You don't seem to know your own laws or basics of guns. AR-15's aren't banned in Canada, they are restricted (requires more processing work). AR-15's aren't automatic (they are semi auto), nor are they assault weapons, nor are they "military" weapons (they are designed exclusively for civilians). But i get it... it's the scary black guns... There are also quite a few of those guns that are unrestricted in Canada, like the Tavor TAR-21... so I don't know what society you are referring to that has supposedly banned such evil scary devices. But yay for bragging about how your citizens kill eachother with different guns than you hear about in the US news. Guess what, ours use bolt action guns too... it took 90 min for police to stop the shooting of Charles Whitman who hid up in a clock tower with a bolt action rifle. He hit 49 people.
Then I just wish we had some speculation regarding a solution that we could all agree makes sense?
I know some people might consider this to be a slippery slope, but hear me out... here we have a case of a man who apparently beat his ex-wife and was bi-polar. His father had posted videos showing his support for the Afghan taliban and had taken his son to the Middle East to see some holy places. His ex-wife says he was wildly homophobic and was constantly ranting about homosexuals... and yet it turns out he was a regular at Pulse (the gay bar he would eventually commit the massacre at), and had gay dating profiles. Growing up he was sent to speciality schools for wild unstable behavior.
His wife divorced him within 4 months of them living together for reasons regarding abuse. His co-workers reported him for going off on rants supporting terrorist groups. Due to an affiliation with a known terrorist who had actually committed an act of terrorism, he was investigated by the FBI. This was the second time he was investigated due to implications that he might have terrorist ties or at least be influenced by propaganda.
A year later he goes out and buys a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle, seemingly to be investing in a big buy-in to a gun hobby for the first time in his life. The background check pulls up nothing.
Is it really that big of a slippery slope to include a series of troubling symptoms and behavioral instances that already (SHOULD HAVE) blipped on the radar, and have this series of blips raise a red flag which allows for a passive investigation? This isn't the first time the warning signs were all in place like an intricate row of dominos, but it feels like we've reached a point where the solution is so obvious it's screaming at us.
Guess again, because I know my own fucking country's laws; ironically I just passed the Canadian R-PAL exam on Sunday with a 100% score. I said automatics are prohibited. Semi-autos are not, like the Israeli one you mentioned, and some idiotic Members of Parliament here even managed to take them off the restricted list. Your condescending bullshit is not making your argument any clearer or more effective.
Okay, I ignore that I stipulated to sensible legislative control for all gun ownership; what if he had lugged a gargantuan pile of ammo and an automatic up there? This isn't a hard line of argument to follow. Faster-firing guns are more deadly and shouldn't be freely available, full stop.
Last edited by botley; 06-13-2016 at 11:41 PM.
Yeah, automatic weapons are also banned in the USA. I don't see how your point applies to the Orlando situation, what the Pink Pistols said, or any of the recent posts here.
Actually... a bolt action was probably the most effective and deadly weapon in that situation. There is a reason snipers in most militaries typically use bolt action. You can't get such exacting tolerances with guns that cycle themselves. A full auto at that distance probably would have hurt less people.
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 06-13-2016 at 11:49 PM.
...but we do fetishize guns, especially high-powered ones, on a level that no constituency in Canada seems to. I blame the NRA's scaremongering about how politicians are going to steal ALL THE GUNS away primarily, but maybe there's something deeper that ties into the insane political divisiveness in this country and how this issue seems central to where people stand on one side or the other.
I'm arguing against the lack of sensible legislative control in your country. It is sick and has led to unchecked atrocities occurring with mind-numbing regularity. It's not right that you can buy almost any guns for any purpose in parts of your country, no questions asked, with very few exceptions.
OMFG A WHOLE SEGMENT DEVOTED
TO ALMOST ZERO LAUGHTER WHATSOEVER
I LOVE THIS BITCH SO MUCH
Really good points and essentially something should have flagged this guy up a long time ago. Why do we think he wasn't?
I also agree that you guys are in some huge convoluted mess re: gun control. The answer is so obvious to the rest of us, but getting enough weight behind it to get it banned in the USA seems impossible. Clearly it doesn't matter how many innocent people have to die.
This should definitely be a topic about gun control and hate crime rather than (the stereotypical definition of) terrorism. People who want to hurt based on insecurity and prejudice should have tools of power taken away from them. Genuine, good people do not want to hurt in the first place; these will not be the people carrying guns as a matter of course.
OMFG A WHOLE SEGMENT DEVOTED
TO ALMOST ZERO LAUGHTER WHATSOEVER
I LOVE THIS BITCH SO MUCH
Because we do not have a national gun database to flag this guy IN because it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States for violating the 10th Amendment. So this is really a complicated mess.
SEE ALSO THIS
Senate Republicans rejected a bill that aims to stop suspected terrorists from legally buying guns, on Thursday. The vote came a day after at least 14 people were killed during the San Bernardino massacre in California by two suspects, including a woman said to have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Forty-five senators voted for the bill and 54 voted against it. One Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, crossed party lines.
The measure would have denied people on the terrorist watch list the ability to buy guns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the legislation, argued that former President George W. Bush initially proposed the legislation in 2007, and the Obama administration also supports it.
Last edited by allegro; 06-14-2016 at 08:22 AM.
To further expand on your list of things known but not acted on...
He openly talked about killing people at work. Coworkers complained but the company supposedly did nothing about it because he was Muslim. Even after stalking and harassing coworkers and making homophobic and racist comments, nothing was done and a coworker instead quit.
http://www.floridatoday.com/story/ne...teen/85791280/
Also facepalm the Republicans in the Senate!
I hate states rights, personally. Hopefully, we can get a few more non-strict-states rights Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and we can establish a Federal database. Women with Orders of Protection need portable flags that carry into all states and even if it prevents ONE situation like this, that will be success. We have robbery and murder laws and that does not prevent all robberies and murders; but without these laws, we are an uncivilized nation.
Last edited by allegro; 06-14-2016 at 10:44 AM.
The gun industry hides behinds "rights" and "amendments" but what it essentially says, fights for, and achieves, is: we'd rather sell as many guns as possible, even if that means that some of them will find their way into the hands of mass-murderers, than take steps to make sure our products are used responsibly and only by responsible owners. They only don't care that their guns are used in mass murders because there is no sanction in it for them: to the contrary, gun sales spike when there are mass shootings, so from that perspective mass shootings are to their benefit. Capitalism without ethics.
It reminds me a bit of the mobile phone industry and cars: if you sold mobile phones, wouldn't you rather they not be the cause of distracted driving deaths of the road? Wouldn't you fight for legislation that bans using a phone whilst driving? Yet it's the other way around: they fight against it. But celphone companies should have no say whatsoever in the matter: public safety should come first, not some private company's profits.
This is what happens when you foster capitalism without ethics, when you reject the very idea of "society", and the fact that we all have to live together in this, and you allow politicians to be bought and sold by lobbyists and private industry: the politicians back the industry against the citizen, even if it means more deaths all round, which is profoundly immoral. Necropolitics indeed.
This is exactly true, it's like the medical insurance companies only being in it for profit and they don't care who they bankrupt or who lives or dies, and the people at the top are rich no matter what and people in Congress have fat pockets because of the medical insurance industry. See also this. And the voters are sold a bunch of rhetoric about "freedom" and "rights" but they're too stupid to realize that the real freedom is the gun industry's massive freedom of profit at the expensive of millions of lives. And the 14th Amendment allows equal protection under the law, which means we have (as stated in the Declaration of Independence) the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The State of Colorado wants to initiate its own single payer healthcare system but the biggest obstacle AGAINST it is? Guess!! THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY!!!
The NRA is a self-sustaining profit force that primarily exists to sustain itself and gain more profits for itself. The more it can scare via a 2nd Amendment boogeyman, the more money it generates for itself.
Last edited by allegro; 06-14-2016 at 12:02 PM.
Bingo, and here is the primary difference between us and countries like Switzerland and Canada, where similar laws aren't drawing out such insane responses.
The irony is that the NRA will be the eventual death knell for the second amendment, they just won't ever have to bear the blame.
The NRA is funded almost entirely by small individual contributions.... you know, just like how Bernie is. But apparently that is only "democratic" if you agree with who/what is getting the money. Else, its the big evil corporate lobbying effort.
Any way you slice it, they are a force that ultimately controls policy. They're gatekeepers against legislation. They don't work to solve these problems or find solutions, they strive to shut down discussion which might result in new laws about guns, and to their credit I guess they've been pretty good at their job.
The thing is, here we have a situation where some kind of red flag database should have been pinging off the radar, and the FBI is responding by saying that going through people's personal information would be an Orwellian slippery slope... As if Prism wasn't really a thing. I wish I'd recalled the name of the guy I heard on the radio, but he said something like "Unfortunately, outside of conspiracy theory websites and science fiction movies, the FBI is not delving into everything you do, and we take extreme lengths to avoid violating people's personal spaces unnecessarily." The guy went on to talk about how, yes, the person was investigated twice by the FBI, but ultimately cleared, so therefore he was taken off watch... and then went on to make it sound like if anyone was accused of a crime would you want them to be tracked for the rest of their lives, having their second amendment rights stripped away because of suspicion?
NO! I want you to stop lying and admit you are spying on us, but you're doing a really shitty job of making use of the information you're collecting! I'd prefer a transparent system, which has soft and hard pings for potentially fucked up behavior. This isn't Minority Report, it's common fucking sense in the modern world.
http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/its...less-hum-53094
It's pretty sad that The Onion has better commentary than most serious news sites on these kinds of things
Well, and there are a WHOLE LOT of things going on, here, and I think we are all being influenced by the media, personal feelings, etc. but if we step away from the subject and look at the big picture, we might see this:
* The majority of Republicans in Congress have not been on board with any kind of gun reform for a long time, for whatever reason; be it their constituency, lobbyist contributions, campaign contributions, whatever.
* Yes, a bunch of gay people were killed in this club, but even a bunch of 6-year-old children in first grade classrooms being shot to death didn't make said Republicans want to go along with any gun reform;
* HOWEVER, what is typical incentive for change for Republicans is (a) Homeland Security, (b) Patriotism, (c) Nationalism, (d) the threat to our primary position in the worldview;
So right now, while a big group of American and the world are focusing on this being an LGBT issue and are pissed at the ISIS terrorist focus, the smarter thing to do would be to let the Republicans focus on the ISIS Islamic Terrorist Threat angle.
Why?
Because they will eventually (if not sooner) lump it in with Homeland Security and will move to create a Government Agency that will control who can buy guns in the interest of Homeland Security.
The last big bipartisan gun reform Act happened after Reagan was shot, and Reagan endorsed it.
So if somebody is "flagged" by the FBI on a "watch list," they can be on a National Homeland Security database that prevents them from purchasing a gun. If you are erroneously on that list, you can file an appeal via your local Senators.
By the way, on a side note: I saw an FBI expert on profiling on TV today, who is also a psychologist, who was talking about this shooter and she said it is likely that he was also gay, based on his frequenting this Pulse nightclub for over 2 years (not just for surveillance but also because others knew him and saw him and he was registered on gay dating sites) and it is likely that he was struggling with being gay and being a Muslim, in a community (and possibly a family) that shuns gays, and he had a mental break; she said that witnesses saying this guy was smiling and laughing while he shot people surely indicates that he suffered a break from reality, he "snapped." So he was probably a gay Muslim struggling to be himself in a culture that shuns him, and he somehow ended up being drawn to propaganda of an organization (ISIS) that kills gay people. So maybe he wasn't only killing those people, but he was also killing himself?
No, the 2nd Amendment isn't going anywhere. It's there to stay, as defined by Court cases and SCOTUS decisions. But the NRA won't tell you that, because it makes too much money telling everybody that the 2nd Amendment is going away. Every time the NRA says "slippery slope," every fake GI JOe with a dick-enlarging AR-15 sends some cash. Boys gotta have their toys.
Last edited by allegro; 06-14-2016 at 10:27 PM.
And yet at the end of the day they will need to answer to their constituency, who they have bred to resist this push. They couldn't dress it up in "Patriot Act" clothes if it meant doing something about guns at this point.
Instead, they will go through whatever mental gymnastics are required to find another solution, ANYTHING but that. This isn't the Reagan republican party anymore. They hold him up as a symbol of something they don't understand, and have rewritten his presidency to be a blanket endorsement of who they are now, no matter how poorly it fits.
Here we are again... and people are running out to buy all the guns they're afraid are about to get banned, and the gun sellers are whistling on the way to work.
The thing is, I'm not even suggesting gun bans at this point. But there are certain guns that seem very attractive to these mass shooters. Fuck it, keep them legal, but look into the people who are newly interested in buying them if they were investigated twice by the FBI already for fucks sake. I can't believe we have a case where the breadcrumb trail is so ludicrously damning and depressing, but there's already immediate blowback to that suggestion of "reform."
Last edited by Jinsai; 06-14-2016 at 04:34 PM.
You cannot make this shit up...
TN state representative Andy Holt is putting together a fundraiser with two AR-15s as the door-prize raffle for contributors
New Gingrich non-ironically said we need to recreate the House of Unamerican Activities Committee, because we know it went over so well the first time
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politi....html?ofs=fbia