I get email:
From the Sandyhook Promise –
Dear Friend,
“The person who killed my precious son Dylan carried 10, 30-round, large-capacity gun ammunition magazines into Sandy Hook Elementary. 300 rounds. He deliberately left the smaller-capacity magazines at home.
In approximately four minutes, he shot 154 bullets, killing 20 children and 6 educators. Five of those bullets hit my son, and in an instant, Dylan was gone.
But in the time it took the shooter to reload, 11 children were able to escape. If magazines were reduced to one-third the number of rounds available that day, just think how many more could have survived. Perhaps my son would still be alive.
Right now in New Jersey, the clock is ticking for Governor Chris Christie to decide whether or not to sign a bill into law that would reduce the size of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds – and opponents of common sense reforms from across the country are pressuring him to veto it. We need your help today to make sure Governor Christie signs this common sense, potentially life-saving bill into law before the June 30 deadline.”
Reduce the size of the magazines?
Let me ironically restate that in bold lettering – Reduce the size of the magazines? (???)
One hundred and fifty four bullets and twenty-six deaths later the people in the US are talking about reducing the size of magazines? How ridiculously absurd is this plea?
How is this even a thing? Don’t even start to talk to me about incrementalism – how many more berserk white dudes killing scores of people does it take for the US to wake the frak-up and institute gun control?
Gaaa!
[Source]
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
11 comments
June 25, 2014 at 5:56 am
bleatmop
I was an opponent of the long gun registry and am glad it is gone. However what is going on down there is ridiculous. First off, a ban on automatic and semi-automatic guns would have saved even more children. Second, guns don’t need clips. Period. If you are hunting, take your time and get your shot right the first time. If you don’t kill it the first time, you’ve either missed and won’t need another shot as the animal will be running away, or you’ve only wounded it, in which case you will be tracking that animal for a couple of miles anyway – plenty of time to reload there. If you are target shooting, you have plenty of time to reload. If you are shooting predators on your farm, you should be using a shotgun for that and they come in varieties with two barrels. Finally, nobody needs handguns. Handguns only have one purpose, that is to kill people. Not even the police need them.
But really, banning all the guns in the world isn’t going to change the culture down there. There are simply too many to ever get them all. Also, Americans by and large worship gun ownership and guns in general. It’s a part of their constitution to have the right to bear them thus is must be holy and good somehow. Americans also choose to solve their quarrels violently more often too. Combine the two and you are going to have a lot of gun death.
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June 25, 2014 at 6:07 am
john zande
I hear you, Arb. As an outsider looking in on the States i am confounded at how insanely immature they are on this matter. They are so far removed from reality on this matter that they’re incapable of even conducting the correct conversation.
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June 25, 2014 at 9:59 am
syrbal-labrys
It is pitiful, is it not, the things mourners for the dead have to plead for while being ignored by the ones with no recent funeral to attend…
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June 25, 2014 at 2:35 pm
Mystro
John Oliver did a fantastic three part mini-series on gun control. It’s a good thing empirical evidence is so important to government action. Effective gun control should be coming along any minute now….aaaaaaany minute now…
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June 25, 2014 at 8:41 pm
roughseasinthemed
Don’t you know all those states that love guns have less gun deaths? Or so my gun toting US pals say. I totally agree with bleatmop.
The UK and Aus pulled out their fingers on guns. It’s time the US pulled their finger off the trigger but they won’t. This is the 21st century not the Wild West. Other countries get by without the right to bear arms.
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June 27, 2014 at 9:54 am
The Arbourist
@Bleatmop
That should be the warning label on the packaging. Most of the time I all I see is the self-defence angle hyped up to 11.
I think they should give it a try anyhow. One doesn’t undo years of madness overnight.
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June 27, 2014 at 9:57 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
On many issues now, my part of my argumentation is to inquire if facts matter, if they do not then off I go – I save time because there are so many other topics I can spit into the wind over. One shouldn’t waste time. :>
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June 27, 2014 at 9:59 am
The Arbourist
@Syrbal
Apparently, one doesn’t know pain until it is happening directly to themselves.
I’m thinking that teaching more people/children about empathy would serve society well in so many ways.
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June 27, 2014 at 10:03 am
The Arbourist
@RSITM
More people need to die to writ larger the body of evidence against the gun-lobby. It is a sad state of affairs.
You would think that, but the level of edumacation in the US might indeed prove you wrong.
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June 28, 2014 at 8:40 pm
bleatmop
@Arb – Unfortunately I don’t think it is possible for them to get the guns without a literal civil war. And I mean literal in the literal sense. The rise of the militias in the excited states has exploded over since Obama became elected. These militias are not only very well funded but also very well armed. It would take the might of the US military to take them and I’m not sure the military would follow orders to disarm its citizenry. They swear an oath to protect the constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, not to serve the commander in chief. I think many in the military, including the higher ups would take any president who would violate their constitution (and it would be a violation of their constitution) as a domestic enemy. And I think the military would have popular support in this action too.
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June 29, 2014 at 7:51 am
The Arbourist
@Bleatmop
It is such a waste of human life and resources. Futile in the additional sense that to overthrow the US government, you would most likely have to go through the US Military first. No parity exists between the military and the state militias.
These people are deluding themselves, fapping to pro-militia movies like Red Dawn and imagining they’d be the heroic resistance as opposed to the squirrelly dudes hiding in the woods shitting their pants whenever a patrol was near.
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