Gun Control Debate

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Alatar]

I hope this doesn't turn into a witch hunt to blame first responders instead of looking at the actual causes... oh who am I kidding...

[RoseMorninStar]

I saw this the other day and it pretty much sums the ridiculousness up:

Lettuce do something.jpg (64.58 KiB) Viewed 2180 times

[Eldy]

I hope this doesn't turn into a witch hunt to blame first responders instead of looking at the actual causes... oh who am I kidding...

I would certainly like there to be meaningful gun reform (though I largely gave up hope of ever seeing it after Sandy Hook failed to make a difference), but I'd also like to see the police held to a standard commensurate to the amount of military hardware and cultural fêting that get heaped upon them. But American police have no duty to protect the public, so I don't expect to get what I want in this regard, either, unless one or a few individuals are hung out to dry as scapegoats.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yes, I don't think it needs to be an either/or.

[N.E. Brigand]

As expected, the Supreme Court today struck down a century-old New York law that required anyone wishing to get a concealed carry permit for handguns to "demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community."

President Biden says that today's ruling "contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all." I agree. The Supreme Court is violating the Constitution yet again, and they'll never face consequences for doing so.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think it is horrible decision, but I think I am even more offended by the idea that Supreme Court justices should face "consequences" for having a different opinion on how to interpret the constitution. That is a truly dangerous idea, in my opinion.

[Eldy]

I too would be very careful with rhetoric about "consequences," not that I think N.E. Brigand meant anything terrible by this, but just because it's so easily taken a bad way. That said, I think (though, admittedly, I have not spent much time refining this thought) that the Supreme Court's power of constitutional review hits differently in the current environment. Granted, people have always been understandably upset when decisions go against them, but I don't think it's solely down to a matter of perception. Part of that is the Roberts Court's very loose attitude towards precedent, but also, I think, because Congress is presently so ill-equipped to play its theoretical balancing role. The idea of a new constitutional amendment feels far-fetched, to put it lightly—though that's as much due to state legislatures—but so is the idea of Congress successfully passing a bill that could mitigate the consequences of a new landmark decision, like Employment Division v. Smith and the RFRA. Even if such a law could somehow be passed when the two chambers are controlled by different parties, it would most likely be promptly gutted by the Court.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think it is horrible decision, but I think I am even more offended by the idea that Supreme Court justices should face "consequences" for having a different opinion on how to interpret the constitution. That is a truly dangerous idea, in my opinion.

There's nothing special about the judicial branch as opposed to the legislative branch or the executive branch. They're all politicians, and when they go too far, they should be kicked out of office. That's what I meant by consequences. Maybe this decision isn't sufficiently bad to justify removal, but there certainly have been some that demanded such a serious response. The U.S. would have been a better and more just nation if the seven Supreme Court justices who ruled for the majority in Plessy v. Fergusson in 1896 had promptly been impeached for violating the Constitution and replaced with Justices who would undo the pure evil of segregation.

[Frelga]

Taken as a whole, the recent SCOTUS decisions are paving a way for a state in which citizens have no recourse against an oppressive government and the armed thugs who support it.

And the party that still has some of power for the next few months lives in a delusional fantasy where liberty and democracy are some sort of self-generating magic, instead of a hard won and fragile state.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's a small step, but it's not nothing:

[N.E. Brigand]

When Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," I don't think he meant that people marching in parades to celebrate the anniversary of the most famous words he ever wrote were to be slaughtered by a gunman on a rooftop.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congresswoman Debbie Lasko, Republican of Arizona, is on the verge of tears as she says (video) that she would "shoot" her grandchildren in order to "protect" them and that gun control laws would "take away my right to protect [i.e., murder?] my grandchildren."

I don't get it, but that's definitely what she said.

[Alatar]

This sort of thing bugs me. She misspoke. It's quite clear from context that she's trying to say she would shoot someone to protect her grand-kids. There are bigger problems in the world, and indeed in the rest of her speech, without stupid "Gotcha" moments cause someone accidentally said something they didn't mean to say.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congresswoman Debbie Lasko, Republican of Arizona, is on the verge of tears as she says (video) that she would "shoot" her grandchildren in order to "protect" them and that gun control laws would "take away my right to protect [i.e., murder?] my grandchildren."

I don't get it, but that's definitely what she said.

This sort of thing bugs me. She misspoke. It's quite clear from context that she's trying to say she would shoot someone to protect her grand-kids. There are bigger problems in the world, and indeed in the rest of her speech, without stupid "Gotcha" moments cause someone accidentally said something they didn't mean to say.

Well, I was being entirely serious. When I saw Rep. Lasko's comments, my first thought was of the people I mentioned here:

A lot of Twitter accounts in the last 24 hours have announced that they're leaving the country. Most using the same exact phrases. Those are largely bots, of course.

But someone really does need to check on the people in the profile I mentioned a few days ago of the Q-Anon dead-enders who told the reporter (about two weeks ago) that if Biden wins they're going to take extreme (personal) measures.

These are people who told reporters that if Trump lost, they'd probably kill their children rather than have them grow up in a nation controlled by Democrats.

This is what Lasko said: "I would do anything, anything, to protect my five grandchildren, including, as a last resort, shooting them, if I had to."

There is no antecedent for "them" except grandchildren.

Sure, the more charitable interpretation is that Lasko would shoot someone else to protect her grandkids, but she didn't say that, and she didn't help her case by later saying not that she'd misspoken but that she'd never said the very words she was being criticized for.

The only person twisting Lasko's words is Lasko herself. To prove otherwise, all she has to do is admit she misspoke. Any rational person would do that. The fact that she won't do that strongly suggests she's irrational and thus, yes, the kind of person who would shoot her own grandchildren to "protect" them.

[RoseMorninStar]

The problem is that one hears such comments made by people in the States too often. It might sound obviously ridiculous in another country.. but sadly, not here. The US gun culture is really in an unhealthy place and does not focus on safety or rational thinking. A person is far more likely to be killed with their own gun (suicide or accident, or kill someone else in their home due to accident) than they are by killing an intruder.

[Eldy]

The Austin American-Statesman has video showing the gunman entering the school, and in the hallways up until entering the classroom, as well as police in the hallway afterwards. It does not show anyone being shot, and while there is audio, they removed the sound of children screaming. I don't recommend watching it lightly, but it further corroborates a lot of what has come out about the shooting after the first week or two.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/20 ... 370384007/

[Sunsilver]

As has been pointed out numerous times, this is NOT how SWAT teams or police are supposed to deal with an active shooter!

[Sunsilver]

Good for them, not that I think it will have much effect:

A Mile-Long Procession Of Buses Carried Items From School Shooting Victims To Ted Cruz’s House
The 4,368 empty seats are meant to honor the number of children killed by gun violence since 2020.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/st ... IpqVcUg4g4

The number boggles the mind.

[RoseMorninStar]

4,368. Wow. That does boggle the mind.