The call of the amygdala

[ddstory]

"Not all Muslims are terrorists, but curiously, most terrorists have been Muslim lately", is what I've been hearing from some circles all the time these days. And not just from Trump supporters (or as I call them, Trumpists).

Well, not so fast. First, what is terrorism? "The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the

Comments

[mahnmut]

You should've learned by now that this is going to fall on deaf ears. I've been hearing excuses even from liberals for the perpetuation of the status quo regarding the gun situation. So I'd say this is a lost cause.

Obama may want to make some initial steps towards untying this knot in his remaining months - he does have this prerogative, and he has nothing to lose at this point. But that is not to say he won't be met with stiff resistance from all corners, and his successor wouldn't scale back everything he now does.

The situation will get much, much worse in this respect, before a sufficient number of people decide that enough is enough. So, expect even more mass shootings, more neglect and more heads buried in the sand about the real domestic plague, and in the meantime a ridiculously disproportionate response to external threats, and an ever tightening grip of the police state using terrorism as a convenient pretext.

[dreamville_bg]

Let me play devil's advocate here a little bit and apply the same or a similar logic. Could it be that a government that is seeking to increase its control of the populace (out of fear of said populace) is aiming to play by the fears of that populace in order to induce a drive for a voluntary surrender of one of the most fundamental rights of said populace, namely the right to bear arms and protect itself from arbitrary government actions? (At least that's what the 2nd Amendment was supposed to address, if I'm reading it correctly). You know, the well-rehearsed libertarian adage that armed people are free people

[ddstory]

The 2nd Amendment was supposed to address a threat that was extant at the time it was designed, and it did serve an adequate function at the time. Since times have changed (or as the popular word is, "evolved"), the relevant legislation ought to be reformed as well. Nobody is arguing in favor of taking away people's precious guns. Nobody. I want that to be very clear.

That doesn't mean the gun laws shouldn't evolve along with the evolution of guns themselves, and with the change of the complex of factors that surround gun ownership and gun use. Again, why should it be easy (or even necessary) for an individual to have an arsenal at home that could serve a whole battalion for a month? And why should anyone be able to go into a shop and walk out with a gun - and I do mean walk with the gun on the street? How does this help curb violence?

[luvdovz]

Case in point: some disgruntled folks took the law in their hands in Oregon.

Perhaps that's the armed civil disobedience that some gun nuts envision in their wettest dreams.

Come on lads! Show them! Show the bad government what huge nuts you have!

[ddstory]

[pigshitpoet]

i love yosemite sam. he reminds me of clark gable

[flaming_goat]

The fact that they have guns with them certainly does change the government's response to them, doesn't it?

[abomvubuso]

Stats!? What sort of godless sorcery is this?

[garote]

A chain of relatively recent, well-covered incidents has caused the popular dialogue about guns to change a lot in the last seven years, and The Prez is only fanning the flames of something that he would have been totally unable to kindle on his own, just after his election, when the economy was a mess and everyone was still screaming about Iraq. 2012 was the real "breakthrough year", with this orange-haired wingnut and this fugly disaster and this one, in a 7 month span...