Conquer Club

Based on my albeit limited understanding of the events in Orlando and the associated calls for action, here are the basic responses to the current "crisis" in the United States.

Please pick your best option (or options) and let me know why (so I can ridicule you):

(1) Ban assault weapons.

Please be aware that choosing this option requires you to define assault weapons and what makes them different from regular guns.

(2) "You may be a terrorist and therefore should not be allowed to buy guns."

Please be aware that this violates the 4th Amendment.

(3) All Syrians (or choose your least favorite ethnic group) are banned from the United States.

Please be aware that choosing this option requires you to enunciate why the shooter in the Orlando incident was a Syrian migrant and not, as is factual, an American citizen born in the United States.

(4) The NSA, FBI, and other executive branch entities should be allowed to perform survelliance on any suspected person or persons without a warrant.

Please be aware that this violates the right to privacy.

Side note - There is a right answer here, but I haven't really heard it from anyone in the two major political parties or major media outlets. The New York Times editorial board came pretty close, but then they went bananas and accused the NRA of aiding and abetting terrorists. It seems that Democrats are lining up with #1 and #4, Republicans are lining up with #2 and #4, and Trumpians are lining up with #3.

How about option #5, acknowledge that blowback is a fact related directly to current and past US foreign policy and alter foreign policy to alleviate said blowback? As in the US isn't the police force for the world. We don't have the moral high ground to engage in it nor do we have the wisdom and ethics to do it fairly and competently.

thegreekdog wrote:
Please pick your best option (or options) and let me know why (so I can ridicule you):

Oh, this sounds just delightful! Oh well, I suppose I can always do with some more abuse.

None of these solutions will work.

Starting from most doomed:
#3. As noted, the Orlando shooter was born in the U.S.A. Most of the attackers in the Paris attacks were born in Europe, also. Blocking immigration would do nothing about these.

Furthermore, after Paris the media made much of the fact that the attackers came from ghettoes and were alienated from mainstream society. There was a lot of talk about how we need to reduce the unemployment in the ghettoes to prevent radicalization, blah, blah, blah. The Orlando shooter, however, while perhaps alienated in some ways, was educated, employed, and generally successful in society.

#4 is foolish. As a basic matter of doctrine, having a massive increase in the invasions of privacy by the government is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If you abandon freedom to save freedom, it's a fail.

But even more than doctrine, #4 has enormous practical problems. We have enormous amounts of surveillance now, and they don't seem to be very effective at stopping terror. Data collection (of any kind) runs up against problems of diminishing returns. Given that fairly extensive surveillance is failing to accomplish much, will increased surveillance accomplish much more?

#2 I'm not entirely certain what you mean. Do you mean identifying a "terrorist type" and prohibiting those persons from owning weapons? That runs up against all the problems of #4, in addition to, as you say, being a violation of the Second Amendment. Or do you mean that everyone is a potential terrorist in some ways, and everyone should be banned from having weapons? That completely abrogates not just the letter but the spirit of the Second, and really would mean a radical transformation of America, maybe for the better but probably not.

#1 comes close to making some sense. It's hard to disagree that America would benefit by scaling back the proliferation of automatic weapons. At least some killings would be stopped that way. Maybe a complete ban on assault weapons is not necessary, but some intelligent restrictions on them would be a good idea.

Still, Orlando is a poor example to choose. Perhaps the killing of children on a wide-open school playground might be stopped if the assault rifle is taken out of the equation. In a crowded disco, however, there's just too many easy ways to kill people. A bomb would be just as effective as a machine gun, probably more so. Or you could just steal a truck and drive it through the front window and probably kill just as many. Or just chain up the entrances and throw a match inside. Or just pull the fire alarm, they might stomp each other to death running for the exits. There's just too many easy ways to kill people in crowded quarters like that for banning one method to have much effect.

Furthermore, the shooter worked for an agency that provides armed guards, did he not? Almost certainly any weapons ban would have exemptions for police and security agency. Another reason why the Orlando shooter makes a poor poster boy for gun control.

patches70 wrote:How about option #5, acknowledge that blowback is a fact related directly to current and past US foreign policy and alter foreign policy to alleviate said blowback? As in the US isn't the police force for the world. We don't have the moral high ground to engage in it nor do we have the wisdom and ethics to do it fairly and competently.

Again, not a bad idea in general, but it wouldn't have saved anyone in Orlando.

Perhaps a large part of the Islamic terror strikes have been a result of American meddling in the Middle East, but I don't think this one was. This seems to have been a simple case of the guy deciding that "God hates fags" and volunteering to be God's assistant. Even the fact that he was Muslim may be coincidental; there are Christians who express the same sentiments. Beyond Christians, I've heard these sentiments from at least one Jew, at least one Sikh, and at least one atheist. There's plenty of room at the gay-bashing extremist table, and I think the fact that this guy was a radical Muslim might be irrelevant, at least in the Orlando case.

Duk, duk, duk......SMH.....an AR is a SEMI automatic weapon. Banning assault stly weapons is NOT banning semi autos.....i have over 10 semis and only one is remotely close to an assault style weapon. I can change a few parts on my woodsmaster deer rifle and change its looks from a clean cut hunting rifle to a scary assault rifle.....weapon is only as bad as the person holding it.

First we need to ban mortgages and subdivisions. Monoculture neighbourhoods are bad for the psyche and mortgages cause housing to have prices divorced from reality. These two changes will cause ghettos to evaporate overnight.

By monoculture I mean all the houses are filled with people of the same income bracket, but having monoculture as in, racial based segragation isn't good either. It shouldn't be possible for someone to surround themselves with people who speak Arabic, send their children to an Arabic school, eat brown people food every day of the week and all that in our country.

By ban mortgages I mean that you have to pay cash for a house. This means the market value of the house will be the actual value of the house, not some grossly distorted price.

By ban subdivisions I mean one person buys land and then builds a house on it (as in the way housing worked for 170k years of human history) rather than one company building thousands and then trying to sell them.

patches70 wrote:How about option #5, acknowledge that blowback is a fact related directly to current and past US foreign policy and alter foreign policy to alleviate said blowback? As in the US isn't the police force for the world. We don't have the moral high ground to engage in it nor do we have the wisdom and ethics to do it fairly and competently.

That has not been noted by any major politician or pundit or media member.

Dukasaur wrote:the proliferation of automatic weapons.

What Koolbak said. Like any other currently legal gun (and unlike any currently illegal gun), one must pull the trigger once to fire one round from the AR-15 (and note the Orlando shooter used a pistol as well). The proliferation of automatic weapons has already been avoided. They are currently illegal.

I have no dog in this fight relative to the Second Amendment (other than that the Second Amendment exists and was meant and has always been meant to protect an individual's right to bear arms). Ultimately, I don't care whether guns are illegal or not. I'm in the business of calling out dishonest and stupid arguments.

- Banning the AR-15 doesn't do shit. If there were some politicians who said "let's ban all guns everywhere" that seems to be an effective policy (ignoring the constitutional issue). But no one is arguing that.
- Banning the AR-15 doesn't do shit. Who cares if the government bans some guns? Shit, I'm pretty sure you can still own an AR-15 as long as it doesn't have a bayonet on it. Nevermind the other stupid things the NRA stands for.

I'm more concerned with Hillary Clinton's comment that anyone that is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to buy a gun. That seems a problem not just from a second amendment perspective. Are we going to take away all rights of anyone the police/FBI/government thinks might be a criminal? Maybe?

I'm also more concerned with Donald Trump's proposals to ban all Muslims, although I don't think it has any viability so I don't care about it as much.

thegreekdog wrote:I have no dog in this fight relative to the Second Amendment (other than that the Second Amendment exists and was meant and has always been meant to protect an individual's right to bear arms). Ultimately, I don't care whether guns are illegal or not. I'm in the business of calling out dishonest and stupid arguments.

You don't like dishonest arguments? How about this one:

- Banning the AR-15 doesn't do shit. If there were some politicians who said "let's ban all guns everywhere" that seems to be an effective policy (ignoring the constitutional issue). But no one is arguing that.

The reason no one is advocating this isn't that there aren't people who believe this would be a good thing, it's because such a thing could never happen given the current politics of the situation. It's hard to imagine someone advocating this even if we did ignore the constitutional issue because it's hard to imagine policies which have a lower chance of passing in the current Congress. And when you put in the constitutional issue, it becomes not only politically impossible but legally so as well (barring a constitutional convention to overturn the Second Amendment, which is also politically impossible given the Republican domination of state houses). It's completely disingenuous to call out people for not advocating policies that they know have zero chance of becoming law. That's not dishonesty in their part, it's being politically non-idiotic.

patches70 wrote:How about option #5, acknowledge that blowback is a fact related directly to current and past US foreign policy and alter foreign policy to alleviate said blowback?

About half of the country is arguing that this is blowback related to current and past US foreign policy, they just don't agree with your analysis regarding which foreign policy choices were the wrong ones.

5) Practice behavioral profiling, not racial profiling, as Israel does. It'll cut down on a lot, but not all, which is why you should all keep carrying concealed.

Remember, this same bullshit happened in Tel Aviv a few days prior to Orlando, but there a good guy with a gun winged the cunt Muslim terrorist and he was only able to kill four people before he was dispatched.

Metsfanmax wrote:

thegreekdog wrote:I have no dog in this fight relative to the Second Amendment (other than that the Second Amendment exists and was meant and has always been meant to protect an individual's right to bear arms). Ultimately, I don't care whether guns are illegal or not. I'm in the business of calling out dishonest and stupid arguments.

You don't like dishonest arguments? How about this one:

- Banning the AR-15 doesn't do shit. If there were some politicians who said "let's ban all guns everywhere" that seems to be an effective policy (ignoring the constitutional issue). But no one is arguing that.

The reason no one is advocating this isn't that there aren't people who believe this would be a good thing, it's because such a thing could never happen given the current politics of the situation. It's hard to imagine someone advocating this even if we did ignore the constitutional issue because it's hard to imagine policies which have a lower chance of passing in the current Congress. And when you put in the constitutional issue, it becomes not only politically impossible but legally so as well (barring a constitutional convention to overturn the Second Amendment, which is also politically impossible given the Republican domination of state houses). It's completely disingenuous to call out people for not advocating policies that they know have zero chance of becoming law. That's not dishonesty in their part, it's being politically non-idiotic.

How is that a dishonest argument? It's not dishonest, it's just not politically expedient. The politically expedient thing is to pretend that banning bayonetted AR-15s is going to stop the next Orlando massacre; that's also a horribly dishonest argument.

Further, let's assume that the only people against banning guns are the people taking money from the NRA. The people taking money from the NRA are also the people against banning the AR-15. So, if banning all guns is not politically expedient (or, as you put it... is politically impossible), the certainly banning the AR-15 is also not politically expedient.

Metsfanmax wrote:

patches70 wrote:How about option #5, acknowledge that blowback is a fact related directly to current and past US foreign policy and alter foreign policy to alleviate said blowback?

About half of the country is arguing that this is blowback related to current and past US foreign policy, they just don't agree with your analysis regarding which foreign policy choices were the wrong ones.

I am willing to bet more than 50% of the country want more foreign intervention. The presumptive Democrat Party nominee certainly wants more intervention, in addition to the Republican nominee.

Further, how is continuing intervention in the Middle East an altered foreign policy? Rhetoric aside, didn't President Obama continue the interventions of President Bush? Aren't Trump and Clinton advocating a similar foreign policy?

thegreekdog wrote:How is that a dishonest argument? It's not dishonest, it's just not politically expedient.

What's dishonest about you pointing it out is using it to argue that Democrats are disingeuous because they're not pursuing effective policies. The reason they're not pursuing strongly effective policies is because they can't even get (what they perceive to be) the easy ones to pass. They can't even get background checks through without a very serious fight from Republicans. Why would they fight for banning all guns if they can't even get background checks? it doesn't make any sense. Things like background checks and banning assault weapons are about the only things that have even a chance of happening. That doesn't justify them, as you say, but that's a different story.

The politically expedient thing is to pretend that banning bayonetted AR-15s is going to stop the next Orlando massacre; that's also a horribly dishonest argument.

Sure, it may be dishonest, or maybe the people advocating it just don't know any better. There's a lot of Democrats that really don't understand gun terminology, don't really understand what assault weapons are. Shit, there's a lot of Republicans that don't. In the wake of the Cleveland school shooting in 1989, Reagan made the comment that no one should be able to own an AK-47, a machine gun, despite the fact that the gun used in that shooting was a semi-auto variant of the AK47. (I've seen this floating around on social media a lot over the last few days.) But you do see a lot of Democrats who are pissed that nothing is getting is done and searching for something they can do. I don't like that the toothless assault weapons bans are what they come up with, but I can at least understand the frustration. (Though maybe some of them are pandering, who knows.)

Further, let's assume that the only people against banning guns are the people taking money from the NRA. The people taking money from the NRA are also the people against banning the AR-15. So, if banning all guns is not politically expedient (or, as you put it... is politically impossible), the certainly banning the AR-15 is also not politically expedient.

YES. THAT'S THE POINT.

I am willing to bet more than 50% of the country want more foreign intervention. The presumptive Democrat Party nominee certainly wants more intervention, in addition to the Republican nominee.

Further, how is continuing intervention in the Middle East an altered foreign policy? Rhetoric aside, didn't President Obama continue the interventions of President Bush? Aren't Trump and Clinton advocating a similar foreign policy?

Some of the people I'm referring to think that our foreign policy hasn't been tough enough. They want more and stronger intervention, not what they perceive as half-assed policies that President Obama supports. Note how the link pointed to Ted Cruz, not Donald Trump.

thegreekdog wrote:I'm more concerned with Hillary Clinton's comment that anyone that is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to buy a gun.

I think that is a great idea with one caveat, anyone who is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to run for President either.

patches70 wrote:

thegreekdog wrote:I'm more concerned with Hillary Clinton's comment that anyone that is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to buy a gun.

I think that is a great idea with one caveat, anyone who is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to run for President either.

yes.

patches70 wrote:

thegreekdog wrote:I'm more concerned with Hillary Clinton's comment that anyone that is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to buy a gun.

I think that is a great idea with one caveat, anyone who is under investigation by the FBI should not be permitted to run for President either.

You stole this from Facebook

Metsfanmax wrote:

thegreekdog wrote:How is that a dishonest argument? It's not dishonest, it's just not politically expedient.

What's dishonest about you pointing it out is using it to argue that Democrats are disingeuous because they're not pursuing effective policies. The reason they're not pursuing strongly effective policies is because they can't even get (what they perceive to be) the easy ones to pass. They can't even get background checks through without a very serious fight from Republicans. Why would they fight for banning all guns if they can't even get background checks? it doesn't make any sense. Things like background checks and banning assault weapons are about the only things that have even a chance of happening. That doesn't justify them, as you say, but that's a different story.

The politically expedient thing is to pretend that banning bayonetted AR-15s is going to stop the next Orlando massacre; that's also a horribly dishonest argument.

Sure, it may be dishonest, or maybe the people advocating it just don't know any better. There's a lot of Democrats that really don't understand gun terminology, don't really understand what assault weapons are. Shit, there's a lot of Republicans that don't. In the wake of the Cleveland school shooting in 1989, Reagan made the comment that no one should be able to own an AK-47, a machine gun, despite the fact that the gun used in that shooting was a semi-auto variant of the AK47. (I've seen this floating around on social media a lot over the last few days.) But you do see a lot of Democrats who are pissed that nothing is getting is done and searching for something they can do. I don't like that the toothless assault weapons bans are what they come up with, but I can at least understand the frustration. (Though maybe some of them are pandering, who knows.)

Further, let's assume that the only people against banning guns are the people taking money from the NRA. The people taking money from the NRA are also the people against banning the AR-15. So, if banning all guns is not politically expedient (or, as you put it... is politically impossible), the certainly banning the AR-15 is also not politically expedient.

YES. THAT'S THE POINT.

I am willing to bet more than 50% of the country want more foreign intervention. The presumptive Democrat Party nominee certainly wants more intervention, in addition to the Republican nominee.

Further, how is continuing intervention in the Middle East an altered foreign policy? Rhetoric aside, didn't President Obama continue the interventions of President Bush? Aren't Trump and Clinton advocating a similar foreign policy?

Some of the people I'm referring to think that our foreign policy hasn't been tough enough. They want more and stronger intervention, not what they perceive as half-assed policies that President Obama supports. Note how the link pointed to Ted Cruz, not Donald Trump.

I'm not sure you disagree with me. I think you want to disagree with me because you want gun control in some form or fashion. I find the Democrats' arguments almost as disgusting as the Republicans' arguments regarding gun control. But we'll put the Republicans' arguments to the side. Let's do everything the Democrats want to do. Let's ban the AR-15, let's ban "assault weapons," and let's provide background checks for everyone. The Sandy Hook massacre would have happened, the Orlando massacre would have happened. The Democrats' proposals wouldn't have solved those problems and they won't solve any other problems, nevermind that more people are killed by guns in a week than are killed in any of these one-off massacres. And they are killed primarily by handguns. My problem with the Democrats is they are acting as if their proposals will have any effect at all when it is clear that they will not. And the Democrats and the political pundits and the media should know better. Therefore, it's a dishonest position and dishonest argument.

And yes, I saw that your link went to Ted Cruz. How is that relevant? I find little difference between President Obama's foreign policies and Cruz's foreign policies (rhetoric aside).

@tgd your position on most things in OT seems to be 'there's no point, we should be talking about something else' (paraphrase)

I think you should start a thread on the issues that people inyouropinion should be discussing ^0^

Yeah, mets...I'd like you to expound on this line of yours (hate getting involved with this shit....just like arguing with my wife....useless and time I'll never get back):

They can't even get background checks through without a very serious fight from Republicans.


WTF are you talking about? Where, exactly, does one NOT need to go through a check to buy a weapon? And where can you point me to see the heinous gun-toting republicans (I like that visual ) opposing checks?

PS...you'll enjoy the bumberstickers I gots on my truck

--Andy

mrswdk wrote:@tgd your position on most things in OT seems to be 'there's no point, we should be talking about something else' (paraphrase)

I think you should start a thread on the issues that people inyouropinion should be discussing ^0^

Why? That's not fun.

At the end of the day, my "no point" points are to attempt to get people to understand that there are no significant differences between the policies* of the presidential candidates. And by policies I mean whether the actual policies enacted by the Obama administration and the laws enacted by the last eight years of Congress were any different than the policies enacted by the Bush administration and the laws enacted by the "Bush" Congresses. In my mind, there are virtually no differences and all the talking points are just rhetoric. How much time do we spend talking about the personalities of the candidates? Bush is a stupid rich kid. Obama is cool (but also Muslim and a Communist). Hillary Clinton is a soulless robot who sent emails on a private server. Donald Trump is a fascist mysoginist jerk. No one really seems to care what policies they will realistically be able to enact. That's what bothers me. So something like the Orlando massacre gets all this airplay (rightfully so) and gets a response that is completely devoid of facts in an effort to score political points.

tl;dr - I'm sick of the reality of American politics and want everyone to be sick with me.

lol, yeahhh. There was a poll in one of the evenings papers last night (in the UK) in which 27% of respondents said that their stance on the upcoming referendum on the UK's EU membership would probably be influenced by how well England's football team did against Slovakia in the Eurocup last night. Good luck with your quest.

mrswdk wrote:lol, yeahhh. There was a poll in one of the evenings papers last night (in the UK) in which 27% of respondents said that their stance on the upcoming referendum on the UK's EU membership would probably be influenced by how well England's football team did against Slovakia in the Eurocup last night. Good luck with your quest.

Like just now, CNN has a news article about a tweet from Kim Kardashian trying to publicly shame the senate. CNN... news... Kim Kardashian... tweet...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/politics/ ... index.html

I don't even know where to begin. CNN reporting tweets as news? CNN reporting the views of celebrities as news? CNN reporting the views of reality television celebrities as news? Has anyone asked Kanye West what he thinks? What about one of the sisters? What do they think? f*ck!

Maybe I should change my username to theangrygreekdog.

Reporting on Tweets is the absolute worst. 'People on Twitter said'. They might as well start saying 'and now for the view from the man on the street, here's an extract from a warmonger post'.

I was reading this story last night and was pleased to see that when the journalist tried saying 'but people on Twitter are condemning you', the interviewee called him on his bullshit rather than humoring it. If only we could go one further and have some sort of journalistic equivalent of a debarring for hacks who quote Twitter as if its at all relevant.

mrswdk wrote:Reporting on Tweets is the absolute worst. 'People on Twitter said'. They might as well start saying 'and now for the view from the man on the street, here's an extract from a warmonger post'.

I was reading this story last night and was pleased to see that when the journalist tried saying 'but people on Twitter are condemning you', the interviewee called him on his bullshit rather than humoring it. If only we could go one further and have some sort of journalistic equivalent of a debarring for hacks who quote Twitter as if its at all relevant.

If some expert had tweeted and CNN had reported on that, I would be less angry. It's fucking Kim Kardashian. She is not allowed to have an opinion in this matter.