Gun Violence Part 2: Thoughts and Prayers STILL Don't Work

[47of74]

I have never been in a situation where I've felt I've needed an assault rifle or any gun for that matter. I work in Glasgow City Centre and have witnessed violence finishing work late at night and while it can be intimidating, I don't think a gun would improve the situation, if anything it would make it worse. 
I do think what causes people to carry mass shootings needs to be looked at too, especially in teens but that should be done as well as gun legislation not instead of. Even a few pro 2A people I have spoken to on twitter are wanting stricter legislation and a few of them voted Trump but they are saying they won't again.

Having visited a few big cities I learned don’t start none won’t be none. Even locally if you don’t go looking for trouble even in what people call our roughest neighborhoods one will generally be ok.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm confused. Is K-Con suggesting we understand and eradicate her boss?

 

[Glasgowghirl]

26 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

 

Having visited a few big cities I learned don’t start none won’t be none. Even locally if you don’t go looking for trouble even in what people call our roughest neighborhoods one will generally be ok.

 

I was robbed once when I worked in a neighbouring town but other than that I have never had trouble because I do my best to avoid it. The late night bus can be a bit of a nightmare so I just put my headphones on and watch something on my phone or read on my iPad.

[47of74]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm confused. Is K-Con suggesting we understand and eradicate her boss?

 

Kellyanne can take a long walk off a short peer.  Preferably in to shark infested waters.  She would have nothing to worry about since the sharks would give her professional courtesy.  Barring that she should shut the goddamn fuck up.

[Smash!]

She's so right.

 

[fraurosena]

Huckabee is as odious as ever. 

 

[Dandruff]

9 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

I hate to wish bad on anyone but perhaps personally experiencing losing a loved one in a mass shooting would hock someof them to their senses.

I'm pretty sure that's how the DUI laws came into being.  Sudden loss of the sense of abstraction.

[Audrey2]

26 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Huckabee is as odious as ever. 

 

Okay, MR. Fundie Huckabee, which version of the Lord's Prayer is the one you expect to hear in classrooms every day (there are at least 3). Would you be okay with mandating that students recite The Apostle's Creed along with the pledge every morning, even though it includes the phrase, "I believe in.. the catholic church" (when it is written with a lower case C, the word means universal, not the one centered in Rome, although I bet Huckabee wouldn't know this and would still blow a gasket.)?

I'm so sick of hearing that all of the ills of society are because we don't allow prayer in school. I know there are public schools that allow a moment of silence where you can pray, think happy thoughts, or think about your math test. Also, how would he handle having a public school teacher with different religious beliefs than many of the students? When I was a mainline Protestant teacher, I had fundies, LDS students, and Catholics in my classroom, as well as atheists and agnostics. How do you offer a prayer for that variety? The other teacher in my grade level was Catholic, and his mix was like mine, but also included Hindu and Jewish.

This is a very hot button issue for me. I'm against mandated prayer in school. I'm not against a moment of silence, as long as what you think about is your choice, and I wouldn't prevent a student from saying grace personally before eating. I would be upset if he/she felt it necessary to bless all the food of the class.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Audrey2

[smittykins]

Someone on my FB feed posted the tired “Instead of arming our teachers with guns, we should arm parents with belts and switches.  It worked for our generation!” meme. 

1 hour ago, Smash! said:

She's so right.

 

 

And the protestors can wave graphic photos of crime scenes in their faces.

Edited August 6, 2019 by smittykins

[47of74]

Huckabee is as odious as ever. 
 

Go fuck yourself Fuckabee. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ while you’re at it. I have no patience for these holier than thou types and their hiding behind prayer and using it as an excuse to not do a fucking thing about guns.

[fraurosena]

I don’t get this whole mandated prayer thing in any situation whatsoever. Isn’t praying supposed to be you communing with your god? How can you commune with any god, if you’re just saying words by rote? What is the purpose of that? I really don’t get it. And all this being forced into reciting words to a god together at the same time, how is that even praying? A person isn’t having their personal moment of closeness to their god when they’re all saying the same thing, let alone saying the same thing every single day. I can’t see how any god would want that, nor what benefit it could have for a person.

Edited August 6, 2019 by fraurosena
Insomnia muddles my spelling abilities

[laPapessaGiovanna]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Huckabee is as odious as ever. 

 

And I thought that it was caused by an overabundance of thoughts and prayers!

[fraurosena]

Because of course they are!

As many call for tighter gun laws, Texas' set to loosen up

Quote

Ten new pro-gun laws will take effect in Texas in four weeks, less than a month after 22 people died in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measures after they were passed in a 2019 legislative session that the National Rifle Association, or NRA, called "highly successful" at the time, celebrating that the measures "will further loosen Texas' permissive gun laws" and would send the "gun control crowd home empty-handed."

Texas is home to almost 1.4 million holders of active firearm licenses, and five of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1900 have occurred in the state. Among them is the rampage in El Paso, where authorities said Monday that the number of deaths had risen to 22.

The NRA said its "deepest sympathies are with the families and victims" of the shootings in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed Sunday. The organization said it wouldn't "participate in the politicizing of these tragedies."

The NRA did heavily influence the political process in Texas, however, lobbying for all 10 of the new bills, some of which will make it easier to store or carry guns in foster homes and on church and public school grounds:

Foster homes:
A bill that was cleared May 21 and signed by Abbott weakens state laws on safe storage of firearms in foster homes.

Texas had previously permitted approved foster parents to keep licensed firearms in their homes, but only if weapons and ammunition were stored in separate locked locations. The new law allows guns and ammunition to be stored together in the same locked location — a protocol that is discouraged by the pro-gun National Shooting Sports Foundation.

When the law was passed, the NRA's lobbying group, the Institute for Legislative Action, or NRA-ILA, called it "just the first step toward restoring the Second Amendment rights of foster parents and their families."

Churches:
A new law removes "the premises of a church, synagogue or other established place of religious worship" from the list of locations where carrying a licensed handgun is a misdemeanor. Beginning Sept. 1, gun owners will be allowed to carry properly licensed handguns into a church unless the church explicitly declares that it bans weapons on its grounds.

"Places of worship are not crime-free zones, as Texans sadly know," the NRA-ILA said in backing the measure, apparently referring to the killings of 26 worshipers at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in November 2017. "And current law, as written, only serves to confuse and potentially disarm law-abiding citizens."

The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Donna Campbell, a Republican from New Braunfels, said in a statement that "those with evil intentions" would carry guns into churches regardless of the law. "It makes no sense to disarm the good guys and leave law-abiding citizens defenseless where violent offenders break the law to do great harm," she said.

Schools:
A new law expands state regulations that allow licensed gun owners to transport and store their weapons in parked vehicles on school grounds by banning school districts from specifying how they must be stored.

The political action committee of the Texas State Rifle Association, the NRA's local affiliate, argued that allowing schools to set the storage rules would let them "effectively prohibit the possession of firearms in private motor vehicles."

Apartments:
A new law will ban landlords from including "no firearms" clauses in leases. The NRA-ILA said such clauses violate "the Second Amendment rights of renters."

Disasters:
Texas will now allow gun owners to carry their guns with them while evacuating from a state- or local-declared emergency — even if they don't have valid licenses to carry.

Supporters argued that compelling gun owners to leave their weapons behind puts those weapons "at risk from looters." But Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo put the measure in the context of Hurricane Harvey, which killed 107 people and caused $125 billion in damage in Houston and southeast Texas in August 2017.

"We experienced one of the worst disasters in Texas history during Harvey," Acevedo said when the bill was passed in May, adding: "This bill wasn't needed then and isn't needed now. This will embolden 20,000+ gang members and will not help law enforcement."

The NRA did suffer one defeat when Abbott signed the state budget bill, to which lawmakers had quietly added $1 million to fund a public campaign to promote safe storage of firearms.

A separate bill to fund the program had earlier been defeated under lobbying by the NRA, which argued that gun rights groups and gun manufacturers already organize similar initiatives and that state-run campaigns could be "corrupted" by anti-gun rhetoric.

 

[Smash!]

Because of course they are!
As many call for tighter gun laws, Texas' set to loosen up

Ten new pro-gun laws will take effect in Texas in four weeks, less than a month after 22 people died in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measures after they were passed in a 2019 legislative session that the National Rifle Association, or NRA, called "highly successful" at the time, celebrating that the measures "will further loosen Texas' permissive gun laws" and would send the "gun control crowd home empty-handed."
Texas is home to almost 1.4 million holders of active firearm licenses, and five of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1900 have occurred in the state. Among them is the rampage in El Paso, where authorities said Monday that the number of deaths had risen to 22.
The NRA said its "deepest sympathies are with the families and victims" of the shootings in El Paso and in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed Sunday. The organization said it wouldn't "participate in the politicizing of these tragedies."
The NRA did heavily influence the political process in Texas, however, lobbying for all 10 of the new bills, some of which will make it easier to store or carry guns in foster homes and on church and public school grounds:
Foster homes:
A bill that was cleared May 21 and signed by Abbott weakens state laws on safe storage of firearms in foster homes.
Texas had previously permitted approved foster parents to keep licensed firearms in their homes, but only if weapons and ammunition were stored in separate locked locations. The new law allows guns and ammunition to be stored together in the same locked location — a protocol that is discouraged by the pro-gun National Shooting Sports Foundation.
When the law was passed, the NRA's lobbying group, the Institute for Legislative Action, or NRA-ILA, called it "just the first step toward restoring the Second Amendment rights of foster parents and their families."
Churches:
A new law removes "the premises of a church, synagogue or other established place of religious worship" from the list of locations where carrying a licensed handgun is a misdemeanor. Beginning Sept. 1, gun owners will be allowed to carry properly licensed handguns into a church unless the church explicitly declares that it bans weapons on its grounds.
"Places of worship are not crime-free zones, as Texans sadly know," the NRA-ILA said in backing the measure, apparently referring to the killings of 26 worshipers at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in November 2017. "And current law, as written, only serves to confuse and potentially disarm law-abiding citizens."

 


Those whole new laws are just [emoji2961][emoji2961][emoji2961]

So obviously shooters can now legally kill people in places of worship [emoji2961]

[Howl]

9 hours ago, smittykins said:

Someone on my FB feed posted the tired “Instead of arming our teachers with guns, we should arm parents with belts and switches.  It worked for our generation!” meme. 

I just came over here to post about the Texas Tower shooting in 1966 and your post is relevant in that regard.  I was a college freshman attending summer school at UT Austin in 1966, and on August 1, had been 18 years old for 3 days.  Thirty minutes after I had left campus for lunch, Charles Whitman (a military trained sharp shooter) opened fire from The Tower on the UT campus, killing 14 and wounding 22. When I returned to classes the following day, there were still blood stains on the plaza in front of The Tower. 

I came across this article that was published in 2016 about Whitman, whose father was clearly a brutal physical and emotional abuser with terrible effects for Whitman.  While reading this, keep in mind hyper controlling, physically abusive (discipline!) fundy fathers.  The focus of this article is on a lack of play, where many useful problem solving skills are learned, and I keep thinking about these crazy home-schooled families where the boys especially seem to not have a clue about how to go out and be successful in the world outside of their families.  The kid who was sending mail bombs to random people in Austin last year and murdered several of them, fit this profile.  

Sorry to wander along here, but there's a lot of speculation about frustrated male mass murderers, but not a lot of interest in the press in how they were raised. 

Play deprivation seen as one of the factors that led to UT tower shooting in 1966   An in-depth study of Whitman's life finds his troubled relationship with his father to be a factor in the Tower shooting.

It's not simple.  The Columbine shooters had social skills, a group of friends and seemingly decent and thoughtful parents who loved them deeply.  The Las Vegas shooter had no discernible motive, although he's nobody's idea of a regular guy. 

That more than one of them has survived should be a goldmine of information if they are willing to talk; they have a lot of time to think in prison.  Also interested in the difference between guys with similar problems who choose suicide, suicide by cop, kill others and live, never act out their fantasies.

The Parkland shooter was reported as a danger by multiple people to  multiple law enforcement agencies for weeks if not months before he opened fire but no one took action, so anything that helps law enforcement to act before the crime is committed is important, too. 

As far as I can tell, few of these guys were truly mentally ill; maladjusted yes; batshit crazy, no. 

  

 

 

[apple1]

10 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I don’t get this whole mandated prayer thing in any situation whatsoever. Isn’t praying supposed to be you communing with your god? How can you commune with any god, if you’re just saying words by rote? What is the purpose of that? I really don’t get it. And all this being forced into reciting words to a god together at the same time, how is that even praying? A person isn’t having their personal moment of closeness to their god when they’re all saying the same thing, let alone saying the same thing every single day. I can’t see how any god would want that, nor what benefit it could have for a person.

This (below) is what I believe about prayer:

 "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matthew 6:5-6)

[VelociRapture]

12 hours ago, smittykins said:

Someone on my FB feed posted the tired “Instead of arming our teachers with guns, we should arm parents with belts and switches.  It worked for our generation!” meme. 

And the protestors can wave graphic photos of crime scenes in their faces.

And they should be subjected to an invasive ultrasound. Preferably up the ass. Not for any legitimate reason, but just because fair is fair. 

(Sorry to any responsible gun owners! But if “responsible vagina owners” are still subjected to all this then you should be too.)

[Alisamer]

So many of the same people who want the government to stay out of their business when it comes to disciplining their children and how they store their guns, also seem to want the government to mandate that children pray in school. This is patently hypocritical, and also ridiculous. You know full well if the kids were made to say the Lord's Prayer every day in school, that there'd be uproar about the exact wording to use! And these are also often the same people who flip out if a school provides a private place for muslims to pray at their designated times during the day. They don't want schools teaching their kids sex ed, but they DO want them teaching them to pray? 

If people want their kids to pray, they should pray with them. Teach them to quietly bless their food, if you want. A prayer is not a sermon or a witnessing opportunity, it's a conversation with God. It's private and personal. That's not something that can our should be required, especially not in school.

Also, I'm amazed at some of those laws that have been changed. Why exactly is the NRA working against laws that require guns to be safely stored? Are they hoping guns will get stolen more easily so manufacturers can sell more? How long before a troubled foster child gets ahold of a gun stored according to the new regulations and causes a tragedy? 

I swear, it seems like they WANT people to be killed. Maybe especially foster children (many of whom are minorities and/or from poor families). But they're mostly Christian and "pro-life", y'all. For real.

[fraurosena]

It doesn't matter that these weapons are made for killing people. They're hugely popular, and that makes everything alright.

 

[smittykins]

12 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Also, I'm amazed at some of those laws that have been changed. Why exactly is the NRA working against laws that require guns to be safely stored? Are they hoping guns will get stolen more easily so manufacturers can sell more? How long before a troubled foster child gets ahold of a gun stored according to the new regulations and causes a tragedy? 

It’s the old “slippery slope” argument.  In their eyes, any form of regulation, no matter how small, is the first step to an outright ban.

[GreyhoundFan]

I have no words.

 

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

It doesn't matter that these weapons are made for killing people. They're hugely popular, and that makes everything alright.

 

Cocaine is hugely popular. So is meth. I take it Toomey is in favour of no regulation and widespread availability of both?

Shot and forgotten: the victims.

There is a lot in this article that angered and outraged me (and made me so sad). But this in particular:

"There could have been more extensive data on these victims today if things had played out differently in Washington in the mid-1990s. Around that time, the National Rifle Association began claiming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was producing “antigun propaganda” in the form of a study that examined firearm-related deaths. Congressional Republicans responded in 1996 by eliminating $2.6 million worth of funding that the agency used for its research related to gun violence."

Fuck these gutless, wimpy, pathetic politicans who cannot even allow research on the impacts of gun violence. Fuck these weaselly snivelling scaredy cats of the NRA who are so in love with their dick extensions that they see any data on the impact of unregulated access as "propaganda". And fuck the arsehole politicans again for not at the very least putting in funding for victims of shootings, and placing costs back on to individuals as much as possible and society for the rest instead of requiring someting like mandatory third party insurance of all gun owners to cover any injuries caused by the weapon owned.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Ozlsn

[SilverBeach]

On 8/5/2019 at 1:06 PM, fraurosena said:

I don't think it's necessary or even helpful for them to lose anyone in a mass shooting. The only thing that might help is if they are part of the public being shot at themselves. (Not hit, mind you, just present and in perceived danger). Let them be scared of losing their very own lives. 

Once they've been on the receiving end of things instead of wet-dreaming of shooting that assault weapon of mass destruction themselves, then they might, just might, alter their way of thinking. 

Something like this actually happened at a Republican baseball or softball game. Didn't make a bit of difference.

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, smittykins said:

It’s the old “slippery slope” argument.  In their eyes, any form of regulation, no matter how small, is the first step to an outright ban.

And, according to the woman I talked to in Arizona, universal healthcare coverage in the US will lead to gun control. Talk about an incentive to expand health care coverage!

[SilverBeach]

5 hours ago, smittykins said:

It’s the old “slippery slope” argument.  In their eyes, any form of regulation, no matter how small, is the first step to an outright ban.

You would think lawyer types would know that this is a logical fallacy and not a valid argument.