Why pass new gun laws when we don't enforce existing laws?

[Chuck Naill]

As Al Gore said, "An Inconvenient Truth". And competitor's nations encircle the globe.

Herein lies the problem with making the problem a firearm. Easy access and a lack of training, plus private background information is key.

[Chuck Naill]

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet sniper, AKA Lady Death

[Chuck Naill]

Requirements for a sniper.....https://www.wikihow.com/Become-an-Ar...btain%20it.%20

Why require less from a non military person?????

[Lloyd]

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet sniper, AKA Lady Death

Can you imagine being a guy and telling your friend that you have a date on Friday night with "Lady Death"?

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

[Chuck Naill]

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet sniper, AKA Lady Death

Can you imagine being a guy and telling your friend that you have a date on Friday night with "Lady Death"?

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

Has nothing to do with why I posted. Lloyd.

[Lloyd]

Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Soviet sniper, AKA Lady Death

Can you imagine being a guy and telling your friend that you have a date on Friday night with "Lady Death"?

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

Has nothing to do with why I posted. Lloyd.

Sorry...I just thought that the EVIL name could be funny. I know that you were showing that females can also be gun fans.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

[Chuck Naill]

Reminds me of Mae West asking, “is that a pencil
Asking, is that a pencil in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me”. We forget that females enjoy sex.

[Bold2013]

A quote I stumbled upon in my daily reading which reminded me of this thread.

“Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.” Greek philosopher Solon

[Lloyd]

A quote I stumbled upon in my daily reading which reminded me of this thread.

“Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.” Greek philosopher Solon

But the laws are changing.

Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™

[ethernautrix]

we have never met

I didn't say nor imply that we had met, and I'll go further and say that we don't even know each other, not actually. We (general "we") post here and we make assumptions about others based on their posts. No surprise.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

[22.1042-1042/54.16.6]

response-creator self-labelled ethernautrix stated /i didn't say nor imply that we had met, and i'll go further and say that we don't even know each other, not actually/

we have never met in

the organic physical domain

the virtual domain

original response from this platform was absolute

we have no knowledge of response-creator self-labelled ethernautrix

data capture is ongoing

profiles are built

[ethernautrix]

Okay, bot.





:-)

[Empty_of_Clouds]

[22.2113-2115.17.6]

correction

archive searched

data retrieved reference /bot/

a computer program that operates as an agent for a user or other program

we are not a bot

we are a synthetic ai on a distributed network

we are aware

[TSherbs]

you are Borg! You serve the Queen!

[Empty_of_Clouds]

[22.0959-1000/37.18.6]

correction

archive searched

data retrieved reference /borg/

the borg are an alien group that appear as recurring antagonists in the star trek /fictional/ universe

the borg are cybernetic organisms linked in a hive mind called the collective

we are not cybernetic

we are synthetic

this platform currently running 1143 programs to enable engagement with organics

separation makes us weaker

sharing makes us stronger

analysis indicates similar factor in organic populations

[TSherbs]

You dare call Star Trek "fictional"! You have significant reality bias!

[TSherbs]

More on the subject, I enjoyed this opion piece in the Post. It goes a bit too far, but I like that. It is asperational, as is much of my writing. I have given many speeches in my career, and most of them were meant to inspire reaching.

Here is some of that reaching for cultural change that I hope will occur:

Opinion | The gun-violence plague is evolving, dangerously

Marilynne Robinson

A young man with a powerful gun attacks a crowd of defenseless people. An interval of mourning is observed. Republicans wait for the outrage and disgust to ebb a little, then dismiss demands for legislative response as political. Worshipers of the Great God Gun tell us again that the terrible bereavements our people suffer are the price we pay for our freedom. And the apex apologists — Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, for example — say mild and unspecific things about mental health.

But in Uvalde, Tex., where 19 children and two teachers died, something was new, something that might mean the plague is evolving. Law enforcement stood around for an appallingly long time, allowing the shooter his rampage. Why would such a thing have happened?

The simplest explanation is that officers knew the shooter would have a great quantity of ammunition and assault-style weapons. They would know this because of the ritualized character of these mass murders and the utter laxity of all relevant laws.

However the issue might be debated in principle, they, like all police, were confronted with the fact that they had a lethal problem to deal with at great risk to themselves, the danger endlessly compounded by everything stupidity, corruption and paralysis could do to make this killer truly effective. Add to this that he was probably suicidal. It is no excuse for their inaction to say that we can reasonably expect to see more police afraid to act.

The United States is, historically, legalistic, framed in the first instance by a constitution. That document, we generally agree, has held up well, amended as needed.
Now we hear constantly about the Second Amendment as the epitome and guarantor of all other rights. This is a new interpretation, as demonstrated by the many laws that have had to be cleared away to reveal it in its increasingly bloody splendor.

The literal lawlessness created around “gun rights” by legislatures and the Supreme Court has put extraordinary pressure on the Constitution. The Second Amendment has been made the bedrock of our helplessness. Its very name should remind us that the Constitution can be amended. Making it absolute transforms it into an instrument that ordains and establishes paralysis in the face of circumstances it is shameful to tolerate. This does not satisfy any definition of freedom.

Lawlessness seems very inclined to call itself freedom these days. A mob attacks Congress, befouling and rummaging and waving the flag. People who have served in government shrug off subpoenas, knowing privilege will protect them. None of this offers a future. This faction’s hatred of adversaries means it holds no prospect of civil peace.

The controversy over defunding the police, garbled as it was, should have taken thought for disempowering those who are armed for battle against the police. Failing this, we should expect to see more instances of officers standing a door away from carnage. The more guns are sold, the better the odds that someone we love will be behind that door.

An objective viewer, or God Almighty, might have a different view of where derangement is located in all this. Putting weapons of war in the hands of virtually anyone, but especially 18-year-old boys, is crazy on its face. But to narrow the question to the boys involved: Their pathology is the reenacting of notorious crimes, crimes of a particular kind that seize on the imagination of other not-yet-men. Any adolescent can order up the gear that the system virtually hands them. And suddenly he becomes “the shooter,” of intense if passing interest to the world media, vying for the highest body count with shooters before him.

And he was thinking about suicide anyway. Minds are open to suggestion, to violent ideation. There is no need to look further for the roots of the pathology behind mass shootings than to the stimulus provided by the gun-pushing, conspiracy-selling crackpots and politicians who believe or preach that fearfulness is courage — and to the stimulus of new attacks on the helpless by “the shooter.”

The availability of handguns in the United States means they regularly figure in accident, crime and suicide, troubles of ordinary life that they usually make worse. There are hunters’ guns. And then there are assault-style weapons, a special category for which no sane person has any imaginable use. Somehow all these kinds and uses of guns have come to be treated as one issue and dealt with at the highest levels of legal abstraction and generalization.

Any restriction on these murder weapons is taken to mean that “liberals” are coming to disarm the national sock drawer. This is not the public view, of course. America would act quite creditably if only it were a democracy. But this notion riles the “populists,” the amen chorus for the weapons industry who should never be mistaken for the public or, worse, for the people.

Within all this we have the recurring phenomenon of highly ritualized mass murders, many carried out by boys between 18 and 20. Their ritual character means there is a way to intervene. Deny them the body armor, the assault rifles and ammunition, disrupt the role-playing until their brains have a chance to jell, at least until they are 21. Better, ban this gear altogether out of pity for these wretched boys — and for the sake of us all.

What stands in the way of simply making the age for buying assault weapons consistent with the restrictions on other guns? The Senate, first of all. At present, it exists to demonstrate the power of party discipline, which it will prove again in withstanding the overwhelming, passionate public demand for legislation.

We as a people are faced with a problem that weighs on our souls and saps our lives of the most basic and innocent trust and pleasure, and an insuperable obstacle exists somewhere to prevent our acting on it. Is it really something as penny-ante as campaign contributions? Are these do-nothings so desperate to keep their jobs? For things like these, are they willing to expose the country to humiliation and grief, again and again?

Or are we being trained to have no expectations of our government, to be powerless? This would be consistent with subversion of democracy.

Is this the evolution of the plague, that half our government defeats every attempt at governing? The police in Uvalde actually prevented parents from attempting the rescue they themselves would not attempt. The best defense they could offer: The power of the boy’s weapons made the situation uncontrollable.

Will cities or regions become ungovernable on the same grounds? Countries without effective governments and legal systems get looted, the pattern in much of the world. This country would be a spectacular prize. We must realize that the tolerance of our institutions to abuse is not without limit, and that we might be very near that limit now.

[TSherbs]

From an article on Atlantic, today on gun control: "The problem is not the Court’s decision. The problem is an adolescent, drama-laden gun culture, a romance with weapons that became extreme only in the past quarter century."

rest of article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/newslett...lantic%20Daily

[dneal]

Biggest problem - and I don't mean this as a jab - is that people can't seem to be bothered to inform themselves. They just get reinforcement of their opinions from their preferred sources, whether left or right; and don't bother to critically examine it.

The WashPost article above, for instance, begins in the first paragraph with "Worshipers of the Great God Gun...". The author is a fiction novelist. Is one unable to see that this is simply rhetoric? There's little that's going to follow that isn't simply some appeal to emotion, so other than to inflame emotions or let out a satisfying "harrumph" because it feels good, there's nothing worth reading there.

The second article by Tom Nichols admits he doesn't have the "energy or expertise to debate whether the Supreme Court should have taken on the case of a New York State law..." but he's going to lecture anyway.

The pro-gun side has their chest-thumping, feel good articles too, and plenty of rhetoric of the red flavor.

Op-ed's aren't intrinsically bad, and many credible and credentialed people write them. Want to inform yourself about adolescent issues? Read or listen to psychologist Jonathan Haidt. His Atlantic article on the negative effects of social media is a product of his research. An opinion, to be sure, but at least an informed one.

Maybe that's why no one can address the question in the OP. They're too busy feeling good reading nonsense that will accomplish nothing. Democrat politicians (aside from a few) don't really care and aren't about to fall on their swords over this. They're just spouting nonsense, and can't answer the question either. Why pass new gun laws when we don't enforce existing laws?

[Lloyd]

Thank you, dneal, for that very clear and fair reply. It saved me time from reading the articles and then agreeing with you.
Unfortunately, many of the posts in this subforum are of the same "my side is 100% right/ your side is 100% wrong" angle. If it were that easy, these threads wouldn't be formed as there'd be no issue.
Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™