TrickstaPriest

They're two different classes of events, and those classifications give context to an argument. To conflate them when constructing an argument is an error, IMO, so fair game to point out.
 
Killing 10 people in one place in a short amount of time is vastly different than killing 10 people in several different places over a longer time. There have been mass stabbings that have exceeded this, and would qualify as mass murders, but this isn't one of them. IIRC, those all took place in confined spaces or in one case where the victims were small children. In any of those cases, a firearm would have been vastly more devastating.

It's important to make good arguments when discussing these things, and that means accurate analogies, IMO.
 
 
There's a reason that law enforcement does not defend against knives with less lethal options, and that reason applies equally to civilians, IMO. The police, whether obligated to or not (and the answer is "not" in this case), cannot possibly intervene in a use of force situation until it's over, unless they're standing right there when it starts. It's not unreasonable for civilians to have the means to present equal or superior force to defend themselves.
 
For the record, I think it's a bad idea to conflate mass shootings and their causes, including the role of availability of firearms, with personal self defense. Taking measures against the tools of mass shooters can probably be done in a way that doesn't impinge too greatly on lawful firearms owners who wish to have the option for defense or recreation.

So many flaws.
I'm over 60, never particularly muscular, and these days, the usual aches and pains don't help.  In many cases, I could offer up some defense to a knife wielder, tho...while I scream my head off.  Your only notion of defense is the counter-attack...escalating the situation.  DARN well better hope my attacker can't disarm me or I put myself MUCH, MUCH worse off.  Against a knife, I might be able to find something for defense in many places...but I'll have to find my gun if I'm at home.  Depending on the nature of the disability, do we really want a disable person with a gun?  Do we really want a LOT of people to have guns?  With people with anger triggers?  Escalation from words to *shots* does happen.  
 
Go back to the summer of 2020.  Numerous incidents where Trump supporters actively tried to intimidate or disrupt Democratic rallies.  And things were very tense.  Now throw in 15-20% of the attendees having guns, and the enormous anger of that summer.
 
Protecting the vulnerable is a major problem, I completely agree, but you wouldn't just be arming the vulnerable.  You're also jumping straight to the highest degree of personal escalation without ever considering if some middle ground is possible, and ignoring both the difficulties in using a gun, and the risk of misuse.

Which is the primary reason why, for the sake of the democracy, the former president cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to return to the White House.

This is likely to be our future now, thanks to Trump.  A prominent Republican loses and they immediately start shouting fraud, demanding an investigation, filing lawsuits, etc.

Ranked-choice only matters in a multi-way race.  And there?  I think it MUCH more accurately reflects things, particularly now when people very often vote against a given candidate.  

Mary Peltola beats Sarah Palin and becomes 1st Alaska Native in Congress

Implying? Heavens, no.

I was so not surprised when it pivoted to lizard people

You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning.

"I may get blocked for this" is pretty typical primer from bots and other weird crap to self-justify

He got blocked but not, I think, for some wild-eyed, radical, or offensive notion...more likely that he was shilling.  

Trump's team told ICE officials to wipe all data from their phones before leaving their jobs, report says
 

Reminds me of a line from The Simpsons--
 
BILL GATES:  "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Student loan forgiveness removes one of the most powerful incentives for military service at a time of dangerously low enlistment." 
 
Seen on the Book of Face today, with the caption "Wait, did I just say the quiet part out loud?"

May need to donate to this guy.
 
An activist plans to test Texas' 'In God We Trust' law with signs in Arabic

Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm
 
 
Dude had hundreds of secret documents, including nuclear and humint information, in his possession, with his own handwritten notes scribbled on them.

https://fixthecourt.com/2022/04/bicameral-bill-bring-real-accountability-third-branch-introduced/
 
Though work on the 21st Century Courts Act of 2022 began at the start of the 117th Congress more than a year ago, and though several sections mirror the 21st Century Courts Act of 2020, this legislation is expanded and takes on new urgency in the wake of revelations last month that Justice Thomas’ wife Ginni sought to overturn the election results while Thomas was ruling on several 2020-related cases.
Legal scholars and FTC believe Thomas should have recused from these cases and a recent Jan. 6 Committee case since, among other reasons, Ginni had a stake in the outcome and since text messages she wrote to Mark Meadows imply she may have discussed her efforts with her husband.
Among the bill’s more impactful proposals, it would:
— Require the justices to finally write and abide by an official code of conduct;
— Require a brief explanation whenever a judge or justice recuses from a case or petition;
— Create a process in the lower courts by which a party may submit a motion for recusal that would be reviewed by judges from other courts;
— Create a process at the Supreme Court by which a party may submit a motion for recusal that would be reviewed by all nine justices; and
— Expand the federal recusal law to require disqualification when a judge or justice has received within the previous six years income, travel reimbursement or a gift from a party or their counsel.

"Old Man Trump" is a song with lyrics written by American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie in 1954. The song describes the racist housing practices and discriminatory rental policies of his landlord, Fred Trump. Although the lyrics were written in 1954, it was never recorded by Guthrie. In January 2016, Will Kaufman, a Guthrie scholar and professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, unearthed the handwritten lyrics while conducting research at the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [From Wiki]
 
Trump skipped a planned appearance outside the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., that campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh blamed on “radical protesters, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media,” who “attempted to frighten off the president’s supporters” with their warnings about the pandemic risk….
 
…Some Republicans involved in the reelection effort said they feared an internal backlash over the snafu. The president has long been known to take his crowd sizes seriously and had viewed his Tulsa rally as a turning point. “You are warriors!” the president told the crowd as he began his remarks. “We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things.”  The thousands of people in the arena, many of whom lined up days earlier, erupted in what felt like a primal scream of pent-up excitement and emotion, months in the making.
[from POLITICO, 6-21-2020,"Trump Blames Protesters for Disappointing Turnout at Rally" by Eugene Daniels]
 
Trump's impeachment came after a formal House inquiry found that he had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid, and then obstructed the inquiry itself by telling his administration officials to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony. The inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid and an invitation to the White House to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. [From Wiki]
 
dem·a·gogue. /ˈdeməˌɡäɡ/
 
See definitions in: All Politics History
 
noun: a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument. "a gifted demagogue with particular skill in manipulating the press"
 
Similar:rabble-rouser, political agitator, agitator, soapbox orator, firebrand, troublemaker, incendiary, tub-thumper
 
verb: rhetorically exploit (an issue) for political purposes in a way calculated to appeal to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people.
"he seems more interested in demagoguing the issue in media interviews than in dialogue"
 
…Why are we still talking about this man having a sane chance as being a '24 presidential candidate after what we went through with him? Not even including some of his of outrageous tweets. I mean seriously.

Comicsgate: How an Anti-Diversity Harassment Campaign in Comics Got Ugly—and Profitable
 
tl;dr: People have discovered that there is considerable money to be made in harassment of female, minority, and LGBTQ comics writers and artists. 

These are your counters?

Italy:  possibly.  I don't recall that aspect that well, but the Italians were turning against Mussolini, and overthrew him.
Germany:  ok, so all we have to worry about is ethnic genocide, and the solution is leaving the country a smoking wreck, with another 5 million or so dead from the conflict  
Russia:  Stalin's "credited" with killing about 700,000 political opponents, and thousands more...artists, writers, etc....were sent to the gulags, with many thousand more dying.  And...how have things changed?  Stalin died in '52.  The Hungarian Revolution was crushed in '56.  Czechoslovakia, '68.  The occupation of Afghanistan.  Chechnia.  Georgia.  The current action in the Ukraine.  Doesn't seem "gone" to me.
China:  Mao's Great Leap led to a famine that is estimated to have killed 30 million people.  It doesn't look like there are particularly good estimates relating to deaths of politically unreliable people, but it's in the millions.  And even post-Mao, again, it's rather difficult to say the Chinese have relaxed their grip on the people.  RATHER the opposite, in fact.
 
So far, you're batting .250 at best.  

"The most pointed is V's belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence." — Roger Ebert, reviewing V for Vendetta

Not the same tactics.  They've never had a Supreme Court that's not only stacked in their direction, but tied to a such an extreme literalist interpretation basis.  There's never been as much effort, I think, to indoctrinate.  Liberty University's stated goal is to build conservative leaders for the next generation...and do you realize they have 100,000 students?   It's not just old men, either;  DeSantis is 43.  They've got 3 Supreme Court justices under 60.  Boebert.  Greene.  OK, to a point these 2 might be the next Palin...loud, noisy, essentially meaningless in the long term, but they're SO extreme...and still got elected.  
 
Plus, we probably don't have the time to play through the cycle, even if it does change.  I don't think we're at the bottom yet...I'm more worried we're not close.  2022 isn't looking great for Congress, the Republicans will have largely completed their purge, and whether it's Trump, DeSantis, or someone else, every 2024 Republican Presidential candidate looks to be another disaster...WITH Congressional control.  How many environmental rollbacks will there be?  Everything suggests we can't avoid serious damage *now*...and we have to move forward quickly to mitigate things because any such measures will take a long time to work.  And as problems grow, societal pressures will do nothing but increase.  Progress becomes far harder when simply getting by becomes much more difficult.  
 
And we've never had the media that creates, then reinforces, polarization.  The reach has never been this great, this pervasive, this easy.
 
No, the collapse is not inevitable.

Progress has never been under attack from every direction simultaneously before.

Sure, but I'd just as soon not have to live through one of the numerous painful setbacks that occurs before the "inevitable" win.  DeSantis frightens me more than Trump.