Political Discussion

Indymisanthrope said:
If you want a fascinating/terrifying insight into what the gun people think, go find the forum Chuck is a mod for and read the thread about the Nashville shooting. One of the posters there is married to a school admin who wasn’t at work that day but he’s positive that if she had been, she’d be dead today. He’s clearly struggling with this. To be honest, it seems like several of the guys there are. And they’re soooo close to drawing some reasonable conclusions about what to do, but invariably it takes a hard left turn and they’ll end up wondering how they can convince their church congregation to let them wear an AR during Sunday worship without freaking them out (not an exaggeration). Chuck was right: we inhabit completely different realities.
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I knew Chuck left, but didn’t realize he was a mod for another forum.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Always was, I think. He mentioned it a few times in his early days on the last forum. I would go check it out occasionally when he would mention that he thought we were mischaracterizing gun owners here.
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the tragedy of gun owners is the same tragedy of christians in america: the obnoxious nutjobs have taken over. they're not the overwhelming majority, but the sane quiet ones just....go along with it. the mentality is pervasive. I have a friend who runs a gun range, I've sat him down and asked him to tell me about clients. A lot careful shooters, but just as many careless assholes. Florida's new permitless concealed carry law is fucking insane.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Right now there's a lot of discussion over there about arming teachers...again.

And that's something I've just never understood. Am I the only person who had a slightly unhinged PE teacher with rage issues, or a science teacher with a personal life in shambles who seemed like he was perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown? You start putting guns in teachers' hands and I guarantee it would be less than a year before one of them lost their shit and shot a student for misbehaving.
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This idea that the way to make guns safe is for there to be more guns in more people’s hands is baffling.
 
Here's the thing about arming teachers:

For one, you have to train them all. How much does it cost, and who pays for it? Do you bump teacher pay because they have more qualifications now?

Conservatives already whine and moan about school budgets, overpaid teachers, etc. They won't even fund necessary supplies! Ask your teacher friends how much they spend from their own money on supplies - not extras, but stuff kids NEED. Ask them how many hours a week they ACTUALLY work. Ask how stressed they are already.

Now add in a gun-proficiency requirement. Many law enforcement officers aren't even proficient in handling arms well. Look at Uvalde police and their own FEAR of long arms:

"In previously unreleased interviews, police who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting told investigators they were cowed by the shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour."

Who supplies the guns for teachers, and pays for them? I suspect the NRA would come up with money for THAT.

Do the teachers get Kevlar vests? Do we WANT a military state?

There are so many parts of that idea that nobody seems to talk about, just throw out "arm teachers!" like a word grenade and step away, waiting for the explosion.

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For the record, I am not anti-gun, I am pro-gun education and safety. They should show kids what a bullet does to a body, in graphic photos and videos. Let them understand how fucked up it is to be shot or to shoot someone. Let them see interviews with people who lost loved ones to gun violence. The language being used isn't helping the gun control side. "Assault weapon" is any weapon used in an assault. AR-15's just look scary, any semi-automatic rifle or handgun can have the same effect. Look at a Remington 750. Add a 10 round magazine.

The problem as I see it is large capacity magazines, not how a gun looks. Not calling it "assault weapon." The things that make it deadlier to more victims, not its color or style. Add to that the wacky American mindset that you use a deadly weapon to solve problems. Is that was sets us apart from other countries, aside from ease of access?

I'm happy to talk about guns and learn more. I am not a gun owner. I did qualify expert with a service revolver at ROTC training camp during college. I have shot .22 rifle and shotgun. I am not afraid of guns. I'm not your typical American, as the Goats sang.

The words I hang on in the 2A are well-regulated.
 
The arming everyone idea never made much sense to me. The shooter will always have the element of surprise. A guy walked into a bank yesterday, assumingly with an armed guard, present, and killed 5 co-workers. He wounded 2 police officers. You could've armed everyone in that bank and he still would've killed someone. The problem is every angry person can inflict as much damage as possible in a short time because we simply won't make it harder for them to have to wait to get these tools of destruction. "But they'll just use cars or knives or bats, you going to ban those too". Well let's compare how many is specifically used to kill people in these type of mass killing events and what the normal use of those tools is for. It's not to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Right now there's a lot of discussion over there about arming teachers...again.

And that's something I've just never understood. Am I the only person who had a slightly unhinged PE teacher with rage issues, or a science teacher with a personal life in shambles who seemed like he was perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown? You start putting guns in teachers' hands and I guarantee it would be less than a year before one of them lost their shit and shot a student for misbehaving.
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My step-sister is a teacher, she has zero interest in being armed. I agree with the earlier points about teachers already having so much on their plates...add in training and safety classes? All of a sudden they are working 6 day weeks or longer days. It's not seemingly feasible and it's not the answer in my opinion. Plus, and I'm not trying to be funny - what if after all the training, they are a terrible shot and kill a bystander or student or cop?

On Sunday she told me that during the week a five year old student said to her "I'm going to kill you!" and she was required to call the police. What happens if she's armed? "Just try it buddy!" and brandish a weapon? It just strikes me as all around bad bad bad.
 
The GOP is continues it's assault on abortion rights in red states.

In Iowa, the state policy to cover the costs of abortion and morning-after pills is on hold while the Republican Attorney General reviews whether this policy is legal within the state of Iowa.

In Idaho, it is now a crime punishable by 5 years in prison to help pregnant minors cross state lines to obtain an abortion.

And to top it all off, there is a bill in South Carolina that would categorize abortion the same as homicide making it punishable by the death penalty.

This is what Time has to say about all this:

Now, hear me out. A lot of my liberal friends predictably will retort that this is all part of some scary, hate-filled agenda meant to oppress non-white, female, and marginalized communities. My conservative pals will say these are simply efforts to roll back government’s reach. Both can be true, but if you get down to the realpolitik of the situation, this polarized agenda is merely the logical conclusion of what happens when the party in power looks around and sees there’s no one there to stop them from drawing legislative districts however they please. The extreme gerrymandering that results means red states get redder legislatures—and, to be fair, blue states turn deeper blue; there are just fewer of them—and the resulting policies move to the extremes with few consequences.
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Lee Newman said:
I read about half the time article. My takeaway is gerrymandering needs to be stopped. Voting districts should basically match geographic boundaries. If a city has more than one representative, straight lines to divy up the area.
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That’s creates a serious democratic deficit though if there’s a greater population in one of the areas than the other.

The alternative could be to have a larger area that has multiple seats and have the vote based on PR.
 
Joe Mac said:
That’s creates a serious democratic deficit though if there’s a greater population in one of the areas than the other.

The alternative could be to have a larger area that has multiple seats and have the vote based on PR.
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That’s how we got here. That was what it was originally about and then eventually became what it is now, the party in office draws the lines to their benefit.
 
Lee Newman said:
That’s how we got here. That was what it was originally about and then eventually became what it is now, the party in office draws the lines to their benefit.
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I don’t doubt it. Geographic boundaries do tend to even further enfranchise the rich and conservative though because they give the vote in areas with a more dense population less significance.

Larger districts with multiple seats and proportional representation through the single transferable vote is generally the most fair option. That and independent boundary commissions.
 
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