The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

fire police, train them to be gun melters who turn them into cool metalworks

― NBA YoungBoy named Rocky Raccoon (m bison), Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:08 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://i.imgur.com/E3sCnd8.png

The organization’s services and leadership opportunities coalesce into something more: a group identity that mobilizes both actual members and the millions of others who think of themselves as the kind of person who belongs to the NRA.

― Simon H., Tuesday, February 20, 2018 6:25 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

members and those who have an nra sticker on their vehicle

was unaware they had that many dues-paying members, jesus fuck

~thread

Here are a few thoughts on the role that liberal fatalism on gun politics plays in our country's failure to stop the killing.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) February 17, 2018

I'll keep hitting this point over and over and over: one of the short-term lines of attack needs to be about trying to convince gun owners that the NRA is an extremist organization. Sure, the majority could probably care less and are maybe even thrilled, but it's all about chipping away, just like the people who are currently turning their back on the GOP in disgust.

I hope the gun nuts love their children too

narrator: they don't

good thread lag∞n.

one of the short-term lines of attack needs to be about trying to convince gun owners that the NRA is an extremist organization.

I think this is already mostly the case - gun ownership declines every year (down to like 35% of the population), it's rapidly reaching a point where the only people who own support the far right OR only own guns because they support the far right.

It’s never been the NRA’s dole that has set it apart among lobbying groups. It’s the NRA’s raw organizational power to topple incumbents it doesn’t like in Republican primaries. A successful movement will need to break that power or break the Republican party entirely. https://t.co/wl93UQ5ah9

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 21, 2018

basically what that Jacobin piece says

Either goal is laudable

i think the actions of the Florida GOP are legitimately a negative for the party. The way right-wingers are scrambling to actively question the motives of children who were actually targeted by a mass murderer shows how desperate they are, tbh. it's pretty disgusting and i don't think it's working. the left has to maintain the full court press, even though the vote yesterday seemed to be an effort to shut it down.

The #1 Trending Video on YouTube Right Now Suggests That a Student From the Parkland Shooting Is a Crisis Actor*

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb5p4y/youtube-david-hogg-parkland-shooting-conspiracy-theory

*the video's been taken down since.

oh good taken down guess that ends that

why does YouTube censor free speech like that

correct me if I'm wrong but the very concept of a "crisis actor" is a fiction is it not?

in that I don't think there's ever been a such thing identified, correct.

that phrase makes me want to both kill and die, appropriately enough

It's hard not to conclude that YouTube has no real problem with this kind of stuff as I believe they could afford to hire a couple people whose sole job is to watch the trending videos

Heck of a moment. pic.twitter.com/H89wXsvdeM

— Alex Fitzpatrick (@AlexJamesFitz) February 22, 2018

they're degenerating in their conspiracy theories. voter fraud, rarely happens. crisis actors, never happens. next theory will the violate the arrow of time or some shit. oh wait that already happened with birtherism huh.

if Trump dies they'll ask "where's the death certificate??!!"

Friend has a warehouse job with a firearms distributor, they had a panic run on high capacity magazines today - even with a GOP Congress, President and Trump taking the weakest possible stance on bump stocks, the industry can still prime the paranoia pump.

fwiw i went out to my hometown in rural GA yesterday to visit my brother (he lives in Auburn, i went to school in Dacula). i was pretty sad to notice a gun store literally right across the street from the high school, with a led sign advertising ".22 ammo unlimited". thankfully my school experience was incident free although we did have a kid suspended for bringing in a toy Star Trek phaser and flashing it off in class. don't be shocked but there is a giant yellow billboard down the road that says "JESUS: COMING SOON" and has been up for at least 25 years.

also i went to elementary school down the road (on "High Hope Road" to be exact) and my school was right across the street from a prison. several times we had lockdowns due to escapes. this was late 80s though...

https://i.imgur.com/sHTTE04.jpg

something i read earlier today (in a review of andreas malm's book on global warming/capitalism) seems appropriate here:

...He takes his title from Walter Benjamin's essay "On the Concept of History" - the angel of history watches catastrophe pile wreckage upon wreckage, longing to "make whole what has been smashed" but powerless before the storm we call "progress." In the section before this, Benjamin writes:

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism."

Benjamin's disdain for a conception of history that allows its adherents to be astonished that barbarism is "still" possible in our clearly enlightened present suffuses Malm's book, as does Adorno's recognition that real progress, in such a world, means "simply the prevention and avoidance of total catastrophe." This progress will not be secured without a struggle.

America is like a bizarro world (everything that's absurd is made to seem reasonable) collapsing into the real world. One would expect emigration numbers to soar, but I don't know if that's true?

Walter Benjamin always otm

Huh. TIL that that Laurie Anderson lyric came from Walter Benjamin.

She said: What is history?
And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress

it's in a Mekons song as well, a vivid and timely image

https://img0.etsystatic.com/215/0/5307484/il_570xN.1382626868_ke9l.jpg

benjamin was inspired by this paul klee painting fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U11SE9eqfSU

the abyss is close to home...

my only tattoo

(the klee drawing)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/05/the-nra-lobbyist-behind-floridas-pro-gun-policies

interesting profile of marion hammer, an unquestionable shit stain of a human being but the driving force (and de facto author) behind so many of florida's controversial gun laws

speaking of shit stain

“If you take out New York and California, 8 percent of Americans have concealed carry permits"

- Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), on Meet the Press earlier today

wtf is this logic

yet, if republicans/NRA get their way, the concealed carry permits that are obtained in states that grant them will allow people to conceal carry in states that don't (like the minor states that don't really count, New York and California)

xp amazing how they always want to remove the two states where nearly 1/5 of Americans live.

Not remove them, take them out.

i imagine hes including the populations of states where youre allowed to put a gun in yr pocket if you want in those numbers too

Let’s take a look at the national tax revenue without those two states while we’re at it

Top trending article on the NRA’s site currently:
https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2016/7/1/10-reasons-to-own-an-ar-15/

just folks

just finishing cv wedgwood's excellent little biography of cardinal richelieu, in whose life as a statesman she argues the first really famous exercise of monarchic power against recalcitrant nobles was his decision to finally take duelling seriously

it was apparently a scourge of the time, with literally thousands of young men (and occasionally women) (of usually noble familes) dying in them. often it wasn't what you imagine, i.e. two fops facing off with sabres or epees, but weird little small-scale gang battles, where the two duellists would bring along two or three "seconds" and each side would go at it. until one side was dead. various edicts had been tried in the past, each was met with contempt and flagrantly ignored, but richelieu was like "this time it's serious" and when a powerful count (who was also duke of luxembourg) flouted flouted it, richelieu had him put to death. the king, louis xiii, didn't want to kill him iirc but richelieu convinced him that if they let this go, nobody would take the king's word seriously in the future.

probably exactly the sort of thing nra members imagine in their fever dreams, left-wing message board posters summoning the memory of a french monarchist to support the idea of taking guns away, but i couldn't help being struck by the parallels, and how swift, authoritative, uncompromising leadership from the top was effective (though it would take decades to finally end duelling altogether)

continuing the parallels: duels were totemic of noble freedoms against top-down control from the king

here's the sacrifical lamb btw - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Montmorency-Bouteville

real talk, i do think the high school students are better with messaging than people who responded to past massacres. for real a couple years back the top anti-gun group around was called "Moms Demand Action" which i don't know i feel like their messaging is a bit questionable, i'm starting to feel that there may be some potential upsides to democratizing discourse control

gun control is wildly popular and liberals are all *extremely nerd voice* um excuse me im not going to take your gun i just want to implement some common sense solutions like allowing 17 instead of 18 bullets in a clip oh no thats not gonna work ok sorry ill go now

Meanwhile the NRA is like “we should reinstate duels; mandatory gun duels”