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Old 02-02-2017, 04:49 PM   #3526
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"Donald Trump administration 'wants to cut white supremacism from counter-extremism programme'"

Not only despite the far, far greater prevalence of white terrorism that islamic extremism in the past decade+, but also mere days after a mosque shooting by a white nationalist. You can't make this shit up.
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Old 02-02-2017, 05:07 PM   #3527
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Bannon must enjoy having his hand planted firmly up the rectum of the acting President.

This is becoming absurd. JAU is right, you couldn't write this shit.
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Old 02-02-2017, 05:59 PM   #3528
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Jesus. I mean the travel ban was one thing, but we knew something like that was coming based on campaign promises and it's not like the Obama administration attitude towards certain Muslim majority countries wasn't fairly shitty to start with. Deciding white supremacy isn't extreme is a fucking shit show.

Here marks the point I lost any hope this administration might turn out to be tolerable.
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Old 02-02-2017, 07:23 PM   #3529
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All Hail our Glorious Leader, President Bannon, Savior of the White Race.
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Old 02-02-2017, 07:35 PM   #3530
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That's the spirit, Jeri! Blitzendegen! Pax Romana! Live Long and Prosper! All Hail Britannia, etc.

...

That said, has our counter-terrorism program (referring to the special forces?) ever been deployed against white nationals in the US, given incidents like the mosque shooting are lone wolf events and they're American citizens? To me the implicit part of using something like Delta Force is targeting non-American terrorist groups abroad.

I'm probably just making excuses but this might have been a poorly timed brand refinement effort.
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Old 02-02-2017, 08:03 PM   #3531
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Ehhh... it's a fair point, but it still rings a few too many alarm bells for comfort, especially given how there are known white supremacists holding governmental power right now. Fascism tends to take a little at a time to get to it's goals. Gotta keep an eye on the early warning signs.
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Old 02-02-2017, 09:09 PM   #3532
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Let's keep piling on the 'WTF' shit, because there seems to be an endless stream of it.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...st-jews-234572
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Old 02-02-2017, 09:45 PM   #3533
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The "inclusive" excuse is just rich. If you want to be inclusive, than you can name off the targeted minority groups, but that would require showing sympathy for homosexuals and Romani people, so it's better to just insult the Jews.
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Old 02-03-2017, 12:27 AM   #3534
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post

That said, has our counter-terrorism program (referring to the special forces?) ever been deployed against white nationals in the US, given incidents like the mosque shooting are lone wolf events and they're American citizens? To me the implicit part of using something like Delta Force is targeting non-American terrorist groups abroad.

Sorry, but it's really difficult to believe that the mosque shooting is a lone wolf event.

Also, the counter-terrorism program includes the FBI (and, I'm sure, several state police forces.) So there is pretty much no excuse for removing white supremacism from the program, because white supremacy-based terrorism most certainly exists inside the USA and is investigated by the FBI.
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Old 02-03-2017, 01:12 AM   #3535
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Meanwhile Kellyanne Conway is literally making up terrorist attacks.
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Old 02-03-2017, 09:29 AM   #3536
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Sorry, but it's really difficult to believe that the mosque shooting is a lone wolf event.
The converse is harder to believe. If you don't think it's a lone wolf event, that means there's some kind of cabal out there organizing shootings like this. Some guy getting excited after reading some particularly inflammatory /pol/ pot and deciding to shoot up a mosque is still a lone wolf event, even if the root cause might inspire similar copycat crimes.
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Old 02-03-2017, 10:40 AM   #3537
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Can we talk about the GOP congress voting to remove background checks for mentally ill individuals wanting to purchase firearms? And the approval to deregulate coal waste being dumped into streams?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN15H2PC

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...d2a_story.html
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Old 02-03-2017, 10:42 AM   #3538
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I don't care about the latter.

The former, what kind of mental illness are we talking about? Not all mental illness = shoot someone in a Burger King.

That could merely be foodborne illness.
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Old 02-03-2017, 11:02 AM   #3539
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I don't care about the latter.

The former, what kind of mental illness are we talking about? Not all mental illness = shoot someone in a Burger King.

That could merely be foodborne illness.
A. Why do you not care about coal waste being dumped into our streams?

B. It doesn't really matter. A person with severe depression, for example, should have that taken into account via background check before they buy a gun, especially with how high the suicide rate is (especially among veterans). This actually could be a matter of life and death for some individuals. And I say that as someone who has clinically diagnosed depression.

I doubt someone with narcissistic personality disorder would be prevented from purchasing a firearm, for example, so there should be nothing wrong with checking the background of someone first to see if they are deemed mentally capable of safely possessing such a thing.
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Old 02-04-2017, 11:13 AM   #3540
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Meanwhile, the so-called President calls a federal judge a so-called judge.
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Old 02-04-2017, 11:45 AM   #3541
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A. Why do you not care about coal waste being dumped into our streams?
Tons of waste is already dumped in streams, and people don't care about them because they're not programmed to react badly to those like they do toward coal. For example, artificial sweetners are accumulating in bodies of water because they can't be broken down biologically or industrially. The effects on the environment are unknown, and that's scarier than a pollutant with a know effect.

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It doesn't really matter. A person with severe depression, for example, should have that taken into account via background check before they buy a gun, especially with how high the suicide rate is (especially among veterans). This actually could be a matter of life and death for some individuals. And I say that as someone who has clinically diagnosed depression.
You're contradicting yourself. I'm saying what type of mental disease matters when it comes to allowing possession of firearms, you immediately deny it then say depression should be denied, but narcissistic personality disorder won't be? I don't know what you're arguing.

I stand by what I said that what mental disease matters. A sociopath with a history of violent crime is a big no. Someone with high-functioning autism? So what.
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Old 02-04-2017, 12:01 PM   #3542
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You're contradicting yourself. I'm saying what type of mental disease matters when it comes to allowing possession of firearms, you immediately deny it then say depression should be denied, but narcissistic personality disorder won't be? I don't know what you're arguing.

I stand by what I said that what mental disease matters. A sociopath with a history of violent crime is a big no. Someone with high-functioning autism? So what.
Way I'm reading it, Deo is saying exactly what you're saying, i.e. certain illnesses are probably more innocuous to carry a gun, but they are also saying that that doesn't mean they should be exempted from a background check, because much like two of the same Pokémon can be wildly different, two people with the same disorder can either be just fine with a handgun, or a huge risk to themselves, others, or both. Fact of the matter is is that if someone with high functioning autism is so innocuous, background check will show all clear and it's nobody's problem once that happens, so it's best to just keep that screening there so that people who are a potential hazard don't do any harm.
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Old 02-04-2017, 12:08 PM   #3543
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Tons of waste is already dumped in streams, and people don't care about them because they're not programmed to react badly to those like they do toward coal. For example, artificial sweetners are accumulating in bodies of water because they can't be broken down biologically or industrially. The effects on the environment are unknown, and that's scarier than a pollutant with a know effect.
This is a rather fallacious point though; sweeteners might be more dangerous than coal, but they also might not be. We already know coal waste is dangerous to aquatic life, so why waste resources A) repealing the law and B) passing the law again when Democrats take office? Shouldn't those resources be going towards investigations on the effects of artificial sweeteners on the environment? There's no reason to ignore and not address a gunshot wound because there's a mole on your chest that may or may not be cancer. Under a Republican congress anyways they aren't likely to care about artificial sweetener waste anyways (or many other similar problems) so its a lose-lose anyways.



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You're contradicting yourself. I'm saying what type of mental disease matters when it comes to allowing possession of firearms, you immediately deny it then say depression should be denied, but narcissistic personality disorder won't be? I don't know what you're arguing.

I stand by what I said that what mental disease matters. A sociopath with a history of violent crime is a big no. Someone with high-functioning autism? So what.
You're honestly both saying the same thing but in different words. But the issue is at the moment, the law being repealed means that no information on any mental illnesses can be obtained from the SSA, so a dealer selling a gun won't know if the person in front of them has something as minor as high-functioning autism or as severe as paranoid schizophrenia (unless there are obvious symptoms). So the risk is once again being opened that someone with a potential to harm other or themselves because of mental illness is going to be able to purchase a firearm. This, of course, won't be passed with any plans to expand mental health care because mental health is simply a convenient excuse to minimize the severity of serious crimes.
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Old 02-04-2017, 01:34 PM   #3544
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This is a rather fallacious point though; sweeteners might be more dangerous than coal, but they also might not be. We already know coal waste is dangerous to aquatic life, so why waste resources A) repealing the law and B) passing the law again when Democrats take office? Shouldn't those resources be going towards investigations on the effects of artificial sweeteners on the environment? There's no reason to ignore and not address a gunshot wound because there's a mole on your chest that may or may not be cancer. Under a Republican congress anyways they aren't likely to care about artificial sweetener waste anyways (or many other similar problems) so its a lose-lose anyways.
I'm going to move off this point just because I don't care for coal power in particular (if we were talking about dumping something I care about into the water, we can pick this back up). However, I'll say that I generally fear what I don't know more than what I do know. There have been tons of studies on the effects of artificial sweeteners on human biology, yet nothing conclusive. Generally, if it could be bad, I would stay away from it, assuming a worse case scenario (carcinogen). If such things really are carcinogenic, you're introducing carcinogens in massive quantities into the water supply. That's like the flouride conspiracy fear all over again.

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You're honestly both saying the same thing but in different words. But the issue is at the moment, the law being repealed means that no information on any mental illnesses can be obtained from the SSA, so a dealer selling a gun won't know if the person in front of them has something as minor as high-functioning autism or as severe as paranoid schizophrenia (unless there are obvious symptoms). So the risk is once again being opened that someone with a potential to harm other or themselves because of mental illness is going to be able to purchase a firearm. This, of course, won't be passed with any plans to expand mental health care because mental health is simply a convenient excuse to minimize the severity of serious crimes.
The question here becomes, does the potential for a violent crime outweigh the potential ethical violation via discrimination? Because if you discriminate someone based on some qualitative criteria like a mental disease that could have a high variance between person to person, and then allow open interpretation of that variance, such opens the floodgates for other, subjective discriminating criteria - like the colour of someone's skin, the inflections of their English accent, and other such things.

I feel like discrimination is rampant and emotionally damaging to the point of stimulating other crimes, while armed violent crimes are relatively low in comparison, so I'd be more on the side of blind issuing of guns rather than case-by-case discrimination. Unless you could prove that most gun owners are not legitimate, I would say fewer rights are violated on the blind side of things.
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Old 02-04-2017, 02:02 PM   #3545
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The question here becomes, does the potential for a violent crime outweigh the potential ethical violation via discrimination? Because if you discriminate someone based on some qualitative criteria like a mental disease that could have a high variance between person to person, and then allow open interpretation of that variance, such opens the floodgates for other, subjective discriminating criteria - like the colour of someone's skin, the inflections of their English accent, and other such things.
Consider though that we do use other qualitative criteria for determining eligibility for gun purchasing: should we discriminate based on someone's criminal past? That for me is a no-brainer: people who, say, have committed violent crimes in the past should not be allowed to own a gun. But, at the same time, there is variance even among this group. There are adults here who did stupid things as teenagers and have lived to regret it as adults when their brains matured and likely won't commit another violent crime again. There are career criminals who have turned over a new leaf and haven't had any issues with the law in 15 years. Not everyone with a violent past is going to commit a violent crime with a gun, but there is always that risk, and we've decided that risk is warranted enough that its an important factor in this issue. Criminals are already stigmatized enough in society; its harder for them to find jobs, fit into social groups etc etc.

On the other hand, is there a quantitative measurement to discern risk? I don't really think so. Someone's height, weight, or build isn't going to determine if they're more likely to commit a violent crime with a gun. Something like testosterone levels might, but I don't think there is a strong enough correlation to justify undermining the levels of privacy involved in this. So qualitative reasons are often the best we have, and they aren't obviously going to be perfect.

Quote:
I feel like discrimination is rampant and emotionally damaging to the point of stimulating other crimes, while armed violent crimes are relatively low in comparison, so I'd be more on the side of blind issuing of guns rather than case-by-case discrimination. Unless you could prove that most gun owners are not legitimate, I would say fewer rights are violated on the blind side of things.
I agree that discrimination against the disabled is common, but I disagree that this particular issue is causing increased gun crimes. Remember, the SSA only releases information on a person's mental health if they are unable to work. Should someone be buying a gun off their disability checks? I don't know if I can say, but there are probably more important things one could use that money for. Rights are probably being violated, but I feel that instead of harping on this issue, we can focus more on other issues that mentally (and physically, to be inclusive) disabled people face. Increased access to mental health care for instance, or more confidentiality for children. I feel like the discrimination here is a bit of a red herring; I don't see people getting so worked up they get a gun illegally. Put simply: The benefits, in my opinions, outweigh the negatives.

On the other point you pointed out about skin color et al. I'm going to first address it by pointing out its a slippery slope and that it can always be checked if we're educated and involved enough. Those are issues though that I feel either have no real correlation or correlation that's only convincing out of context (such as skin color). Mental health could be the latter, I'll admit. But I feel the causation is at least somewhat present there.
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Old 02-05-2017, 11:29 AM   #3546
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This show is amazingly topical, so much so it's hilarious. Apparently the "Deus lo Vult" episode aired the day Trump was inaugurated too. Freaking amazing entertainment coming out of torrent and TV these days.

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Consider though that we do use other qualitative criteria for determining eligibility for gun purchasing: should we discriminate based on someone's criminal past? That for me is a no-brainer: people who, say, have committed violent crimes in the past should not be allowed to own a gun. But, at the same time, there is variance even among this group. There are adults here who did stupid things as teenagers and have lived to regret it as adults when their brains matured and likely won't commit another violent crime again. There are career criminals who have turned over a new leaf and haven't had any issues with the law in 15 years. Not everyone with a violent past is going to commit a violent crime with a gun, but there is always that risk, and we've decided that risk is warranted enough that its an important factor in this issue. Criminals are already stigmatized enough in society; its harder for them to find jobs, fit into social groups etc etc.

On the other hand, is there a quantitative measurement to discern risk? I don't really think so. Someone's height, weight, or build isn't going to determine if they're more likely to commit a violent crime with a gun. Something like testosterone levels might, but I don't think there is a strong enough correlation to justify undermining the levels of privacy involved in this. So qualitative reasons are often the best we have, and they aren't obviously going to be perfect.
Actually I've confronted this very thing. I was searching for a roommate and saw an ad on Craigslist for a guy with a felony. He was desperate to move on from his past. Unfortunately, my apartment wouldn't allow felons to stay in rooms, so that was a non-starter, but I was seriously considering contacting him for that reason. Continued stigmatization of crime is part of the prison failure that continues to cause people to commit criminal acts.

Our society is built on the "innocent until proven guilty" criminal system, and laws in general merely tell you what you can't do, not what you can do. This isn't the kind of system where people who are fearful can look to the law to feel safer, since it prioritizes rights over safety by default.

Given that, rather than strike a balance, I'm for allowing guns to people with criminal backgrounds. I fully acknowledge the United States, as an experimental democracy, has also demonstrated how democracy can be abused. It would require a fundamental change of the US' founding character to change the nature of how the laws are. I'd rather not change that, so while it's painful, people abusing the system comes with the territory. Better to not judge then beforehand and bar them as likely abusers before they've actually done something condemn-worthy.

One of my current roommates is Muslim, from one of the African countries Trump didn't set a ban on; I accepted him despite 100% of the people I consulted saying it was too dangerous. But I met him in person and determined he was a good person.

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I agree that discrimination against the disabled is common, but I disagree that this particular issue is causing increased gun crimes.
I wasn't saying that it was; rather, I should say that the quantity of rights violated is important to me on symbolic grounds. I don't assign weights to rights violated. So if 1,000 rights to bear arms are violated to ensure a single right to life isn't, I am going to oppose this. I would oppose it even if two rights to bear arms were violated to ensure a single right to life wasn't.

That's why I'm against the mental disabilities ban, because probably, more people are disenfranchised that would would be due to a violent crime.

I feel like this logic is pretty consistent with me. Using the same approach, I would be against any mass surveillance privacy violation in the interest of national security, because you are violating billions of rights to privacy in the interest of protecting at most, empirically, the 3,000 something lives lost during 9/11.
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Old 02-05-2017, 12:34 PM   #3547
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Hi, so, I really wanted to stay out of this discussion because I understand that I have a larger amount of and much more personal experiences with the dark side of the second amendment than pretty much anybody on UPN and thus shouldn't hold everyone else's views on something they have a far less drastic perspective on to the same standard, but just... that last post is something I can't not respond to.

Some rights absolutely have more intrinsic value than others, with the right of a person to live being the most important right by a long-shot. If you take away someone's right to live, you also take away every single other right they should have. You can't enjoy free speech, freedom of religion, free press, a right to a fair trial, or any of that when you're in a coffin six feet underground because some nutjob shot up your school. If you take away someone's right to own a gun.... they lose literally nothing else. It's absurd to insinuate that stripping even a single person of absolutely everything down to their own existence is a reasonable exchange for keeping intact a minor luxury a relatively small group of people wish to possess.

Maybe it's because I live outside of Chicago and know that every day I leave my house could truly be the last day of my life due to our rampant gun problem. Maybe it's because multiple students at my school, one of which I shared a class with at the time, attempted to smuggle a gun into my school. Maybe it's because a man was drive-by shot across the street from my school last year while I was in class. Maybe it's because I know from my own experience just how much of a danger you can pose to yourself when you're mentally ill- because I know there have been multiple occasions where if I had a gun in my house it would have made it so easy to kill myself that I would have died three times over by now from my bouts of severe depression. It's probably all of those things that make it fundamentally impossible to see your argument as even slightly valid.

You can posture about the second amendment and how America will always be an imperfect place in terms of safety due to our emphasis on democracy all you like, but you cannot reasonably put one person's, or two people's, or 3,000,000 people's, or even 300,000,000 people's so-called "rights" to own a literal killing machine that serves little to no realistic purpose that couldn't be fulfilled by something non-lethal over even a single human being's right to exist in the world without being slaughtered like a calf. It's absurd to even try.

Sure, you can say that violent crime can occur with knives or crowbars or a bow and fucking arrow if you want. Sure, you can say that guns are important to hunters if you want. Sure, you can say the overwhelming majority of people who own guns don't use them for violence against other people. Sure, you can even try to argue that the people behind the guns, not the guns themselves, are the problem. But what, exactly, does any of that prove? Do we allow people to own grenades because they're useful for breaking down your back door when you lost the key? Is it okay for a random guy to own weapons-grade plutonium because he likes to keep it in little containers on his shelf and look at it like some kind of collector's item? Should we let anyone at all own a tank because violent crime happens even when tanks aren't roaming the streets? Should we be allowed to own an arsenal of explosives because the vast majority of bomb-owners would never actually light them, and sometimes they slip through the cracks and get into the hands of bad people anyway?

No. That's all preposterous. No one in their right mind would agree with any of that. The only real difference guns and any of those things in this regard is that a piece of parchment drafted 250 years ago by people who found dueling an honorable affair and had access to little more than a shitty musket in terms of arms gave guns the A-OK. Those same people gave the A-OK to things like the right of white people to literally own other people. They were right about some things, but wrong about a lot of other things. We as a country need to stop taking the word of James Madison as gospel. He was a fallible human being, like anyone else, who expected the Constitution he drafted to change with the times as necessary. To assume he was correct in all matters is to do him and the system of government he created for us a massive disservice.

Of course, it's just as idealistic of me to think that guns can ever be unilaterally banned from the United States as it is for a member of the NRA to think that guns are a non-issue. It can't and won't happen. But maybe at some point people will realize that this needs to become an issue that we allow the states to handle, because while Alaska surely has no problem with and perhaps even a legitimate use for their guns, firearms absolutely need to be outright banned in the State of Illinois and perhaps should be in most other urban states, too.
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:29 PM   #3548
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Some rights absolutely have more intrinsic value than others, with the right of a person to live being the most important right by a long-shot.
This is the ultimate slippery slope, and I was hoping someone wouldn't advocate it. Because if you make this distinction, you also have to entertain the uncomfortable idea that not all lives are created equal, which then opens things up for discrimination again. Rich lives have more value than poor lives, the born have more worth than the unborn, and so on.

This is why I tier everything on a single axis, quantity. In that way, the majority will always win over conspiracies and cabals. The good of the many will always outweigh the inconvenience of the few. It isn't perfect, but it's the best way to sabotage small elite power.

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Of course, it's just as idealistic of me to think that guns can ever be unilaterally banned from the United States as it is for a member of the NRA to think that guns are a non-issue. It can't and won't happen. But maybe at some point people will realize that this needs to become an issue that we allow the states to handle, because while Alaska surely has no problem with and perhaps even a legitimate use for their guns, firearms absolutely need to be outright banned in the State of Illinois and perhaps should be in most other urban states, too.
The United States is simply too large, has too much state law variation and guns have been legal for too long. Otherwise, I'm for either extremes - either guns are banned everywhere, or everyone should own a gun and people get used to them being around.

Guns shouldn't be used to settle disputes. That's a problem with America culturally that needs to be fixed.
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:29 PM   #3549
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From a practical view point a major issue with gun control laws is how easy it can be to illegally bring them in from a jurisdiction where they're legal. Gun control works very well in the UK, in part because they're not a culturally accepted thing here but also in part because we're an island with decent border control which makes it hard to bring them in. Contrast with bringing guns across the US-Mexico border or (if done on a state by state basis) across state lines and you can see why that might limit the effectiveness of gun control. Would still do wonders for more impulsive gun crime, but on a more organised level (even that of any street gangs) it probably wouldn't be the magic cure-all. Not an argument for not implementing more gun control, but a practical consideration that would need to be taken into account.
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Old 02-05-2017, 01:33 PM   #3550
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This is the ultimate slippery slope, and I was hoping someone wouldn't advocate it. Because if you make this distinction, you also have to entertain the uncomfortable idea that not all lives are created equal, which then opens things up for discrimination again.
Why? The idea that not all rights are equal and the idea that not all lives are equal seem entirely unrelated to me. I don't see what one has to do with the other. I'd personally consider the former obvious and the latter nonsense, tbh.

(Apologies for the double post, on my phone).
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