General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Jason Alexander long twit on Assault Weapons [View all]calimary
(81,110 posts)And maybe part of the answer, or the counter-strategy should be - PUT THEM ON THE DEFENSIVE. "Oh, I see. You planning your own mass murder then." Like LBJ did with the enemy he faced - MAKE 'EM DENY IT.
I'd put that accusation out there as hard and as often as I could if I were in that arena. And straight into their faces. "So you're getting ready for a copycat massacre? That's the only purpose for the existence of the kinds of firepower like you want so damn badly."
And something else, Rainngirl - I, too, go directly to that other thought, with these wannabe Wyatt Earps: "Overcompensating much?" That's the first thing that comes to my mind! Every time! They're obviously trying to get around their own - um - shortcomings. How else would you explain it, in the deepest psychological terms? Obviously what they've got, themselves, isn't enough for 'em, for whatever "statements" they seem adamant about making. I saw a post a couple of days ago - I forget if it was here or Daily Kos or Think Progress or somewhere - in which the writer ran down a list, a VERY LONG list, of all the shootings that snuffed out more than one life. And it was, I think, just within the last few years. I forgot the time frame. But EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE GUNMEN was just that. Male. Except in a single case where it was a gunwoman. The ratio was something like several dozen to one. It was BEYOND lopsided. Ridiculously lopsided. EVERY MASS KILLER who did it with guns, time after time after time after time after time after time, example after example after example after example after example, was male, except for ONE.
Seems to me that such a glaring fact should be instructive for people.
Frankly, I just don't even want to hear from these people anymore. Not a bit interested. Heard it already, WAY more times than I care to, and it never made sense to me before, and it certainly doesn't make any more sense to me now. These people are just tiresome. And they better start figuring out how to compromise with the rest of us - because NOTHING stays the same.
True enough, maybe everybody in power on our side is afraid of the NRA. Maybe our Dems are all spineless regarding standing up to the gun lobby. Maybe it is more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings with a single bullet (or a barrage from a 100-shot magazine). Maybe the gun lobby and gun nuts do trump every other right and safeguard on the books. Maybe their right to be able to kill is far more sacrosanct than even the right to life they cling to so religiously. But NOTHING lasts forever. There's been plenty of speculation here and elsewhere that - at the rate we're going with this wanton gun obsession - there likely will someday come a massacre that just tips the whole weight of public opinion back to the side of reason and anti-hyperbolic hyperventilating and hysterics. It won't be just you and me who've had enough, and in whom something snaps. It'll be huge swaths of the American people who just finally will have had enough. And even all the hundreds of millions of dollars at the NRA's command won't make a damn bit of difference. And we'll finally have some gun regulations and gun ownership restrictions with real teeth in them. Bought and paid for by the blood of dozens more innocent men, women, and children. At the rate we're going with this madness, there may indeed come a point when it's even too much for the gun nuts anymore.
If nothing else, they might be forced to compromise in a case like that - for no other reason than not wanting to look bad, or too blood-thirsty. I hope to God that day never comes, but I'm not optimistic. I heard another statistic quoted on Stephanie Miller's show this morning that spoke of the massacre rate dropping by 60% during the years when the assault weapons ban was in place. Once it was allowed to expire, the numbers went back to hell again.