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lol American’s calling for Piers to be deported. 
Funny how Amendment Rights only apply when you want them to apply. Fucking dumbass hypocrites.
I’m relatively neutral on this issue, but neither of the people in that video did their sides much justice.
In fact, I think the video above perfectly demonstrates why gun control debates never lead anywhere. Both sides of the argument are reasonably complex (at least complex enough to not be properly covered in a 5-minute news slot), the significance of individual statistics or the relevance of extrapolating from a single event is rarely discussed, and the amount of emotional energy that charges the debate means that nearly every discussion devolves into an *ad hominem *slanging match.
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund taking on Rockefeller:
http://cbldf.org/2012/12/evidence-does-not-support-link-between-video-games-and-violent-crime/
Also, a town in Connecticut that’s near to Newtown, Southington, is starting a drive to collect and burn violent media.
http://cbldf.org/2013/01/video-games-to-be-destroyed-in-connecticut-town/
This article contains two great things: the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the motherfucking truth.
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i don’t know if any of you saw this last night, but it was pretty insane.
I dunno do violent video games make people violent? I mean its part of the culture in america that glorifies killing and slaughter. Video games are just an entertainment medium with which memes can be spread, just like books or movies. And many entertainment mediums praise the warrior hero who slaughters the “bad guy”, who is dehumanized and demonized. Cuz I know I love it when we pwn terrorists. Perhaps the violent video games don’t cause people to kill, but it makes us subconsciously look to violence as the best solution to problems.
Or do they sublimate an instinct that’s already in there and has been since the dawn of the species?
You mean the lizard part of our brain? Yes, but that evolved because as humans, we had to have a xenophobic “us vs them” mentality. That’s why all the ancient mythology, bible included, praised the warrior who slaughtered the enemy. probably also why the ancient gods demanded blood. However, the environmental factors that made us evolve into what we are today don’t really exist anymore, so memes that promote killing should be questioned. I’m obviously a hypocrite cause I love killing terrorists, but I know why it is that I do so. We’re a product of our culture, and our culture says violence is beautiful.
BTW I agree with your point that just because people can still kill with knives, does not mean we shouldn’t severely limit access to guns in america. Its a good conversation to have.
This. The problem is that because games are interactive, people seem to think that they are somehow training kids (because adults never play games, ofc) to kill. It’s an argument that does hold a little weight because having to enact a gruesome murder on a screen is more damaging than watching one done on a screen but at the same time watching a graphic slasher film will probably be worse than playing, say, COD or BF3.
It’s a bit of a cliché, but the whole ‘violence is a last resort’ thing really should be more visible in games and other media, IMO, or at least violence used to make a point. Instead, we’re stuck with games that try to outsell each other by making more things go boom and more people go splat. It’s little wonder that non-gamers sometimes view gamers as borderline psychotic budding murderers (especially when games like Manhunt 2 are released and rely solely on the shock value of being the most extremely violent game to date), however wrong that assumption may be.
I would go on, but this is a gaming forum so I’m sure you’ve all heard the arguments before.
I think this would require a visible correlation between consumption of media and propensity toward violence. I doubt this is the case, or even that such a thing could be demonstrated.
Perhaps instead of trying to purge violence from media, we should be focusing on how to react to violence responsibly. Even if we were to stop glorifying violence as a solution to conflicts in our games and storytelling, we’re still going to have our most abundant source of violent depictions: the news media.
Yeah the issue here is all these entertainment mediums glorifying the killing. If you took that away, then maybe, just maybe people wouldn’t have such an issue with stricter gun control. I like good vs evil stories as much as anyone else, but as I get older I enjoy the more morally ambiguous ones, because that’s a more accurate reflection of real life. in the real world, there are rarely bad guys. even the religious nutjobs think they are doing good, not evil. they just got brainwashed.
It blew my mind, I was speechless I could have throttled him :annoy:
The Daily Show on Tuesday did a good segment on the gun debate or rather lack of.
Linky?
WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH AMERICAN PSYCHO?
THERE IS ONE FUCKING THING YOU DON’T DO, LOBBYISTS, AND THAT’S FUCK WITH MY TRANGRESSIONAL FICTION NOVELLAS WITH SATIRICAL ALLEGORY ON CONSUMERISM.
Who the fuck nocks American Psycho in this day and age?
Bunch of amateurs
It’s comedy, but even the beginning kind of makes me sick. On the other hand, video games as a source of the kind of violence we see… Laughing the goons out of the room is well appropriate. Corpse Raper is not believeable, 'mericans are too icky with regard to sexythings. The murderparts are OK.
A lunatic database sounds scary. Though I think the CIA or their pals could probably whip one up from a subset of their data real snappily.
…s<eiodhgwe9ioautjge0riaoutgar+ws (<reaction @ sin problem)
Okay. I guess why the control side people think the pro-gun folks are freaks.
Gun only available at shooting ranges means guns stored at shooting ranges. Lots of guns in one place makes for stuff easily stolen - a couple Scandinavian army bunkers were recently raided from guns. Goddamn. Freaking. ARMY.
Glorifying guns? Whatever. But it’s a decent idea. There’s a few, not-authoritarian-up-the-ass solutions that help, and one of the hands down best ones is just trying to influence the gun culture. I don’t mean laws here, but talking to people. Here in Finland, for example, the gun culture emphasizes safety and responsibility because hey, that’s the proper thing to do. (A licenced gun owner is only half as likely to commit violent crime as your average Finn.) We’ve a goddamn huge bunch of guns per capita, a staggering portion of them illegal or otherwise unaccounted for.
But it’s not a problem because of the culture of responsibility. The law is just a “Do this, or else” guide on how to act, with a followup of “horrible things happen to you”. It does not, can not, and will not dictate people’s morals. Trying to coerce people into acting the way you want by way of authoritarian legislation while calling them freaks or evil or whatnot, in short, doesn’t help. Talking to them and promoting a good gun culture, however, changes attitudes. It’s what can create that “Nope, I shouldn’t do that” switch in people’s head, which is what is really needed.
Stewart’s stuff doesn’t help, really. I mean, yeah, comedy. But if you want to make an actual point and get some change done in any way other than forcing it down the throats of unwilling people by decree of law, it’s the height of counterproductivity. It helps advance Camp A vs. Camp B thinking, which is a thinking pattern that typically divorces a discussion from issues and turns it into a contest of winning over the other camp and makes it personal. In other words, turns it into politics. Given the blazing success of the American two-party system on this front, I’m not entirely surprised.
Furthermore, I’m amused by how they always talk about GUN violence. [hypothetical scenario] Like, fuck it, let’s ban guns, now we have a bunch of severely unhappy (previously quite happy) gun enthusiasts, and just about every gun-related murder was replaced by a stabbing. SUCCESS! Because I care so, so much whether I die from a gunshot or a stab wound.[/scenario]
Wait. No. No I don’t. I’m dead as a fucking doornail. Which is why looking strictly at gun-related violence is nothing but a convenient trick to convince people. A claim that is, at surface level, correct but doesn’t actually mean shit. Reducing violence as a whole should be the goal, not shuffling it around elsewhere because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
Back to the program, on the theater example: Another theater, another gunman, he shot at another peaceful moviegoer and was promptly nailed by an off-duty law enforcement woman. One shot, one wounded innocent, dead perp. Might’ve been a bit different had no one been armed. These kinds of cases of course rarely make it into national news. For some reason. Probably because of a low death toll and lack of heroic sacrifice, I guess. Plus, dammit, guns aren’t evil bloodthirst-radiating demons?
Guns being the last resort against tyranny is very much a correct statement. It seems paranoid, sure. Not going to disagree with that. But what if you went to pre-Nazi period Europe and told them there will soon be a dictator in Germany who’s mustachioed, professes hate against the Jews and tries to take over the continent? Exactly. As with surveillance and censorship laws and the accompanying systems and whatnot, they seem benevolent at least in intent during peacetime, but are all too easily usurped into something heinous with a simple regime change. The best solution is thus not letting those systems be established if you can help it in the first place.
There’s one surprisingly good point in LaPierre’s interview: Desperation breeds extremism. You know what makes people desperate? The feeling of being driven into a corner with no options whether real or imagined. What creates that in modern-day murrica? The increasing authoritarianism forcing people to conform - the religious nuts want others to live just like them, but the “liberals” are just the same. The stuff they disapprove is just different. In the end the average Liberal Larry desires for other people the freedom to be just like Larry himself, not what the others want themselves to be. Larry is just pretty good at telling himself he isn’t like that.
On top of all that social hoopla comes all the business-related regulatory red tape that, while well-intentioned, just helps the big companies at the expense of the small ones. The big corps can handle the strain, the smallest market actors snap under it.
The result? People want more laws to tear at the big players. Laws the big players can sustain and that further hurt the small guy. If they don’t initially, who has the legislatory power in America? Thought so.
^That’s why I liked his comedic point about how the media has played it’s role in all this, they invented the bogeyman.
Ok so I watched the new Les Miserables last week and it got me thinking. Basically the movie takes place during a very tumultuous time in French history where the people were starting to rebel once again against the monarchy/government. The movie ends with basically a student revolt, with armed citizens fighting the police/government in the name of a freer, more just France (yes this is all gross simplification).
In the scene I found noteworthy, the students are behind a barricade, getting ready to stand off against the troops come to stamp out their little revolution. At this point in history the firearms are of the musket variety - you get one shot, then spend 2-3 minutes reloading, etc. So things seem to be going okay, since the soldiers on the other side have to use muskets too. Except then the soldiers roll in the cannons. And suddenly a musket ain’t looking so hot. The cannons make short work of the barricades, and all the citizens are basically slaughtered. It didn’t matter how many muskets the citizens had - the government had fucking cannons.
That made me think of our current pitiful American landscape. The most common (and really downright treasonous/terrorist when you think about it) rationale for NRA and 2nd Amendment supporters is that the people must have guns to protect itself from the goverment, in case the government goes bad, tries to take away their freedom, etc. “It’s my duty as an american to own a gun so I can keep watch over our government” etc. Yet it’s these morons running around driving up gun and ammo prices because they think DEA is going to start knocking down doors confiscating handguns (yes, I have seen people who actually think this) who are the ones that are the biggest military supporters, they are the ones who send people into office who never vote against any defense spending. Who pump up defense spending and military contracting to OBSCENE levels, who make sure no weapon, tank, aircraft, etc goes out of stock…basically the same people who want their guns to protect from a tyrannical government are the same people giving that government a blank check to make and buy every weapon of mass destruction ever dreamed up by man!
I mean, I don’t care how many bushmasters you got stocked in your basement - do you really think any of your weapons have a chance against the current US arsenal? Against fucking tanks and bunker busters and tomahawk missiles and stealth bombers, unmanned drones, oh yeah, and fucking unmanned robots with recoil-less shotguns? Yeah buddy, YOU created all that, YOU keep it going, and now you want to talk about how your glock is gonna stand watch over Uncle Sam?
If these NRA and teabagger simpletons actually had any principles, they would be the most anti-defense department people in the country.
It’s too bad that they fall apart under scrutiny.
In many of these cases
- The person with the CCW permit was a current or former police officer, an armed security guard, or a member of the military.
- The shooter had run out of ammunition.
- The shooter did not plan to kill anymore people.
There are also lots of cases where people tried to intervene and things went horribly wrong, but you don’t hear about that either. People who own guns are robbed, murdered, and have their houses broken into all the time. Gun control doesn’t necessarily prevent crime, but having guns doesn’t necessarily stop it, either.
What if people could have forseen what would happen under the Bush Administration? What if they could have forseen what would happen after Franz Ferdinand was assassinated? That’s why it’s what if and not reality. Hindsight is 20/20.
Since you brought it up, though, it’s a simple answer. They just wouldn’t have voted for him. No guns would have been necessary. Hitler did not come to power by taking away guns. He came to power by manipulating people and playing on their fears. Guns were legal under Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Idi Amin.
Guns didn’t stop Abraham Lincoln from declaring martial law and suspending Habeus Corpus. They didn’t stop Franklin Roosevelt from interning Japanese Americans. They haven’t stopped the US government from eroding civil liberties for the last 30-40 years including passing laws like the Patriot Act and the NDAA. They haven’t stopped the US government from catering to the richest of the rich at the expense of the rest of the country.
Tyrants and dictators don’t come to power by taking away guns. They come to power and stay in power by keeping people uneducated, uninformed, ignorant, afraid, poor, sick, demoralized, and pessimistic. They are more than happy to let the populace have their guns because it gives them a false sense of security and keeps their minds off of what’s really going on. Just look at America. The people here won’t admit it, but they are just as controlled, regulated, and manipulated as anyone else, if not more so. They fall for it time and time again because they think that their guns give them super powers.
“You homo sapiens and your guns!” - Magneto