Nuclear Unicorn
Nuclear Unicorn's JournalThe Controller mentality
Here is something I have seen constantly among pro-gun control advocates here that continues to elude me.
Outside of this particular board they post on other topics. Many will post on a variety topics, others are a bit more narrow concerning where they offer comment. However, there is one thing that is nearly universal among them to some degree:
They all find a deep-seated dissatisfaction with the government in at least one facet. Some will tell you the police are killing unarmed civilians either out of the arrogance of power and/or racist animosity. Some will tell you we are being sold-out by the politicians to multi-national corporations that heed no national laws and are laws unto themselves. Many will claim the government has all but discarded our civil liberties and the Bill of Rights in the name of a surveillance police state. Others will claim the government wages illegal wars of aggression. Still others will even tell you the US government engineered 9/11. We incessantly hear of stolen elections and corrupt appointments.
Every person posting here on behalf of expanded gun control subscribes to at least one of these propositions. Some of these complaints I find absurd but there are many to which I am sympathetic to varying degrees.
But I'm not really interested in arguing the veracity of these claims. In fact, for the purposes of this OP I will assume the claims are all as true insofar as the proponents state them to be.
So why then the mania to disarm the people?
If you truly believe the government is a racist, corporatist, lawless, war-mongering, murdering, self-selecting, rights-abusing police state why in Heaven's name are the people to be made defenseless? Even if you believe civilians could never match modern militaries (the Viet Cong, ISIS, etc. may beg to differ) the entire premise of gun control relies upon the assertion that the government is and forever will be a beneficent caretaker.
How does anyone reconcile these beliefs in their own minds?
SAFE Act: Gun groups say data shows low compliance
ALBANY – About 44,500 assault weapons have been registered in New York since a new gun-control law was enacted in 2013, records released by State Police to a gun-rights group this week showed.
The Shooters Committee on Public Education, a gun-rights group based in western New York, successfully sued after the state refused to release the details. Now the group claimed that the statistics showed what they suspected: Few gun owners are complying with the SAFE Act adopted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature in January 2013.
The total number of applications to register assault weapons in New York was 25,536.
"The majority of gun owners and sportsmen in New York have absolutely no respect for this law," said Stephen Aldstadt, the group's president.
The group said that estimates have showed that there about 1 million assault weapons in New York, so if that's the case, about 4 percent were registered as required under the SAFE Act. But gun-control advocates said there is no way of knowing how many assault weapons exist in New York.
http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/23/safe-act-data-low-compliance/29188575/
I'm curious to know why the state had to be sued into providing the information. Are they that embarrassed by their failures? And if it's this bad in NY what does that portend for registration efforts in less blue-friendly environs?
Suspect in Attacks on Asian Women in Manhattan Found Dead of Apparent Suicide: Sources
The suspect wanted in a string of recent attacks on Asian women in Manhattan has been found dead of an apparent suicide inside a basement on the Upper East Side, law enforcement sources said.
The suspect, 25-year-old Tyrell Shaw, apparently hanged himself and was found in an elevator shaft on the 700 block of Madison Avenue, according to the sources. The body was positively identified as Shaw's.
This is how deeply disturbed this individual was --
"Heres my plan: Every Asian Woman by herself must be hit in the face. I may even take a photo before hitting them. The reason is because I don’t think Asian Women like me and that specific one or two or three may have never met me. So I think its brilliant to give all Asian Women a legitimate reason to hate me," the person continuted.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Tyrell-Shaw-Suspect-Attacks-Asian-Women-Manhattan-Found-Dead-Apparent-Suicide-309155991.html
The excerpts don't do justice to the depths of his depravity.
The day the Klan messed with the wrong people
You saw those cars coming, and you knew who those men were. They wanted you to see them. They wanted you to be afraid of them."
- Lillie McKoy, former mayor of Maxton talking about the KKK
By the mid-1950's the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum and the KKK decided they had to fight back. Their campaign of terrorism swept through many of the southern states, but largely fell flat in North Carolina.
James W. "Catfish" Cole, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, decided he was going to change that. Cole was an ordained minister of the Wayside Baptist Church in Summerfield, North Carolina, who regularly preached the Word of God on the radio. His rallies often drew as many as 15,000 people. As Cole told the newspapers: "There's about 30,000 half-breeds up in Robeson County and we are going to have some cross burnings and scare them up."
Cole made a critical mistake that couldn't be avoided by a racist mind - he was completely ignorant of the people he was about to mess with.
.
Dr. Perry was a black doctor in Monroe, NC, and helped finance a local chapter of the NAACP. One night at a meeting, the word was received that the Klan threatened to blow up Dr. Perry's house. The meeting broke up and everyone went home to get their guns.
Sipping coffee in Perry's garage with shotguns across their laps, the men agreed that defending their families was too important to do in haphazard fashion. "We started to really getting organized and setting up, digging foxholes and started getting up ammunition and training guys," Williams recalled. "In fact, we had started building our own rifle range, and we got our own M-1's and got our own Mausers and German semi-automatic rifles, and steel helmets. We had everything."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/01/17/826081/-The-day-the-Klan-messed-with-the-wrong-people?detail=email
I don't see the value in polls -- pre-primary -- that gauge candidates against the other party
Polls that gauge how Democrat A or Democrat B stack-up against Republican X, Y or Z don't strike me as all that valuable at this stage of the game. Those polls really only gauge one thing, Name Recognition.
However, the primaries are the sport of the parties' base, not the general populace. Once the bases have made their decision Name Recognition ceases to be a factor because the resources of the Parties are aligned behind them. Name Recognition becomes moot at that point.
I honestly think it is an over-valued attribute.
If failure to enact gun control makes a person/group responsible for gun deaths
does the fact that Controllers act deceptively, prevaricate about their objectives, refuse consensus and vilify opponents in the most noxious terms make them responsible for the failures of their own efforts?
Free speech again at center of court case involving man's arrest at selectmen's meeting
...
Jared Bedrick of Sisti Law Offices, who along with Gilles Bissonnette of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, represents Clay, said his client on Feb. 3 had engaged in constitutionally-protected speech when — without obscenities, anger or physical threats — he asked some of the selectmen to resign for doing a bad job and for violating the state’s Right-To-Know law.
Clay was given five minutes to address selectmen — Clay reportedly set a timer on his cellphone to alert him as he approached the deadline — but just 40 seconds into his remarks, Bedrick said selectmen made and passed a motion that Clay had violated the terms of the public comment by making allegedly defamatory and libelous remarks.
The selectmen’s vote also closed the public input, and when Clay continued to speak, Heath approached him and told him to stop. Because Clay continued talking, Heath issued the command a fourth time, after which he escorted Clay out of the selectmen’s meeting and placed him under arrest — even though Clay still had a minute left to make additional comments.
Subsequently charged with two counts of disorderly conduct, Clay saw one charge dropped prior to Friday’s hearing before Carroll.
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150511/NEWS0606/150519939&source=RSS#sthash.EIkDlRNL.dpuf
Even if the charges are dropped the effort to silence dissent had succeeded -- unless the objections become more numerous and frequent.
If saving lives is the objective let's look at the facts
More than half of gun deaths are suicides. Anyone who uses a gun has no allusions about the extremity and permanence of their actions. There is no, "Oh maybe I'll shoot myself and someone will save me" cry for help; it's an act calculated to result in death.
Someone who is that determined to die cannot be dissuaded by what is or is not commercially available; they need help to move past what is destroying their lives.
And to ignoring what moves people to suicide in order to fixate on the chosen method of suicide is effectively saying it is okay to leave someone trapped in the abyss of suicidal depression for nothing more than a fleeting political victory.
Treat the mental health issues and guns become irrelevant.
Of the remaining roughly 45% of gun deaths we have a portion that are accidental and the remainder are deliberate criminal acts.
If banning a thing because of the misuse of that thing has never worked. It brought us Prohibition which turned irresponsible behavior into a criminal enterprise that remains entrenched to this day, decades after its repeal.
What reduces drunk driving isn't banning alcohol but rather a shift in social mores where responsible behavior is constantly reinforced. DUIs are down because people know it isn't cool to be the guy who killed a family of 4 after partying all night. It's better to find a DD and being a DD is considered a worthy cause.
As far as criminal use of guns is concerned, consider the fact that the majority of criminals using guns have prior criminal records. In others words their possession of a gun is already a criminal offence.
Many more are instances of domestic violence. Will a proposed law be.more likely to deter the offender or only end up disarming the targeted victims?
President Obama recently took steps to bolster the flagging NICS database. He is to be applauded for this. Now it is time to open NICS to private sellers as well.
You go, grrrrl!
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