(no subject)
Aug. 4th, 2019 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So, how're we going to explain away the latest round of mass shootings? Here's the thing: all of your excuses -- but that won't stop these guys, it's a mental health issue, we should arm everyone, I need my guns in case the government tries to force me...
For fuck's sake.
News Flash: if the government really wants you (like they could be bothered) they will just take you out. The only thing protecting you from being just wiped off the face of the earth, should the government decide you should be, the only thing giving you a fighting chance, giving you time to get in touch with a lawyer, etc, are the very rights to due process you're working so very hard to dismantle for others, for example immigrants, the foreign born, the brown skin born, the non-Christians. So maybe, you want to lay off that bullshit. But seriously, the government you seem to want to be building - they're going to have zero patience with your stash of guns, your ammunition, your last-stand mentality. They'll just send in a drone and disappear you. AND YOU KNOW THAT. So let's stop pretending that you need guns to defend yourself from the government that you elected. I dunno, maybe you're playing the long game - building this armory and letting the planet go to shit so that when it all falls apart you're big man on campus because you have guns a plenty and five years worth of macaroni and cheese in a bucket.
Arming everyone -- that's a great idea. That's what I want in an emergency -- two dozen people who have zero training and can barely hit the side of the barn when they're concentrating all shooting at once. Super. Police officers and the military undergo all sorts of training to make sure they can keep a level head in an active shooter situation. But sure, you with your 20 hours a week video game habit will do a great job and are much less likely to shoot an innocent bystander. Hang on, I gotta wipe the sarcasm foam from my lips.
Mental health -- look, for starters, crazy people will still do crazy stuff, yes, absolutely. But a fraction of crazy stuff per minute my friends. Two people killed instead of 20. That'd be just fine in the books of those 18 people...their parents, their partners, their children. Maybe if you gave a shit about mental health and fixing that, you wouldn't have elected a president that's cutting all of the social support and programs that could be helping these people. A president whose minion is cutting education, science and research that could actually help these people.
Maybe you shouldn't have elected a president who incites hatred and othering of people on a daily basis. Maybe you could say "Look, GOP, you run him again and we lose, we're going to totally lose our guns. Why don't you run a candidate that eschews hatred and actually gives a shit about his constituency, doesn't give all of the racist, sick fucks a hard-on for shooting up people that piss them off?"
Because, news flash: this keeps happening, and this, more than any thing else, will lose the election for you, will lose your guns -- and lose them hard.
Make a compromise, repudiate the Fomenter-of-Hatred-in-Chief, and you stand a good chance of keeping 90% of what you've got. I mean, hell, we liberals have guns too -- I might have to hunt, I might have to put something out of its misery. Most of us have no problem with people having guns -- but it'd probably be okay to have to jump through some hoops. And maybe that class of guns should have bigger, harder hoops, be able to be used/kept in only certain places, at certain times.
Oh, we know. It's not going to stop all of it. But some of it. Maybe only 10% of it. Isn't that enough? There have been 8,737 mass shooting deaths so far this year, as of right this minute. If it only stopped 10%, that'd be 873 people going home to their families today -- alive, going to church, going to the birthday picnic, chilling on the couch with their loved ones. Are you really going to stand there and say "yeah, I'm okay with those 873 people dying in order to ensure there's no more regulation on my guns." You going to look at their widows, their widowers, their parents, their children and say "yeah, well, sorry, price of freedom and all."
Please. You don't even have the courage to stand up to a party and president that are making it clear that unless you're a white American, you're not actually a person.
For fuck's sake.
News Flash: if the government really wants you (like they could be bothered) they will just take you out. The only thing protecting you from being just wiped off the face of the earth, should the government decide you should be, the only thing giving you a fighting chance, giving you time to get in touch with a lawyer, etc, are the very rights to due process you're working so very hard to dismantle for others, for example immigrants, the foreign born, the brown skin born, the non-Christians. So maybe, you want to lay off that bullshit. But seriously, the government you seem to want to be building - they're going to have zero patience with your stash of guns, your ammunition, your last-stand mentality. They'll just send in a drone and disappear you. AND YOU KNOW THAT. So let's stop pretending that you need guns to defend yourself from the government that you elected. I dunno, maybe you're playing the long game - building this armory and letting the planet go to shit so that when it all falls apart you're big man on campus because you have guns a plenty and five years worth of macaroni and cheese in a bucket.
Arming everyone -- that's a great idea. That's what I want in an emergency -- two dozen people who have zero training and can barely hit the side of the barn when they're concentrating all shooting at once. Super. Police officers and the military undergo all sorts of training to make sure they can keep a level head in an active shooter situation. But sure, you with your 20 hours a week video game habit will do a great job and are much less likely to shoot an innocent bystander. Hang on, I gotta wipe the sarcasm foam from my lips.
Mental health -- look, for starters, crazy people will still do crazy stuff, yes, absolutely. But a fraction of crazy stuff per minute my friends. Two people killed instead of 20. That'd be just fine in the books of those 18 people...their parents, their partners, their children. Maybe if you gave a shit about mental health and fixing that, you wouldn't have elected a president that's cutting all of the social support and programs that could be helping these people. A president whose minion is cutting education, science and research that could actually help these people.
Maybe you shouldn't have elected a president who incites hatred and othering of people on a daily basis. Maybe you could say "Look, GOP, you run him again and we lose, we're going to totally lose our guns. Why don't you run a candidate that eschews hatred and actually gives a shit about his constituency, doesn't give all of the racist, sick fucks a hard-on for shooting up people that piss them off?"
Because, news flash: this keeps happening, and this, more than any thing else, will lose the election for you, will lose your guns -- and lose them hard.
Make a compromise, repudiate the Fomenter-of-Hatred-in-Chief, and you stand a good chance of keeping 90% of what you've got. I mean, hell, we liberals have guns too -- I might have to hunt, I might have to put something out of its misery. Most of us have no problem with people having guns -- but it'd probably be okay to have to jump through some hoops. And maybe that class of guns should have bigger, harder hoops, be able to be used/kept in only certain places, at certain times.
Oh, we know. It's not going to stop all of it. But some of it. Maybe only 10% of it. Isn't that enough? There have been 8,737 mass shooting deaths so far this year, as of right this minute. If it only stopped 10%, that'd be 873 people going home to their families today -- alive, going to church, going to the birthday picnic, chilling on the couch with their loved ones. Are you really going to stand there and say "yeah, I'm okay with those 873 people dying in order to ensure there's no more regulation on my guns." You going to look at their widows, their widowers, their parents, their children and say "yeah, well, sorry, price of freedom and all."
Please. You don't even have the courage to stand up to a party and president that are making it clear that unless you're a white American, you're not actually a person.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 02:47 pm (UTC)Shooting under stress is hard. I worked for a large police department back in the '90s doing IT for nine years and spend a lot of time with the firearms guys, got a taste for their training. Shooting people is hard. A number of cops quit their job after having to shoot and kill a person. One sobering non-graphic story that I witnessed was I was at the academy and went in to the firearms "shack". There's a classroom to the right as you enter, and normally if there's anyone in it, it's full of buff and fit young people - recruits. This time it was all people in their 40s and 50s. I found the Sgt and asked him what was up.
The entire class had failed their annual firearms qualification and were retraining. The reason they failed? They'd all shot someone in the line of duty.
Contrary to Rick Santorum and all the other idiots that there are too many "soft targets" and getting everyone armed is the solution, it isn't the solution. If the problem was a soft target, why did the El Paso shooter drive 650 miles? I guarantee you plenty of soft targets in his neck of the woods or much closer. He specifically targeted El Paso because it's in the news and next to the border.
I can't wait for Black Friday. How many soft targets then.