Let's talk about lumping crazies & sane people.

a reply to: tonycodes

Whats the difference though. Killing is killing regardless of whom it is. So are they insane or not.

a reply to: tonycodes

What a well written and well reasoned OP.

I would add that we also need to be careful of who we call 'crazy' or mentally ill. If we start calling anyone that has gone through depression or other minor mental illness in their life unfit for gun ownership then they (the Government) have effectively met their goal of disarming the public.

Also, if they start making the category of mental illness too broad you will have many more people that forego any treatment until things get really bad. Not to mention the stigma of 'being crazy' which people with mental health issues have been trying to shed for decades.

You also cannot have a 'choice' to end the life of an unborn human, but not give me the right to own a Constitutionally protected firearm. I mean I am not actually even ending a life in 99.9% of the cases of owning a firearm whereas 100% of abortion 'choices' end in death.

Leave my rights alone and I will leave your rights alone.

Nice post, OP.

I look at it this way:

I own a gun. I am not insane.

I know many muslims. They are not insane.

All this BS would stop if we just stopped focusing on the group mentality and instead focused on the individual. Every group's got their crazies.

a reply to: Looselungjones

the difference is killing is part of a soldiers job and cops are trained to killl to stop threats.. were talking about civilians here. If Radical Islam was represented by an actual country and army, then i wouldnt be calling the soldiers crazy, just their leaders. I am sorry if i put out this op to be too broad, but i am trying to simply point out that our leaders are not attacking the source of how 105 million people can be turned radical and violent, as far as domestic gun policy goes, most of the gun deaths are in impoverished US cities. If the govt really cared they would come together as i suggested and actually use PR and American spirit to help those cities turn around.

originally posted by: Metallicus
I would add that we also need to be careful of who we call 'crazy' or mentally ill.

Another point of agreement!

These people aren't necessarily 'mentally ill' by today's standards. I'd venture to say that most mass murderers are not mentally ill, but "ideologically driven".

a reply to: Metallicus

I answered part of your post above, but also wanted to say you def. found another double standard... you can kill scores of babies but you dont want people to have guns bc they kill people lol

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic

originally posted by: Metallicus
I would add that we also need to be careful of who we call 'crazy' or mentally ill.

Another point of agreement!

These people aren't necessarily 'mentally ill' by today's standards. I'd venture to say that most mass murderers are not mentally ill, but "ideologically driven".

Yea, your right, let me clarify real quick that unless you were diagnosed as crazy, your not a crazy to me until yyou actually kill someone. so that doesnt mean were gonna pick people off so that they cant get a gun bc they took prozac once in there life... innocent until proven guilty... sane until proven crazy

originally posted by: rockintitz
Nice post, OP.

I look at it this way:

I own a gun. I am not insane.

I know many muslims. They are not insane.

All this BS would stop if we just stopped focusing on the group mentality and instead focused on the individual. Every group's got their crazies.

thank you, and i feel that the leaders of a popular group, like the worlds second largest religion, is responsible to make sure their crazies are kept under control and not fed and bred.... only they will know best how to curb their own crazies.. it would be nice if our leaders promoted personally responsibility instead of making people think changing laws and pieces of paper will change anything

originally posted by: jjkenobi
Completely agree, it's happening everywhere.

All police are racist and want to hurt us.
All Republicans are racist.
All Muslims are terrorist.
All gun owners want to shoot us.
All people on welfare are just lazy and need to go to work.

None of those are true. Yet there are pages of threads on ATS where people will argue for half those statements and against half those statements.

All republicans are not racist. But, the rhetoric is racist EVEN when it isn't intended to be, and that needs to be stopped.

a reply to: tonycodes

Well said...very well said. It's amazing how obvious things sound when put forth by someone who doesn't have media/political-fueled stupid blinders on. Not much to add, you said it sir!

a reply to: tonycodes

In theory I can agree with much of what you've said but you've glossed over some things and on other points I think you're just plain wrong and so those things are what I'll comment on.

I grew up with nothing, worked hard, and I am young for the success I have attained now. My Point? How can anyone be a victim in the USA?! Jesus, have you seen what these other countries look like? Even growing up in a #ing ghetto I could see how cozy I had it as an American. I cant stand the whining. We got it real good compared to the rest of the world.

BUT in the big picture I truly feel responsibility lies on the politicians that allow their cities to go to # in the first place.

Donations, help, missionary work, etc. AND WE ALL GO THE # TO WORK AND SAVE OUR COUNTRIES CITIES FROM BEING OVER RUN BY CRIMINALS AND LOONEY TOONS. Suggesting that changing some laws would replace hard work and responsibility is the epitome of how #ing lazy our society has become.

Donations, missionary work, changing mayors, etc are all temporary measures that do nothing to remedy the root causes and so will not be long term solutions.

Society is not adapting to keep up with technological progress.

All of the cities you referenced in the OP are rust belt cities. These cities sprung up in periods of booming industrialization, drastically accelerating the thousands of years old trend of urbanization with the then substantive promise of economic opportunity. Poor people flocked in waves; poor European immigrants, black folks escaping the oppression and dearth of employment opportunities of the agrarian South, poor whites abandoning the farms ruined in the Dust Bowl, etc.

Speaking of the Dust Bowl, there was of course a major lapse during the Great Depression but by the build up to WWII, industrialization was in full swing once more, the economy was booming and after the war, things continued to improve right up until about 1973 when Bretton Woods fell apart, the stock market crashed, OPEC quadrupled the price of a barrel of crude and the boom was over.

We hit peak manufacturing employment in 1975 and so began deindustrialization and the end of the first "long boom" and the introduction into the popular American lexicon of terms like "globalization," "outsourcing," "automation," and "downsizing."

I've obviously neglected some other factors like women's lib but I think you get the gist. The economy had evolved under capitalism from a predominantly agrarian one to a modern industrial one and then started shedding jobs. A lot of rhetoric is dedicated to defending a system — that is benefiting the wealthiest few more so than ever — by blaming the poor, blaming the social safety net programs, etc but mostly what's going on is that a lot of American workers are simply being made irrelevant and I can assure you that people like me in the tech sector are driving another wave of technological advancement, chiefly computerization, that will be chipping away at even more jobs and it's not just the factory workers now.

We need a long term strategy that will provide economic opportunity for the masses. Recently, I've been interested in ideas like shortening the standard work week and basic income schemes but ultimately, there's no silver bullet which makes it that much harder to get people talking about the root causes because people have a natural aversion to complex problems and a preference for simplistic would be solutions that can be turned into easy to digest dogma and memorable slogans.

If we can increase economic opportunity, I think we'll find a lot of circumstances greatly improved in one fell swoop: welfare rolls shrinking, ghettos shrinking, crime continuing to fall, race relations drastically improving and far far less fertile fields for the growth of extremist ideologies (be they religious, political or other).

The problem for me is I don't see our political leaders doing much of anything but rehashing old ideas that either never worked in the first place or have no real bearing on what the hell is going on. I'm entirely onboard with the idea of rolling up our collective sleeves and getting to work but we need a real plan.

originally posted by: tonycodes

originally posted by: 0hlord
... Yes, let's supply the Ghettos with crats of guns and ammunition sk people can protect themselves from Gun violence.

It's foolproof.

thats not what i suggested... that would be stupid

Sorry it's called satire.
Of course I agree with your OP.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
If we can increase economic opportunity, I think we'll find a lot of circumstances greatly improved in one fell swoop: welfare rolls shrinking, ghettos shrinking, crime continuing to fall, race relations drastically improving and far far less fertile fields for the growth of extremist ideologies (be they religious, political or other).

The problem for me is I don't see our political leaders doing much of anything but rehashing old ideas that either never worked in the first place or have no real bearing on what the hell is going on. I'm entirely onboard with the idea of rolling up our collective sleeves and getting to work but we need a real plan.

Our current political leaders are perpetuating a cycle that leaves generations of families dependent on social welfare programs and unable to compete in a capitalistic society. The elite don't want to compete with a trained/educated populace in a free market society. They prefer it to feel oppressed, dependent on government, and dumbed-down.

If we put more effort into training/educating the populace and more focus on individual achievement -- rather than throw money at the problem in a social welfare system that just exacerbates the class-divide -- I suspect we would see the kind of progress you are talking about.

I think it's a tough problem that requires creative solutions and real individual effort to break the cycle. But it needs discussion, now.

oh my bad.. i am used to people actually giving answers like that and they are serious.. im all for satire