I guess you defend what you support and speak out against what you do not.
He is an arrogant prick and way too thin skinned, you rarely will see me jump to defend him as a person. Not everything he does is bad though.
Las Vegas shooting: 50 people killed in Mandalay Bay attack
- Thread starter sglowrider
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I guess you defend what you support and speak out against what you do not.
He is an arrogant prick and way too thin skinned, you rarely will see me jump to defend him as a person. Not everything he does is bad though.
I consider myself a firearms illiterate. So I'm one of these people who had no idea that suppressors are more about hearing protection than stealth. But, then, that goes to show you the power of Hollywood (even if it's something depicted just for dramatic effect).
I also came across an interesting column in the WaPo yesterday from a fellow firearms illiterate -- and 538 alum -- discussing not only this, but also some interesting things she's come across in researching gun violence and pondering policy solutions.
She, too, learned a little something:
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer.
Whatever kinds of policies we do adopt, we really need to make sure they're grounded in reality. If "silencers" were what they are in the movies, it would make sense to make them harder to get....and no sense to make them easier to get. But if the upshot is the preservation of somebody's hearing, well....hell, I come in contact with situations everyday where hearing protection isn't only easy to get, it's downright mandatory under OSHA regs.
One of the other things we hear a lot about is the background check loophole. Is there any reliable data on how much gun violence is perpetrated with weapons legally obtained without a background check?
I've thought that regulating ammunition similar to a prescription drug would help identify who is buying ammunition and the rate they are buying it. The weapon doesn't hurt anyone without amunition.
Someone could go to a law enforcement agency to request a permit for ammunition for weapons they can prove they own. It doesn't prevent someone from having multiple weapons that share the same ammunition. It does make you responsible for a weapon.
I am usually against registering all weapons (especially weapons for hunting). Despite being a gun owner and supporter of the second amendment, I could support in some fashion, the following:
1. Make it illegal to instruct, or sell devices to make a weapon an automatic firearm. Eliminating the hardware is not a concern. Possible censorship of the internet is my only conflict.
2. "Prescriptions" for buying ammunition that can be taken to any license ammunition dealer..
3. For #2, a weapon of the caliber the ammunition is being purchased must be registered with the police.
4. People buying ammunition will be reviewed to make sure no felons or people that can't lawfully possess a weapons live in the same household.
5. Ammunition purchase rates that exceeds "normal" personal use would require a deeper interview with the person requesting the ammunition. People associated with the individual would have to be identified.
None of these actions would 100% prevent an attack, but it could make it more punitive to help someone buy ammunition to commit a tragic act. The only way to stop an attack is to say something, raise concern, or hope the terrorist makes a mistake.
Someone could go to a law enforcement agency to request a permit for ammunition for weapons they can prove they own. It doesn't prevent someone from having multiple weapons that share the same ammunition. It does make you responsible for a weapon.
I am usually against registering all weapons (especially weapons for hunting). Despite being a gun owner and supporter of the second amendment, I could support in some fashion, the following:
1. Make it illegal to instruct, or sell devices to make a weapon an automatic firearm. Eliminating the hardware is not a concern. Possible censorship of the internet is my only conflict.
2. "Prescriptions" for buying ammunition that can be taken to any license ammunition dealer..
3. For #2, a weapon of the caliber the ammunition is being purchased must be registered with the police.
4. People buying ammunition will be reviewed to make sure no felons or people that can't lawfully possess a weapons live in the same household.
5. Ammunition purchase rates that exceeds "normal" personal use would require a deeper interview with the person requesting the ammunition. People associated with the individual would have to be identified.
None of these actions would 100% prevent an attack, but it could make it more punitive to help someone buy ammunition to commit a tragic act. The only way to stop an attack is to say something, raise concern, or hope the terrorist makes a mistake.
I guess I prefer bad policies over a prez causing a deeper divide between Repubs and Dems through hate speech. A president needs to quell hatred when displayed for another human race. Be open to peaceful dialogue when a portion of society is feeling something is being overlooked. Those are just common sense but many defend his actions as righteous instead of deplorable. It's become incredibly strange how the right has become zombies marching to whatever beat he throws down next.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
As I have observed Trump over the last few years I have seen a change in the man. He was a despicable man who was full of himself, but he has been humbled. He might not be as humble as you would like. Obviously he stands up for what he believes in and does it in a way that Presidents usually don't do by tweeting etc. But he has changed.
WTF?
There hasn't been a positive change in him and humble isn't a word for describing him.
Such as him saying "fire them sob's!"??? Is that doing as the lord asks? You lost all credibility when you tell me he embodies the christian philosophy in ANY way.
I can't even believe you can convince yourself of this. There is not a single humble bone in his body. If anything, the power has made him worse. The only change, from people that know him, is that his speaking ability and intellectual capacity seems diminished. Can you give specifics on on etime where you felt he showed any type of humbleness. The delusion here is quite strong.
(rolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllleyes)
He's actually gotten FAR more full of himself.
Heck, just yesterday, he made the ENTIRE Puerto Rico thing all about him.
Hahahahaha what? Give me one example of him showing humility. One.
The President of United States just referred to football players as sons of bitches simply because they knelt during the national anthem.
Wow, I thought you could not get any worse!
Trump getting humbler? Where in the Bible do I find the meaning of being humble? I really like to know. That will help me to stop my relatives bugging me for not going to church!
Yes, he stands for what he believes in, and that is the problem.
I don't have any problems with any of that. Of course, I'm not a gun owner, either (not yet, anyway). I also see no real good argument for the legality of high-capacity magazines. And, as the 538 statistician I linked earlier wrote:
Magazine limits were a little more promising (in terms of expected efficacy), but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless (not sure I buy the "meaningless" part...every millisecond counts).
We may as well discuss this. Was the Vegas perp a terrorist? I say no -- not unless we learn that he had a political, religious, or ideological motivation.
Trump doesn’t do things because he thinks they are good or bad. Trump does things that will benefit him in some way. If that means something good or bad happens to others as a result, meh, whatever. He is completely amoral.
Your ability to imagine & rationalize the unbelievable and what is also before your very own eyes is amazing. Your hypocrisy has no rival on this forum.
To me, a terrorist is anyone that plans an attack with the purpose to kill, injure and cause a maximum amount of disruption of life.
I don't place a distinction between a person like this, the London concert bombers, and the San Bernardino killers. The motives might be different, but the preparation and result are the same. He had some motivation to commit this act. It was too well planned to be a sick person that snapped. Like an ISIS terror attack, some warped and twisted idea spawned this. Just like Timothy McVeigh, this was a terrorist attack. One used a bomb and one used firearms.
McVeigh was clearly a terrorist -- he had a distinct political motive.
I think it's an important distinction. Maybe not to those who lose loved ones, I get that. But in a larger context, the distinction matters.
The point of terrorism is to alter the attitudes and, ultimately, the political behavior of those who *aren't* killed.....with the implication being that you either affect the desired change or else you and/or those you love might be next. It's employing fear to bring about otherwise unrelated change.
Maybe Paddock was doing that here. We don't know enough yet. But, if he wasn't and it's true that he just "snapped", then I wouldn't call him a terrorist.
Also, I don't think "snapping" necessarily implies something instantaneous or compulsive.
The worst part is they internally rationalize his actions as him just being anti-establishment. When you put it in that context, it adds a ribbon to his actions and makes them come across refreshing instead of absolutely insane.
What benefit did Trump become President to fulfill? From a business view, it was a bad move. He spent a lot of his own money, gave up income from his business for 4-8 years, and will leave office older and detached from the business he left.He will likely not return to the company he founded.
What income is he "giving up"?
The kids are still running everything and, if anything, they're bringing in MORE money than before.....especially with over-charging the Secret Service every weekend to stay at his properties while he golfs.
Good point. Trump stands no chance at profiting off being a president.
Have a seat lad. You see, Trump has quite the ego. He would've paid most all of his fortune to pet his ego by being president of the US of A. His tax cuts for the wealthy will come in quite handy when he leaves office. I'm pretty sure that $205k pension plan per year starting as soon as he leaves office (it'll be more by the time he does leave) will be enough to supplement these phantom losses you believe he will have incurred.....
Not to mention the money he is making by hosting foreign dignitaries at his hotels and golf courses.Good point. Trump stands no chance at profiting off being a president.
Have a seat lad. You see, Trump has quite the ego. He would've paid most all of his fortune to pet his ego by being president of the US of A. His tax cuts for the wealthy will come in quite handy when he leaves office. I'm pretty sure that $205k pension plan per year starting as soon as he leaves office (it'll be more by the time he does leave) will be enough to supplement these phantom losses you believe he will have incurred.....
You seriously don't think Trump is all about Trump? Where have you been for the last 25 years? And it has nothing to do with being a Republican or Democrat, because he's been both.
Oh my goodness. He did not divest as he was supposed to. His kids are running the shop and he will jump right back in. He is making a tremendous amount of money by pressuring heads of state and others, including SS to stay at his properties. You saw the raise of price in membership at Mar a Lago? Not to mention the multiple other corrupt ways he will profit from the presidency, just as he has profited off others his entire life. Ask his Trump U graduates.
He will probably donate the pension the same way he donates his salary. $205k to a billionaire isn't going to be a reason to give up millions x 4-8 years. Apart from the worth of his investments, he drew a salary from his company. He isn't getting that while he is in office.Good point. Trump stands no chance at profiting off being a president.
Have a seat lad. You see, Trump has quite the ego. He would've paid most all of his fortune to pet his ego by being president of the US of A. His tax cuts for the wealthy will come in quite handy when he leaves office. I'm pretty sure that $205k pension plan per year starting as soon as he leaves office (it'll be more by the time he does leave) will be enough to supplement these phantom losses you believe he will have incurred.....
You cannot possibly be this naïve.
Van and Bud can have a club and talk about this humble, unassuming president, whose only goal is to help this country. Trump has no interest in making more money off this presidency. At all. He has a long history of charity.
He's screwed over every charity he's promised to help for decades so please forgive me for not buying he's "donating his salary."
They're also saying his tax plan will save his family close to a billion......with a B.....dollars over the years.
So spare us the "He's sacrificing money" crapola.
Looks like he’s making money from his resorts and hotels with all the money the secret service and other government staff has had to spend at them. Didn’t the prices at his resorts skyrocket after he was elected? And let’s not forget the main reason he ran was to wreck everything Obama did because Obama made fun of him at the correspondents dinner. Not to mention all the attention he gets.
The company he founded? The one he’s bankrupted and few times and is now getting his money from Russian banks? Donnie Jr has openly admitted they get all the money they need from Russia.
Has anybody graduated from Trump U? I thought it was a scam all the way to practice what he would do as the future president of the USA!
I'm saying that when you alter a product making it different from what the manufacturer made in a way that effects it - like removing a saw guard - the one who altered it is liable, if anyone is and no action should prevail - or even get to trial - against the manufacturer.
Likewise, misuse. IF you try to use a chain saw to cut a piece out of your sidewalk and are injured in the doing, that's on you not on the manufacturer. Have you read the warning labels on hammers and hatchets/axes? Seem stupid, right? Those are there because some ambulance chaser has sued on the issue and the court found a warning should have been there.
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There is and has long been an enormous amount of misinformation - including not using correct terms/names - from the gun control/left. For example, there is no such thing as an "assault weapon" except in the text of the now extinct California code and in some proposed legislation. No matter what appliances are attached - forestock, pistol grip, sights, rails, if the weapon fires once per trigger pull, its exactly the same as grandpa's repeating rifle in its operation. The contrary - truth about firearms - is readily available, but you'll never see it in the left wing nor mainstream news.
EDIT 2nd reading of your article - mental health and anger at the core of vast majority of murders by firearms. Now if we think the outcry is likely to be near revolutionary in the face of some gun restriction measures, imagine the virtual hell that will break out if we require that the prescription of drugs and treatment by mental health providers require the name and social security number of such patients be added to the national data base that is the basis of current back ground checks and those identified there are refuse the purchase of a weapon.
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That's a good article. It highlights the fact that we too often support or oppose policy - especially on hot button issues - primarily based on optics and emotion, instead of on any evidence they'll accomplish anything. To me, the most obvious two issues we do this to are guns and abortion. Gun control advocates are focused on restricting gun ownership, when they should be focused on reducing gun violence. Abortion opponents are focused on restricting access to legal abortion, when they should be focused on reducing the demand for abortion generally. They focus on certain policies, and skip over the point where they examine whether or not those policies would actually move us closer to any tangible goal.
That said, I'm okay with restrictions that only offer very mild benefits, if those restrictions are themselves not particularly onerous or objectionable. That's why I'd be okay with banning bump-stocks. Sure, the number of lives actually saved may be minuscule, but as I see no legitimate benefit to a gun owner from owning a bump-stock, even a small benefit is worth the restriction.
Still, the big picture remains this: we can talk about gun control all we want, but if we really want to make a large dent in the level of gun violence in this country, we're almost certainly looking in the wrong direction. Mental health, inner city poverty, the war on drugs, domestic violence...these are all issues that are not directly related to gun restrictions, but actually trying to tackle them would probably do more to combat violence than any gun control legislation.
We might have a better debate if Republicans would allow federal funding for research into gun violence:
But one reason the positions are so intractable is that no one really knows what works to prevent gun deaths. Gun-control research in the United States essentially came to a standstill in 1996.
After 21 years, the science is stale.
“In the area of what works to prevent shootings, we know almost nothing,” Mark Rosenberg, who, in the mid-1990s, led the CDC's gun-violence research efforts, said shortly after the San Bernardino shooting in 2015.
In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association accused the CDC of promoting gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research — which had a chilling effect far beyond the agency, drying up money for almost all public health studies of the issue nationwide.
. . . That hasn't stopped the rallying cry for “common-sense gun control.” But, as Rosenberg pointed out, we don't know what that looks like. Maybe background checks are not the answer. Maybe allowing guns on college campuses makes those places safer. Maybe there is a way to stop a single gunman from killing and wounding hundreds of people at a concert in Las Vegas.
But, many advocates say, it's impossible to have an honest debate about preventing gun violence when we can't study the issue.
Everyone agrees the Las Vegas shooting was a tragedy. But no one knows what might work to prevent the next one.
“If we get better data, we could get a lot of traction on this,” said Jennifer Doleac, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, who has used gunfire-detection technology deployed in many cities to study how often guns are fired. “It's just so political.”
And this is defended with the spurious argument that a different agency ought to do the research that Republicans won't allow to be done at all.After 21 years, the science is stale.
“In the area of what works to prevent shootings, we know almost nothing,” Mark Rosenberg, who, in the mid-1990s, led the CDC's gun-violence research efforts, said shortly after the San Bernardino shooting in 2015.
In 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unless it stopped funding research into firearm injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association accused the CDC of promoting gun control. As a result, the CDC stopped funding gun-control research — which had a chilling effect far beyond the agency, drying up money for almost all public health studies of the issue nationwide.
. . . That hasn't stopped the rallying cry for “common-sense gun control.” But, as Rosenberg pointed out, we don't know what that looks like. Maybe background checks are not the answer. Maybe allowing guns on college campuses makes those places safer. Maybe there is a way to stop a single gunman from killing and wounding hundreds of people at a concert in Las Vegas.
But, many advocates say, it's impossible to have an honest debate about preventing gun violence when we can't study the issue.
Everyone agrees the Las Vegas shooting was a tragedy. But no one knows what might work to prevent the next one.
“If we get better data, we could get a lot of traction on this,” said Jennifer Doleac, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, who has used gunfire-detection technology deployed in many cities to study how often guns are fired. “It's just so political.”
