Parkland Florida School Shooting

[Peally]

Different dynamics tend to come into play during armed conflicts

Like the damned French

[Joe in PNG]

Like the damned French

Or Spanish.

[blues]

Like the damned French

Or Spanish.

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre

[critter]

Or Spanish.

Or any other revolution (that I studied anyway). It's exceedingly rare to get a 'Washington' who turns down the proffered crown. More common to get purge after purge after purge followed by a 'Napoleon' (or worse).

Regardless of current or recent French popularity, it's unlikely we'd be having this discussion outside the realm of the Crown were it not for their assistance back in the day. They've forgotten who they are... maybe if we send that statue back... nah.. too little too late.

[Trukinjp13]

This dude knew.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[blues]

This dude knew.

Sorry...

[Zincwarrior]

Like the damned French

You can have my New Orleans beignet when you or it from my cold dead hands!

[Totem Polar]

@critter: Faurxism?

@blues: I have no rebuttal; I yield the floor on the subject, kind sir.


Also @blues

The thought hadn't escaped me. (Though there's the question of where the government's armed personnel end up in the fray.)

I dunno. I try not to muse aloud on the subject, despite my own Carlinistic (Dan Carlin) tendencies.

I will say that I’ve read that both Romney and Trump carried 70 percent of the .mil vote, and I don’t think it’s because either one had killer hair.

[OlongJohnson]

This conversation has been a bit different than others we've had here, I think because some of us are really trying to think of ways that additional regulation or better application of the regulations we have could help with the problem. That is admirable.

But for me, the logic of the debate has not shifted. The pros and cons, the meaning and the objectives have not changed since Las Vegas, or even Newtown. Just the name of the "good crisis."

Everyone here can agree that even if we put ever-stricter gun control in place, evil will bide its time and jump through the many hoops like the asshole in Norway (where laws are similar to Australia) and the asshole in Santa Barbara (CA- 'nuff said), or it will go under it, like in Chicago and Washington, D.C. and the underworld of Paris, or it will go around it and use trucks or knives or bombs. Evil is resourceful and patient (indeed, the weeks/months/years of anticipation and planning are likely more pleasurable than the actual act), and it hides in plain sight in any society sufficiently free for any of us to want to be a part of it.

We do need to work on improving families. We do need to work on more effectively using the tools that our existing regulations give us.

It's a perverse reality that those playing defense, if they seek to be heard at all by those not already in the choir, seem to be constrained to rational debate about whether or not the current gun control proposal on the table will actually produce the results that are argued in its favor. That entire conversation, though we must be prepared to have it and win it, is in reality a diversion and a charade from the real goals of those making proposals.

The push for more gun control remains what it revealed itself to be in CA when Los Angeles banned middle-aged, economically stable, responsible, law abiding people from continuing to lawfully possess property after more than 15 years of telling them they could continue to possess it until their deaths. The push for more gun control is what it revealed itself to be when the whole state jumped the shark into downtown crazytown in 2016, making that confiscation apply statewide (currently stayed by the court), and a whole lot of other nonsense.

The push for more gun control is nothing more or less than a weapon in the war on a culture that has different ideas about the nature of the individual and the relationship of the individual to the government. I have realized in debate with one of my oldest friends that those ideas are fundamental to one's idea of self and of humanity, held instinctually at a gut level. They are extraordinarily difficult to change, and it is extraordinarily difficult even for two people who know and care about each other to not talk past each other when on opposite sides of an issue determined by those ideas. As long as gun control is perceived to be productive in that war, the calls for it will never stop. It has nothing to do with guns, nothing to do with actually reducing violence, nothing to do with actually solving problems and healing ourselves, and everything to do with control.

Sadly, the pro-2A people who have made the connection and speak publicly about gun control as a cultural attack seem to have a counterproductive (as has been pointed out here) habit of bundling pro-2A philosophy with other political and religious identities and wrapping themselves in a flag of tribalism, which makes them unable to be heard by the people in the middle who might be swayed by effective reasoning.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Love the paragraph starting with "Sadly" at the end. Excellent point.