It just seems so ridiculously narrow on this one issue. I mean it’s like one lobby group. There’s usually multiple. Neither NRA members nor GOP voters seem to agree with them. And even in gun circles I’ve almost never run into true hardliners. The one I have run into, like I said, don’t actually seem to own guns or know much about them. They know the political “facts” Fox News told them. And they occasionally decide to run out and buy one right now because obama/mexicans/blacks and they need protection.
It just seems like a much more extreme example of outsized influence in our politics.
I’ve been in an open area where someone started firing weapons more than once, though never anything as horrifically massive as this most recent terrorist attack in LV.
Speaking from experience, I seriously doubt the ability of anyone here to remain calm and collected instead of going into panic mode; the only thoughts that registered for me each time were “Get down!” and “Run!”
It should go without saying that those who have served in active duty where they’ve been under actual gunfire are the exception; I was referring to the average civilians like myself.
The first time I experienced this horror, I was 14 years old and standing on my neighbor’s porch when some ‘gentlemen’ with semi-automatic weapons opened fire in the middle of my residential street one summer day; everybody and their mama hit the deck instantly.
I was lucky that day; the only damage I suffered was from smacking my head into a screen door as I awkwardly scrambled to get inside.
Agreed. And honestly you’d be surprised by those who should know better how to react based on their training and experience but just cannot shake instincts.
I was 100% serious. At this point I’m ready to try anything that hasn’t already comprehensively failed to work.
Not everyone runs or panics. And how do you characterize the difference between fear and harming others due to fear?
Sure, panicking happens, and can literally happen to anybody. But don’t act like trampling people is excusable. It’s no more admirable or desirable than peeing your pants in terror, and does considerably more harm.
If trampling other people because you’ve given in to fear is not cowardice, what in the world could possibly qualify as cowardice? Has our culture reached a point where there are no behaviors that we are expected to resist as long as we say we were scared?
Edit: tried to give a little more clarity as the flagging begins.
after all… we’re all humans. and how our different brains react when under fire absolutely doesn’t have anything to do with how much muscles and how ‘tough’ we are… i never got under fire (THANKS TO GOD) and i don’t know how I would react… but now all the best to families of those killed and injured… Pray for Vegas
In my mind “cowardice” would mean running away when one’s presence was needed to keep others safe, such as a soldier or a police officer abandoning their position in order to save themselves.
Running away because you’re a non-bulletproof person facing a hail of machine gun fire isn’t “cowardice,” it’s common sense. Unfortunately when several thousand people do it at the same time it’s bound to result in some injuries. Not because people are willfully causing harm, just because a calm and orderly exit is virtually impossible under such conditions.
My Gram always defined ‘courage’ as being scared and still doing what’s necessary anyway; so it seems to me that cowardice would be the opposite of that.
It’s a damn shame that victim blaming has somehow reared it’s ugly head in this, of all topics.
I take it back. It’s a great argument against a written constitution. It’s an awful argument for the reinterpretation of the second amendment as applying only to black powder muzzle-loaders.
Legally, the American constitution is obsolete technology, no qualms there.
But absent political will to change it, it is what it is, and it is interpreted in a very, ah, textual way.
I try not to. I have tried to nail-down Brainspore’s position as ‘no self-loaders’ for instance. That’s not all/nothing. That’s ‘no self-loaders.’
True. But as I mentioned, America has a pressure group for every anti-human cause, too. I mean, just look at the ink spilled to not give you guys a healthcare system that works.
Just as you were reluctant to believe that masculinity could be a contributing factor, but then realized you couldn’t cite a single parallel example with a female perpetrator, I’m hoping that at some point it will occur to you that getting into whatever state this man was in with only a pile of rocks to hand would result in fewer corpses.
NPR today said that survivors of the shooting observed some people immediately using themselves to shield not only partners or friends but also total strangers. Some of those same people are now counted among the dead.
I think you and I would both agree that these were acts of courage and selflessness. In my mind, it does not follow that an equally immediate act of self-preservation is necessarily the opposite.
I respect your opinion and appreciate your insight on many topics. I’m surprised to read what I feel is a very callous viewpoint coming from such a BBer.
Well there’s your problem. Armchair speculation on peoples behavior, when standing in an open field when it starts to rain lead, is a rather pointless exercise.
Yes, this did occur to me as I typed it, but I doubt that many would be killed or injured if someone shouted “fire!” in an open area like this; while there were probably some injuries from stampede physics I doubt it was even close to half.
That said, I have been reading the comments here in bits and pieces and hesitate to add anything else because I don’t have any answers. I think realistically stricter gun control will reduce the number of gun deaths, but certainly not eliminate them. I think also that NRA arguments about “freedom” are kind of . . . childish. "Freedom to. . . " wreak destruction on a target at the firing range? Is that freedom worth the lives lost in Las Vegas? Ultimately their argument is reduced to “guns are a necessary defense against a US totalitarian government” except as a political entity the NRA doesn’t seem to care about other totalitarian actions the government takes, like mass surveillance or torture or loss of habeas corpus.
It would be really nice if a powerful political organization like the NRA weren’t promoting civil war as the solution to a dictatorship, especially when in a democracy we have the power to change the direction of our own government without bloodshed.
