Uvalde - the followup
- Thread starter Shiftless2
- Start date
I still agree with voting blue, but gun control laws clearly are not a solution to violence, and actually make it worse.
Since school shootings are almost always suicidal, the problem is actually one of mental health, and that society is vastly too stressful and hostile.
There is way too much emphasis on competition.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Funny that if you look north of the border to Canada there have been comparatively few school shootings. Or mass shootings of any kind.
List of school shootings in Canada - Wikipedia
As for mass shootings
List of mass shootings in Canada - Wikipedia
That said, I'd really like to know how you conclude that gun control laws make violence worse.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
A teenager stood before a massive Washington D.C. crowd and stopped talking. The Emma Gonzalez speech didn’t end. The microphone remained live.
It was March 24, 2018. Thirty-nine days earlier, a nineteen-year-old gunman walked into Building 12 of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He carried a legally purchased Smith & Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic rifle in a black canvas bag. He entered the east stairwell at 2:21 in the afternoon. He pulled the fire alarm.
When students stepped out of their classrooms into the hallway, he raised the rifle. He fired one hundred and thirty-nine rounds.
He shot through the glass windows of classroom doors. He fired down the length of the corridor. He killed seventeen people. He wounded seventeen more.
From the moment the first shot echoed in the first-floor hallway to the moment the shooter dropped his weapon in the third-floor stairwell and blended in with the fleeing students, exactly six minutes and twenty seconds passed.
Since the 1999 Columbine shooting, mass school shootings had become a normalized rhythm in American life. The legislative response was almost always identical: thoughts, prayers, and gridlock.
Now, thirty-nine days after the massacre, a crowd of eight hundred thousand people stood shoulder to shoulder on Pennsylvania Avenue. They had come to hear the Parkland shooting survivors at the March for Our Lives rally. It was one of the largest youth-led protests in American history. The crowd expected demands for legislation. They expected policy proposals. They expected anger.
Gonzalez walked to the podium wearing a military-green jacket. The right sleeve was sewn with patches: a Cuban flag, a peace sign, a patch that read "We Call B.S." They pulled a folded piece of paper from their pocket.
They leaned into the microphone and began by reading the names of the dead. They didn’t just read the names; they read the mundane, ordinary things those people would never do again because of a bullet.
Carmen Schentrup would never complain about piano practice.
Aaron Feis would never call Kyra "sweet pea."
Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan.
Meadow Pollack would never smile in the hallways.
Luke Hoyer would never.
Cara Loughran would never.
Martin Duque would never.
The list took less than two minutes to read.
Then, Gonzalez stopped speaking. They looked out at the sea of people stretching down toward the Capitol building. They pressed their lips together. They closed their eyes for a second, then opened them. They just stood there.
The timer on the podium kept running.
At the time, federal broadcasting guidelines and network algorithms were built on a single, rigid premise: dead air is a failure. Television anchors are trained to step in and fill silence within three seconds to prevent viewers from changing the channel. Silence on television signals a lost satellite feed or a broken microphone. When the silence on the National Mall passed the two-minute mark, network control rooms faced a technical contradiction. They were broadcasting live to millions of American homes, transmitting nothing but the sound of .....
CONTINUED with comments
Shiftless2
Well-known member
When were such hypocrites ever entitled to the "pro-life" claim?
Regarding women's reproductive rights, they are not "pro-life", they're anti-choice.
And if such persons deny this, it demonstrates their shame, by denying their own hypocrisy.
Funny that if you look north of the border to Canada there have been comparatively few school shootings. Or mass shootings of any kind.
List of school shootings in Canada - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
As for mass shootings
List of mass shootings in Canada - Wikipedia
That said, I'd really like to know how you conclude that gun control laws make violence worse.
The fact you have to get a gun permit in Canada is not a restriction at all.
What makes gun violence worse is stress, and Canada has less stress because it has public health care.
In the US, the police, the federal agents, etc., constantly violate rights, like with Prohibition, the War on Drugs, illegal drafts for illegal wars, vax mandates, etc.
Gun control laws in the US are used to murder innocent people, like at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
There are no "military style assault rifles" sold to ordinary people in the US.
An assault rifle is full auto, and the AR-15 is single shot and is entirely different internally.
In fact, the AR-15 has such a weak bullet that it is not legal to use for deer hunting in many states.
The biggest danger to any republic is when it is the central government that gains a monopoly on the use of force.
What we need to worry about is the government.
The police murder over 1000 people a year, and the US military murdered over 10k per year.
When the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are prosecuted, only then would I want the government to be armed again.
Gun control should start with disarming the government.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
On that topic it's interesting that Soldier of Fortune magazine did publish an article that told how to convert that semi-automatic rifle to full auto in a few minutes.