Gov. Christie refuses to sign 3 gun bills, including version of weapon ban he called for

[rrneck]

59. I don't have a problem with whatever you choose to consider or not.

And I don't have any need to score any points with you.

If you have no interest in the subject of guns I don't think any less of you for it. Lots of people don't like them or have any use for them, and that's fine.

Do you vote? Since guns periodically become a political issue in this country, and that issue often as not results in legislation to regulate them, I would think any responsible voter would have at least some passing knowledge about the thing being regulated. How can anyone hope to make an informed decision as a responsible citizen without some basic knowledge about the world around them? I mean, it's not like firearms are new development. The technology is only 725 years old.

Do you ever fly on an airplane? I would think that in the interest of self preservation if nothing else, you might have considered how someone might shoot down the airplane in which your are riding. I mean, it's not like commercial aircraft have not been in the news lately as tools of terrorists.

But I'm being silly. Of course you've thought of all those things. How could you not? So the real question is why would anyone claim to have never considered how a terrorist might shoot down an airplane with a rifle? In your case, I have no idea. To claim otherwise would be an ecological fallacy, and that's not fair to you. So I will have to generalize.

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Why would anyone claim to have never considered a possibility even though that possibility has been brought to their attention repeatedly over a period of time? Well, since there is a reason for everything and I don't like to think the worst of people, I expect is has something to do with group dynamics and tribalism. People want - need - to be members of a group. There are many ways to go about that and some are better than others. Preferred methods would include actually being a productive member of that group through the contribution of intellectual or physical capital. You know, actually helping people. But through the miracle of industrialization and marketing, there are other ways.

Group affiliation can also be secured through affectation. All one has to do is say the right words and use the right products to be considered the member of a group in our consumer culture. Linguistic taboos become thought crimes in the best hear no evil tradition, and certain products become evil totems and symbols of the depravity of the "other tribe". This way ideology becomes a sort of social plumage that can be donned, and discarded, at the wearers convenience. Such ideologies are at best useless and generally detrimental to society as a whole. People who embrace them don't have any skin in the game, and when the time comes for them to put up or shut up, they typically choose the latter by merely selecting new plumage.

But the real issue is not people's motivation for why they say and do things, but who provides the things they say and do. And why.

Ideologies have become products. They are developed and marketed like dish soap. The social conventions that have traditionally held cultures together have become products and the people that embrace them frequently confuse human relationships with brand loyalty and research with smart shopping. Religion, politics, war, peace, life and death are just the source of a revenue stream for a hyper wealthy cadre of individuals who no more embrace them than they would embrace a leper. They use the media that they own to employ talking heads to tell people what they want to hear as a substitute for critical thinking. Rush and Keith, Rachel and Glenn are all in the same business, and business is good.

The result is a body politic without a head. We are paying the owners of this country to divide us and making them rich doing it. We are all becoming casualties in the culture wars for profit because too many people seem to think all they have to do is buy the right stuff to be good citizens. We are being balkanized for profit.

You can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half.
Jay Gould 1836 - 1892