TrickstaPriest

Yeah, I know they happen.  I'd need to dig out the data to see how common they are, how often they have numbers that high... but again, that's not what problems are currently the ones I'm most interested in addressing 😕

14 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Note: I'm responding to this quote first, but don't take the length of the post as I continue on into the weeds personally, Tricksta. I just found myself expanding on a thought that started here.

Thanks for the start!

And yes, I think we can say that Stewart's tactics (and more importantly information) isn't right here.  I appreciate him, but do know he's just as liable as anyone else to do bad things.  Or use bad information.  Or simply be wrong.

55 minutes ago, Tom said:

Even if you don't know the sharp edge cuts and the pointy end goes in the other person, as long as you can at least figure out which part to hold onto you can do a lot of damage with a knife.

Yeah, but that's damage to an individual person.  I'm not sure how much damage a knife can effectively inflict on a crowd.  Like at a nightclub.

There have been 'stabbing frenzies', but I don't think they are as common.

Anyway it's not a conversation about whether we should allow knives or guns, it's a question of whether a knife is more dangerous than a gun.  A knife is very hard to use to seriously injure a dozen people.  It's very easy to improvise a weapon and coordinate with a group.  You are likely to get stabbed or hurt grabbing a knife, but rushing a firearm from a distance away is quite a different prospect.

Though as I said before, my priorities lie elsewhere.  And in general I'm quite willing to be wrong on an issue I don't know much about... >_>  but I think we, as a country, are a real outlier on this subject, so I'm also willing to push back a little more too.

Right now my biggest concern is... well, the fostering of more violence and death in this country by major politicians.  My second biggest is how this chaos is going to be exasperated by serious poverty being created by resource extraction of the American public.  And then from lack of resources and food and water due to overuse and climate change that will collapse any kind of reconciliation or revival.  And how technology can be leveraged by a government in such times to have a death-grip on society and the major suffering that can cause...

Best thing I can suggest is to find good video footage of the events.  There are some sources I've found but I have nary the time to dig through it.

https://thepatr10t.github.io/yall-Qaeda/map.html

Yep, knew this was going to happen.  While they say at the same time 'next time it'll be with guns'.  😕

Normally I like the bringing up of issues and the providing of information but I don't like the proposed solutions.  Stewart's interview is probably a reverse of that - there are great ways we could correct for these problems and make it more viable to solve gun-related crimes (including gang violence) through methods like marking of bullets (if it's effective)

So while I don't agree on his child-death rate point (as per some of the provided information), it's still a set of solutions that I think are generally reasonable.

30 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

I can understand the perspective. There’s a mechanism to change that Amendment with another one if enough folks agree, after all. It could get there, at some point.

Yup, and I can appreciate the perspective difference too.  There's stuff I'm intractable on, and there are things on 2A that I believe must happen (risk appetite rants before), but I'm more interested in working solutions than nonworking ones.  That often means less rewriting of rules - one of the things I wholly agreed with John Stewart's latest interview on some of this, is we -did- have a period where there was registration, tracking, and so on of firearms.  I don't think bringing that back will be a great infringement of rights.

But that's a 'belief', and my beliefs are tractable with evidence, research, et cetera.

There's a lot we need to do that infighting won't help on.

2 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

I am personally opposed to excessive restriction on the Second Amendment (deemed the right to self defense by the Supreme Court) as well. Individual interpretations may vary on all of these, including freedom of expression, and none of them are unlimited rights. But I tend to favor the expansion of rights rather than restricting them as a philosophy. I also like our right to assemble. To avoid self incrimination. There’s a lot of good rights in there, I prefer to have them protected rather than curtailed.

Unfortunately for 2A rights, I do have to agree that the greater presence of guns in our culture and society has a marked effect on it - that is to say, the greater amount of deaths by guns.

It's just not my priority right now one way or another. 😕

33 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

Oh certainly agree. That’s why we have parallel State and Federal court systems, after all. And there are areas that are not up to local discretion. The Bill of Rights is cross jurisdictional, but interpretation may vary.

Yar.  I guess I'm interpreting this past conversation on guns, versus lets say trans or gay rights.

Mostly cause SB1443 is on the brain

Related:

https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/SB1443/2023

part I and on are the relevant bits.  Same sex attraction would be banned in school books entirely.

1 hour ago, Iuz the Evil said:

I’m not sure that’s a bug though, more of a feature. Local government makes decisions based on the interests of their community. It does make it difficult to know what the rules are though.

Yeah, I do consider things like a 'minimum standard of rights' to kind of go beyond local government though.  ie- the primary benefits of having a 'Constitution' are to set a minimum standard (a public benefit for those living there) and a set of rules and agreements so we don't 'Sengoku Jidai' every time a leader dies off (a reason why the constitution/country doesn't get destroyed every decade or two, aka stability).  So public benefit + stability are a pretty decent motivation to follow a constitution, which sets a third benefit (ie a reason to fight or defend a country other than to protect another politician's career/riches)

So I guess what I'm suggesting is that while we can debate what some quantifications of a 'minimum standard' are, my interpretation is that those rights aren't just a set of rules but the entire reason people/public abide by them to begin with.  Interpreting it as a 'minimum standard' is kind of the point.

Some light reading

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23691846-2023-02-27-redacted-dominions-answering-brief-in-opp-to-smj69

Would love to get more official documentation, records, data on this

22 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Getting different sides to talk is at least an important part of the solution...but it's VERY hard to do on a large scale.

Particularly when the media makes money on the very opposite of that thing.  Literally eroding the country for cash... which is a thing we've seen in many other venues, this is just one more of them...

2 minutes ago, Tom said:

The first stories I saw on CNN and BBC had to explain the origin of the phrase so I understood why I was supposed to be offended. 

When I was walking around Canada as a teen I had someone pass me by raising his fist, shaking it, and cheering 'rahowah!'  I cheerfully responded back.

It look me years later to understand he was chanting for a racial holy war.

Not even sure who responded to a poll.

Like, botting an online poll can happen at the best of times.  Or paying/having people respond to your own service poll, if the agency giving the poll is malicious.

There's so much I can do to fake something like this without even trying.

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

While, from what I have read (I have not watched the rant itself) Adams seems to have gone way too far, it does seem disturbing that a significant portion of the population...well, we'll just quote the poll link in that article...

 

BLACK AMERICANS ONLY: "It's okay to be white." 53% agree, 26% disagree, 21% not sure

 

What would the response be if we swapped "black" and "white" in those poll results?  I hope we are moving away from the -isms like racism, sexism and religious discrimination, not just moving towards new and different -isms with the same divisive and discriminatory consequences, just with different victims.

Was this an online poll?

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/daily-wire-host-you-have-ban-transgenderism-entirely

Kansas leading the way to ban all forms of transgenderism "to push back against the woke left"

Never was 'about protecting the children'

I know I've earned my fair share

Unfortunately the perception of him might be more important for re-election.  Propaganda works.  😕

I also know people who've been struggling and honestly did better financially under Trump.  They may not like Trump, but they admit that.  I'm not about to tell them 'their experience is wrong' any more than I'd tell someone else that.

I don't really believe MSNBC's opinion of it because, unfortunately, they are propaganda on 'our side', but at least the jobs report seems to suggest an improvement.  I'm not sure I know any people who have been financially desperate who've been doing better now, though.  So much like polling, I have to take it with a grain of salt.

My concern is that Biden is just going to depress the Dem vote (particularly the young or impoverished vote) at a time when it could literally get a lot of people killed.  The DNC could try and build up a new candidate, but this move makes it pretty clear to me they aren't going to do so.

4 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Do you consider that bad?

I know a number of people who won't be voting during the presidency this time around because of Biden (and the DNC).  They'll only vote for candidates that might help impoverished people more significantly 😕

So in the shadow of a country starting a war because of a major politician wanting to build his reputation and base of power as he dies... I watch another one risk allowing a literal insurrectionist and openly anti-trans genocidal leader winning because he feels he's the best candidate.

Is he?  Maybe, maybe not.

But to me it looks like a race to the bottom fostered by politicians seeing opportunity in disaster. 

I don't have any faith in Biden to garner a lot of votes.  If only because the Fox News machine has had its time to work on him.

Just now, Lord Liaden said:

Could you elaborate on what particular game you think Biden is playing?

The DNC change to put South Carolina first in the primary indicates to me that Biden wants to run again 😕

Biden's playing politics to try and boost himself while everyone else watches the other likely candidate talk about destroying the trans community (and if you pay attention, wrapping up any and all gay/bi people in his statements as well)

Next few years are going to be just great.

58 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's the Catch-22. American right-wing politicians loudly proclaim after every mass shooting, that it's an issue of mental health care, not guns. Then they vote against every bill to finance expanded access to mental health care.

Not a surprise - the media apparatus behind them preys on mental illness.

15 hours ago, Tom said:

I have a bit of a tangential question here, having recently seen an argument that essentially compared the marketing of sugary cereals to kids with the marketing of rifles like the JR-15.

 

Now I can see (and remember) the arguments back then. The specific focus was on Saturday morning cartoons.

 

Yeah, the commercials were on programming aimed at kids with the intent the little darlings tell their parents to buy the product. 
 

I don’t watch much TV, hardly any in fact, so I’ve got a question.  Can anyone tell me where they’ve seen firearms advertised where they think children/minors could be targeted?

Nope.  I am mixed on this - my brother was threatened at gunpoint at his high school by one of the other kids, but I don't know that the JR-15 rifle 'itself' is more than a note on the significant cultural issues around gun ownership that produce regular shooting.  ie- it's a symptom, its not really going to be a cause (of much)

I've been following his content for a few months now

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

A while back, I posted links to Perun Gaming's essays on how corruption and lies destroy armies. He's now dropped the third volume of this trilogy, on how militaries are sabotaged by personalist politics. As he says, the way politics works in autocracies, where personal ambition and CYA inhibits collective competence, is not unique to Russia. Some people might even see familiar elements in Trumpworld.

...

 

Dean Shomshak

Perun does good work.

I'd also argue that's a common thread in a lot of politics... which is why they tend to destroy anything they become invested in.

Meanwhile, the most likely presidential candidate overall has still been reposting people calling for civil war and to literally 'fight and die for him, lock and load'.

Given how... problematic things are for Biden, and how short memory/disinterested public are... am I going to be hearing about how the fed or military has to deal with 'that abusive California state' in 2025?  If he wins, are people going to 'stand up to tyranny and protest' and have him 'justifiably' crack down on the protests (extra violently?  like they 'should have done' to those 'race rioters'?)

You would not believe how many people I run into think that the george floyd protests should have been met with machine guns.  These are the opinions of the mildly conservative people I know.

If he loses, how much are the shootings going to go up?  How many more times are friends of mine going to literally be skirted with death?

There's no outcome where things aren't going to get worse.  With poverty, the limits of water usage now, and soon climate change?  The future of a united states (as in the states uniting to not engage in war) are looking grim to me. 😕