Mental health is a completely separate issue that's being used as a distraction. It's certainly worthy of discussion but it does not belong as part of the gun debate.

I am not for banning weapons.

I would, however, set the bar for ownership so high that only committed hobbyists would own the most extreme weapons.

The more potentially impactful the weapon, the higher the bar. I have no problem with someone casually walking into a store and buying a bolt-action .22 target rifle or a break action sporting shotgun with a fast background check. The licensing, training and security check requirements would then grow progressively stringent until you get to fast shooting, large ammo capacity, medium-large caliber weapons. At which point there should be annual training and recertification requirements, in-home verification of safe storage compliance, thorough background checks and anything else.

Any committed hobbyist is already training regularly with their firearms and storing them safely. The certification requirements are no more than a verification of the practices they already follow. What's needed is to weed out the casual purchasers, the revenge-fantasy dreamers and the paramilitary idiots.

I'm a big fan of EC-Comics-style ironic punishment and I love the Punisher and other revenge fantasies but Bill is right. You have to be better than them. You can't sink to their level, you need to keep your ethics in place.

But it's of course A-ok to kill Nazis once they do actual physical harm to others. I am a big Indiana Jones fan too, you know.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

I found Hanna completely bizarre. The "facility" she escapes from that looks more like a Prada runway with convenient hidey-holes that aren't even air-ducts, yet somehow lead to all the important rooms. The whole "never-heard-music" thing. What? Her dad can't sing her a fucking song? "Mary had a little lamb?" He didn't bring a cassette tape? She interacts socially with one person her entire life and then functions completely normally in society?
And I realize that the violence in movies is never realistic, but Hanna was just ridiculous. And not even in a good Matrixy-kind-of-way or a brutal Old Boy style. The whole thing played out like a teenage super-model's revenge fantasy. Like if Paris Hilton were to make a movie about her worst enemy.
Not that I think less of anyone for liking it. I was really excited to see it and it was certainly better than the latest "Pirates" turd.


Yeah, but that movie is supposed to play out like a stylized fantasy. All the fairy tale references aren't there by chance.

I found Hanna completely bizarre. The "facility" she escapes from that looks more like a Prada runway with convenient hidey-holes that aren't even air-ducts, yet somehow lead to all the important rooms. The whole "never-heard-music" thing. What? Her dad can't sing her a fucking song? "Mary had a little lamb?" He didn't bring a cassette tape? She interacts socially with one person her entire life and then functions completely normally in society?

And I realize that the violence in movies is never realistic, but Hanna was just ridiculous. And not even in a good Matrixy-kind-of-way or a brutal Old Boy style. The whole thing played out like a teenage super-model's revenge fantasy. Like if Paris Hilton were to make a movie about her worst enemy.

Not that I think less of anyone for liking it. I was really excited to see it and it was certainly better than the latest "Pirates" turd.

And here we are back to the immature need to find meaning and simple causation for everything in life. There are an uncountable number of moving parts that make up the world we live in. When you are living your normal day-to-day routine and something extraordinary happens, you can see God or you can see an amazing and complex world. You see a butterfly land next to you on the park bench and see God, or you can see that butterflies share our planet and land places nearby occasionally. You can walk out your front door into a beautiful spring morning and see God, or you can see the amazing complexity of seasons and weather.

It is very, very easy to look at things around you that are beautiful or rare or confusing and see God. Because then you simply don't have to think about it any further, and can go about your day. But others have the curiosity to look at it more closely, or think about it more deeply, or reason out what may have caused something to happen. The more you do that, the less you see God in everything, because you simply don't need a conscious presence and invisible hand to explain anything. That doesn't make things any less beautiful or amazing. That doesn't make me appreciate life any less. I love life, I love this world. It's awesome, and there are endless things to explore and learn about it. Or I could turn off my brain, call it God, and mentally live in a church instead of expanding my mind and allowing all new knowledge to freely enter my consciousness.

I am open. I am loving. I am ethical. I live by the golden rule of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. If God wants to make his presence known to me, then He knows what forms of evidence I will accept. If I make changes to who I am, then I am denying the person God supposedly made me to be. The God you claim exists made me who I am, made me think the way I do. And now you say I can't feel his presence in my life because I am not changing to suit Him? Do you see the nonsense here?

Scroll up a bit and you will see yourself saying "Ask Him to show Himself to you, ask Him to reveal to you that He is Almighty God and He will do it!" But that's not true. I asked Him for a long time. Every time I realized how something I was taught didn't make sense. I said God, if I'm on the wrong track here please let me know. Silence. I only want to understand the world as it truly is, because there are many people making may different claims about the nature of God and creation. So I thought, and prayed, and read. And more and more it revealed itself to be an illusion. A pretty story that was actually very, very ugly when you really look at it. I mean, have you read Genesis? The things that God does, commands, and permits are breathtakingly horrible. This is not the story of a loving God. This is the story of a vengeful god of war and blood. And the more you read about how the Bible was cobbled together by many authors, with many perspectives over a long period of time, the more you realize that it is all just revenge fantasy for a persecuted people, and justification for their own atrocities. The story is still playing out in Israel and across the world as we speak.

But you say I need to abandon my search for truth and rational thought and just accept that God is always right in everything He did as described by the Bible. Don't bother questioning it because God's thoughts are higher than mine, right? Don't ask why. Just believe that he loves you and would prefer that you worshiped Him. Of course if you don't worship Him he will abandon you to silence and coldness and of course, HELL after you die. Because that is the very definition of love right? When your children make poor life choices you condemn them to eternal torture, right? That's God's higher thought. "I gave you a chance. You could have chosen to believe in the Bible (while of course rejecting the Qur'an, Tripitaka, Bhagavad-Gita, and all the other books claiming to have the answers). But no, you chose to have an open mind and think for yourself and make your own decisions."

It is painfully clear to me that what I just described is not love. It is selfish, covetous, rapacious. We are to worship and obey God for our entire lives, prostrating ourselves before Him, or suffer eternally. You can't explain that away. You just can't.

So let me be clear. Even if this God of the Bible that you love so much were to truly exist, I would not worship. I will not love anything under the threat of torture. Even if "hell" was merely defined as the absence of God's presence, it's the same thing. Either I love and obey or I will not be allowed to enter the club in the clouds. Sorry, not going there either. Even if for some reason I was allowed in and there were others who were not, I would not go in. I love people more than God? WHAT?

Either God's love is unconditional, like any decent parent, or I want nothing to do with Him. And that is simply not what the Bible describes. It is clear that "Heaven and Hell" is a fantasy for people who want to believe in epic justice in the afterworld. The world we live in is horrible unfair, and some people need to think that bad people will get what's coming to them somehow, even if it's not in this lifetime. Sigh. But that is a topic for another epic post, and I think I've rambled on far too long as it is.

The Bible was written by many people for many reasons. It's part religious doctrine, part philosophy, part mythology, part history, part political propaganda, part revenge fantasy, part pulp fiction, part erotic fiction, part poetry, part law book, part cook book and part science book. Although repressive by today's standards, I get the feeling it was progressive in its time. >> ^jmd:

The bible was written by a person who wanted control and power over a massive amount of people.
worked pretty good didn't it.

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