Ducks Attack Message Board Forum

Those that follow blindly, risk being led by the blind.

karlhungis wrote:Yay another politics thread!

I genuinely don't get why some people just hate the sight of a political conversation. If you don't want to take part in it, no one's gonna force you, but instead you always get comments like this and they don't make any sense. Are politics threads so bad?

Tray Dub wrote:

buckmarkduck wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:

greenyellow wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:He called the parents of the dead children liars and claims their kids aren't really dead, so that's pretty wack. The really scary thing is how many supporters he has. If you click on the Yahoo story's link to the Emerald story, most of the comments are just flat out agreeing with him. This country is horribly paranoid at the moment. It's also a moronic school of thought, seeing as how a person with an M15 is not going to fend off government agents if they decide to bust down his doors. Guns don't protect you from tyranny, activism and protest does. But instead, you have people arming themselves to the teeth and claiming mass shootings are government conspiracies to take everyone's guns and send us all to concentration camps or whatever.

Tell that to people in Syria, Libya, and even the US (look at how we started as a country) that have overthrown (or are attempting to) tyrannical governments with the help of guns.

Also, it's an M16/AR15, not M15.

The US military is not in the same ballpark as any of those countries. If the Minutemen had been facing the US military, they would've been slaughtered. Same goes for Libyan and Syrian rebels. You're just not living in the real world if you think bands of militias are going to stave off the military. It's more likely that they devolve into paranoia and xenophobia and we end up with an extremist right-wing movement, a la Hitler and the brown shirts. There are some frightening parallels between today's America and the late Weimar Republic. People are angry and have lost faith in the ruling class (justifiably), and that's a very dangerous situation.

Furthermore, let's say you do believe the US government is getting ready to institute total tyranny. Why don't you do anything about it? Why don't you protest? That's how rights are won and illegitimate authority is resisted, at least until it's absolutely impossible to do it anymore. People in much more repressive circumstances (including in this country) have won a great deal without having to resort to shootouts with the ATF.

Plus, if the government wanted to disarm the population, they wouldn't be staging gun massacres, because it's easy to predict that those are likely to drive up gun sales, as they have. Gun sales went through the roof after Sandy Hook. The whole thing is just silly, and more than a bit ominous.

I don't have the same opinion on what Colt posted, but that said some of you are extremely naive to think governments don't stage or even massacre their own people. And to think 100 million armed Americans couldn't beat 2 million military personnel is also naive. It would come at a great cost, but the sure numbers would eventually overwhelm them.

Obviously governments commit violence against the population. The question is, does it make any sense at all for this to be the strategy of a would-be tyrannical government? If you think about it for five seconds, it's pretty definite this would not. Furthermore, what exactly are you afraid of? And why aren't you doing anything about it? Until you see these people getting involved in protest and peaceful resistance with their fellow citizens, they're nothing more than paranoid passive bystanders.

And good luck with your spontaneous hundred million man army armed with rifles against air strikes, martial law, tanks, and an army that actually has, y'know, generals and a command center and organization. I don't get how you can possible not see how silly the whole plan is.

Hmm, I believe we've heard this narrative before .....Though Tray Dub is correct, the erosion of personal liberties isn't exclusive to the second amendment.

I firmly believe in protecting all of our constitutional liberties. As I see it, neither party has done much lately to be very consistent on that matter. Democrats happily support wealth redistribution, and the undressing of the 2nd amendment. Calling their detractors "gun nuts" and paranoid, while universally slamming laws such as the "Patriot Act". A law passed on the exact ideological basis as so called, "Gun Control" legislation...limitation of personal rights to promote the well being of the collective. Republicans, they will protest all day against the same "Gun Control" laws, but largely embrace Legislation like the Patriot Act; and furthermore, many would support legislation that would systematically deny our homosexual population even the most basic of our human rights. The sad thing is, most people just nod their heads and fall in step with they D's or R's they've prescribed themselves to follow.

On the topic of Colt's theories, though: The conspiracy theory very easily becomes a societal defense mechanism. A way to convince ourselves that we aren't as flawed or vulnerable as these events make us feel. It is, in a way, more comfortable to convince one's self that at a certain level "we" are still in control; rather than concede that we might just be so vulnerable as that a few radicals can kill thousands, or our own cherished liberties would leave open the door for a mentally sick individual to kill scores of children, as examples.

Elduderino wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:

buckmarkduck wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:

greenyellow wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:He called the parents of the dead children liars and claims their kids aren't really dead, so that's pretty wack. The really scary thing is how many supporters he has. If you click on the Yahoo story's link to the Emerald story, most of the comments are just flat out agreeing with him. This country is horribly paranoid at the moment. It's also a moronic school of thought, seeing as how a person with an M15 is not going to fend off government agents if they decide to bust down his doors. Guns don't protect you from tyranny, activism and protest does. But instead, you have people arming themselves to the teeth and claiming mass shootings are government conspiracies to take everyone's guns and send us all to concentration camps or whatever.

Tell that to people in Syria, Libya, and even the US (look at how we started as a country) that have overthrown (or are attempting to) tyrannical governments with the help of guns.

Also, it's an M16/AR15, not M15.

The US military is not in the same ballpark as any of those countries. If the Minutemen had been facing the US military, they would've been slaughtered. Same goes for Libyan and Syrian rebels. You're just not living in the real world if you think bands of militias are going to stave off the military. It's more likely that they devolve into paranoia and xenophobia and we end up with an extremist right-wing movement, a la Hitler and the brown shirts. There are some frightening parallels between today's America and the late Weimar Republic. People are angry and have lost faith in the ruling class (justifiably), and that's a very dangerous situation.

Furthermore, let's say you do believe the US government is getting ready to institute total tyranny. Why don't you do anything about it? Why don't you protest? That's how rights are won and illegitimate authority is resisted, at least until it's absolutely impossible to do it anymore. People in much more repressive circumstances (including in this country) have won a great deal without having to resort to shootouts with the ATF.

Plus, if the government wanted to disarm the population, they wouldn't be staging gun massacres, because it's easy to predict that those are likely to drive up gun sales, as they have. Gun sales went through the roof after Sandy Hook. The whole thing is just silly, and more than a bit ominous.

I don't have the same opinion on what Colt posted, but that said some of you are extremely naive to think governments don't stage or even massacre their own people. And to think 100 million armed Americans couldn't beat 2 million military personnel is also naive. It would come at a great cost, but the sure numbers would eventually overwhelm them.

Obviously governments commit violence against the population. The question is, does it make any sense at all for this to be the strategy of a would-be tyrannical government? If you think about it for five seconds, it's pretty definite this would not. Furthermore, what exactly are you afraid of? And why aren't you doing anything about it? Until you see these people getting involved in protest and peaceful resistance with their fellow citizens, they're nothing more than paranoid passive bystanders.

And good luck with your spontaneous hundred million man army armed with rifles against air strikes, martial law, tanks, and an army that actually has, y'know, generals and a command center and organization. I don't get how you can possible not see how silly the whole plan is.

A law passed on the exact ideological basis as so called, "Gun Control" legislation...limitation of personal rights to promote the well being of the collective.

Some of what you wrote I agree with, as I usually do with libertarian-type ideas. But this part that I quoted is really simplistic. It's a fancy way of attacking the idea that laws and other legislation can be passed that makes society better. There are a ton of examples of personal liberty being limited in a really beneficial way. The libertarian calculus of categorical opposition to any measures that might touch personal liberty is simplistic and harmful.

We've got way too many guns in this country. It's off the charts, and so is our rate of deaths due to guns. A majority of Americans (lots of polls show this over and over again) think we should do something about it. That doesn't mean banning all guns, because no one supports that. It just means taking steps to reduce the problem. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work.

Libertarians are alienated from the government because the government is failing, and has been for a long time. Okay, great. It's still the only tool we've got that average people have some degree of influence on. It's the only way we can make decisions about our society. It's just ludicrous to oppose any decision that impacts the individual.

Tray Dub wrote:We've got way too many guns in this country. It's off the charts, and so is our rate of deaths due to guns. A majority of Americans (lots of polls show this over and over again) think we should do something about it. That doesn't mean banning all guns, because no one supports that. It just means taking steps to reduce the problem. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work.

I think people should be more concerned with total murders and violent crime rates than being as simplistic as focusing on gun deaths without acknowledging a correlation between disarming people and violent crime/murder rates as well. Further, if there is a majority of Americans that want to amend the 2nd Amendment, I haven't heard of it. I know the media made a big deal about assault rifles in the wake of hand-gun deaths (Newtown) but the people in each state have been pretty clear about their beliefs on the matter because none of the proposed "solutions" don't actually do anything to (and this is the big point) prevent people from committing crimes. - It's already against the law to steal and kill.

Tray Dub wrote: Some of what you wrote I agree with, as I usually do with libertarian-type ideas. But this part that I quoted is really simplistic. It's a fancy way of attacking the idea that laws and other legislation can be passed that makes society better. There are a ton of examples of personal liberty being limited in a really beneficial way. The libertarian calculus of categorical opposition to any measures that might touch personal liberty is simplistic and harmful.

We've got way too many guns in this country. It's off the charts, and so is our rate of deaths due to guns. A majority of Americans (lots of polls show this over and over again) think we should do something about it. That doesn't mean banning all guns, because no one supports that. It just means taking steps to reduce the problem. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work.

Libertarians are alienated from the government because the government is failing, and has been for a long time. Okay, great. It's still the only tool we've got that average people have some degree of influence on. It's the only way we can make decisions about our society. It's just ludicrous to oppose any decision that impacts the individual.

We've got too many guns? According to who? I don't think we have too many guns. I think we have too much unadressed mental illness; far too much organized crime, driven largely by well intentioned but ineffective legislation; we've got too large a failing in the family structure, allowing impoverished youth to seek structure in often violent gang culture; compounding the issue, we've got failing public schools and limited employment opportunities located in the hotbeds of gun violence in this country. You're correct, we should be addressing the problem and these are the issues we should be tackling. But we won't, because it's simply easier and much less painful to blame the tool.

As for being simplistic, the most simplistic approach is to just start limiting guns. It's absolutely akin to addressing obesity by rationing food; which the City of New York has already tried.

I'm not an anarchist. I believe in civil government. As far as libertarians go, I'm fairly moderate. I just cannot condone or support policies that, aside from being ineffectual, will also be unnecessary violations of constitutional liberties.

Duck07 wrote:

Tray Dub wrote:We've got way too many guns in this country. It's off the charts, and so is our rate of deaths due to guns. A majority of Americans (lots of polls show this over and over again) think we should do something about it. That doesn't mean banning all guns, because no one supports that. It just means taking steps to reduce the problem. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work.

I think people should be more concerned with total murders and violent crime rates than being as simplistic as focusing on gun deaths without acknowledging a correlation between disarming people and violent crime/murder rates as well. Further, if there is a majority of Americans that want to amend the 2nd Amendment, I haven't heard of it. I know the media made a big deal about assault rifles in the wake of hand-gun deaths (Newtown) but the people in each state have been pretty clear about their beliefs on the matter because none of the proposed "solutions" don't actually do anything to (and this is the big point) prevent people from committing crimes. - It's already against the law to steal and kill.

I agree that this conversation is way too narrow. I support gun control but it's not high on my priority list at all. That being said, the 2nd Amendment doesn't have to be amended to pass laws on this.

But, you're right. If we want to deal with gun violence, we should look at our ridiculously high levels of poverty and our miniscule spending (by world standards) on helping people. Still, combating this paranoia about gun control is a worthwhile thing to do.

Elduderino wrote:

Tray Dub wrote: Some of what you wrote I agree with, as I usually do with libertarian-type ideas. But this part that I quoted is really simplistic. It's a fancy way of attacking the idea that laws and other legislation can be passed that makes society better. There are a ton of examples of personal liberty being limited in a really beneficial way. The libertarian calculus of categorical opposition to any measures that might touch personal liberty is simplistic and harmful.

We've got way too many guns in this country. It's off the charts, and so is our rate of deaths due to guns. A majority of Americans (lots of polls show this over and over again) think we should do something about it. That doesn't mean banning all guns, because no one supports that. It just means taking steps to reduce the problem. That's the way a democracy is supposed to work.

Libertarians are alienated from the government because the government is failing, and has been for a long time. Okay, great. It's still the only tool we've got that average people have some degree of influence on. It's the only way we can make decisions about our society. It's just ludicrous to oppose any decision that impacts the individual.

We've got too many guns? According to who? I don't think we have too many guns. I think we have too much unadressed mental illness; far too much organized crime, driven largely by well intentioned but ineffective legislation; we've got too large a failing in the family structure, allowing impoverished youth to seek structure in often violent gang culture; compounding the issue, we've got failing public schools and limited employment opportunities located in the hotbeds of gun violence in this country. You're correct, we should be addressing the problem and these are the issues we should be tackling. But we won't, because it's simply easier and much less painful to blame the tool.

As for being simplistic, the most simplistic approach is to just start limiting guns. It's absolutely akin to addressing obesity by rationing food; which the City of New York has already tried.

I'm not an anarchist. I believe in civil government. As far as libertarians go, I'm fairly moderate. I just cannot condone or support policies that, aside from being ineffectual, will also be unnecessary violations of constitutional liberties.

Agree with you on all points you made. Politicians and those supporting them would rather deal with a symptom than deal with the root cause of that symptom.

I don't want to talk about gun violence/control/safety/need.

But seriously, this talk over Sandy Hook being a government conspiracy is pitiful and shameful. The University isn't distancing itself from Colt because he is anti-gun control. The only reason he's in any kind of hot water is because he is choosing to proliferate horrible, repulsive lies about the families of victims and our top elected leaders.

Anyone who honestly believes in this BS needs psychological help and a hug.

Double post

I heard that there are more US deaths per year from hammers than guns. The argument of massive escalation of death via gun is bull crap.

The real solution to the problem is increasing services for thementally ill. Trying to take guns away from everyone so a select few who may pose a threat can't hurt others is really poor waste of resources.

Simply basing things on the ideallistic argument doesn't mesh with the actual situation.

Our nation is spending too much. It would cost less to help those with mental health issues than to chase additional regulation. As an added bonus, we would have to screw with the rights of law abiding citizens.

pezsez1 wrote:I don't want to talk about gun violence/control/safety/need.

But seriously, this talk over Sandy Hook being a government conspiracy is pitiful and shameful. The University isn't distancing itself from Colt because he is anti-gun control. The only reason he's in any kind of hot water is because he is choosing to proliferate horrible, repulsive lies about the families of victims and our top elected leaders.

Anyone who honestly believes in this BS needs psychological help and a hug.

You can say the same for all these theories. Not just Sandy Hook.

Anyone who truly questions that Sandy Hook was a conspiracy is totally open for criticism. This is offensive and insensitive to those who lost their loved ones and Colt deserves no sympathy. At least don't be such an idiot to put such uninformed beliefs online. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States. Most by far with handguns. No law is going to change those facts. Better poverty and mental health resources will help somewhat. Serious gun control laws or bans will not pass for a long time if ever in the US. Background checks would help a little in a few cases.

soduck wrote:Anyone who truly questions that Sandy Hook was a conspiracy is totally open for criticism. This is offensive and insensitive to those who lost their loved ones and Colt deserves no sympathy. At least don't be such an idiot to put such uninformed beliefs online. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States. Most by far with handguns. No law is going to change those facts. Better poverty and mental health resources will help somewhat. Serious gun control laws or bans will not pass for a long time if ever in the US. Background checks would help a little in a few cases.

They just passed gun control laws in Colorado this past week.

duckduckgoose wrote:

soduck wrote:Anyone who truly questions that Sandy Hook was a conspiracy is totally open for criticism. This is offensive and insensitive to those who lost their loved ones and Colt deserves no sympathy. At least don't be such an idiot to put such uninformed beliefs online. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States. Most by far with handguns. No law is going to change those facts. Better poverty and mental health resources will help somewhat. Serious gun control laws or bans will not pass for a long time if ever in the US. Background checks would help a little in a few cases.

They just passed gun control laws in Colorado this past week.

Only increased background checks and limited magazine capacity, which really fell short of what they wanted. Those aren't the biggest thing, but the magazine capacity thing is making one of the largest magazine manufacturers, Magpul, to possibly pull out and relocate, taking about 200-300 jobs along with it.