@Finn dAbuzz,
Finn wrote:The presence of "money" the NRA and the stoking of fear and resentment though informs your intuition sufficiently to warrant an accusation that people who hold a conservative viewpoint on the 2nd Amendment, have blood on their hands. However, these factors are only "superficial because the true cause of these horrendous acts is our pathological culture
Well, if gun violence is not a cultural phenomenon, what other explanation do you have for the huge discrepancy between our rates of school shootings and those in other countries? If it's the huge number of firearms then it would stand to reason that laws affecting the supply of weapons and their ease of purchase might not be as useless and ineffective as the gunbunnies contend.
Quote:Democrats spend as much money or more as their opponents on elections.
You're always quick to bring this up, as if campaign spending is the only money in the picture. It isn't.
Quote:As far as stoking fear and resentment, what do you call the claims of Democrats that Republicans are trying to kill people with their policies, are waging war on women, the poor and every other “minority” interest group in America, literally want to control women’s reproductive systems, consider blacks and Hispanics inferior to whites, and, oh yeah, care more about their guns than their children?
I thought we were discussing gun violence and how right-wing rhetoric might have an effect on it. Why are you bringing up standard Democratic campaign positions which have nothing to do with the discussion and manifestly
don't stoke the sort of fear or resentment which leads to school shootings?
Quote:Do you frequently make truly damning accusations about people, despite the fact that you cannot draw a clear line from them to the tragedy for which you blame them; which are based upon an intuitive conclusion which you admit centers on three factors that are “superficial” (and only one of which, whether or not you admit it, can be considered uniquely “owned” by them) and which, when pressed, you discard and offer up an entirely different causation?
I didn't realize you were this thin-skinned. I simply suggested that the long held right wing positions like nationalism, hostility toward non-white immigration, and hyper-individualism tend to complicate any discussion of solutions to gun violence. Many conservatives
don't hold these beliefs but the ones that do tend to predominate in this debate.
Quote:Do you image that conservatives are so cold-hearted and devoid of empathy that they would not, quite reasonably, find being accused of having the blood of innocents on their hands to be deeply insulting?
Aww... <sniff>
I think before I took offense I'd look at the source of the charge. In this particular case I defy you to point out where I said that "conservatives have the blood of innocents on their hands"? If a similar charge were made against me I'd question the accuser's motivation. I don't subscribe to the notion of "collective guilt" and would simply discount such a specious accusation instead of getting all butt hurt because maybe someone doesn't like me or my politics.
Quote:Talk about “fighting words” Do today’s liberals have any concept of what this term means other than voicing opinions like marriage should be between a man and a woman, men who simply feel like women should not be permitted to use the same public bathrooms as young girls who are only biologically female, all lives matter, men on campuses accused of sexual misconduct should not be deprived of due process, or hunting and killing animals is good fun?
Now that you've had time to cool down maybe you can reformulate this so it's comprehensible. What's it have to do with gun violence and school shootings?
"marriage should be between a man and a woman" — why?
"men who
simply feel like women should not be permitted to use the same public bathrooms as young girls who are only biologically female" — you think it's so "simple" — what about people who have a complex relation to the gender attributed to them at birth and have lived as the opposite gender for a good portion of their lives?
"all lives matter" — except that this feel-good platitude is pretty hollow when contrasted with human history. All lives
should matter, sure — but they don't, which is why we have this nifty little slogan.
"men on campuses accused of sexual misconduct should not be deprived of due process" — if they're singled out because they're white sports heroes?
"hunting and killing animals is good fun" — you know, I've killed a number of animals in my life. Some were euthanized, some were raised by me for slaughter, and some were hunted and harvested in the wild. I've never considered killing to be "good fun". In fact, the people who
do are often people who end up killing other people. There's a word for those types — "creeps".
