Shooting discussion devolves

[Terralthra]

Did anyone catch the BBC coverage of the NRA's press conference? They had to remind viewers in the UK that the press conference was not a parody or a satire. Multiple times.

[the atom]

I don't know much about guns, I'll admit that. Like I said, I've never owned one. But I see a lot of people here who care more about guns than 20 massacred children.

Maybe I don't want these fuckers to become suicide bombers instead.

I wish people would stop treating widespread bans and heavy restrictions on firearms as some sort of magical hypothetical.

[Nephtys]

Obviously not being able to get a gun to commit your crime of insane passion means your mass-killer suddenly learns how to build, place, and employ effective explosives. Of course.

[Lonestar]

Obviously not being able to get a gun to commit your crime of insane passion means your mass-killer suddenly learns how to build, place, and employ effective explosives. Of course.

The loudest noises for gun control right now aren't "keep guns out of crazies" but "ban assault weapons". I've stopped listening to NPR since, apparently, mental health isn't even on the docket for most gun control people.


You can't really convince me that a AWB will greatly curtail the number of fatalities in spree killings, as Derrick Bird managed to kill more people than the Aurora shooter with a side-by-side 12 gauge and bolt-action .22lr.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

These things are normally planned for years, anyway. Look at Breivik using both guns and a bomb, so it's quite factual that they'll use explosives when it is convenient. So calling these attacks crimes of passion is just absurd. I suspect even the Aurora shooter had fantasized about it since being a teenager, he just had a future until his grad studies fell apart.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Anyway, I have no problem with the propositions that semi-automatic rifles should not be concealable, and that large-capacity magazines should be banned. The problem is that gun control people are unwilling to compromise and are actively quoted, on reference, as saying that they are trying to create a slippery slope to a ban... It isn't a fallacy when your opponents are on the record saying that's what they're doing, after all.

[Lonestar]

Anyway, I have no problem with the propositions that semi-automatic rifles should not be concealable, and that **large-capacity** magazines should be banned. The problem is that gun control people are unwilling to compromise and are actively quoted, on reference, as saying that they are trying to create a slippery slope to a ban... It isn't a fallacy when your opponents are on the record saying that's what they're doing, after all.

If the police use magazines of that capacity, wouldn't they be "standard capacity"?

[ryacko]

I personally would support a quinquennial firearms census to make sure that gun owners aren't strawbuying, along with banning large capacity magazines. But I don't see any reason why semi-automatic rifles can't be concealable (unless you ban trench coats), or any reason why guns with pistol grips should be banned either.

No idea why bayonet lugs should be criminalized.

If the police use magazines of that capacity, wouldn't they be "standard capacity"?

Aren't the police allowed to have bigger weapons then the average citizen anyway, including armored personnel carriers and attack dogs?

[Lonestar]

If I could afford it, nothing would be stopping me from buying a APC. Just wouldn't be able to drive it on public roads.

[Agent Fisher]

And an "attack dog" is available to anyone who wants to spend the money for a good dog breed and the training needed for that task.

[ryacko]

And an "attack dog" is available to anyone who wants to spend the money for a good dog breed and the training needed for that task.

Nevermind that the "victim" can sue the owner of the dog in some jurisdictions, and in other jurisdictions, police dogs are protected so that you cannot harm the police dog.
Even if the police dog is biting you.

[Kamakazie Sith]

And an "attack dog" is available to anyone who wants to spend the money for a good dog breed and the training needed for that task.

Nevermind that the "victim" can sue the owner of the dog in some jurisdictions, and in other jurisdictions, police dogs are protected so that you cannot harm the police dog.
Even if the police dog is biting you.

That's only true if you're the suspect. If you aren't the suspect then a police dog does not have any such protection.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Anyway, I have no problem with the propositions that semi-automatic rifles should not be concealable, and that **large-capacity** magazines should be banned. The problem is that gun control people are unwilling to compromise and are actively quoted, on reference, as saying that they are trying to create a slippery slope to a ban... It isn't a fallacy when your opponents are on the record saying that's what they're doing, after all.

If the police use magazines of that capacity, wouldn't they be "standard capacity"?

*shrug* Whatever, call them what they are--detachable magazines of more than 10 rounds capacity should be treated as Class IIIs just like silencers.

[Zirojtan]

I wonder what you guys would say if you knew that in both the Newtown and the Aurora shootings, there were more than one shooter?

I watched the original coverage and remember another shooter being mentioned. I later saw eyewitness news and listened to the police radio recordings on the Newtown shooting. A young boy described seeing someone being handcuffed as the kids were being hurried out of the building, and the policeman on the radio said that there were three shooters...

What's really, really interesting about all of this though is that the media can report something originally, go back on that report as well as the eye witness accounts that were displayed on the national news and feed people information over, and over, and over again, and they'll believe... even though the original information is still readily available.

You guys can say what you want, but the timing of these shootings, SPECIFICALLY the Newtown school shooting, are far too convenient for me to ignore. I don't know how many of you live in the United States, but there's a lot going on here behind the scenes that's now been swept under the table by media coverage of dead children.

[weemadando]

Holy shit. This is going to be good.



Because the only reason for confusion during an event like this is a massive government conspiracy to take away your gerns right?

[Terralthra]

And initial reports about the 9/11 attack refer to the plane hitting the tower as an accident. Sometimes early reports are incorrect.

[Zirojtan]

Lol... It always makes me laugh when people instantly shrug off the idea of gaming in government.

Why is that so preposterous may I ask, Weemad? To name two things that were going on around the same time:

The Benghazi Hearings, in which Hillary Clinton, who was scheduled to testify, miraculously and conveniently collapsed from dehydration and sustained a concussion. Coverage of the hearings ran at the bottom of the screen for the first few days after the shooting.

More violence from Fast and Furious. Of course we're getting plenty of news all the time about more people shot by the cartel with weapons sold to them in the State Department's "Fast and Furious" operation (the point of which was... what, exactly?), but this time a Mexican celebrity was the target.

The Fast & Furious death of Maria Susana Flores Gamez aside, you still have the Benghazi issue, which the significance of which has been fascinatingly under-appreciated by the American people. Ambassador Stevens (although probably a corrupt shitbag) was the first US ambassador to be killed since the Hostage Crisis in 1979, and coverage of this rather news worthy event on FOX has been called a "witch-hunt" for months by other networks. There was a mall shooting in the same week that didn't get a lot of media attention while FOX continued its "witch-hunt" on the Benghazi Attacks, with Clinton's upcoming testimony. Granted FOX is just as much of a bunch of corporate whores as the next network, but at least they recognized the weight of the issue concerning the Benghazi Attacks (albeit they have seriously misconstrued Arabs and Muslims in general regarding them). Then all of the sudden a school shooting happens and EVERY national news station blacks out almost everything else for 4 days of covering Newtown over the weekend that Hillary Clinton was supposed to testify. An interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?

And I would be willing to shrug the issue off as "incorrect early reporting" if the policeman on the radio didn't refer to multiple suspects in sight several times on the radio, even saying: "We got them."

So maybe the shooting is planned, maybe it's not. If it's not though, why drown out the eye-witness accounts and police recordings indicating multiple shooters, and multiple arrests with the story of a single shooter who blew his brains out? Where is the motive in that?

Even if it isn't a planned shooting, you can't deny that certain people in government serve to gain from this. The Benghazi Hearings are swept under the rug, and we now have national discussion of gun-control, which is a platform on which many left-wing Democrats run.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

NEVER attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. That's also a popular quote of a lot of Libertarians. Jesus christ, trained Japanese naval airmen thought they'd sunk 50 US warships off Formosa in late 1944 when the number was ONE. Chaotic situations produce chaotic information.

I think this board is in the middle of a troll invasion. There are about five different people whose behaviour is suspiciously like that of total drooling insane morons from Lord Falcon through this guy occurring all at once, very suspiciously.

There's a conspiracy theory for you!

[weemadando]

No, MacGobshite we dismiss it out of hand because the stakes of such an endeavour would be far beyond what anyone in politics would ever conceivably risk. Seriously, you think that the bullshit, partisan, scapegoating witch hunt of an investigation into Benghazi would have been worth the deaths of 20+ primary schoolers to push out of the news cycle? What if it ever *EVER* came out? Even if it was 100 years later the Barack Obama Memorial library would probably still be razed by an angry mob.

Not to mention that you have to ensure that everyone who is in the loop would be willing to be complicit with such an action. That no one developed a conscience or that no one approached turned them down? Surely someone would have. So, who has died mysteriously or disappeared between Benghazi & Sandy Hook that could have been involved/approached?

There's a reason we dismissed it out of hand. Because it's fucking ridiculous.

[Zirojtan]

"Surely someone would have"...

That's a very common assumption that I've never been able to make sense out of. You yourself acknowledge that these people murder children overseas. Where is their conscience when they approve drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, and then call the lives of those that die accidentally "necessary casualties"? Not to be rude, but you're talking out of both sides of your mouth here.

Either these people in government have consciences, or they don't. Period. Children are children, all over the world, regardless of color, and people with a conscience understand that. What would make children in a kindergarten in Newtown any less expendable to people in government than children in Afghanistan and Pakistan who get blown apart to protect an oil line to the Caspian Sea?

Bad press is bad press, and can damage your credibility as a politician, especially when the portion of the media on your side is resurrecting discussion of historical events like Watergate to make the other side of the isle look bad when you're looking at your own rather serious scandal. So... why not kill two birds with one stone?

And you can't seriously think that the American people are that involved, can you? Really? You think that an angry mob would destroy the Barack Obama Memorial Library in 100 years? These same American people of which only 30-40% actually vote, and who generally acknowledge the meaninglessness of their vote? The same American people who accept cockamamie explanations like a Youtube video for being responsible for attacks that have international implications by people who have every other reason imaginable to be upset with their country? The same American people who don't think it's a big deal that an American politician was killed for the first time in over 30 years? The same American people that won't impeach a president who used executive privilege to cover his friend's ass after said friend approved an operation that has cost hundreds if not thousands of lives over the border?

Apparently you seriously underestimate the apathy of the population of this country. A good deal of Americans know what we do over seas is unequivocally criminal, they know about corrupt legislation like 9/11 AUMF and the 2012 NDAA, and they don't do a thing. Maybe people in the 1970s would've done something Weemad, but not today. These days the government could probably piss on the faces of the entire country and tell them it's rain, and even the ones who knew they were being pissed on would just shrug their shoulders as long as they could watch TV as the same time.

I can tell that by your use of the word "shite" that you're not American. I don't know if you've lived here or not, but I would advise you to never underestimate the apolitics of Americans.

[Vendetta]

Man, conspiracy theorists are so precious.

I mean Bill Clinton couldn't get his dick sucked and not have it be top of the news cycle for half a year, what makes you think that the US government these days (nb. unable to govern itself sufficiently to produce a budget) is able to organise a pissup in a brewery, let alone a shooting in a school?

I love how your perception of them is of these hypercompetent bond villains whenever it suits you. (because you're probably also some kind of Libertarian romanticist loon who believes that the government is de-facto incompetent at doing everything else and should be gotten rid of so the "market" can do it instead.)

[PeZook]

Apparently you seriously underestimate the apathy of the population of this country. A good deal of Americans know what we do over seas is unequivocally criminal, they know about corrupt legislation like 9/11 AUMF and the 2012 NDAA, and they don't do a thing. Maybe people in the 1970s would've done something Weemad, but not today. These days the government could probably piss on the faces of the entire country and tell them it's rain, and even the ones who knew they were being pissed on would just shrug their shoulders as long as they could watch TV as the same time.

I can tell that by your use of the word "shite" that you're not American. I don't know if you've lived here or not, but I would advise you to never underestimate the apolitics of Americans.

Dude: YOUR OWN HYPOTHESIS requires people to care enough about the Newton shootings to lose their shit. How else could they dominate news channels like that?

It's called "tribalism", and it makes people ignore brown children of THE ENEMY dying halfway across the world, while losing their shit over America children being murdered here. For the Newton shootings to have involved multiple people which were covered up (WHY were they covered up? What, two or three shooters would make the thing not dominate the news?) you'd have to involve a whole bunch of cops and make them shut up, which means the probability of at least one of these cops having a conscience rapidly approaches 1.

In other words, it's the typical conspiracy theorist thing where early confused reports are always accurate, the government is a hypercompetent shadowy cabal and people never reveal secrets.

[Zirojtan]

Vendetta,

Of course not. While I do believe very sincerely that no man should have the right to govern his fellow man, I do realize that human beings are not there yet, socially speaking, and probably not likely to get there anytime soon. I would of course love to see the Constitution re-written to impose more checks and balances on government, as the original writers, the Founding Fathers, wrote it under the assumption that voters were going to remain politically informed, which is evidenced several different times in the document. For example, the fact that there is no cap on how many terms a congressman can serve. The Founding Fathers probably assumed that as long as a congressperson was keeping their constituents happy, that they would continue to be elected. They probably could never have imagined the apathetic, apolitical population we have today that 9/10 times just need to be shown the right campaign commercial. As long as an incumbent congressperson has the right adds, and hasn't done anything that affects the daily lives of their constituency to the point that the TV isn't coming on and the beer isn't coming in, they're very difficult to beat. A good example would be the Republican congress we have right now, which was elected for the purpose of repealing PPACA, yet hasn't been doing anything to that effect since the Supreme Court somehow found the law Constitutional... They could also be granting discovery to federal cases investigating the legitimacy of the president's citizenship in the country, which doesn't necessarily rest on where he was born as much as it does where is Indonesian stepfather adopted him, which is a detail that the president has never released.

He also refused to release his college records after Donald Trump offered 5 million dollars to the charity of the president's choice? Trump's reasons for requesting their release aside, that's 5 MILLION dollars for anyone the president decides. That's kind of a lot of money, and begs the question as to the president's reason for ignoring the offer? Is there something in his college records that might indicate the location of his adoption? I don't know, but if anything, this should tell people that President Obama is vastly out of touch with the American people, and little more than a career politician.

While I understand where you're coming from, having heard a number of other libertarians go off on the incompetency of the government in one direction yet claiming absolute competency in another, let me just say that this isn't my view at all. While I don't understand why the idea of a government that operates poorly in the department of economics yet efficiently in controlling public opinion (see any former Soviet Republic or Soviet satellite for example) is so silly to you, I don't at all profess that this is the situation that we're facing in this country. When I look at the Recession of 2008, I don't see a series of random, bad economic policies, but instead a coordinated government takeover of large sections of the private economy. I see the same thing when I look at PPACA, since healthcare is 1/6 of the economy, as well as a takeover of private information that has very long reaching consequences for the public. The only thing I would say that government is inherently incompetent with is budgeting, since it's very easy to spend money that people HAVE to pay you. Other than that though, they're good at a lot of things, specifically manipulating public opinion, as that is a required skill of almost any aspiring politician.

Now to move onto the subject. I don't understand where you're going PeZook? If you're referring to a perceived inconsistency that I'm assuming that people cared about the Benghazi Hearings because they were informed while being so ridiculously apathetic that exposure of government involvement in the Sandy Hook shooting that they wouldn't respond, let me explain.

My theory here is based on American apathy. So why would the Benghazi Hearings garner any attention and possible action if people are so apathetic that they wouldn't take action if they discovered that the government was behind the murder of 20 children? Because it depends on how much people are TOLD to care. Like it or not, FOX News wields a very powerful stick of authority in this country and their near constant coverage of the Benghazi Attacks had sparked enough interest in the conservative public mind for stories concerning the upcoming hearings to still be of relevance. People only cared about Benghazi because the same charismatic people that TOLD them to care about Sandy Hook had been telling them for months to care about Benghazi. So there's no need for reduced apathy here. If facts pointing to some kind of cover up in the news about the shootings became a matter of public discussion on your big news networks, and it got enough coverage, then I imagine that the American people would be whipped into some kind of a frenzy... MAYBE. They would probably just call for the impeachment of the president and his administration, who may or may not be forced to resign from office by Congress. It's possible, but because nobody's being told by anyone but lowly "conspiracy theorists" like myself to at least reexamine the details of the popular story rather than eat up what their being spoon-fed, it will remain just that, a "conspiracy theory", because nobody in a suit with sleek combed hair and a blue tie or bodacious blonde bangs told them any different.

And with regards to "tribalism", are we to apply that same theory to Mexican and black kids that die on a regular basis here in the United States? When I was in rehab as a teenager, one of the other kids there from Detroit had had an entire branch of his family murdered by a school teacher who then killed himself. I think it was around 5 kids and both the parents. He was Armenian, but his cousin had married a black guy, and so all of the kids were black, and so was the school teacher. I've never been able to find so much as a local news report of THAT shooting, even though some of the kids that died were as young as 2 years old. Or how about black kids that die as accidental (or deliberate) casualties of gang violence? They don't get any attention either. Although maybe not in the same numbers (or maybe so, it would be interesting to find out), minority children in the United States die pretty frequently under similar circumstances, i.e. being shot for no reason at all. Nobody tells anyone here to care about them though, and even people in those communities are able to shrug their deaths off as just "the way it is", yet they simultaneously light candles for white kids in Connecticut. So if tribalism is what is causing people not to care about kids overseas or just over the border, what is causing them not to care about kids as close as six blocks away? You could of course argue that it's something similar, given that the majority of Americans are white and therefore it's an issue with being able to connect with people different than you, but I could counter that argument with the national sentiment over the media-created crisis of the death of Trayvon Martin, who in life fit the description of a tribalistic enemy of the white community to the T, yet somehow so many whites cried out in anger over his death? Again, they were TOLD to, by the media, and by a president who gave a speech to the country on national television about it.

So now, why cover up multiple shooters? Good question. Perhaps because multiple shooters breaks the model? I can count on one hand the number of rampage killings that involved more than one shooter since 1930 (including Columbine), and there seems to be a trend in the more recent shootings, 75% of those since 1960 have taken place in the last 24 years, towards socially removed, and possibly seriously mentally disturbed individuals. Multiple shooters also doesn't accomplish the same kind of goal. If you show people 3 sociopaths who were calculating enough to get their hands on weapons and coordinate the mass murder of children in a kindergarten, they're probably less likely to cry for future prevention from people in authority, as the question of HOW to prevent such a crime has all of the sudden grown more complex. Three people implies cooperation, and a degree of social normalcy. If the killers can interact with each other, then they can probably interact with others as well, making it harder to pick them out of a crowd. But if you show people one obviously disturbed, socially removed lunatic who displayed a clear inability to interact with other people and appears to have snapped at random, people are FAR more likely to ask the question of HOW to prevent something like this in the future because the ANSWER just became more obvious. One seriously removed and socially indifferent person is easier to police than three.

So with ONE crazy person, ONE person to examine, there is a shorter list of problems to lay out on the table and an even shorter list of solutions.

A) you make sure that someone like this single individual is not able to come into legal possession of the weapons used to commit their heinous crime. If you eliminate legal avenues, you force them into the criminal world, and the criminal world is a place where being a social butterfly means everything. Some ghoulish looking nerd who stares at the wall during the entire class period isn't going to ask around for where he can buy an assault weapon on the street, which would further require him to pursue the dealer and be able to make a good impression on him/her. Legal avenues might altogether eliminate need for any social contact, as is the case with the alleged single shooter of the Sandy Hook Massacre, Adam Lanza, who in theory got the weapon from his mother.

B) you make sure that anyone and everyone who seems abnormal is closely monitored, and since "abnormal" is a very subjective term, this opens a very wide avenue of government monitoring and control of the general public.

But all of this is just speculation. I can only hypothesize about the reasons WHY the media covered up the FACT that there were multiple shooters, all I can do is report the fact that they did indeed, COVER IT UP. I can post links for you, those POLICE RADIO RECORDINGS and EYE-WITNESS accounts are a Google search away. It's fascinating how people can choose a single detail of an argument and marry themselves to its opposition, when that detail isn't even key. Nobody ever claimed that the initial reports are always correct. I DID however claim that the police radio recordings and the eye-witness account of a kid who spoke to his local news station in Connecticut were probably more reliable than reporters on national networks that were receiving the story second and third hand, which in a court of law would be called "hearsay".

[Losonti Tokash]

So you're a Truther, a Birther, and you think the mass shootings were all done as part of a government plot to do...something. What are your opinions on vaccines, the moon landings, and JFK's assassination?

[Zirojtan]

I actually didn't say I believed that this is all a ploy to sweep bad press under the rug and get gun control legislation past.

What I DID say though was that regardless of whether it was a planned incident, the government certainly has us discussing gun control legislation, and has successfully swept inconvenient press coverage under the rug. In other words, they've capitalized on the problem, regardless of whether they created the problem or not.

In light of their having capitalized on such a tragedy, I'm trying to look at all of the factors here objectively, and a very big factor is that there has been a FALSE story reported by the mainstream media that SHOULD raise some very serious flags with people. Granted the police audio is 2 hours long, but if you have the patience and the time to sit through it, you'll hear what I'm talking about.

So what are my opinions on vaccines? I don't see anything wrong with vaccinating children, but I think that it should be a parents right to NOT vaccinate them if they so choose. I am of course not for mandating that people have drugs injected into their bodies. That is the ultimate invasion of personal space, don't you think?

I'm sure we landed on the moon but I haven't really researched the subject at all, so I can't really say. I can see the reason why our government might have faked it at the time, but I also don't see why it wouldn't have come out by now... we're not exactly competing with the Soviet Union on the world stage anymore.

And the JFK Assassination? Probably a government cover up on a mob hit designed to divert attention away from the political corruption of the Democratic Party at the time. Now, please don't assume that just because I believe that two Democratic presidents are corrupt shitbags that I believe that the Republican Party is a bastion of truth. But the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald has the shooter fits right into the propaganda of the time. "Crazed communist kills president." It's the period equivalent of how FOX News automatically assumes that every time there is a bombing or a shooting that not only Muslim fundamentalists, but fundamentalists linked to Al-Qaeda are involved. However more importantly, it fits popular propaganda of today. Democratic Presidents are often portrayed as champions of human rights and honest politics in today's schools and media. All through school we're spoon-fed stories of what a wonderful president FDR was, even though he put Japanese, Germans, and some Italians in concentration camps around the country. We're told about how noble Woodrow Wilson was, when he re-instated state sanctioned racial segregation, and then reminded that Lyndon B Johnson signed critical legislations that granted African-Americans basic civil rights, when he was the Senate Majority leader that opposed President Eisenhower on similar legislation in the late 1950s. How would it look if one of the greatest champions of the party was shown to be in bed with organized crime? Pretty bad...