Town Quixote's

[Town Heretic]

Saw a Rand Paul meme where he was saying, "Ilhan Omar came here and we fed her, clothed her, she got welfare, she got schooling, she got healthcare, and then, lo and behold, she has the honor of actually winning a seat in Congress, and she says we're a terrible country? I think that's about as ungrateful as you can get."

My first thought, poor Rand, wanting people to thank him for all the help he is against them getting. lain:

 

[Rusha]

Saw a Rand Paul meme where he was saying, "Ilhan Omar came here and we fed her, clothed her, she got welfare, she got schooling, she got healthcare, and then, lo and behold, she has the honor of actually winning a seat in Congress, and she says we're a terrible country? I think that's about as ungrateful as you can get."

My first thought, poor Rand, wanting people to thank him for all the help he is against them getting. lain:

He’s just seeking attention again ...

 

[Town Heretic]

Meanwhile, as of 7/30/2019 there have been 286 mass shootings in the nation, claiming 304 lives and injuring another 1,078.

This is an increase in number of shootings by 27, and the death toll is slightly behind last year's 317 killed while over a hundred more were wounded than last year's 952 at the same time.

If we want to put seriously impact gun violence we're going to have to have uniform and serious laws. Then, as is true in Europe and in every Western Industrial Democracy, we will have a much safer public. And we can do it without forfeiting the right to arms.

 

[Town Heretic]

This Just In

A local CBS affiliate is reporting shots fired at Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, on the heels of a Bigfoot sighting.

In related news: liquor. lain:

 

[Nihilo]

Anybody see Nick M? Is he on that other flickering candle of a site?

Besides this one, I mean, and I mean that sadly, because, look at my join date there.

How old were you when I joined TOL? Ask me and Jerry and The Barbarian. We know. We know what TOL was before the dispie event, we knew TOL during the dispie event, and we now know not only TOL but also another internet discussion board, after the dispie event. Single digit dozens, if that makes sense as a number. Single digit dozens, like just one or two dozen doughnuts, tops, of users, and TOL has the other joint beat in "visitors" by a wide and persistent margin.

So many of the dispies during the height of the dispie movement were so much fun. John W was my favorite, but there were literally at least a single digit dozen really quality dispie thinkers, and that is saying a lot. A really quality Calvinist thinker for example was the late great AMR, and Lon is close to his caliber.

There were some great Open Theists way back in the day, before the dispie event. Back then it was the only thing that resembles the modern definition of "social media," so there was a demand that today is satisfied elsewhere. So that's the largest factor for TOL pre- and post-dispie event.

The thing about the dispie event that's really only now clear and pretty apparently so, is that it brought with it a lot of freedom, and many people didn't like that, and many people actually did, and I was one of them. And many people did not like it, to listen to them, but a very strong majority of those who complained about the freedom, stuck around, and only a small minority actually did up and leave. I miss Zippy, not because he was a superb user, but he was definitely high quality, but I liked his avatar, the "ninja turtle."

It just made it easier to like him.

So anyway I'm curious about Nick M because I thought highly of him as another very high quality dispie, along with Hilston and STP and a very long list of other users as well.

I just think that perhaps without the dispie event, that TOL and another Protestant theology internet discussion board website, would have been where we're at today sooner, because the social media event /phenomenon began in fair earnest right around when the dispie event began too, and the overlap perhaps masked that most people just aren't all that into theology, and can make due on and maybe even greatly prefer the modern social media to an internet discussion board devoted to Protestant theology.

I love theology, personally, but not everybody does.

 

[Nihilo]

Meanwhile, as of 7/30/2019 there have been 286 mass shootings in the nation, claiming 304 lives and injuring another 1,078.

This is an increase in number of shootings by 27, and the death toll is slightly behind last year's 317 killed while over a hundred more were wounded than last year's 952 at the same time.

If we want to put seriously impact gun violence we're going to have to have uniform and serious laws. Then, as is true in Europe and in every Western Industrial Democracy, we will have a much safer public. And we can do it without forfeiting the right to arms.

The biggest impact of all would be to regulate handguns like how machine guns are regulated today, make them "NFA Title II Weapons," and then you'll watch the suicide numbers dive, but not to zero, just to a lower level than now, because of how many suicides are by handgun, either a pistol or a revolver, both of them are equally dangerous in the hands of suicidal people.

And while another "Braddock" event would be less likely by making semiautomatic guns "NFA Title II Weapons" will definitely not cause a sudden drop in any deaths. Handguns would.

And I don't know; is it safe to believe it when this link says that in Australia there's a long tradition of massacres of all kinds happening, going all the way back to it says 1828, and on up to just this past June 2019, when there was a massacre, a mass shooting. There have been at least two mass shootings since the Port Arthur mass shooting, but there's nothing approaching the Port Arthur mass shooting there since then.

Australia does have a long history of massacres of aboriginal people that numbered into the hundreds, and retaliatory massacres perpetrated by aboriginals. There's a lot of blood in that soil, I don't know how it compares to the blood in our soil, but that's a shared experience of a sort that we have with Australians.

Australia averages five massacres every 14 years, going back to 1828. That pace isn't slowing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia

 

[Town Heretic]

The biggest impact of all would be to regulate handguns like how machine guns are regulated today, make them "NFA Title II Weapons," and then you'll watch the suicide numbers dive, but not to zero, just to a lower level than now, because of how many suicides are by handgun, either a pistol or a revolver, both of them are equally dangerous in the hands of suicidal people.

Semi automatics at least. Suicide is always the numbers driver, but I don't think you can treat a revolver like a machine gun. The same argument can't be made that you can make against semi and fully automatic weapons, along with aids that facilitate the worst guns have to offer.

And I don't know; is it safe to believe it when this link says that in Australia there's a long tradition of massacres of all kinds happening, going all the way back to it says 1828

I think that's reading in a sense of pattern. We've had our share here too.

, and on up to just this past June 2019, when there was a massacre, a mass shooting.

Well, it's a guy with a pump action shotgun who killed 4 people and injured one other, which sort of makes my case about lesser weapons and it isn't the Port Arthur, Las Vegas, double digit event I'm speaking to. You want to end three or four people dying in a place you'll have to outlaw guns entirely and I'm against that for a number of reasons.

So, since Port Arthur you haven't had that sort of event in Australia, not in twenty plus years. And you've only had 6 killings of between 3 to 7 people by guns at all.

That's fewer than we've managed in a month in a given year.

 

[Town Heretic]

Just saw an add for Coors with a guy drinking in the shower...and the tagline, "The official beer for drinking in the shower."
Yeah. That's healthy. Drinking alone. In the shower. lain:

Coming soon: "Wild Turkey, it's what's for dinner."

 

[annabenedetti]

Semi automatics at least. Suicide is always the numbers driver, but I don't think you can treat a revolver like a machine gun. The same argument can't be made that you can make against semi and fully automatic weapons, along with aids that facilitate the worst guns have to offer.


I think that's reading in a sense of pattern. We've had our share here too.



Well, it's a guy with a pump action shotgun who killed 4 people and injured one other, which sort of makes my case about lesser weapons and it isn't the Port Arthur, Las Vegas, double digit event I'm speaking to. You want to end three or four people dying in a place you'll have to outlaw guns entirely and I'm against that for a number of reasons.

So, since Port Arthur you haven't had that sort of event in Australia, not in twenty plus years. And you've only had 6 killings of between 3 to 7 people by guns at all.

That's fewer than we've managed in a month in a given year.

Another massacre today, this time in El Paso.

 

[Town Heretic]

Another massacre today, this time in El Paso.

Twenty dead and 26 wounded. Very sad news out of El Paso.

 

[annabenedetti]

Twenty dead and 26 wounded. Very sad news out of El Paso.

And followed by the latest massacre in Dayton OH early this morning.

 

[Rusha]

Twenty dead and 26 wounded. Very sad news out of El Paso.

Sad indeed ... though not unexpected.

 

[Town Heretic]

I wrote this elsewhere but I want it here to remember and preserve a crystallization of my position on the point.

After El Paso...

Another day, another slaughter. This time in Dayton, Ohio, where a man wearing body armor and using an assault rifle killed 9 and injured many more in the span of a few breaths. The mayor of Dayton said that the shooter was killed within a minute by police who were on scene at one bar eatery. It took next to no time for him to do that much damage anyway.

I'm a gun owner who is sick of this. There is a simple lesson that needs to be learned here and it's this: if you place more and more weapons capable of killing a great many people in a short interval of time into our stream of commerce, you will never see an end to this sort of carnage. It will not get better by osmosis. It will not be stopped by prayer without action.

Every other Western Industrial Democracy does a dramatically better job of protecting its citizens from gun violence. None of those models puts more guns into the hands of their citizens. All of them make the possession of assault rifles illegal or extraordinarily difficult and subject to serious scrutiny. In this country we can't pass registration or safety course requirements.

We managed to protect and exercise our 2nd Amendment rights for generations without these weapons. We can exercise the right without them again, just as we manage to do it without rpgs and for the same reason, they are a clear and present danger to our security with no value to equal that risk.

I don't want to see another church, mosque, schoolyard, concert, nightclub, or mall transformed into a killing field. I'm beyond being polite. I will work tirelessly against any candidate that supports the status quo and as stridently for any who works to change it for the better.

We can make our nation safer. This is not a 2nd Amendment issue. It's a human one.

 

[Town Heretic]

A friend of mine responded to the recent shootings with a Ronald Reagan meme/quote that read: "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

My response?

"To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Ronald Reagan

Or, the statute of limitations on using him as a moral authority has run.

 

[Town Heretic]

A man begins to carry about a small snake whose venom is without antidote. He becomes unhinged one day and walks through a public fair, allowing it to strike and kill scores of his neighbors.

Many argue that the public safety can only be assured if everyone begins to carry this snake.

Strangely, none of these people is evaluated for their mental health. lain:

 

[Stripe]

Yes.

And you want to ban McDonald's.

 

[Town Heretic]

The sad truth is this: you don't have to be a violent, white supremacist to support this president, but it doesn't appear to be an impediment either.

 

[Idolater]

The sad truth is this: you don't have to be a violent, white supremacist to support this president, but it doesn't appear to be an impediment either.

'Know what? I'm on "the Train" now. I wasn't before, but this ride is just too wild for me to pass up. I Love this guy as President of my country. I cannot get enough of him, and I hope to God in heaven above that he is reelected and serves out his second term in the full health and vigor that he's given to us, We the People of the United States of America, since his inauguration.

I've Never seen a President get more done, I've never seen a President be like a dog with a bone on So Many issues, all at the same time. And this is with at least half his cabinet and staff in a constant state of flux. If any other president had this kind of church among those who need to assist him most, we would obviously give them a pass on any failure to deliver on promises, but President Trump feels more like he actually takes the job seriously, and literally every other one has in some form or other rested on his laurels.

Going back to Lincoln.

Maybe JFK an exception---maybe. 'Of course, the tragic cut-shorted-ness means our dataset is limited, but so is President Trump's right now, so I'll still give the nod to President Trump over JFK, understanding that JFK was negotiating to prevent WWIII. We all know President Trump isn't dealing with anything like that.

 

[Town Heretic]

'Know what? I'm on "the Train" now. I wasn't before, but this ride is just too wild for me to pass up. I Love this guy as President of my country.

On the plus side, I'm not a breakfast eater. So that was a lucky break.

I've Never seen a President get more done

So, your first president then.

And this is with at least half his cabinet and staff in a constant state of flux.

That's not how you spell criminal indictment.

President Trump feels more like he actually takes the job seriously

Yeah, I was feeling that feeling had to be like somewhere between 100% and 110% of this.

and literally every other one has in some form or other rested on his laurels.

Whereas this one tends to lean more heavily on his hardys.

Going back to Lincoln.

Oh, I think he'd rather go just a smidge further back.

I'll still give the nod to President Trump over JFK

After the assassination?

We all know President Trump isn't dealing with anything like that.

And that's before we count the cards.

 

[Town Heretic]

Apparently, the Colts are officially out of Luck. lain: