The Onion blows it: "No Way To Prevent This"
The Onion doesn't explain its layers of deception, but they could start by explaining how guns motivated the carnage and mayhem expressed in the killer's video. If guns weren't the motive, The Onion could explain how guns enabled Rodger's killing of his initial victims (and, btw, explain what was the motive for that initial phase which didn't seem to involve guns). That's where it started (motive and tools) so that's where the discussion should start if we want to get somewhere.
41 comments:
Lem, I'm not pretending that guns weren't a factor, I'm just hoping for a "first-things-first" analysis.
I could accept the emotional outburst of a grieving parent, after a tragic killing like this.
But that's a far cry to make when justifying the altering of a way of life that has made us the envy of the world... according to their own words... "the only economically advanced nation in the world"
I believe it is our respect for life and property, both, that makes us unique.
Gun in the hands of the citizens, I believe, has helped preserve both. To now blind ourselves to that would be foolish.
There is no evidence that we are becoming angels.
All you have to do is look around. From Putin to #wherearethegirls, the world is a place where people are better of when they have the means to defend themselves.
Guns in the hands of the citizenry to protect themselves from tyrannical government is in the political DNA of our nation; it will never be expunged. And if it is, there goes the nation. Curiously, nobody divorces that notion from guns in people's hands to protect themselves from crime.
It somehow relates to my father's favorite dictum:
If people can't control themselves, the government will. If the government can't control itself, another government will.
I agree.
Not to make a sermon out of it... but it is true of many other facets of life. and what will happen is that if we say yes to that loss of freedom there is very little to no guarantee that the rest wont follow.
Gun gives We, in We the people, some teeth. and I don't even have one.
Lem, I have one but it's in another state. I know how to use them and I'm not afraid of them.
Yeah... "only nation where this happens..." WTF?
I recognize that I have no need of one. But if one day I do need I would like to have it.
Like Yogi says "the one you really need to have, if you don't have it, that's why you need it".
"only nation where this happens..."
Tell that to the Venezuelans and the Mexicans.
Its ridiculous how the other side gets away parroting that line.
Brazil is dangerous, as it is magnificently beautiful.
I am so sick of these self-righteous cunts they never give up. I just got off a thread on a British site that cited this Onion piece. The entire thread is politically-minded liberals applauding the Onion piece. One said he felt like standing up and cheering upon reading it, and all the rest fell into line.
Then there was me.
I told them their obsession is wearisome, and predictable as all hell. There is no talking to them, their self-righteus minds completely closed therefore I'll stop listening. Put me on ignore completely and we'll be even. Guns scare the piss out of me but liberals wear me the fuck right out.
It's the Onion, it's not supposed to be factual or accurate. They used to aspire to humor, but who knows what they are up to now.
I think that many of the recent mass shooters have come to the attention of various doctors and law authorities but being crazy is, I guess, a protected subset of PC or something, so nothing is done to nip the problem in the bud.
As for the odds of being shot in this country, well, as several have pointed out here, many of those crimes fail to meet the requirements to make national headlines due to the color of the perps or the victims.
Those crimes do not cause outrage. Why? They don't further the leftist narrative.
Ban all hammers and Machetes!
Nut jobs exist everywhere, on all continents and in all societies. Sadly, when the anti-2nd amendment folks are given an opportunity to bitch and moan - they take it. Every time.
What is the remedy, oh holy leftists? Shall we remove the right to bear arms and kill the 2nd amendment once and for all? Will that stop the crazy?
Crazy people will continue to do crazy things - until the end of time. It's sad, gruesome, often horrific, and we all abhor such behavior, but there's not much that can be done in a free society.
if we want to get somewhere.
Ah..there is the rub. We have different somewhere's in mind.
The libs and gun control nuts want us (the common peons) to be divested of guns. Of course they don't mind that their paid bodyguards are armed. We (or I, speaking for myself) want to get to a point where mental illness is better controlled and guns are prevented from being in the hands of criminals and the insane. No matter WHAT you do, the insane and the determined criminals will get guns and other weapons. There is no way to stop them. The end result will be that the law abiding citizens will be left defenseless.
I agree with Lem. If we lose our freedom to protect ourselves and are forced to rely strictly on government to save us from criminals (it does a pretty shitty job of it now) we will be on the way to losing all freedoms.
Owning guns isn't scary. They are no more dangerous to the owner than a chain saw or other tool as long as you operate your tool correctly. That is what a gun is, really, a tool. You can cut trees and make firewood, or you can go all Jason, like in Friday the 13th, and massacre people. Your choice. I own guns. They are useful for protection but also useful for gathering food, hunting.
I'm seriously considering getting a compound bow again. Those are really great now that they have better engineering and sighting. Also several of a wrist rocket and a whole bunch of these 38 caliber sling shot rounds When you run out of those....rocks are free.
:-)
Actually, a charitable girl, and a couple of pity fucks, and none of this would have happened.
HUTUS unite!
Oh, wait, I mean
TUTSIS unite!
As if man needs guns to kill ...
"only nation where this happens..."
Uh, no. Inconvenient fact: Brussels Jewish Museum, four dead in a shooting rampage on Saturday. Belgium has very strict gun control as does the rest of Europe. So so much for the standard go-to gun-banner argument that the weapons were imported from nearby areas which do not have strict gun control. (Darn those white people in the suburbs and their meddling guns.)
Politicizing other peoples' grief, standard operating progressivism. Other peoples' money and other peoples' grief and other peoples' resentments are just grist for the big government mill.
Note: The grieving dad who is sounding off about guns is a criminal defense atty from Cali so he was a gun-banner, no doubt, already. He coopted his son's death to push the progressive agenda. Grist for the mill. It's rather thoughtless, actually, with respect to the parents grieving the loss of children who were "merely" stabbed or run down by the monster in his car.
Apparently religious zealots and paranoid schizophrenics can be quite bright and imaginative. It makes sense to keep guns out of their hands, but where there's a will there's a way. Pressure cookers, box cutters, butcher knives. The human body is a frail membrane, and it takes no great skill to mortally damage it.......I read somewhere that not one person of Japanese ancestry has ever been convicted of murder in California. If that's so, our Japanese are actually less violence prone than Japan's Japanese. Jamaica is an island with strict gun control laws. I understand that their murder rate is higher than that of blacks in NYC......Gun ownership does not inspire, cause, or intensify murderous hostility. That comes from other roots.......I think it's a bad thing when a paranoid schizo gets his hands on a gun. There are lots of bad things in the world.
They've got lots of guns in places like Norway, Finland, and Switzerland but comparatively few mass killings. And, of course, in Israel where I'm not sure they've ever had any.
I read somewhere that's probably because those countries have a far less individualistic culture than the U.S., and so notice when someone starts to lose it and can intervene before all hell breaks loose.
What pretty much happens "only in America" is that we wallow in it. We wallow in the crazy shooter. We wallow in our racism. People from other countries look at us and, for some amazing reason, think we're telling the truth.
But some crazy goes nuts in Britain and kills a couple of neighbors with a knife and Britain doesn't wallow in it, doesn't have a "national conversation" about the original sin of their policies or culture. And anyone who's been overseas knows that as "racist" goes, America is not.
But we wallow in it, and they think we tell the truth.
And they dismiss it, mostly, and it doesn't make the news here, and we think that they tell the truth.
Everyone has their "triggers" as we know... mine is: "Only in America."
It's like saying, "I'm too stupid to think beyond the self-righteousness of hating my country." And that's how I take it, too.
There was a mass shooting in Norway a few years back, 60-70 people were killed.
Lydia said...
They've got lots of guns in places like Norway, Finland, and Switzerland but comparatively few mass killings.
Amartel said...
There was a mass shooting in Norway a few years back, 60-70 people were killed.
Yes.
"Do you know what the ‘Hunger Games’ movies are about?… It’s teenagers killing other teenagers.'
The killer was the son of one of the producers of the Hunger Games? Right? ...a movie about teenagers killing other teenagers - and the NRA is to blame?
I betcha Norway hasn't done much wallowing in their national sin and communal guilt.
I betcha Norway hasn't done much wallowing in their national sin and communal guilt.
Well, they did give the guy a 17 & 1/2 year sentence. You gotta ask what a guy would have to do there to get a life sentence.
The Wikipedia entry on the Norwegian monster says he was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which is the maximum penalty in Norway, and his incarceration can be extended for as long as he is deemed a danger to society. The entry also says he will likely remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Thank you, Lydia.
More vengeance to people would be helpful.
OTOH, let's show some love for the guns. They've been doing a great job of keeping us free from police brutality, 4th amendment shortcuts, trillions wasted on empire. They really don't get the love they need at crucial moments like this when peskily innocent humans get in the way. What a drag.
Stand up and show our guns some love. They are, after all, more important than people. And our government agents obviously never abuse our rights, so the guns must be doing something right.
That is what a gun is, really, a tool. You can cut trees and make firewood…
No wonder your views are so nutty. You think guns are to be used to cut trees and make firewood.
Come R&B, you're as good an armchair psychiatrist as the next. Give us your reasons for the roommate bludgeoning and the whole filmed tirade.
NRA made him do it?
I'll give you an easy out: I know how much you loathed "The Hunger Games" but I always figured it was because you loved the 1% in Panem City.
You also have a very long written record of despising rural people and siding with the urban, H.I.P. positive America.
Give your best!
What's with the need for all these complex social explanations? My dad put it best. If you violate someone (murder would be included as a violation), then you're a sociopath by definition. So this guy wasn't off the charts crazy, but obviously crazy enough that most of the pundits seem to agree that better knowledge of his state would have/should have put him on a "do not buy" list.
That said, I don't see putting mental patients on a "do not buy" list as a panacea. Many still will get through. You think gun purchasers have rights? Let me tell you, patients have a hell of a lot of rights, too. It's called HIPPA.
So we'll continue this standstill with gun-lovers never ceding an inch on acquisition and everyone else saying that easy access will always be a problem for as long as the gun-lovers love guns more than they love potential crime victims. Every other measure is sure to be half-ass if that and everyone knows it.
Your last two taunts are there just to amuse yourself but as long as you mention NRA you should accept that 90% of even their own membership believe they've gone off the deep end extreme with their stances.
The reaction is the only psychology worth looking at any more. Gun-nuts should just admit the pursuit of responsibility doesn't interest them as much as does the paranoia of fictional tyrannies. The real-life tyranny of 4th amendment and police abuse doesn't concern them so much - it's so much less exciting! Fictional tyrannies however, do. You can always arouse more emotion with what the imagination can come up with than with the real-life quotidian government abuses that bore the gun-nuts who obviously failed to protect the country from them.
Chew on that.
I don't look down on rural people, BTW, just Southerners, really. Red staters outside the Dixie-ocracy can become an aggravation but much less so. It's the Dixiecrats who hold the country back. Let them secede in some way. I love rural areas (do you have any chicken coops or livestock, BTW? My family does) - and homesteading but the way the Dixie-sucking nutters arouse everyone is the problem. They can leave their ideas of society to Scarlett O'Hara and let the rest of us be.
Rhythm and Balls said...
Chew on that.
Thanks for the effort, R&B but that fails my "first-things-first analysis." I want to know how guns enabled the sunlight Beemer screed and the bludgeoning deaths.
I have no idea what a "sunlight Beemer screed and" whatever else means but after all it is a typical strategy of yours to try for obscurity whenever others are focused on the bleeding obvious.
The "beemer screed" is the video he made before he carried any of this out. Sorry for the obfuscation.
Proceed. Just stay out of Piers Morgan territory. (Does that need a clarification too?)
Piers Morgan didn't do anything wrong. I don't understand the distraction of raising him, either, though. But I don't see what it is about him being crazy that you want to discuss or argue about.
It's the point of "what are you going to do to keep guns from the freedom takers?"
I certainly don't see their retention in the hands of the "freedom-givers" going anywhere to keep us safe from the NSA, the DEA, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the IRS, the Imperial Pentagon budget or any other government over-reach.
But I do see a lot of unnecessary collateral damage to the "freedom-givers'" clamor when it comes to getting these things within easy reach of murderous violators.
You seem to be avoiding this point.
How many "bad guys" do you want to give guns to before you can say that they did any good in the hands of the "good guys"?
Remember, the people you defend what to think this is keeping us safe from both government tyranny and crime.
The Onion doesn't explain its layers of deception, but they could start by explaining how guns motivated the carnage and mayhem expressed in the killer's video. If guns weren't the motive, The Onion could explain how guns enabled Rodger's killing of his initial victims (and, btw, explain what was the motive for that initial phase which didn't seem to involve guns). That's where it started (motive and tools) so that's where the discussion should start if we want to get somewhere.
____________
I'm just not going to fall for your misdirection, Ritmo.
Guns are not a "motive", dilweed. They're a "means". If you're going to discuss murder details, you need to get these things right.
Also, were you aware that The Onion is satire? Apparently other right-wingers (and the government of Iran and other tyrannies) have failed to grasp this at times in the past. Satire may make a salient social point, but to treat it in such a way as to require the accuracy of normal journalism is ludicrous.
Talk about misdirection.
You can talk about whatever you want on your blog and in your posts, obviously. But when you want to go to the lengths you do to ignore what really concerns a great many more people at large, you might want to explain why.
Or not. Whatever.
Make mine a whatever then. And clearly the people cheering the "satire" took it quite seriously.
As long as they didn't take it literally. ;-)
Post a Comment