Anyone who pays attention to polity, indeed anyone not a vegetable, has heard (from a leftist) gun crime is much worse in the United states than "other developed countries" like the UK.
It's true. There are many more gun homicides in the U.S. compared to the UK. But there are a slew of other factors gun control proponents either unintentionally or intentionally ignore to advance the narrative one is "worse" than the other. According to the CDC there were 2,712,630 deaths, of which 12,979 were gun homicides, in the U.S. in 2015. According to the ONS (Office for National Statistics) there were 529,655 deaths, of which 26 were gun homicides, in England and Wales in 2015. And guess what folks? 26 out of 529,655 in the UK, and 12,979 out of 2,712,630 in the U.S., are both less than half of 1% of all deaths respectively. Sure, there's less gun crime in the UK, but we're talking a fraction of a fraction of a percent; merely the relocation of a decimal point within two diminutive sums (0.004% versus 0.4%). It's simply not the profound disparity they make it out to be. There's another inconvenient truth gun control proponents commonly omit when peddling their hyperbolic claims and fear mongering. "As I've said forever, even could you achieve a complete ban of firearms (you can't), all that would do is result in a drastic rise in the number of knife murders, or something else as murderers simply found some alternative means to go about killing others." And that's exactly what you see in the UK.
What do you see on that table? To put it colloquially, "Those ain't guns." And the reason for that is knives accounted for over 37% of homicides in the UK, taking the lives of 213 victims (719% more than gun homicide), in the year ending March 2016.
So far from achieving a violence/murder free society, the product of onerous gun control has been a "knife or other sharp instrument" becoming "the most common method of killing" in the UK, and "kicking or hitting" someone becoming "the second most common method of killing" comprising 17% of all homicides. Rather than "progressing" under onerous gun control the UK is regressing as people, in the absence of more modern/sophisticated tools, have reverted (like cavemen) to killing others by poking them with pointy objects, or beating them to death with their hands and feet (which killed 292% more people than guns). Rather than abolishing violent crime 55% of homicides in the UK during this period were a result of penetrating or blunt force trauma.
What does this tell us? It tells us that if guns are available to an aspiring criminal or murderer they will use a gun, but if not, they'll simply use something else instead, and that the UK, contrary to being a barometer of modernity, is a paragon of a resurging antiquity sweeping across occidental society. (You're probably more likely to be stabbed in the UK than the U.S. too.) Clearly gun bans didn't abolish violence or murder in the UK, it just reduced violence and murder in which a gunwas used, and resulted in the preferred method of committing violence and murder shifting from guns to something else more readily available.Onerous permitting requirementsdidn't even stop gun homicide. According to the ONS, of the 26 homicides perpetrated with firearms, in "only 1 of these cases was the firearm known to be licensed." "In 18 homicides (69%) the firearm was not licensed, and in the remaining 7 homicides it was not known if the firearm was licensed or not."
Permitting and stronger background checks accomplish nothing regarding those who don't apply for and submit to such; which no criminal with a record barring firearm ownership, knowing the outcome, would do. These measures serve purely as impediments to law abiding citizens acquiring firearms. Ultimately, it's to be expected that a nation with a 393% larger population than the UK would have more gun crime, even were private firearm ownership not allowed. (As illustrated above, someone wanting to commit a crime will use whatever tool is most readily available and/or conducive to that end, and in the absence of one merely substitutes another.) USA today made the calculated decision to use sensationalist language, i.e., there are "160 times as many gun homicides" in the U.S. compared to the UK, because they knew full well saying gun homicide comprised 0.41% of all deaths in 2014 simply doesn't have the same shock value. It would be decidedly harder to convince people that less than half of 1% is a big deal whereas "160 times" suggests rampancy.
Leftists also love to post such figures by themselves, without figures for other causes of death, and therefore without context. 55,227 people died of "influenza and pneumonia" in the U.S. in 2014 for example, or 325% more than were killed by gun homicide, but you'll never see that juxtaposed against or even in the same article with gun homicide figures from USA Today (or any other leftist rag). Alcohol induced deaths caused 1.2% (as opposed to .65%) of all fatalities in the U.S. in 2015, or 155% more than gun homicide, but when have you seen any multi-day/week long media coverage of the alcohol induced death "epidemic?" You could probably recount the names and/or details of multiple shootings if asked, due to their extensive media coverage, but can you recall the last time you heard about any of the 33,171 alcohol induced deaths that occurred in 2015 from any prominent leftist or major media outlet? Clearly, if the goal is "saving lives" and bans affect that outcome, then we have just as much grounds to ban alcohol as guns. I could just as easily claim one is over 4 times as likely to die of influenza and pneumonia, and over 2.5 times as likely to suffer an alcohol induced death, than die to gun homicide. But again, you'll never see that headline, because no one's ever deposed a tyrannical state with dyspnea and a bottle of rum. Examples of such being done with guns are plentiful. What we see in the UK vindicates the philosophy that inspired the Framers of America's limited government.
"The voice of experience and the voice of reason speak but one language. [....] Both united in teaching us, that men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand, when the rains fall, and the winds blow, and the floods come, as to found free institutions upon any other basis than that of morality and virtue, of which the word of God is the only authoritative rule, and the only adequate sanction. All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them; or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet." - Robert Winthrop, legislator, author and orator, and descendant of Governor John Winthrop (founder of the Massachusetts Bay colony), May 28, 1849.
"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere." If men cannot restrain themselves, then the state must necessarily do it for them.It's only solution to people harming one another is to remove their means of harming one another. It's only recourse to a populace with no "controlling power" within themselves, is the imposition of ever more onerous regulation, resulting in tyranny. Hence the reason religion was so integral to the Founders' design. It was religion which would inculcate and sustain virtue in the populace preventing the moral decay that causes accretion of power in the state. It should be understood, as clearly evinced by the data, we are not that populace incapable of self-restraint. Not yet anyway. Though the left is constantly undermining society's traditional moral fabric in order to reduce us to such a society. The tyrannical left merely wants us to believe we are, so we'll accept and facilitate the state becoming that external "controlling power," protecting us from ourselves. That's the purpose of the assiduous and hyperbolic media coverage of shootings and gun homicide. If we're led to believe we're a society gone amuck, and can no longer control ourselves, then we'll accept the state doing it for us. We must resist the left's manipulative demagoguery and remain objective and pragmatic. We must not be swayed by the paroxysmic appeals from the victims of shootings and their kith and kin. These people, as a result of their proximity to the event, are typically highly emotional and therefore those least objective and suited to dictate policy. There's a reason police officers are removed from a case, and judges are expected to recuse themselves, when they're close to a victim or party in an investigation or trial; their proximity to the victim/plaintiff is likely to compromise their objectivity. But we see the exact opposite after every shooting. The left and the complicit media parade out anyone and everyone close to the victim(s), in the hopes their doleful and visceral appeals will subvert the rationality of onlookers. They want you feeling as opposed to thinking. They want you focusing on the ostensibly huge disparity between 26 and 12,979, without cognizance or concern for the context surrounding those figures. Remember why the Second Amendment exists, always, and let no one cause you to forget. Do not let crying or angry relatives cause you to forget it is armed governments, and not armed civilians, that have murdered more people than anyone else in human history.
It's a common thing to see Republicans derogating the mainstream media (MSM) for bias and coverage blackouts. And there's certainly truth in those claims. The MSM has a conspicuously leftist bent and flagrantly engages in selective coverage, e.g., the hyper-coverage of "mass" shootings intended to induce public misconception they're a national crises and major cause of fatalities, in efforts to foment wide scale opposition to the Second Amendment. Republicans however do the same thing to the same end; they just do it regarding different issues. Not a single day goes by in which I'm not deluged by references to economic/job growth by pro-Trump GoP shills attributing such entirely to Trump.
The problem is this isn't the vindication or validation for their vote they plainly believe it is. As I've said in the past Hitler and the Nazis took Germany from around 30% unemployment to 0% (a national labor shortage) in about 5 years. People incapable of nuanced thought, who think an illustration or comparison is an equation, will think I'm saying Trump is Hitler. I'm not. He's obviously not an ardent genocidal anti-Semite and I've never argued otherwise. I'm not saying favoring economic/job growth is "Nazism" either. It's not. I'm not even disputing he's better for the economy than Hillary. I'm saying this conspicuous belief among the GOP (and DNC) that the economy/jobs is all that matters, and is the sole criteria for a president being "good" or "successful" is a staple of Socialism, and is fundamentally flawed, myopic, and even dangerous. It seems completely forgotten that Obama often spoke of and touted job growth too.
But Republicans devote(d) themselves to invalidating Obama's job creation at every opportunity, arguing many were just part-time or temporary jobs, etc. Conversely under Trump a job's a job, and job creation is everything. I don't know a single Republican without a job yet job creation is all they care about (because that's what the GOP and its shills tell them to care about). These two men couldn't be more different according to Trump supporters, even though their rhetoric and positions on issues were/are often similar if not indistinguishable. Like when Trump expressed support for raising the minimum wage, a Democrat position, during his campaign.
They'll suggest things like that don't matter because Trump's job creation is better than Obama's, no consideration given to the fact Obama (unlike Trump) entered office during one of the bigger recessions of our time, and yet according to some was still more successful at creating jobs than Trump. Data from the Department of Labor clearly shows unemployment trending down, and almost reaching current levels, long before Trump even took office.
This obviously pokes serious holes in the Trump is a job creation god ship. But pointing things like this out will get you nowhere with his supporters, because anything not pro-Trump is automatically "fake news," and therefore invalid in their eyes. I'd bet money if Trump bails out some major corporation(s) to ostensibly save jobs (as Obama did thanks to the precedent set by another Republican), GOP shills will be praising him from now to kingdom come as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The problem is not job creation, but to whom people are looking for such. As I've said in the past, presidents don't create jobs, dictators do. Jobs are an organic byproduct of free enterprise in a free market capitalist society. In a Socialist/Communist state jobs are a product of an economy managed by a centralized government. And the GOP, just like the DNC, plainly believes in and wants more of the latter; evinced in the manner they look to the government, and the executive of the federal government in particular, to create and sustain job growth. The obvious problem with government created/provided jobs, is that it renders those who have such dependent upon the state for their livelihoods (granting it profound leverage over them), which is quite a hypocritical position to have for people incessantly derogating their rivals for promoting government dependency through entitlement programs. They clearly support the same thing, they just go about it a different way. Republicans also conspicuously cull information to serve their party's interests just like Democrats. I have yet to see any unabashedly pro-Trump page or organization post this (and probably never will).
Posting things like this might result in inconvenient thoughts being evoked and questions being asked. Why is an alleged "Conservative Republican" president supporting gun control? Is being in favor gun control compatible with Conservatism? Is the president empowered by the Constitution to circumvent congress and impose legislation through unelected bureaucracies like the DoJ and OMB? Isn't undermining the Second Amendment a violation of the president's oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?"
The GOP shills don't want people thinking about such things, or even being cognizant of them at all, and thus engages in assiduous economy/jobs coverage (i.e., pro-Trump propaganda) to keep their base perpetually distracted from Trump's unconstitutional conduct (on which it passes in virtual silence). In the rare event they acknowledge such, it's only to serve in an apologetic capacity, explaining why Trump doing the same thing as Democrats isn't the same thing, is okay when he does it, and is "exposing" the left somehow.
If economic recovery and job growth is all that matters, and it clearly is to Trump Republicans, then Hitler is one of the greatest governors to ever live. The problem isn't that Trump is Hitler, it's that Trump proves America would elect Hitler, based upon its glaring emphasis on all the wrong things. How am I not to believe Republicans wouldn't support an American Hitler, when boosting the economy and job growth is plainly all they care about (to the point they'll suffer assaults upon the Second Amendment in silence), and Hitler was so much better at it than Trump? If they adore a draft dodger with the diction of a child, simply because he expresses homage to the flag and claims to create jobs, how much more so would the uniform worshiping Republicans adore the oratorically adept veteran and war hero Hitler who eliminated unemployment in Germany? Based upon such criterion Hitler, like Trump, would clearly be a superior alternative to Hillary. And "anyone's better than Hillary," right?
As Limbaugh states above.
"This is not some cyclical recovery. This is not a cyclical rebound. This is a policy- and confidence-driven, substantive economic turnaround, and it would not have happened had Hillary Clinton been elected, and it probably wouldn’t have had if 90% of the Republican field in the primaries had been elected."
All equally true of Hitler. As stated in the past I might very well not be a Conservative if not for Rush, but his Trump analysis is frankly a nauseatingly infantile spectacle of partisan sycophancy. Given the lack of popular impediment to a tyrant being elevated to power, what besides sheer luck has prevented its occurrence, and protects us in the event of such? The answer is the Second Amendment and organizations like the NRA (among others) which Trump, and consequently numerous others within the GOP following his lead, are openly undermining and attacking. The Republican base is perpetually herded like cattle via the "lesser of two evils" fallacy, into supporting the very apparatus systematically eroding their liberties, in election after election.
"We are aware that it is no easy task to persuade men - even intelligent men - that this is a matter in which they have a deep, personal, and responsible interest. [...] The notion is so prevalent that if there is anything wrong, it is not their concern; [...] And, finally it is so easy to lull the conscience by the delusive idea that the best way to reform a government is first to swear to support it, and to take a part in its operations." - James Willson, The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government.
You see this constantly from members of both parties. The solution to the two party system perpetually underming our liberties according to them, is to renew our support for such every election, and to remain steadfast in our loyalty despite the fact no substantive reform occurs under the policies of either. That's why you'll never see any of these shills posting how many jobs were added to the labor force, mentioning the fact we're still 21 trillion dollars in debt, because Donald Trump and his GOP are spending other peoples' money like Democrats.
Remember all the GOP shills criticizing Obama's massive spending and saddling future generations with debt for 8 years?
"By the time he leaves office, President Obama will have added more to our national debt that all the other presidents before him combined. When President Obama finally leaves office, the national debt will be almost $20 trillion." - Sean Hannity.
You don't hear about things like spending and debt from Republicans anymore do you? When their Socialist spends trillions it's no big deal. Indeed, it's not even worth mentioning to these same people who harped upon such incessantly under Obama. Apparently Trump's policies are less about cutting spending than redirecting it to other things, and you either support his massive defense spending to sustain the American war machine, or you're not "patriotic." Which brings me to another troubling aspect of the characteristic "Republican" demeanor currently; the waging of constant war and the elevation of the military over the civilian it induces in the minds of the populace over time.
"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. [...] The continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free. [....] The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. [...] And by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors, but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters, is neither remote nor difficult." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #8.
Our country has been in a state of perpetual war for nearly 17 years. We are poised to have an entire generation which, from birth to voting age, have never known a time in which their country was not at war. They will have spent their entire lives in a state of "continual alarm" induced by "a state of continual danger," from terrorists according to Republicans and "mass shootings" according to Democrats, and will look to the state for protection from both, finding two parties eager to provide it in exchange for small perpetual sacrifices in personal liberty; two parties whose efforts, though they may not seem to compliment one another, cumulatively work in tandem to the same end; i.e., both by working against each other, are working in accord to erode individual liberty, merely doing so under differing pretexts. If you deviate from the platform of either of these parties, you're subjected to aggressive coercion tactics intended to bring you back into the fold, e.g., "you must want Hillary to win" if you're a Republican (and the inverse if you're a Democrat). Basically, if you want to save America from the two party system, you must continue to support the two party system. If you want to "reform government" you must "first to swear to support it and take a part in its operations." A common attempt at such manipulation from GOP shills is that asinine and trite "airplane" analogy they incessantly regurgitate it as though it were novel profundity. You know, "Hoping that Trump fails is like rooting for the pilot of the airplane you're on to fail." Need I ask the obvious question? What happens when the pilot wants to fly into a building? What about when the pilot attacks the Second Amednment and wants to suspend due process? Well, apparently when flying Air Trump Trump it's your civic duty to support the pilot no matter what. But under Obama these same people were singing a very different tune.
I actually agree with Rush. I also want Socialism to fail. The difference is I don't only want it to fail when a Democrat pushes it. Hence my desire that Donald Trump fail in his support of Socialist medicine, his massive spending, his assault on the Second Amendment, etc. But what Rush wants, though he'd tell you otherwise, is plainly for Socialism to succeed when it's a member of his own party (Republican) pushing it. When it's their guy, when it's the head of the Republican party doing it, party unity supersedes all else and it's imperative you support the leader (i.e., der führer). And obviously, you get the exact same thing from Democrats, just inverted along party lines. What is the expectation of tacit or even blithe acceptance of liberty loss, i.e., expectation one subordinate personal interest to party interest if not sacrifice the former for the latter completely, if not a quintessential feature of the Socialist "collectivism" Rush claims to oppose? And what should one conclude about the GOP when it expects such from its members in identical fashion to the DNC?
I reached my conclusion long ago. The plain reality is Republicans to a large degree under Trump aren't even pretending to be "Conservatives" anymore; fiscal or otherwise. As I've long said we plainly have a two Socialist party system in America. The hardcore Marxist Democrat party which wants to dive head first into full blown Socialism, and the Fabian Socialist Republican party which prefers to wade in gradually to avoid the discomfort of rapid acclimation. There is no major "Conservative" party in this country and hasn't been for years, decades even, and that needs to change and soon if we really want to "save" America.
Contrary to what many may think, this isn't the first time Republicans have tried to revoke due process, not even in recent history. After the Boston Marathon bombing, numerous Republicans demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be stripped of citizenship and deemed an "enemy combatant," so he could be interrogated without legal representation.
I remember being pretty disturbed by this when it occurred, perhaps still naively clinging to a vestigial remnant of a disposition born of previous times, when Republicans where overall "better" than Democrats. I had already long since stopped calling myself a Republican, and this only served to affirm that choice on a deeply personal level. It's one of the few times I've ever agreed with Democrats on anything, though for completely different reasons. The Democrats defended Dzhokhar because they benefit politically from the mass importation of foreign labor just as they did in the antebellum days. But the right position for the wrong reasons is still the right position. I opposed it because, unlike the inept shills of the GoP, I was looking beyond the exigencies of the moment, and contemplating in what such a precedent might ultimately culminate. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not a citizen, and therefore not entitled to Constitutional protections, and also dead (so I didn't really care about him). Dzhokhar Tsarnaev however was a naturalized citizen. And under no circumstances, at the behest of either party or any party, should the government be empowered to arbitrarily revoke citizenship to exempt people from due process. The abject myopia on the part of Republicans in this instance was simply astounding. What will happen to Conservatives I asked then, if radical leftists who label anyone at odds with their platform "terrorists" of some kind, take control of a government empowered to revoke peoples' citizenship exempting them from due process? All they need do, certainly will do, is label dissidents, especially gun owners, "terrorists," whose citizenship may be rescinded and denied due process. And just recently, as is all too often the case (much to my disappointment), my concerns were vindicated.
This is the problem, and profound danger, of the myopic partisan prejudice that grips this nation. Who knows what might currently be happening to NRA members and gun owners had the GoP gotten its way, under a federal government that could revoke one's citizenship by declaring them an "enemy combatant," exempting them from due process and granting the state license to treat them like members of ISIS. Who among you can say men like Micheal Moore and Dannel Malloy would not use that power, abuse that power, to target, suppress, and/or eliminate dissidents and opponents to their political agenda; e.g., members of the NRA? Some will argue, stupidly, that would never happen. But I tell you what the GoP was proposing in 2013 after Boston, and what Trump was proposing in 2018 after Parkland, is an integral step in getting from here to there. You cannot base your position on these matters solely on how the people for which you vote wield their power. You must also consider how the people your opponents elect would wield it. And if you would not trust the latter with a thing, then you should not trust the former with it, because all it takes is an election to redistribute it from the former to the latter. I don't know why people can't seem to understand that. If you give Donald Trump the power to suspend due process today, or the federal government the power to suspend due process by labeling people "enemy combatants," in 4-8 years Democrats will have that power. The very power you conferred to the state for protection from your enemies will be wielded against you by your enemies. And your appeals to justice will fall on ears as def as yours, when warned against doing so by those you dismissed.
The fact is leftists are already demanding that these shooters be designated and officially treated as terrorists. If you think it will stop there, and the criteria for what constitutes a terrorist won't be revised according to partisan whim and made increasingly broad in its application, eventually including gun owners, you're dangerously naive and shorthsighted. Moore and Malloy are all but declaring as much above. Simply making a threat without actually harming anyone is already grounds to be jailed for terrorizing. The Republicans at the time were only pursuing the best interests of Americans in their minds; except they weren't. And likewise the Democrats above are only pursuing the best interests of Americans in their minds; except they're not. Both are doing the same thing, attacking liberty, under the pretext of making people safer. But if history teaches us anything, it's that we are least safe when we are least free, and the greatest threat to a society is its own government. "Official records show that 800,000 were shot in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1952" under Russian Socialism. Under German Socialism the Einsatzgruppen "murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings in less than a year." In one solitary instance of state sanctioned mass murder "about 42,000 Jews were shot" in just two days. But the left in America wants to revoke the right of gun ownership for all law abiding gun owners, reserving it exclusively to functionaries of the state and those loyal to them, because some reprobate killed 17 people. And maybe Trump's not calling for the disarmament of all law abiding citizens, because that would never be successful if presented thusly. But he's doing his part to make the pie of gun owners smaller, by removing whatever slice of it he can, in precisely the same fashion leftists have been both acutely and incrementally attacking the Second Amendment (2A) for decades. In the eyes of leftists some people disarmed is better than no people disarmed, and if they can't disarm us all at once they'll gladly disarm us a few at a time, in perpetuity, until they achieve the same end. Again, if you disarm 1% of the people 100 times, how many people get disarmed?
Some will argue he's being deceived, or manipulated, as if that's somehow better. (That just means he's an idiot.) And my answer to that is I don't care. Whether done deliberately or out of ignorance is irrelevant. He's serving that agenda all the same. Your freedoms are no less lost by accident than volition, in much the same manner your house is no less lost to an accidental fire than intentional arson. Gone is gone. And once gone the "how" is of little immediate significance, having far more application for prevention than restoration. There's simply a staggering degree of solipsistic ignorance on display in the two major parties, a culture of obscurantism pervading both, the members of which flaunt their sciolism at every opportunity. They know of and have learned nothing from the mistakes of the Weimar Republic, much less the plight and wisdom of the Founders of this country.
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.
It seems a trite and germane notion, this quotation being so often bandied about, and often without good cause. But the thing about existential maxims is they always have relevance. This admonition has as much relevance today as it did then, and is as applicable to us here as it was the Weimer Germans, who traded liberty for security and ended up with neither. We find ourselves in the same situation now. Liberty eroding policies proposed by a kakistocratical cabal, are being facilitated by a credulous mob clamoring for safety from (largely imaginary) threats, and willing to trade liberty for the promise of it. What hope is there for a populace so ignorant it cannot recognize the most ostentatious threats to its freedom, or so physically, intellectually, and morally indolent it offers no meaningful resistance to such? The farcically specious justifications for Trump's recent rhetoric and actions, and the equally farcical sophistry in defense of such from his supporters, is repugnant to any thinking, intellectually honest person, as is the abject hypocrisy on constant display from our glorious leader Comrade Trump.
Had Barack Obama said this, there would have been an immediate outcrying from GoP shills, warning of his impending dictatorship. But after 8 years of Republican conspiracy theories floating around social media, that Obama was going to abolish term limits and/or run for a third term, Republicans pass on this in virtual silence. They have nothing to say about it, and if they do, it's an explanation (as always) about how it's just meaningless banter; an excuse (he was only "joking") they'd have never accepted in regard to Obama. Allegedly it was graphic imagery of the dead and wounded in Parkland that compelled Trump to take action on gun control, in a manner not dissimilar to that which moved him to bomb Syria after seeing images of dead Syrian children, in direct contradiction to his position under Obama and again with no Republican outcry of note whatsoever.
"A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to share private conversations, likened the president's reaction to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students to the impact Trump felt when he saw images of children's listless bodies after a chemical attack in Syria last April."
It's funny how tragedies only seem to induce the president to have "reaction(s)" to the left and never to the right. Seeing pictures of dead Syrian children caused him to react by unconstitutionally attacking another sovereign nation without congressional approval. Meeting with the families of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School victims causes him to react by attacking the Second Amendment. But images of the atrocities that occur every day in America's racist genocide mills apparently induce no reaction whatsoever.
Such imagery is readily available. Yet Planned Parenthood has not been bombed and remains funded. Trump calls no meetings with PP's executives to "discuss" racist genocide. One might be tempted to conclude from such inconsistencies that his moral indignation is selective and deliberately one directional. I mean, he did defend PP as an alleged "Conservative" candidate after all.
And this merely provides another example to illustrate how comprehensively stupid, or deceptive, Donald Trump is. If we should accept the death associated with PP because "we have to look at the positives" of its existence also, and because killing is "actually a fairly small part of what they do," then surely we should accept the deaths that result from AR-15 ownership which results in far, far, far fewer deaths. I mean, "we have to look at the positives also," and consider that gun homicide is "actually a fairly small part" of what AR-15 ownership represents, right? But that's not what we're seeing. He defends one (the much bigger killer) and attacks the other (the exponentially lesser killer). He is "shocked and distressed" by "the savagery of the wounds inflicted" by AR-15s, but babies thrown in trash cans, dismembered, and sold for parts, not so much. And never mind the fact Trump apparently got the idea to raise the age requirement AR-15s from his unambiguously leftist friend and journalist Geraldo Rivera.
"Television personality Geraldo Rivera, who dined with the president and his two oldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, arrived with a pitch: ban people under age 21 from buying assault-type weapons. Trump took the idea 'under advisement,' Rivera, a Fox contributor, wrote in an email. And as days passed by, consideration turned into full-blown support."
So apparently national gun policy under Donald Trump is being dictated by outspoken illegal immigration supporter Geraldo,and children, whose appeals for federal intervention Trump "studied [...] on cable news." So yeah, as you can see we're so much better off under Trump, than had Hilary won. Trump is pushing law based upon the input of leftists who didn't even vote for him as opposed to his constituency.
So again, just to be clear, just to really emphasize what's going on here, just to really hammer it home, gun law in this country is being dictated by Donald Trump's leftist friends and kids. The abject rancid stupidity permeating the GoP base is enough to gag a maggot, more befitting a Monty Python skit, than the Republic bequeathed us by our Founders and party of Lincoln. It's simply astonishing to see how gullible, hypocritical, and dishonest these people are. Every day, literally every day, I see Republicans defending a guy pushing Geraldo Rivera's gun policy across the nation. HOW THE HELL IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!? The great negotiator, master of the "art of the deal," has dinner with a commie and meets with some emotional kids and comes out it pushing gun control? Need I ask the obvious question? What other policy positions, if any, are derived from Trump's leftist friends? Is this why Obamacare is not repealed, Hillary's not in jail, and there's no wall yet? Perhaps it was Hillary, over brunch, that convinced him not to investigate Hillary. And perhaps most amazing of all, this trickle down stupidity is working. A leftist manipulated the laughably capricious and facile Trump, and Trump in turn is manipulating the equally capricious and facile GoP base, and even many in congress. It's already worked in Florida (seen in a previous installment), and continues to spread.
"What we need is a tactically trained school resource officer, or two of them, assigned to every public school in America."
We don't "need" that actually. We don't "need" any of the things currently being proposed by bureaucrats. Because the school shooting epidemic is a completely leftist/media manufactured crisis. It simply doesn't exist. The media induced perception and the numerical reality tell two completely different stories. Based upon the CDC's death figures for 2015, the Florida school shooting comprised 0.0006% of all deaths in the United States. Based upon the same data your child is 222000% more likely to die in transit to or from school (automobile fatality). So where's the demand for one or two trained resource officers in every car, and a "nationwide cultural change," to keep ours kids safe from automobiles? Republicans, just like Democrats, want to change state and even national policy based upon an incident that killed 0.000005% of the country's population and less than .5% percent of all deaths in 2015. Meanwhile a practice that comprised more than 40% of all deaths in 2015 (abortion) is of no concern to any of them (or any of the people that voted for them); they couldn't care less. Far from Republicans opposing tyranny, as they would have you believe, they're complicit and even leading the charge for new/more firearm regulation and government oversight.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, coming from Higgins. Louisiana has a conspicuous penchant for electing leftists, with the report cards to prove it, who call themselves "Republicans."
Louisiana's representatives beautifully illustrate that Republican red and Socialist red are growing ever more indistinguishable by the day. D's and F's abound in this collage of leftist Republican garbage. Only one, one, has a respectable score. Is it any wonder well known leftist Donald Trump, buddy of Hillary Clinton and Geraldo Rivera, won the Republican nomination, the presidency on the GoP ticket, and continues to enjoy wide scale Republican support? Republicans love big government leftists; provided they have the right branding. They elect them, and reelect them, again and again. And when presented with these facts, they respond just like leftists/Democrats do, with denial, subterfuge, and intransigently clinging to their delusions. America is doomed. Freedom is dying, and Republicans are killing it, all the while believing themselves freedom fighters like every other Socialist.
I take no joy in exposing Trump. I wish it wasn't necessary. I wish he was the man his supporters believe, and some blatantly pretend, him to be. But he's not and someone has to give an honest accounting. Because you sure won't get such from his supporters, or repugnant GoP shills like Rush Limbaugh, whose status and livelihood depends on preserving the status quo.
As I've said in the past the Limbaughs and (insert Democrat counterpart here) of America have a vested interest in perpetuating "the animosity of one part(y) against another," in much the same manner men like Al Sharpton have a vested interest in perpetuating racial enmity. If partisan strife ever dissipated, so too would their relevance and sources of revenue evaporate, in much the same manner Sharpton's would if racial division ended. They're partisan pimps, who flagrantly stoke duopolistic acrimony out of pure self-interest, portraying it as a patriotic/philanthropic endeavor. So it falls to me to illustrate what the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Coulters, and Ingrahams have continually refused to acknowledge.
Since essentially the outset of his campaign the evidence that Trump is an ideological leftist (if not a Democrat operative) has been accruing without cessation. That trend unfortunately continues unabated, and apparently, will continue to do so interminably. To the litany of instances in which Trump has mirrored Democrats on issues he now adds blaming video games for gun violence.
Once again I ask the question. Why is a "Republican" incessantly taking the same position on issues as a Democrat and facilitating the Democrat agenda? Because this is not new. I've seen it before.
Diane Feinstein blamed video games for a school shooting in 2012. Donald Trump blames video games for a school shooting in 2018. Both exploited such tragedies to propose more/new gun regulation. Despite this Trump supporters will deny the flagrant similarities and argue there's some difference between the two. But as usual, the ways in which they're the same are substantive, and the ways in which they differ frivolous. Both blame others entities and plainly believe those entities can and should be held accountable for crimes they didn't commit. They simply blame and hold accountable different entities. The Democrats blame other gun owners, the NRA, Republicans, etc. The Republicans blame the FBI, the Sheriff's Department, Democrats, etc. They may disagree on who's to blame, but both agree that others besides the shooter are to blame, and seek more/new regulation and government oversight under the pretext of preventing its reoccurrence. So while their rhetoric and whom they hold responsible may differ, they are in conformity on the only thing that matters, in that both agree the government should be made more powerful and intrusive to achieve their political goals.
Even were studies not done that found no definitive link between video game violence and real world violence, it should be obvious that one has no direct connection to the other. To say seeing virtual violence in a video game induces in the player an urge to emulate those acts in real life, is tantamount to saying watching an episode of the Sopranos induces in the viewer an urge to join the mafia and "whack" people. It's basically an inadvertent argument for the non-existence of free will. Even if engaging in violence in video games did induce such urges, it would only be a problem if people were incapable of suppressing those urges. Obviously if there were any such substantial causative and paucity of inhibitive factors at play, the vast preponderance of the population would be murderers, as there are tens of millions of "gamers" and graphic violence is a staple of modern (leftist produced) film and television (i.e., most Americans are subjected to such regularly if not assiduously).
It's a testament to the abject hypocrisy and/or stupidity of leftists in particular to blame film, television, and video games for violence, when most film, television, and video games are produced by political leftists, thus blaming themselves. Quentin Tarantino, the maker of Kill Bill (depicted above), is a political leftist (like the vast majority of Hollywood film makers and actors). Alan Kertz, a developer on EA's popular "Battlefield" game series, is likewise an overt political leftist. His Twitter profile depicts him holding two Thompson submachine guns and describing himself as a "liberal feminist."
Sure, he calls himself "masculine" too, but no Conservative would refer to themselves as a "liberal feminist." And if there's one thing Kertz is plainly not, it's Conservative, or even Republican.
There's also Manveer Heir, another game developer on EA's "Mass Effect: Andromeda" (widely panned by gamers for its overbearing leftist bent), whose penchant for posting racist Tweets expressing his antipathy for white people is well known among the gaming community.
Clearly not a "Conservative" guy. You never see Conservatives complaining about "white supremacy," because Conservatives don't waste their time complaining about problems that don't exist. There hasn't been a credible white supremacist movement since the Nazis, and an inconvenient fact to which all leftists are ignorant (or intentionally ignore), is that it was white people that opposed and defeated that movement. Had fate been left in the hands of "people of color" like Manveer Heir, the entire world would now be under German National Socialist dominion. It's completely forgotten today that an entire division (13th SS Handschar) of the German National Socialist (Nazi) army was Arabic, and you can rest assured no leftists will go out of their way to point it out.
The fact is these industries are literally thronged with radical leftists that routinely proclaim and peddle their Socialist sentiments, both in real life and through their creative mediums, while reveling in "artistic" gratuitous violence of their own and others' making. Yet leftist bureaucrats have the audacity to accuse us of fomenting and supporting violence with our gun rights. We're expected to simply accept without protest the pretentious and hypocritical ire of leftists lamenting a circumstance that, by their account, they cause through mediums they control. If video games cause violence then leftists, through extension, cause violence. Because all the major game publishers and developers are left leaning or outright SJW meccas.
Despite there being no evidence video games cause violence, and it being contrary to simple sense, the myth they do persists. And it plainly persists in the GoP as well as the Democratic party, evinced in a recent exchange on an ostensibly "Conservative" social media page, which featured a letter written by a teacher concerning the Florida shooting that went "viral." (There being no more fitting appellation for the tripe that so frequently ascends to prominence on social media.) An excerpt from which I'll now provide.
"Until we, as a country, are willing to get serious and talk about mental health issues, lack of available care for the mental health issues, lack of discipline in the home, horrendous lack of parental support when the schools are trying to control horrible behavior at school (oh no! Not MY KID. What did YOU do to cause my kid to react that way?), lack of moral values, and yes, I’ll say it-violent video games that take away all sensitivity to ANY compassion for others’ lives, as well as reality TV that makes it commonplace for people to constantly scream up in each others’ faces and not value any other person but themselves, we will have a gun problem in school. Our kids don’t understand the permanency of death anymore!!!"
I agreed with some of her points initially, to a degree anyway, but it rapidly descends into utterly subjective emotionally driven malarkey. I responded thusly.
"Lost me at video games. Been playing video games for almost my entire life, and I've yet to 'shoot up' anything. [...] Stop using video games as a scapegoat. They're no more violent and graphic, and even much less so, than any number of television shows or movies. A child inculcated with a solid moral foundation will not be swayed into mindless homicidal sociopathy by video games, or any other influence, and one without such may be by any number of influences. Video games, movies, television, music, etc., are all a product of the culture, and looking to remove them is only treating the symptoms instead of the illness; i.e., blaming video games is no different in substance than blaming guns."
My response was, naturally, promptly met with yet more ignorance laden, hyperbolic nonsense, criticizing the addictiveness of video games, comparing them to drugs, and accusing them of dehumanizing others in the eyes of gamers, etc. I conceded that there is an addictive element to video gaming, but that in and of itself does not constitute a correlation to violence. By that hyper-reductionistic rationale, smokers are more likely to be murderers than non-smokers, because they have an addiction. When have you ever heard of someone robbing/killing to sustain their video game habit? You haven't; because video game addiction, though it may have similar or common attributes, is not heroin addiction. If you read someone was murdered over drugs you'd find nothing unusual about that per se; it's common. If they told you someone was murdered to procure money for a World of Warcraft subscription you'd find that very unusual; it's very uncommon. What these women are describing, as you'll see going forward, is simply not reality. It's a fantasy of their own making. As illustrated in (an excerpt from) the response to my remarks above.
"I understand that the vast majority of people will play violent video games and not become mass murderers, and anecdotally you turned out just fine (by criminal standards), but surely you can concede that awarding points for rape or murder is not elevating or stabilizing any positive cultural values that we would like to see in people."
Do you see how, just like gun control advocates, she wants to base the rule on the exception and not the standard? According to her 99.95% of people should be punished for what .5% of people do. (And that's not a random figure I pulled out of thin air by the way. More on that later.) And I don't concede that point; because I've never seen it. Her reference to "awarding points for rape and murder" is a gross misrepresentation of gaming. Perhaps somewhere out there exists some obscure title that does this, but I am aware of no game (and I've played more than a few) that awards players points for raping people. Quite to the contrary, many game developers are striving for less sexualization (not more) of video game characters (particularly female characters), as a direct result of complaints from leftists/feminists. The developers of the game Overwatch for example, changed the way one of the game's characters posed, after someone complained there was too much emphasis on her ass in the original pose (left side in image below) making it "sexist" or whatnot.
Other examples of such revisions exist, and are easily discovered, provided one takes the time and effort to actually look for them.
Her reference to games rewarding players for committing murder is also a gross misrepresentation. First of all, since when is shooting an imaginary person with an imaginary gun, "murder?" None of it'sreal. Secondly, we see in this sentiment a direct parallel with gun control proponents, in that it makes no distinction between righteous and unrighteous violence; all violence is bad. It's just a flagrantly self-serving generalization that lumps everything and everyone into the same category. Just as all firearm use is violence, and the NRA is a "terrorist organization" that promotes such in the eyes of leftists, all killing in video games is "murder" and all virtual violence promotes such. There is no accounting for the fact that violence is the only reason the west didn't fall to colonial Islam a millennia ago; that violence is the only reason we are free of British monarchical tyranny; that violence is the only reason there are Jews left on Earth, et al. No mention is made of the fact many games, most even, put the player in the role of the hero using righteous violence to defend their honor, to save someone they love, their family, their society, the world, even the galaxy from destruction at the hands of malevolent forces. Likewise there is no acknowledgement or consideration of the fact that in many games, again perhaps most, you're not even killing people. The objects of your ire cover the gamut from people, to animals, to monsters, demons, aliens, robots, fantasy creatures, etc., etc., etc. Explain to me how the hit game "Monster Hunter: World" rewards players for "rape" and "murder."
It simply doesn't. And anyone who took the time and effort to actually look into it would know that. But we're dealing with a leftist here. Personal prejudice and baseless conjecture take precedence over reason and facts. Some of the most seminal "shooters" in the FPS genre placed the players in the role of American soldiers fighting German fascism. (How evil.) An experience so popular in the past Activision just released another Call of Dutygame with that premise. Another (Freedom Fighters) places the player in the role of a character resisting the Communist invasion of America and occupation of New York. (A game that, in my opinion, should be required playing for all male youth.) But she makes no mention of games that portray altruism, integrity, valor, or patriotism, as to do so would contravene her fallacious narrative, and require she acknowledge that gamers would have an irresistible urge to emulate these traits and behaviors too. Either games influence the people that play them or they don't, and if they do as she contends, to the extent she contends, then gamers should be emulating acts of self-sacrificing heroism they experienced in video games in equal proportion. But they're not. And you'll never see any of these people accusing video games of inducing that kind of behavior. Only the bad they see in society; because they're intellectually dishonest. The notion that it's all just "mindless violence" grooming "killers" is a lie,coming from someone who's clearly never played video games to any meaningful extent, or simply doesn't care about (or has a vested interest in suppressing) the truth. And in that we see yet another direct parallel between video game critics and gun control proponents. Just as people who plainly know nothing about guns, will presume to lecture those that actually use and have knowledge about them, people who plainly know nothing about video games will likewise presume to lecture those that actually play and are familiar with them. Just as people who've never fired a gun, or have only fired one a few times, presume to lecture us on the dangers of firearms, people who've never played a video game, or have only played one a few times briefly, presume to lecture gamers on the dangers of gaming. In both instances you have abject ignoramuses, who blatantly have no idea what they're talking about engaging in egregious distortions of reality, dictating to those with the most knowledge and experience and denying cogent evidence that contravenes their position. What does Donald Trump or Diane Feinstein know about video games? Answer: Not a damn thing. But Republican voters, just like Democrat voters, have no problem with him taking it upon himself to be involved in the regulation of something about which he knows nothing, nor is empowered by the Constitution to regulate. On this issue Trump is an outsider looking in. He's a billionaire who's been privileged his entire life. He'll never understand what it's like to know you'll never be anything more than ordinary, or the yearning the common man feels to be more than that, and the accommodation for that yearning a virtual world provides if only for a while. Because Donald Trump's real life is one about which ordinary people fantasize, and will only ever experience virtually if at all. And need I point out the glaring hypocrisy, of criticizing video games for promoting gun violence, when as a presidential candidate Donald Trump proclaimed "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." How quickly the amnesiac American forgets. Another woman attempts to qualify her position by stating its derived from "from personal experience" observing others play video games. But I've been playing games essentially as long as they've been around. Literally since the Atari 2600 days. We even had an Odyssey. $100 says this woman could not even tell you the difference between those two, or a physical or digital copy of a game, but she and people like her presume to lecture us and should be dictating policy in their minds. Just like people who don't know the difference between a clip and a slide, presume to lecture us on firearms safety, and think they should be dictating policy on guns.
Being a Conservative lectured on guns by a leftist, is like being a doctor lectured on anatomy, by someone who doesn't know the difference between the myocardium and the anus. I mean, who needs to know what a slide is, right? Every part of a gun is the "clip" in the mind of a leftist, nuance estranged ignoramus, just like all killing in video games is "murder." I'll tell you the real reason they want to regulate "violence" in video games. It's just part and parcel of, and merely another front in the larger culture war being waged by leftists, to emasculate men and turn them into docile women with penises under the pretext of making society "safer." So naturally I am immediately repulsed when an appeal to reform society, turns into a naked "feminist" attack on my hobbies and masculinity, and attempt to rob me of one of the few places left where men are allowed to indulge their innate aggression without actually hurting anyone. Where can I be the liberator of France and raise the American flag over the Reichstag in real life? Because I did it in a video game; the only place I can emulate the heroism of my forefathers. And if Trump and the rest of the commies have their way, males will be robbed of even the fantasy of manly heroism, in their interminable pursuit of a society purged of masculinity.
Pixels are not people. Shooting pixels does not give me an uncontrollable urge to do the same to real people and never has. That's simply unmitigated nonsense. Indeed, one of the things that I personally enjoy about certain games is that they afford you the ability to be the bad guy. I play a do gooder every day in real life. But in some games I can be the villain for a change, and when given that choice I sometimes take it, precisely because no one actually gets hurt by it. It doesn't blur the line between fantasy and reality for me. What manner of moron could believe or be subject to such a thing? By that rationale women who watch Fifty Shades of Grey must suffer in an irresistible compulsion to engage in a depraved S&M fling with a prominent businessman. But such an assertion would never be tolerated. It's only acceptable to portray boys/men as visceral cretins incapable of self-restraint, which is exactly what Trump and those who share his disposition (whether they realize it or not) are inherently suggesting. Is it the fault of video games or parents if "kids don’t understand the permanency of death?" Since when is it a video game's job to inculcate that understanding in children or people at large? And even were video games responsible for this dearth of understanding, how could that be the case save for abject parental dereliction? How does a child without an innate and/or incurable psychological disorder, mature to have no value for human life whatsoever, without egregious parental apathy in regard to inculcating values? But we live in a post-personal responsibility society. So the solution to parents using video games as babysitters for the women above, is not for parents to become better parents, but to empower government to compensate for and allow them to continue being negligent parents. Parents don't need to teach their children right from wrong, and inculcate critical thinking skills, the state just needs to purge society of all references and allusions to violence, so they may remain lazy parents who refuse to provide the proper edification or police their childrens' entertainment. Now, I would agree you could indeed probably warp a child mentally, by assiduously exposing them to graphic violence sans any ethical instruction that places such in its proper context for a protracted period of time. But as illustrated earlier, if such a moral vacuum exists, it's leftists that created it and leftists that sustain it. They're not trying to fix that with what they're proposing, they're trying to validate and protect it. They don't just want to eliminate the right to bears arms (leaving us helpless against the monsters they create), they want to eliminate the psychological disposition innate to males, that induces them to resist authority altogether (that we strain not against the yoke of a totalitarian state). Boys who enjoy using guns, without the supervision of the state, may one day use them against the state. And to prevent that they need to not only eliminate access to firearms, but to eliminate the natural aggression innate to boys and men, being the contingent of society most likely to take up arms against a tyrannical state. That is the real agenda behind this.
The argument that gun crime is grounds for this is farcical. In 2015 (according to the CDC) there were 2,712,630 deaths in the United States. In that same year there were 12,979 gun homicides. So gun homicide comprised a paltry 0.4784655481949252% of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Now, let's say 100 of those deaths (which I'd surmise is well more than what actually occurred) were caused by "mass" shooters using an AR-15. That would mean 0.7704753833115032% of that 0.4784655481949252% were the result of shootings with an AR-15. By contrast 37,757 people died in automobiles (190% more than killed by gun homicide). But no one cares because that's just 1.3918964252404493% of America's total deaths in 2015. The freedom to travel, everyone will readily concede, is worth the cost in lives. There are over 3,000 abortions in the U.S. every day. That's over 1,095,000 deaths a year; a sum that amounts to over 40% of all deaths that occurred in 2015. Abortion killed 8336% more people than gun homicide in 2015, and (based upon the figure I provided) 1094900% more people that AR-15s. But according to Trump, the Democrats, and the complicit media we have a gun problem in America. And thus guns (especially AR-15s), and video games which induce people to use them in acts of random violence, need more regulation. You know, for the safety of the people and whatnot, but especially the children; that leftists would throw into trash cans, or dismember and sell for parts, if they were simply unwanted by their mothers. Based upon these figures, if video games are causing gun violence, they're doing a terrible job of it. The "link" that exists according to Trump, if it exists at all, when viewed in the broader context of causes of death in the U.S., is statistically insignificant by comparison and a non-issue. This is just another example of stupid or disingenuous bureaucrats, augmenting the size of government and scope of its authority to "fix" imaginary problems, which remaining deliberately unfixed provide a pretext for more of the same in perpetuity. These measures won't solve anything, because they're not meant to solve anything, as solving the problem would eliminate the necessity of future/further government intervention. And this perverse anti-logic validated regulatory boondoggling, which has long been the epitome of leftist/Democrat thought and conduct, is now coming from Republicans; the head of the Republican party at that. So again I ask. What is the non-rhetorical difference between a Republican and Democrat? Hell, as this (and previous installments) plainly evince, even therhetoric is becoming indistinguishable. Again I ask. With Republicans like this, who the hell needs Democrats? I'm done with the GoP in any serious capacity. Done. My days of voting straight along party lines are well and good over.
