the core problem to me, but I do not know the fix, it's taken so much time to build this image and I'm not sure how to change it.
 
Written by Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterterrorism, just a few days before the El Paso shooting. His "instinct and experience" was spot on...

Opinion | Why Does Trump Fan the Flames of Race-Based Terrorism? - The New York Times - www.nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/opinion/gilroy-white-domestic-terrorism.html

"If I learned anything from 25 years in the F.B.I., including a stint as head of counterintelligence, it was to trust my gut when I see a threat unfolding. Those of us who were part of the post-Sept. 11 intelligence community had a duty to sound the alarm about an impending threat.

Now, instinct and experience tell me we’re headed for trouble in the form of white hate violence stoked by a racially divisive president. I hope I’m wrong....

....We’ve seen this movie before in the radicalization of Muslims by internet sermons delivered by charismatic, father-figure clerics who inspire terrorism and martyrdom. The president has fallen short of calling for overt violence against minorities and immigrants, but unbalanced minds among us may fail to note the distinction. If a president paints people of color as the enemy, encourages them to be sent back to where they came from and implies that no humans want to live in certain American cities, he gives license to those who feel compelled to eradicate what Mr. Trump calls an infestation.

It doesn’t really matter whether Mr. Trump is truly a racist or merely playing one on television to appeal to his base. Either way, his path can lead to bloodshed. When that happens, we will hear White House officials and the Republican leadership claim their hands are clean because malicious people can’t be stopped from acting out.

Don’t believe a word of it. Terrorists aren’t born that way: They are inspired, cultivated and directed. Our experience with online radicalization has shown there is a clear path to violence. I fear we are on it."
 
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