Oompa Loompas are some of the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet.
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The worst comments were deleted. This wasn’t a difference of opinion, but someone venting belligerently and inappropriately. They earned their time out.
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I’m certainly not “freaking out”. I’m in favor of returning America to the pre-paranoia age when I could enter a courthouse without going through a metal detector, carry my Leatherman and a full size bottle of shampoo on a plane, and when everyone agreed that I have a right to buy a semi-automatic rifle whenever I want to.
And this was not where I thought my post would go, but:
Please provide statistics. How many black people are killed each year by law enforcement, and how many years would this take to equal 9/11?
Why do you think that? It seems pretty reasonable to me to consider types of weapons when considering gun policy, and i am not secretly hoping to see the 2nd amendment repealed. Everybody seems to agree that fully automatic machine guns are a no-go. Why is it hard to believe that people could want weapons designed to fire a lot of rounds in a very short time more regulated yet not object to the 2nd amendment?
Off topic: It’s interesting to me that right wing ‘gun rights advocates’ are simultaneously against any attempt to talk about changing gun policy becsuse they feel like it is an attempt by the gov to strip them of their right to defend themselves from the gov, while being for candidates that openly advocate devoting an ungodly and ever increasing amount of money to making sure that same gov is going to be several orders of magnitude better armed than themselves.
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Cool. Let’s derail this thing!
“Everybody seems to agree that fully automatic machine guns are a no-go.”:
You are wrong. Very wrong. People love these things. They would absolutely own them if they could. They’re the cool guns from the movies. They have family that remembers when you could own one.
Really, though, let’s talk about an idealized section of second amendment supporters. They would probably give up on private ownership of stringer missiles. They have family that flies, and they do understand the possible harm in letting a single person easily end hundreds of lives. Those people could probably own one responsibly, but they don’t already have one, and they understand the rationale.
They fight government “encroachment” on this issue, and they have a point. The federal government cannot grow as large and cumbersome as possible if there is an armed populace to shoot it down. The people with the guns like the idea of controlling their own destiny. You should too, even if you think the violence is horrific (you should too).
We are talking about degrees, right? These people see the government taking and never giving back. Of course they’re fighting. They’re standing the line. It’s an old tradition.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. I suspected there might be more to it.
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I think a rash of smaller attacks, such as those seen in Europe, is far more likely than one on the scale of 9/11. Mastermind plots are the approach of now-weakened and passé al-Qaeda. Daesh’s approach to remotely agitate and convert alienated individuals in their host country favors a scattered pattern of smaller, more frequent attacks.
You and I will both agree there is no comfort in predicting bad news. But if another attack occurs in the U.S., I imagine it will be perpetrated through C4 and bullets, not planes.
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It feels so weird to “like” a sentiment like that, what with some poor bastard getting killed, but I think you’re right.
I see where you are going there. Let;s not let that happen either. Dueling was against the law then and is against the law now. Although it seems like it would confine the damage to the individuals involved, no on is an island, and death is pretty final and wasteful.
It’s called stochastic terrorism.
Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication “to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
Let’s break that down in the context of what Trump said. Predicting any one particular individual following his call to use violence against Clinton or her judges is statistically impossible. But we can predict that there could be a presently unknown lone wolf who hears his call and takes action in the future.
Stated differently: Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn’t know which dog.
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Not sure I derailed (though little ol’ ADD me is no angel). I thought I was discussing a statement you made? Trump was the one who brought up the 2nd amendment. Which I am still completely baffled about. It defies belief that a politician could say such a thing and get away with it. I believed for some time that a Trump victory was a very real danger. I am starting to believe that it is certain he will kamikaze well before November.
Re: the gun debate, I really don’t have much to say about it aside from what I did. I don’t follow that particular issue much or have many opinions about it, other than it shouldn’t be impossible for one side to even discuss change without going from 0-60 on the hyperbole scale instantaeously.
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“statistically predictable but individually unpredictable”… bullshit. Sure “terrorist acts will happen” is a “statistical” prediction. It’s like the stock market though… “transactions will happen”. Terrorism is not predictable in any meaningful sense. “a blogger” said a dumb thing that’s not worth repeating.
OMG. Yep. Yep, it is.
No, I derailed. You helped 
Just, getting into guns is off topic, but I don’t care that much.
People have predicted his collapse since he entered the race. Jeb Bush would clinch it for sure. Trump’s got a bad habit of doing better than everybody says he should.
Re: guns. I agree. I see both sides. I am aware that the laws (on everything) have progressed in a single direction, though. Not everybody thinks machine guns are a “no go”, whatever that means. It’s like weed. Knowing the law and liking the law are not the same.
A capital idea! But it turns out the government doesn’t actually track that kind of thing very well. Even FiveThirtyEight had an article explaining why they couldn’t even make an educated guess.
Hopefully that will change soon.
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Yet they consistently shitcan their destiny by voting for a party that has made betrayal of their most basic human interests it’s one and only consistent objective. They want to control their own destiny?, get aware and educated and involved, instead of harboring the delusion they could overthrow the United States government if they just had bigger guns.
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Who’s “they”? Are you saying the Venn diagram of gun owners and Republicans forms a perfect circle? Everyone who believes in the second amendment is an anarchist actively seeking the overthrow of the government? That’s an… unsubtle opinion.
