The Glade 4.0

So, no threads on this yet?

I find it amusing that the press seems eager to focus on the ridiculousness in Oregon or hyping up Obama's expected announcement of plans for executive actions on gun control instead of the two leaders of the major Muslim sects formally severing political ties over the execution of political dissidents by our major ally in the region. Maybe Obama should be more concerned with trying to be a statesman instead of end-running around our own legislature extra-Constitutionally? After all, he's made a big deal about buddying up with Iran and how crucial a move that will be towards peace in the region -- but now he's got better things to do than to step in when that key player has a major beef with our ally?

I mean, it's not like an embassy has been firebombed by angry mobs or anything, right? Oh, wait.

Not to mention, the rest of the region is lining up along Shia/Sunni lines and all this sounds really familiar to students of WWI history, just transplanting the whole ordeal to the Middle East instead of Europe. But no, making sure we close overblown gun show loopholes that aren't proven to be a major source of firearms to criminals is far more important.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Bro, do you even lead from behind?

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The Dude abides.

There were 8,855 gun-related homicides in the US in 2012. By contrast, there were far fewer deaths in the US caused by Saudi / Iran tensions.

Obama views guns as an issue of national security, so it's not a small issue with him. I get it.

In 2013, ~30k people fell to their death. ~11k were murdered by firearms. Maybe he should make gravity a higher priority.

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I seem to recall science is above the president's pay grade.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_(accident)

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Raell Kromwell

Huh? Are you really equating falling with being murdered? And 30k? I don't buy it.

I don't really care if you buy it. It was a CDC statistic that I found by using Google. The amazing thing about Google is that they'll just tell anybody the data they want to know.

Are you really considering 11k out of 2.6M deaths nationwide significant? If you need me to, I can show you all the zeroes, and how they reduce, but I understand you pride yourself on some amount of problem-solving and mathematical ability. Or, you know, Google could do that for you, too, if you're having trouble.

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The US murder rate is far higher than that of most other developed nations, which is a better comparison point than 2.6M deaths overall. However, I am NOT of the opinion that guns themselves are the reason for the higher murder rate. There are nations with a higher gun ownership rate and much lower murder rates.

Guns are the "low hanging fruit." They're easier to grab at. Tackling the actual social issues that cause the crime rate in the USA is a political nightmare.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, that might require critical reevaluation of liberal platforms. That would be uncomfortable.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

You mean the victim politics and poverty politics that are keeping a handful of people rich and in power?

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He might be talking about the identity politics, the victim politics and the poverty politics that are keeping a whole bunch of people poor and out of power.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Tomayto, Tomahto

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It should be no surprise that tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, despite having the potential to trigger a major regional war that could expand to an even wider war as Russia, India, China, Pakistan, Britain, France, the rest of Europe, Australia and whoever else you can think of line up to support one or the other, generate no traction. We have convinced ourselves for the last 24-25 years that serious conflict was no longer possible.

Admitting that this dispute between major regional powers is significant would mean admitting that other nations take actions based on their own perceived interests, their own assessments, and make their own mistakes. They are not supposed to do that. Other nations are only supposed to react to America. They are not supposed to take actions based on their own perceptions, assessments, interests, ideas, ideology, or worldview. They are not supposed to exercise agency.

If they were allowed to do such things, that might mean that America is not to blame, by which I mean that the other party from the one someone likes is not to blame. It might mean that American missteps are not the sole, or even primary driver of conflict. It might mean that the imaginary alternate history in which everything would have been perfect if not for George Bush (either of them) Barak Obama, or Bill Clinton is not to blame, or any of the favorite subordinates. It might even mean that the Europeans are not to blame whether you prefer the flavor of blaming the "West" or the flavor of calling Europeans pussies. Amazing as it may seem those brown people that we carpet-bomb for laughs or which are all waiting to swamp us in a tide of scimitars, depending which brand of nonsense you believe, may actually make decisions that cannot be traced back to a root primary cause of whatever political issue is most important in the world of one of us.

Fortunately, the situation is retrievable. There is still time to trace all of this back to the actions of one's least favorite recent President and claim none of this would have happened if he had/had not done <whatever>. There is still time to pretend all other factors leading to the current situation are unimportant, and that one's political opponents are to blame because of their Obvious Stupidity And Evilness and So Forth. This crisis can still be used for political leverage. We have not yet lost all hope. There is still time to pretend all threats are trivial and we will never face anything with truly serious consequences again.

So please, no one panic.

As for Obama's belief that guns are a serious national security threat, the fact that we have a Commander in Chief admitting in a public forum that he allows his national security decisions to be affected by the fact that he might have to visit injured soldiers in the hospital, that's a far greater threat. As President, you cannot care about that. Your job is, if it ever becomes necessary, to end the world. If you can't do that, you do not belong there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd like to vote for this one.

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The Dude abides.

Attempting to apply logic to the gun debate is totally futile, it's the biggest circle jerk in US politics. The left's arguments are based pretty much entirely on fraud while the right's arguments are based on what are essentially unfalsifiable religious beliefs. Rational thought has no place anywhere near it.

Evidently not, since it is the height of irrationality to think that the pro-gun-rights camp is basing their arguments on religion. Religion appears in this debate in only the most peripheral manner. I don't think the irony of you talking about the irrationality of the debate while at the same time trying to shoehorn your personal need to cast everything the right does as some sort of religious imperative onto it.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about; screw the Iran-Saudi Arabia problem (and for that matter any other international crisis) these are not nearly as important as portraying people I disagree with as religious nuts on domestic issues!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

To be fair, the gun-rights lobby in the USA treats the 2nd ammendment with a remarkable reverence that ranks right up there with Jesus.

It's only "religious," however, metaphorically.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

This might be more fair if it weren't for the fact that the various rights enumerated in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments and often the 14th as well are treated the same way by pretty much all parts of the political spectrum. The only reason the gun-rights lobby appears this way is that they have an opposition group making the case that a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights isn't actually a right like all the others because of special-pleading arguments. A case they continue to make 7 years after it was finally affirmed by the USSC, using such creative arguments as "Well, that decision was from Antonin Scalia and is therefore 'conservative ****' and doesn't count because the rules magically change for precedent and the powers of the courts if guns are involved." Think of how absurd an argument like this would sound were it applied to a USSC case on any other amendment.

If anything, the anti-gun lobby behaves far more as if gun control were an object of (metaphorical) religious devotion. The gun control lobby treats gun control as a goal and an end in and of itself that must be accomplished for its own sake, and presents supposed benefits to society of having it as beneficial side effects. Gun control is ALWAYS presented as if it were a self-evident necessity that will, happily, make things better in the process. The primary tactic for getting it is to push any and all measures at gun control, knowing that if any are implemented that will simply become the new "extreme" gun rights people are forced to defend and a new "compromise" will be asked for. The idea is to erode gun rights by any and all means by portraying any position other than total or near-total bans as extreme.

The pro-gun lobby is largely forced to behave as it does by the tactics of the opposition. The NRA, historically, did favor certain types of gun control and restrictions - they ceased doing this when they realized that acquiescing to any restriction meant just more demands for yet more restrictions. Many of the measures that seem to more middle-of-the-road people as reasonable are not opposed by the gun lobby because they're unreasonable but because once they're imposed, that will become the new extreme and a new "reasonable middle" will appear.

Think about the howling from the anti-gun people when Canada ceased its registry despite its high cost and total lack of evidence of actually accomplishing anything.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/us/gun-violence-graphics/

US has the highest per capita (civilian) ownership of guns of any country in the world.

Those numbers are skewed because the average american gun owner owns multiple guns, and doesn't included the 2 guns permanently issued to every single Swiss male by the Swiss government (and also every Swiss female who volunteers for military service) which would push the Swiss numbers up over 100 guns per 100 people, all on their own.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It doesn't matter (to me) if it's significant or not. It matters to liberals, and certainly to Obama. They are certainly more significant than the US deaths caused by terrorism, which is the point. Obama views guns as a greater national security threat than overseas terrorists. I think it's easy to see the thought process there. Still don't know how falling has anything to do with it.

Let me clarify for you: You're arguing different things.

-You are stating what Obama finds to be a significantly greater threat to national security than overseas terrorists.
-Shuyung was NOT stating that Obama doesn't find it significant. Nor was he seriously suggesting that gravity is a threat to national security. He was attempting to show the ridiculous nature of Obama's opinion.
-You have countered with "It matters to liberals and Obama." Shuyung's proper response at this point will be to post more absurd and yet accurate comparisons to prove that liberals and Obama are acting like morons on the subject.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The right wing position on guns is basically based on the unfalsifiable belief that people have a natural right to own guns. This is simply accepted as fact, see the NRA and "from my cold dead hands". As such, the arguments of the anti-gun lobby are not just considered wrong, they're totally irrelevant. In their eyes it would not matter if literally every single thing the Brady campaign people said was true, this would not change the fact that people still have a right to own guns and this right cannot be infringed. The consequences are not relevant. So the gun debate is basically a situation where both sides are coming up and presenting arguments that they don't actually believe in, they're just calculated to draw as much support as possible.

It's the 2nd Amendment. It's right up there with freedom of speech. And it's as natural as the right to own a knife. A gun is a tool. They're very useful for hunting, self defense, and warding off tyranny.

Amusingly, the people who want to take your guns away would use guns to force you to do so. How hypocritical is that?

Philosophically, your home is basically a tiny country. Your country has a defense force, which consists of the people living there. You should be able to use modern weapons to do so.