Another day, another school shooting

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Another day, another school shooting

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 18, 2018 10:02 pm

This time in Houston.

My first reaction was to be glad that I didn't get stuck in Houston traffic, seeing as I went there a week ago. This demonstrates both what a terrible person I am and how common this shit is.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat May 19, 2018 2:16 am

In before the left calls for gun control, the Parkland Kids hold a big rally featuring Beyonce, and the right says something along the lines of "Now's not the time to talk about this. Anyway, instead of doing anything about guns, let's pin the blame on the autistic".

sigh
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby blehblah » Sat May 19, 2018 8:53 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:In before the left calls for gun control, the Parkland Kids hold a big rally featuring Beyonce, and the right says something along the lines of "Now's not the time to talk about this. Anyway, instead of doing anything about guns, let's pin the blame on the autistic".

sigh


I'm sure it'll all work-out, like how seatbelts miraculously appeared in cars. Maybe someone can publish "Guns: Unsafe at Any Speed". That could lead to groups of gun owners and manufacturers recognizing the need for education, creating governing bodies which advocate for regulations which could help bring the death-toll down, and...

... whatever. Money wins.

Say, now that some traditional gun manufacturers are experiencing tough times, where is the NRA getting their money? Do they publish a balance sheet? I mean, Ted Nugent hasn't really brought home the bacon in a long while, so where does their political power come from?
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby mancityfooty » Sat May 19, 2018 10:54 pm

Ollie North.
where have you been?
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Crimson847 » Sun May 20, 2018 4:09 am

blehblah wrote:I'm sure it'll all work-out, like how seatbelts miraculously appeared in cars. Maybe someone can publish "Guns: Unsafe at Any Speed". That could lead to groups of gun owners and manufacturers recognizing the need for education, creating governing bodies which advocate for regulations which could help bring the death-toll down, and...

... whatever. Money wins.

Say, now that some traditional gun manufacturers are experiencing tough times, where is the NRA getting their money? Do they publish a balance sheet? I mean, Ted Nugent hasn't really brought home the bacon in a long while, so where does their political power come from?


...From their six million members and vast network of supporters. Same place most of their lobbying money comes from:

Donations in the 2014 election cycle were up by more than 50% compared to the prior two years, and nearly doubled from a decade ago.

"Americans look to the NRA to defend their constitutional right to self protection," NRA spokesperson Jennifer Baker told CNNMoney. "When gun control advocates ramp up their efforts to pass gun control people voice their opposition by donating to the NRA."

Contributions came from nearly 30,000 donors, with around 90% of donations made by people who gave less than $200 in a single year. According to the NRA, the average donation is around $35.


http://money.cnn.com/news/cnnmoney-inve ... index.html

And there was a huge spike in donations after Parkland:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/28/us/nra-d ... index.html

In the days and weeks following the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the National Rifle Association saw a significant spike in donations.
In fact, reports from the Federal Election Commission show donations to the NRA's Political Victory Fund tripled from January to February.
In January, the NRA collected almost $248,000 in individual contributions. In February, they collected more than $779,000.



"But I've heard that the gun industry gives tens of millions of dollars to the NRA every year! How can most of the NRA's revenues be from small donors?"

The NRA writ large is mainly a gun-safety organization, providing training and classes for gun owners across the country, as well as law enforcement and security companies. The overwhelming majority of the NRA's total spending ($414 million in 2016) goes to this side of the organization.

Of course, the NRA has a lobbying arm as well, called the Institute for Legislative Action or the NRA-ILA. It gets some money from gun manufacturers, and it spent a little over $4 million in 2016 on political contributions and lobbying combined. The NRA also has PACs associated with it (like the NRA Political Victory Fund, which according to CNN bars corporate donations). The PACs spent about $54 million in 2016. (source)

Now, when you hear about the NRA's budget being half a billion dollars, or about the massive amounts of money gun manufacturers give to the NRA, they're referring to all the money given to the entire organization, including money for the gun-safety side of the organization which accounts for most of their budget and which gun manufacturers do donate to in staggering amounts. The small-donor figures I quoted from CNN, meanwhile, exclusively cover donations to the company's political arm and PACs.


Ultimately, the NRA is powerful because lots of people support its cause, not so much because of its money. Crossing the NRA means crossing millions of reliable voters that most Republicans (and a few red-state or rural Democrats) can't afford to piss off. That's where their power to block gun control legislation comes from, not the relative pittance they give to politicians compared to many other special interest groups (for instance, one liberal SuperPAC called Priorities USA spent $133 million in 2016, more than double the spending of the NRA PACs and the NRA-ILA combined).
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby iMURDAu » Sun May 20, 2018 1:23 pm

I'm thinking, maybe hoping, that gun owners will be like cigarette smokers in America. It'll be too expensive for most people and you won't be allowed to have them anywhere but your house. The reason for that will be due to the ignorance of the group as a whole regarding how they're affecting the people around them. This will result in a lot of whining and "dey took our 2nd menmen rots" which I will find hilarious because the best backyard "militia" would last approximately half a second against a military drone strike.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sun May 20, 2018 4:43 pm

iMURDAu wrote:I'm thinking, maybe hoping, that gun owners will be like cigarette smokers in America. It'll be too expensive for most people and you won't be allowed to have them anywhere but your house. The reason for that will be due to the ignorance of the group as a whole regarding how they're affecting the people around them. This will result in a lot of whining and "dey took our 2nd menmen rots" which I will find hilarious because the best backyard "militia" would last approximately half a second against a military drone strike.

That won't happen. You see, it doesn't matter if those people form a hostile militia, the military will never fire upon a fellow American, because they obviously sympathize with their cause, since all soldiers are conservative and there are absolutely no gun owning leftists in the country. Therefore, the military will side with them as they overthrow the government and form a theocratic white ethnostate where they can freely marry their eight year old niece.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Delta Jim » Sun May 20, 2018 7:17 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:where they can freely marry their eight year old niece.


I'd have said this was hyperbole, but Kentucky had a bit of a controversy a few months ago when they tried to make child marriage illegal (the bill finally passed after major revisions to appease the people protesting the bill making it illegal to rape children).

And then there was that time last year Chris Christie vetoed a bill making child marriage illegal.

And Tennessee just killed a bill banning it a few months ago.

Even Florida's relatively uncontroversial banning of the practice a few months ago received push-back. And, again, the words "a few months ago" come up it was both legal and often heavily encouraged until someone realized how fucked up it was this year.

(Apparently when the people opposed to same sex marriage said "if we allow gay marriage then people will start fucking children" it was just them warning us of their intentions)

However, incest is still illegal in all 50 states (well, 48. But the two it's not outright illegal in still don't allow incestuous marriage). So the only inaccurate part of that statement is that they can't actually freely marry their niece.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Absentia » Sun May 20, 2018 8:29 pm

A few states don't include aunt/uncle-niece/nephew sex in their incest statutes. As far as I can tell, if you can get a judge to sign off on it you can legally marry your eight year old niece in Wyoming.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Kivutar » Sun May 20, 2018 8:49 pm

"Spurned advances provoked Texas school shooting, victim's mother says"

Yes, getting turned down for a date "provoked" the guy into mass murder.

Provoked

rages

There's victim blaming, and then there's that.

(And no, the victim's mother did not use the word "provoke," that's all on Reuters.)
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sun May 20, 2018 9:12 pm

Judging by the responses to the actions of Nikolas Cruz, Alek Minassian, and now Dimitrios Pagourtzis, there's some part of the media that seems out to retroactively cater to the demands of spree killers. Cruz shoots up the Parkland Kids? Clearly we should encourage people to get close to and personally reform them like some sort of sociopathic school project! Minassian hits ten people with a van in the name of inceldom? Maybe they have a point. Could be.Let's grant them access to prostitutes (which they hate)! And now, this sort of thing.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Absentia » Sun May 20, 2018 9:36 pm

Kivutar wrote:"Spurned advances provoked Texas school shooting, victim's mother says"

Yes, getting turned down for a date "provoked" the guy into mass murder.

Provoked

rages

There's victim blaming, and then there's that.

(And no, the victim's mother did not use the word "provoke," that's all on Reuters.)


"Provoked" only means that it made him angry enough to act. It doesn't mean he was justified.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Kivutar » Sun May 20, 2018 10:10 pm

Still rubs me the wrong way.
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Crimson847 » Mon May 21, 2018 7:42 am

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:Judging by the responses to the actions of Nikolas Cruz, Alek Minassian, and now Dimitrios Pagourtzis, there's some part of the media that seems out to retroactively cater to the demands of spree killers. Cruz shoots up the Parkland Kids? Clearly we should encourage people to get close to and personally reform them like some sort of sociopathic school project! Minassian hits ten people with a van in the name of inceldom? Maybe they have a point. Could be.Let's grant them access to prostitutes (which they hate)! And now, this sort of thing.


People really, badly want some kind of solution to this...preferably a simple one. The gun control angle hasn't gained any traction despite all the hullabaloo; if anything it's lost some. The mental illness angle on the other hand is quite popular, but provides little in the way of easy or cheap solutions. Not coincidentally, people have started racking their brains for different angles on the problem, which is why we're seeing a resurgence of old ideas like the violent media explanation or the bullied outsider explanation that were previously shelved.
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- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Another day, another school shooting

Postby Aquila89 » Mon May 21, 2018 7:58 am

Crimson847 wrote:[ The gun control angle hasn't gained any traction despite all the hullabaloo; if anything it's lost some.


One of your graphs goes until 2105. which I believe is supposed to be 2015, the other until 2007. Both are outdated, they can't disprove that support for gun control hasn't gained traction after Parkland. Gallup polls show that support for stricter gun laws has increased since 2015. (Not that this means that anything will actually change...)
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