Happy Birthday!! 4 dead, 20+ injured in ‘Bama.

[Tigers!]

Biden called on Congress to “require safe storage of firearms, require background checks for all gun sales, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

I think more robust background checks, gun licensing and liability insurance (including for things like improper storage leading to easy thefts) are good points to address. Note that we do not know who the shooters are nor how they acquired their weapons, so none of these might have been effective in this case.
I disagree about liability for manufacturers. We do not get to sue Ford if somebody commits a crime with an Explorer, so why should we get to sue Smith & Wesson if somebody commits a crime with an M&P Shield?
If anything, "strict liability" should be abolished for all goods, as well as the perverse idea of "punitive damages". It puts way too much power in random juries. If a company is not breaking any laws, I do not see why they should pay (especially pay in excess of damages) just because some jury feels they should.
And so-called "assault weapons" are not even involved here. Just like in vast majority of homicides. So I think this Dem obsession needs to go. It merely distracts from more fruitful avenues of reform.

Goodman said guns and violence are not a frequent presence in Dadeville. He said trying to control guns would prove as futile as trying to control illegal drugs.

Or legal drugs for that matter. It is the same impulse that gave us Prohibition. Some people do bad things, so let's ban it for everyone.

So, why the fuck are we trying to control illegal drugs, if guns and drugs are both impossible to control?

Aren't many libs in favor of legalizing all drugs, not just weed? I think full legalization goes too far, but I also think the punitive approach to possession/addiction is counterproductive even for crack, meth, fentanyl etc.

I agree that drugs should at the very least be decriminalized. I just found it ironic that a sheriff in a hick town compared how difficult it is to control illegal drugs to how difficult it would be to control guns if we had stronger gun control laws. We lock up an enormous number of people for using drugs that usually only harm the user, if that, but people like the sheriff in the article, don't see any point in trying to do a better job at keeping guns out of the hands of those who are not emotionally stable.

Over 70% of Americans want better gun control laws, yet those in the minority have no problem with most anyone, other than felons, owning guns legally.

>70% of Americans might want better gun control . So why do they not vote when the time comes to elect officials who might actually do something about it? Americans might want gun control but they want some else to do it for them. Gun owner seem to vote, those who want gun control do not.
I can only conclude that Americans do not really want gun control. It is just virtue signalling.

It never used to be like this when I was growing up. How did we get to this place where people settle arguments by shooting each other, or where people are so paranoid that if they see a stranger at their front door or in their driveway, they shoot them. Btw, the young woman who was murdered was white, just like her killer. Race doesn't always have a thing to do with this mindless killings.

You have hit the nail on the head.

 

[Elixir]

I can only conclude that Americans do not really want gun control. It is just virtue signalling.

Your conclusion is based on your unwillingness to consider the truth; Americans want gun control, but a minority party, through aggressive gerrymandering, is in control of one of our houses of Congress, and that party is beholden to the 40% of their members who get their money from (Russia, via) the NRA.

If they want to keep control, they must kowtow to MTG, Gym Jordan, Matty Gaetz and the others on the NRA payroll.

You must think the majority of Americans are severely mentally disabled, and enjoy living in fear while watching their kids get shot. Come visit some time and disabuse yourself of that delusion.
Perhaps, as a conservative you just can’t see “conservatives” as capable of all this evil. Let me assure you - they are, even if all you Australian conservatives are humanitarian angels.

 

[Politesse]

Not that I expect anything to ever be done about it, but there are obviously way too many people who can't control their emotions who own guns. There was a murder in this week at a baby shower. Apparently, two men started arguing and one pulled out his gun and killed the other one. His girlfriend was some sort of accomplice, although the article that I read didn't explain exactly what she did to be arrested for assault. People shoot each other over traffic incidents, and other petty things. If people all had control of their emotions and didn't over react, like the old, obviously racist man, who shot the young black teenager who rang his doorbell or the incident that I think happened last night when a group of young women pulled into the wrong driveway by mistake and just as they were turning around, one was shot and killed by the home owner....It's insane that so many emotionally unstable people have guns. And yes! Anyone who shoots someone over a minor incident is too emotionally unstable to have a gun. WTF is wrong with people!

As an outside looking in with permanent sadness at you lot it has been obvious to me for decades that you have far too many people who should not be allowed to own or even hold a weapon and you let them do so.
Why do you hate each other so much?
You shoot first and don't ask questions afterwards.

We committed multiple genocides to create this nation, more than a fifth of us are descended from slaves, and one in three people you meet is a gun owner. We assassinate a president once a generation, and there are nightly homicides in all the big cities. Why would any of us trust each other?

 

[Tigers!]

I can only conclude that Americans do not really want gun control. It is just virtue signalling.

Your conclusion is based on your unwillingness to consider the truth; Americans want gun control, but a minority party, through aggressive gerrymandering, is in control of one of our houses of Congress, and that party is beholden to the 40% of their members who get their money from (Russia, via) the NRA.

If they want to keep control, they must kowtow to MTG, Gym Jordan, Matty Gaetz and the others on the NRA payroll.

You must think the majority of Americans are severely mentally disabled, and enjoy living in fear while watching their kids get shot. Come visit some time and disabuse yourself of that delusion.
Perhaps, as a conservative you just can’t see “conservatives” as capable of all this evil. Let me assure you - they are, even if all you Australian conservatives are humanitarian angels.

So why do you not vote for gun control advocates when you have the chance? Your abysmally low voting rates is keeping the status quo.
I do not think that the majority of Americans are severely mentally disabled. But I see the constant hand wringing about what is to be done and yet nothing is done. Vote in gun control advocates and at least try to achieve something.
Conservatives are just as capable of non-conservatives of behaving badly/poorly. No type has a monopoly on virtue.

I have a niece living in NJ. She has four school aged children. One of them told me that they practice shooter drills. He says that did not do that in Australia. "Why do we do it Uncle Tim?" he asked me. I have no answer for him. I have some fear for their safety.

 

[bilby]

i.e. clothing made out of a material that makes bullets bounce off back where they came from without imparting any energy

It seems unlikely that we will ever produce materials that disobey the laws of thermodynamics.

People have this odd idea that anything they can imagine will someday be achievable by technology, but technology isn't magic, and scientific advances don't make new things possible - quite the opposite, science is the process of whittling down all of the imaginable things into the tiny subset of actually achievable things. Science doesn't make more things possible, it just makes it easier to sort the possible from the impossible.

And "clothing made out of a material that makes bullets bounce off back where they came from without imparting any energy" lies squarely in the 'impossible' camp.

Weapons don't become obsolete because they are less deadly; They become obsolete because they're replaced by weapons that are equally deadly, but faster, easier, or and/or cheaper to use.

You would still die if someone shot you with a matchlock musket, or a crossbow bolt, or an arrow fired from a bow. Those weapons have largely disappeared not because they stopped being lethal, but because there was something more effectively and/or efficiently lethal to supplant them.

If guns go out of use, it won't be because they're no longer effective. It will be because somebody invents something even more dangerous.

I was suggesting that its possible for technology to not replace guns with a more lethal solution, but that technology would make physical threats obsolete...

Yes, I know. And you are wrong. It won't and can't, for fundamental reasons to do with human fragility and how energy works.

and yes, that would inspire new "non-physical" lethal weapon development (i.e. phasers).

No, it would inspire new more lethal weapons, if it were possible, which it's not.

I am not so idealistic to believe that just because a thing can be imagined, it can be made real. I'm not a child.

My apologies.

I AM, however, quite aware that what we believe today to be "impossible" could one day be possible.

Apology retracted. I just got through explaining to you that that's not the case, and why. [/quote]
Faster than sound travel through the atmosphere was thought to impossible, as it violated the laws of aerodynamics AS THEY WERE KNOWN AT THE TIME.
We may never pass through space faster than the speed of light, but that does not mean that faster-than-light travel is not possible - one "simply" must find a way to travel without "traversing"... as "easy" as changing your frame of reference from 3 dimensions to 4.. and then just "step" over a million light years away in an instant....
No, we cannot break the laws... but we have been pretty good at getting around them, so far.
less "fancy" - this "bulletproof" material can simply convert the energy of the bullet in a way that is safe for the wearer.... like wearing 10 inch thick high speed steel armor.. except it is only a millimeter thick and super comfy and workable.[/quote]I shall buy shares in an unobtanium mine forthwith.

There is a substance called Oobleck - it is a liquid until something hits it with force, then it acts like a solid. This concept, taken another level.
Anyway... nothing is impossible, if reframed.

Non-Newtonian materials have been known for a long time. The problem is that if you want to stop a bullet, you need to put its energy into something. Like shifting a lot of mass (that's how heavy armour works). Being solid isn't helpful, it's positively harmful because it allows momentum to be more easily transmitted through the material. But being heavy (literally) outweighs this problem.

You cannot protect a human from arbitrarily high momentum projectiles with lightweight materials. Because of physics.

 

[bilby]

Note that those states (except for WY, which Loren already said is due to suicides, not homicides) are also those with highest black populations.

Given that

...the entire point of the second amendment was to let people kill uppity niggers and redskins with impunity...

that correspondence is hardly a coincidence.
Now of course, many variables affect the homicide rates. But this is a major one I think.

FTFY.

 

[Elixir]

So why do you not vote for gun control advocates when you have the chance

I DO!

And do do some eighty million other American voters. But it only takes 70 million to overrule them because:
Conservatives are over represented in Congress. Due to;
GERRYMANDERING and the
ELECTORAL COLLEGE

This has been explained to you repeatedly.

 

[Tigers!]

So why do you not vote for gun control advocates when you have the chance

I DO!

And do do some eighty million other American voters. But it only takes 70 million to overrule them because:
Conservatives are over represented in Congress. Due to;
GERRYMANDERING and the
ELECTORAL COLLEGE

This has been explained to you repeatedly.

Your voting % are abysmal. Improve that for starters.
I do not look forward to continuedly reading about the un-necessary gun deaths.

 

[southernhybrid]

Not that I expect anything to ever be done about it, but there are obviously way too many people who can't control their emotions who own guns. There was a murder in this week at a baby shower. Apparently, two men started arguing and one pulled out his gun and killed the other one. His girlfriend was some sort of accomplice, although the article that I read didn't explain exactly what she did to be arrested for assault. People shoot each other over traffic incidents, and other petty things. If people all had control of their emotions and didn't over react, like the old, obviously racist man, who shot the young black teenager who rang his doorbell or the incident that I think happened last night when a group of young women pulled into the wrong driveway by mistake and just as they were turning around, one was shot and killed by the home owner....It's insane that so many emotionally unstable people have guns. And yes! Anyone who shoots someone over a minor incident is too emotionally unstable to have a gun. WTF is wrong with people!

As an outside looking in with permanent sadness at you lot it has been obvious to me for decades that you have far too many people who should not be allowed to own or even hold a weapon and you let them do so.
Why do you hate each other so much?
You shoot first and don't ask questions afterwards.

We committed multiple genocides to create this nation, more than a fifth of us are descended from slaves, and one in three people you meet is a gun owner. We assassinate a president once a generation, and there are nightly homicides in all the big cities. Why would any of us trust each other?

I'm sorry but the violence, at least where I grew up, was nothing like it is now. Kids played outside without any fear, and there were no school shootings etc. In fact, ever since the craziest of the right wing came to power and the right wing news media outlets became the most watched so called news stations, the hatred, racism and violence have increased.

Plus, most gun owners aren't going to kill someone who comes to their front door or turns around in their driveway, but there seems to be a lot of fear being implemented by the nut jobs on the far right. I discuss this with a close Black friend on a regular basis. She and I don't understand how this has happened, but we do have some thoughts regarding what influenced it. We live in a city where most of the neighborhoods have become racially integrated, where all of the schools are racially integrated and were mixed race children are extremely common. Most of this progress happened over the past 20 years. When I moved here, I had no Black neighbors, but now my street and the area is nicely integrated, and we all get along very well. Even the crazy old woman who I mentioned in a previous post, who harbors some racist feelings is harmless. She probably needs to be in an assisted living facility.

So, it appears to us as if we have made progress, at least locally. We are always trying to figure out what's going on. While she is a Christian, she agrees with me, that some of the madness comes from White Christian Nationalists. Of course, there must be a lot more to it than that, but when you have so called leaders like MTG and TFG with large cult like followings, that has to be part of the problem. It may have been coming for a long time, but people like those two and their ilk. have escalated a lot of hatred and division.

But, there is one thing that has influence us that is hard to change. We evolved from apes and we are more like the male dominated chimps, who are one of the original warrior species. Sadly, we've never been able to remove that tendency for violence towards the "others" out of our nature. Of course without guns, the violence would be less effective. Guns weren't fetishized like they are these days.

 

[Elixir]

Your voting % are abysmal. Improve that for starters.

HOW???
Read it again:

We cannot pass any legislation that imperiles minority control because the minority has control! Anything that promotes voting undermines Republican control!!!!

What part don’t you understand?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So why do you not vote for gun control advocates when you have the chance

I DO!

And do do some eighty million other American voters. But it only takes 70 million to overrule them because:
Conservatives are over represented in Congress. Due to;
GERRYMANDERING and the
ELECTORAL COLLEGE

This has been explained to you repeatedly.

Your voting % are abysmal. Improve that for starters.
I do not look forward to continuedly reading about the un-necessary gun deaths.

This seems like it should make sense, but it doesn't work in the US because of the Affordable Care Act. Yes, it doesn't really make sense that a health care bill intending to help provide medical insurance coverage to more Americans should be a reason why the voting % shouldn't matter, but this is America, are we are good at making hard things happen. The Democrats, with a bare super-majority in the Senate and a healthy House majority (in part because the GOP fucked things up so badly in the W years), passed the ACA... barely.

The idea of people having access to health care was offensive to the right-wing and they attacked the left viscously. Even hearing about death panels and what not. They made America hate the ACA. Add that to the astroturf'd resistance to the Obama Admin started by the likes of Fox News in February 2009 when they'd start moving to instigate protests in the summer, and the Democrats were slaughtered in the mid-terms in 2010.

So what?! Just one election. When I slaughter... they were slaughtered everywhere, in most state legislatures too... in 2010. See, every 10 years we have a Census to count people and where they live. The Census is also when redistricting occurs. Redistricting is a fancy term these days that means gerrymandering the vote. With healthy majorities everywhere, the GOP was able to gerrymander purple states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin to bulk up their representation in Congress. In 2010, they showed no intention of being subtle. They turned purple states in red ones, both Federally and Statewide. They stuffed courts too, where they could.

And now in 2023, we are in a situation where, states are being unequally represented by the GOP because of gerrymandering that was close to set in stone in 2010. Pennsylvania had the courts turn things around. In Ohio, the GOP ignored the state courts and kept their ever worse gerrymandered maps (though oddly enough, the GOP would lose two seats in Ohio because they got too cute... the joy in this was lost in NY where the opposite happened).

So states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida are being run as if they were right-wing totalitarian states, not purple. And the Democrats need to win by a lot more in order to have smaller majorities.

All again, because of Affordable Care Act.

 

[Elixir]

So why do you not vote for gun control advocates when you have the chance

I DO!

And do do some eighty million other American voters. But it only takes 70 million to overrule them because:
Conservatives are over represented in Congress. Due to;
GERRYMANDERING and the
ELECTORAL COLLEGE

This has been explained to you repeatedly.

Your voting % are abysmal. Improve that for starters.
I do not look forward to continuedly reading about the un-necessary gun deaths.

This seems like it should make sense, but it doesn't work in the US because of the Affordable Care Act. Yes, it doesn't really make sense that a health care bill intending to help provide medical insurance coverage to more Americans should be a reason why the voting % shouldn't matter, but this is America, are we are good at making hard things happen. The Democrats, with a bare super-majority in the Senate and a healthy House majority (in part because the GOP fucked things up so badly in the W years), passed the ACA... barely.

The idea of people having access to health care was offensive to the right-wing and they attacked the left viscously. Even hearing about death panels and what not. They made America hate the ACA. Add that to the astroturf'd resistance to the Obama Admin started by the likes of Fox News in February 2009 when they'd start moving to instigate protests in the summer, and the Democrats were slaughtered in the mid-terms in 2010.

So what?! Just one election. When I slaughter... they were slaughtered everywhere, in most state legislatures too... in 2010. See, every 10 years we have a Census to count people and where they live. The Census is also when redistricting occurs. Redistricting is a fancy term these days that means gerrymandering the vote. With healthy majorities everywhere, the GOP was able to gerrymander purple states like Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin to bulk up their representation in Congress. In 2010, they showed no intention of being subtle. They turned purple states in red ones, both Federally and Statewide. They stuffed courts too, where they could.

And now in 2023, we are in a situation where, states are being unequally represented by the GOP because of gerrymandering that was close to set in stone in 2010. Pennsylvania had the courts turn things around. In Ohio, the GOP ignored the state courts and kept their ever worse gerrymandered maps (though oddly enough, the GOP would lose two seats in Ohio because they got too cute... the joy in this was lost in NY where the opposite happened).

So states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida are being run as if they were right-wing totalitarian states, not purple. And the Democrats need to win by a lot more in order to have smaller majorities.

All again, because of Affordable Care Act.

That’s WAY too nuanced for Tigers!, who can’t even grok how a minority can hold Congress hostage and suppress voter turnout.
Long term dynamics such as you describe are complicated - like how Obama “caused” the rise of the racist right and their orange mascot. I have faint hope that he can wrap his head around that, being an Aussie conservative.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, being lectured on liberals not being tolerant enough to intolerance by a European and being lectured that voting turnout being higher would solve all of our problems by an Aussie.

2000 v 2004? Voter turnout increased 50% to 56%... W won electoral college in both, lost popular vote in first.
20016 v 2020? Voter turnout 55% to 62%... Trump loses electoral college in second, lost both popular votes.

 

[Elixir]

20016 v 2020? Voter turnout 55% to 62%... Trump loses electoral college in second, lost both popular votes.

Right, and that doesn’t even touch on the fact that Biden winning by 7 MILLION+ votes came within 45k votes of LOSING the election, because of the EC.
I don’t think Tigers! understands how that works to maintain the minority stranglehold on the electorate, enabling them to suppress the vote and rack up “wins” even when they’re in the minority.

In truth, I don’t think he WANTS to understand it because it casts light on the utter corruption of our “conservatives”.
Tigers! has no desire to see conservatives as bad guys, since he considers himself one of them and HE would never behave so badly.

 

[TomC]

I don’t think Tigers! understands how that works to maintain the minority stranglehold on the electorate, enabling them to suppress the vote and rack up “wins” even when they’re in the minority.

In truth, I don’t think he WANTS to understand it because it casts light on the utter corruption of our “conservatives”.

I don't think that's the problem.
Like many other IIDB members, @Tigers! and @DrZoidberg live in modern democratic republics. It's very difficult to wrap their heads around the issues of living in a country designed in the 18th century.

Another problem is explaining the level of desperation in the GOP. Their only hope of clinging to power as the party of the rich is increasingly voter suppression and disenfranchisement and deceit.

Things are so different in countries who's political systems and institutions are 20th century creations, rather than 18th century political technology, it's extremely difficult for them to understand.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Another problem is explaining the level of desperation in the GOP. Their only hope of clinging to power as the party of the rich is increasingly voter suppression and disenfranchisement and deceit.

I think that’s it. Voter suppression, disenfranchisement and deceit have been tools of the trade for minority, white supremacist parties (Dem and Rep) ever since the War of Northern Aggression. Don’t know if it’s so much increased, as maybe they are just better at it, and have better tools (e.g. media).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The system has generally worked minus an asterisk in the second half of the 19th century. Since Nixon though, and the Civil Rights Act, the right-wing has gone to a bad place and they seem intent on dragging us all with them... some while chained to the backs of their trucks.

What is mind blowing is that Nixon comes up with the Southern Strategy... and signed the Clean Air and Water Acts. Watergate... but put a wedge between China and the USSR. Just can't wrap my mind around what was Nixon. But still, he did effectively fuck our country in the long term. Then Reagan, AM Radio, Cable news and 40 years later... they are rioting at the US Capitol building because a media company was selling a lie that'd cost them over $700 million in two years for saying.

And there is no way out.

 

[Derec]

Good news! They caught the bastards.
Dadeville birthday party shooting: 2 teen brothers arrested for reckless murder

Two teenage brothers have been charged with four counts of reckless murder in the Saturday night shooting at a Dadeville birthday party that killed four young people and injured 32 others.
Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, both of Tuskegee, have each been charged as adults with four counts of reckless murder.

There might be more suspects though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I note in Louisiana, the dumbass politicians are finally beginning to wake up. People carry guns in their cars. Car burglers love this. Breaking into a car and finding a gun is always a welcome prize. So there is a promised crackdown on fools who leave guns in their cars for the thugs and robbers. How this will get passed over gun whackjobs shrieking remains to be seen. And of course we will have the problem of a moron having a gun in his car stolen not reporting that to the cops.

I'm not clear on what they are changing.. what are they "cracking down on"? Your car is your private property, no different than the private property that is your house. You can store a gun in your car, just like in your house, and it is not "concealed"... it is "stored". If you are allowed to "possess" then you are allowed to "store". Cars get broken into, houses get broken into... PEOPLE get robbed.... so what are they "fixing"? Are they cracking down on car break-ins in general? That would be great.

Car windows are not adequate security for storing a gun. They're saying that stored guns need to be locked up better than that--a low bar but at least something. However, my memory is that this has a big problem with how it would be enforced--only if you tell them the gun was stolen from your car. Oops, all you actually did was make people not report gun thefts.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yeah, I mentioned that. But lil Thuggo with a rap sheet as long as your arm, is out of prison and already has a gun despite being denied all rights to carry a gun. It gets traced back to Kevin Jerkhoff, who bought it, and did not report it stolen. He has to lie how he lost it. Could be a problem for Kevin.