NRA ad brings Obama kids into gun debate; White House fights back

[Locke]

Very good post and I agree with most of what you say. However, I don't know why you guys hate statler, sure he talks a lot of ****. But a lot of his post are intelligent. There are some lib posters on this forum who are just as controversial (borderline douchey).

I can't speak to others, but I can't stand that he won't give a straight-forward answer to a question. It's always a strawman, a half-truth, straight lie, or answers with another question. When he first started posting and I took him seriously, anytime he got caught in a place where he had no answer, he lied and said something about having a degree in the field, which meant that he just knew what he was talking about and didn't need to justify the opinion. There's a reason that's a running joke on the forum. I also can't stand talking to people who condescend regularly. Sometimes it's unavoidable to say something without it coming off like that, but it's like 75% of his posts, despite them usually being bat**** crazy. So I just stopped responding to the guy, but he feels the need to pull my posts out of 8-10 page threads that I've barely participated in, most likely because he knows I'm done with him. I agree he is intelligent, but he is also pretty immature, and obviously a petty person...

[phinfan3411]

No timeout for me, just a crazy weekend with the wife. At some point we're going to have to start acting like a married couple. But that day is not today.

I'm more than happy to talk with you about this topic, Statler not so much. I can only handle so much straw-manning, spinning, non-answers, blatant lies, and passive-aggressive remarks before I get the desire to drink the memory of my conversation with him away.

I believe his question was if guns are so ineffective at stopping violence, why should the secret service have them? Or something along those lines. The answer is simple. The secret service is trained, the average person is not. If you look it up, the percentage of shots fired to shots hitting their intended target for a trained professional varies from 20%-33% depending on which study you look. Best case scenario, 1 out of 3 bullets hits their intended target, 1 out of 5 worst case. That's a trained soldier, police officer, or security officer who has gone through rigorous amounts of training designed to have them keep a clear head, not panic, and stay focused. And they still MISS between 66 and 80 percent of the time. Now what would you expect the accuracy rate of the average joe to be? Being accurate on a shooting range is a completely different animal than being accurate when everyone around you is panicked, screaming, and you have bullets flying at you.

More specifically, the risk of an armed group of men attacking the President is real. The thought of an armed group of men coming into your house for your TV and iPod? Yeah right. There is an actual need to have the President's detail armed to the teeth. There is no need for the 55 year old guy in Nebraska to have 10 AK47s and enough ammunition to conquer a small town.

I agree with you that if we have to have armed guards on campus, it would be best to have them be former military or police. I strongly STRONGLY disagree with arming teachers. But I'm not opposed to having highly trained security personnel on campus. But it needs to be light, otherwise you turn into a police-state. Before someone argues that, keep in mind that we live in a capitalistic society. You don't hire someone to sit around for 364 days a year and only do something on the 1 day when a shooter shows up campus. If there are going to be armed security on campus, they are going to be involved with rule-enforcement and discipline as well. If you have 50 armed guards on a high school campus, you turn a school into a police-state. It's a tough line to walk.

Lastly, as to your second point, it tends to be the opposite, actually. The non-mentally ill people who go on these shootings tend to be the bullied. They don't feel like they can fight back physically, so they don't. They get bullied, picked on, outcast, and humiliated for whatever length of time it takes for them to reach a breaking point. They snap, they do the shooting, and that's it. As to those who are mentally ill, it's a bit different. Everyone assumed this Newtown shooter was an evil person just looking to kill people. But I would bet he thought he was helping them. I would put money on the fact that he thought some great conspiracy/calamity/terror was coming, and that these kids were better off dead than going through it. Of course we'll never know since he killed himself. That's usually the case with most mentally ill people who do these horrific things. They have a twisted sense of reality, but not necessarily an evil one...

Thanks Locke, two caveats though.

One, I have no problem with how they protect the President, I just did not understand how many on the left could be so against some type of security guards in the schools yet still believe the President's daughters benefit from their security detail...it makes no sense to me.

Secondly, my question on the shooters is specifically geared to the way they behave on the day of their action. It makes sense that many, or most of them have been bullied at one time or another, if not constantly. It just seems to me that they seem to almost take on that persona on their "day". They most certainly seem to pick a place where they can kill as many as they can while picking out targets that will not be able to fight back with equal ability. This was taken to the extreme a month ago, and to finsh off my bully theme, as soon as the jig is up (hear police arriving etc.) they have no desire to fight against somebody equally armed, so they off themselves, or give up without a fight (theatre guy).

[Locke]

Thanks Locke, two caveats though.

One, I have no problem with how they protect the President, I just did not understand how many on the left could be so against some type of security guards in the schools yet still believe the President's daughters benefit from their security detail...it makes no sense to me.

Secondly, my question on the shooters is specifically geared to the way they behave on the day of their action. It makes sense that many, or most of them have been bullied at one time or another, if not constantly. It just seems to me that they seem to almost take on that persona on their "day". They most certainly seem to pick a place where they can kill as many as they can while picking out targets that will not be able to fight back with equal ability. This was taken to the extreme a month ago, and to finsh off my bully theme, as soon as the jig is up (hear police arriving etc.) they have no desire to fight against somebody equally armed, so they off themselves, or give up without a fight (theatre guy).

His daughters benefit from a security detail because it's imperative that they stay safe. If someone wanted to blackmail the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, the most obvious target would be his daughters, don't you agree? It's a national security issue, not merely a safety one.

I could see them temporarily taking on the role of bully while going on their rampage. But the ones who are bullied target the ones who made their lives hell, i.e. Columbine, Virginia Tech. Those shooters went in knowing they weren't coming out, and probably decided beforehand that they weren't going to give law enforcement the satisfaction of taking them down, so they took themselves down. I'm not buying the Aurora shooter as mentally ill or bullied, personally. He doesn't fit either profile. I think he is trying to be sold as mentally ill by his defense, but I'm not buying it personally, for a variety of reasons that I won't go into since it gets convoluted. I think he was a perfectly sane person with sociopathic tendencies who just decided he wanted to go down as a famous villain. I couldn't really know without talking with him, though. Although I think my theory is correct because there has been a curious lack of discussion about him and the shooting from the media, almost like it was on purpose. If that was what he wanted, looks like they are taking it away from him. As for the mentally ill who kill themselves, if they are in a paranoid psychotic episode, it's almost expected that they would kill themselves after deciding that they need to "save" others by killing them. Of course they'd want to save themselves too. That's as simply as I can put it at least...

[Statler Waldorf]

Very good post and I agree with most of what you say. However, I don't know why you guys hate statler, sure he talks a lot of ****. But a lot of his post are intelligent. There are some lib posters on this forum who are just as controversial (borderline douchey).

Hey Jared,

I hope nobody on here actually hates me, hating someone on a message board seems a bit extreme to me. However, the bad blood with Locke seems to trace back to one incident that I can think of. We were debating the decay rates of organic matter and he challenged me to produce a peer-reviewed article outlying how fast organic matter decays (something I never claimed to possess, but have found since his challenge), however once I pointed out how I never said I had a peer-reviewed article on that subject he went on a monologue about how he is a PhD candidate and he “knew” that all peer-reviewed articles are only available to those who work in university or are currently studying at university so I must obviously have been lying. Of course, after a claim like that I had to point out that anybody can subscribe to peer reviewed journals if they’d like and I linked him to the subscription webpages for both NATURE and SCIENCE which I am sure you are aware are the two most well respected peer-reviewed journals in the world. The funny thing is that he didn’t know they were peer-reviewed journals but thought they were just magazines; I found this a bit odd considering he claimed to be a candidate for a PhD and should have plenty of exposure to the peer-review system (not horribly unlike someone claiming to have a doctorate in English but seeming to not know what a sentence fragment is). I probably rubbed it in a bit hard, but after he was so rude I couldn’t help myself. Ever since then he has dodged most of my posts or has diverted the topic to something inappropriate or completely irrelevant (as you saw in this thread, he claims I am immature but was I really the one acting immature in this thread?).

As for my degrees, I have been completely consistent in what degrees I have and how many I have (only two); I think it just bothers him that someone he disagrees so vehemently with can also be rather well-educated; so that’s the back story behind our relationship. I hope that helps clear things up for you.

[GoFins!]

I think it just bothers him that someone he disagrees so vehemently with can also be rather well-educated; so that’s the back story behind our relationship.

History and reality don't support their ideas so they resort to believing that anyone who disagrees with them just isn't as enlightened and that makes the opposing ideas, history, and reality that much easier to dismiss.

Their purposeful misinformation regarding your degrees is a weak attempt to discredit you.

[Locke]

History and reality don't support their ideas so they resort to believing that anyone who disagrees with them just isn't as enlightened and that makes the opposing ideas, history, and reality that much easier to dismiss.

Their purposeful misinformation regarding your degrees is a weak attempt to discredit you.

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Apparently realty is subjective, then...?

[Statler Waldorf]

Their purposeful misinformation regarding your degrees is a weak attempt to discredit you.

You’re absolutely right, rather than address the opposition’s arguments they’d rather take the discussion down rabbit holes and appeal to ridicule. Oh well….

Apparently realty is subjective, then...?

I am not sure why you find that funny. No, reality is not subjective, but facts are interpreted within the framework of someone’s axiomatic belief system, so if you start with an invalid belief system you are going to interpret the facts incorrectly and therefore arrive at invalid conclusions about reality.

[Locke]

I am not sure why you find that funny. No, reality is not subjective, but facts are interpreted within the framework of someone’s axiomatic belief system, so if you start with an invalid belief system you are going to interpret the facts incorrectly and therefore arrive at invalid conclusions about reality.

There are no other ways to interpret facts. Facts are facts. 2+2=4. An atom is made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Crime and violence is directly correlated to poverty. There is no way to interpret this stuff other than for what it is. So when you get these numbskulls coming in here and make blanket statements like "history and reality don't support their blah blah wah wah", it's nothing more than someone who doesn't know what the **** they are talking about, can't convey what they want to say, or are just incapable of having an intelligent conversation trying to make themselves feel better. So yes, I find that funny. The predictability of it hilarious. These Neo-cons come and go, yet the same couple of techniques tend to stick around. GoFins isn't the first one to use that stupid history and reality line, and when he stops posting here in a few weeks/months/whatever, another one will show up and use it again. It's like clockwork...

[MoFinz]

There are no other ways to interpret facts. Facts are facts. 2+2=4. An atom is made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Crime and violence is directly correlated to poverty. There is no way to interpret this stuff other than for what it is. So when you get these numbskulls coming in here and make blanket statements like "history and reality don't support their blah blah wah wah", it's nothing more than someone who doesn't know what the **** they are talking about, can't convey what they want to say, or are just incapable of having an intelligent conversation trying to make themselves feel better. So yes, I find that funny. The predictability of it hilarious. These Neo-cons come and go, yet the same couple of techniques tend to stick around. GoFins isn't the first one to use that stupid history and reality line, and when he stops posting here in a few weeks/months/whatever, another one will show up and use it again. It's like clockwork...

They are factors, but certainly you would admit the recent spate of mass murders that sparked this gun debate werent carried out by poor people living in the slums or homeless. It's hard to make a blanket statement because there are always exceptions. The one common thread gets ignored. These mass murderers were latchkey kids. They were medicated with psychotropics. They were "loners" . They were abandoned by their parents and society, but poverty of the monetary kind played no role. Moral poverty is real too, and it was absolutely a factor in the murders

[Locke]

They are factors, but certainly you would admit the recent spate of mass murders that sparked this gun debate werent carried out by poor people living in the slums or homeless. It's hard to make a blanket statement because there are always exceptions. The one common thread gets ignored. These mass murderers were latchkey kids. They were medicated with psychotropics. They were "loners" . They were abandoned by their parents and society, but poverty of the monetary kind played no role. Moral poverty is real too, and it was absolutely a factor in the murders

But you're pulling out single instances and acting like those break the trend. We're going by the general populous. There's a reason why crime is highest in the inner city; that's where people are the poorest...