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Thread: Gun control

  1. #1241
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    Yeah, this is pretty on-brand for us.
    -Formerly Stabulator

  2. #1242
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    Interestingly, the NRA were humble-bragging about "over 5 million members" on Twitter last night. To put that in context, about 1.6% of the US population are members, vs. 17% that are AAA members (58 million) or the nearly 20% (64 million) with Amazon Prime.

    That's a lot of policy making for 1.6% of the population. The all-powerful bike lobby needs to figure out how to pull this off.

  3. #1243
    Director Freude am Fahren's Avatar
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    The NRA, folks.

  4. #1244
    Senior Member G'day Mate's Avatar
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  5. #1245
    Parts Guy tigeraid's Avatar
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    I found this rather poignant.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/20...MzA0NTA1NTc2S0


    There are obviously many components to the gun and mental illness issues but one thread that never seems to be acknowledged: America is going through a crisis of masculinity brought on by structural changes in our economy.

    Jobs, if men possess them, no longer provide routes to self-esteem for working class men and so, with the help of the NRA, guns have become a talisman for a potency and meaning that has evaporated in the marketplace.

    Take a moment to look at the gun magazines at your local WalMart and register the themes that are hammered home. Constant references not to hunting but to warfare, and the trappings of masculinity, the humorless insistence on the tacticality of every day objects, including, I kid you not, a spork with a hidden knife. These industries are preying on the needs of men to feel like they have a job, bigger than themselves, a protector of the fatherland, the constitution.

    When I look at [the Las Vegas mass murderer] I see a man who gave himself a job. He worked out all the details as though he were a character in his own mission impossible. He moved from stage to stage with the precision of an engineer. He embraced this culture of death that is fed to men as a surrogate for that which was available for all too short a time in this culture: the ability to take care of a family on one salary.

    There has been no counterweight to this culture of death. No one seems to be able to answer the question: What are men good for? What are the qualities that make a good man … good? Instead this enormous vacuum is filled by people with products to sell. Men are warriors with tactical sporks. What else could they be if they can’t be providers?

    Caregivers? I read that most of the jobs in the near future will be in the Healthcare field. Don’t we owe it to these men who have been displaced by the loss of manufacturing and other blue collar work to, at the very least, acknowledge that this will require a different sort of mindset than hammering or shoveling? It will require a different sort of definition of what men are and what they might be.

    Mental illness in this context means the inability to adapt to new circumstances but shouldn’t we at least admit the difficulty of what we are asking of men? I fear by not posing the question we are opening the door to a fascist mentality whose answers we cannot tolerate.
    All these are well-argued points. For now I’ll simply add that working-class men around the world are subject to similar pressures. Only in one country are they routinely vented through mass gun slayings.

  6. #1246
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    Horribly mis-placed mindset.

    It really sounds like a man hating concept with the sentence structure of several of the sentences and paragraphs.

    How many MEN are going out and gunning people down?

    Anyone who has an undeveloped pre-frontal cortex should not be considered a man. Don't care what you say.

  7. #1247
    Parts Guy tigeraid's Avatar
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    That's a fine sentiment, but I suppose we could replace "men" with "males" if you want to get pedantic. Surely you'd agree that modern society has placed confusing demands, inspirations and ideas of what "masculinity" means on us? I know I feel it, and I WORK in a "car guy" industry. And surely they are people who can't handle that confusion, and turn to drugs, or to gambling, or depression, or who knows what else--and also, sometimes, to violence.

    And all mass shooters are men.

  8. #1248
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    Not quite all, but most.

    Most are white too.

    White males feel threatened? Certainly plausible.

    Guns, walls, protectionist... I do agree they're probably all somewhat related.

    Injected with extreme ideology, mentally unstable, lost of job or loved ones or some other triggers..., it's not hard to understand the mind of Nick Cruz. Adopted father died young, socially rejected, there's no way this confused kid knows how to be a real man...

    Oddity like the Vegas shooter..., that's just fucking weird. That thing was planned and the perpetrator(s) know exactly what they were doing.

  9. #1249
    Ask me about my bottom br FaultyMario's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tigeraid View Post
    And all mass shooters are men.
    I just know that ALL generalizations are incorrect. And nefarious.

    I think we, the observers of this debate (those of us unable to actively participate in the polity), ought to strive to have a conversation stay in relative terms, try to distinguish between positions and argue in comparisons and contrasts but not to the extremes, because we know, the persons for and against gun control have their positions well off the extremes.



    That said, I think I agree with John's quotation, there's a shift in masculinity (and race and labor) in the Plurinational United States of America, with some subnational organizations already having moved from previous (and I think irreconcilable) positions and some of the things that we are seeing now are a reflection of that conflict taken to the national stage.

    If we accept this graph to be a valid representation of The US:



    Then we can agree that Males, Roles in the Family and Race have varying degrees of change that cause these conflicting positions that the Black Lives Matter, MeToo and Gun Control movements have only made apparent. Oh yeah, Obama's election really stirred up some confronting attitudes as well.
    Last edited by FaultyMario; February 23rd, 2018 at 08:58 AM.
    acket.

  10. #1250
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    Quote Originally Posted by Godson View Post
    Anyone who has an undeveloped pre-frontal cortex should not be considered a man. Don't care what you say.
    And no true Scotsman would...

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