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The Genius of Ricky Gervais

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Bill Maher: Who Needs Guns?

scheherazade says...

Lawrence Wilkerson's dismissive comments about self defense are very disrespectful to people who have had to resort to self defense. He wouldn't say things like that had he been unfortunate enough to have had such a personal experience. (As one parent of a Fla victim said - his child would have given anything for a firearm at the time of the event.)

Re. 2nd amendment, yes, it's not for pure self defense. The reasoning is provided within the text. The government is denied legal powers over gun ownership ('shall not be infringed') in order to preserve the ability of the people to form a civilian paramilitary intended to face [presumably invading] foreign militaries in combat ('militia').

It's important to remember that the U.S. is a republic - so the citizens are literally the state (not in abstract, but actually so). As such, there is very little distinction between self defense and state defense - given that self and state are one.

Personally, I believe any preventative law is a moral non-starter. Conceptually they rely on doling out punishment via rights-denial to all people, because some subset might do harm. Punishment should be reserved for those that trespass on others - violating their domain (body/posessions/etc). Punishment should not be preemptive, simply to satiate the fears/imaginations of persons not affected by those punished. Simply, there should be no laws against private activities among consenting individuals. Folks don't have to like what other folks do, and they don't have to be liked either. It's enough to just leave one another alone in peace.

Re. Fla, the guilty party is dead. People should not abuse government to commit 3rd party trespass onto innocent disliked demographics (gun owners) just to lash out. Going after groups of people out of fear or dislike is unjustified.







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As an aside, the focus on "assault rifles" makes gun control advocates appear not sincere, and rather knee-jerk/emotional. Practically all gun killings utilize pistols.

There are only around 400 or so total rifle deaths per year (for all kinds of rifles combined) - which is almost as many as the people who die each year by falling out of bed (ever considered a bed to be deadly? With 300 million people, even low likelihood events must still happen reasonably often. It's important to keep in mind the likelihood, and not simply the totals.).

Around 10'000 people die each day out of all causes. Realistically, rifles of all sorts, especially assault rifles, are not consequential enough to merit special attention - given the vast ocean of far more deadly things to worry about.

If they were calling for a ban+confiscation of all pistols, with a search of every home and facility in the U.S., then I'd consider the advocates to be at least making sense regarding the objective of reducing gun related death.

Also, since sidearms have less utility in a military application, a pistol ban is less anti-2nd-amendment than an assault rifle ban.







As a technical point, ar15s are not actually assault rifles - they just look like one (m4/m16).
Assault rifles are named after the German Sturm Gewehr (storm rifle). It's a rifle that splits the difference between a sub-machinegun (automatic+pistol ammo) and a battle rifle (uses normal rifle/hunting ammo).

- SMG is easy to control in automatic, but has limited damage. (historical example : ppsh-41)

- Battle rifles do lots of damage, but are hard to control (lots of recoil, using full power hunting ammo). (historical example : AVT-40)

- An 'assault rifle' uses something called an 'intermediate cartridge'. It's a shrunken down, weaker version of hunting ammo. A non-high-power rifle round, that keeps recoil in check when shooting automatic. It's stronger than a pistol, but weaker than a normal rifle. But that weakness makes it controllable in automatic fire. (historical example : StG-44)

- The ar15 has no automatic fire. This defeats the purpose of using weak ammo (automatic controlability). So in effect, it's just a weak normal rifle. (The M4/M16 have automatic, so they can make use of the weak ammo to manage recoil - and they happen to look the same).

Practically speaking, a semi-auto hunting rifle is more lethal. A Remington 7400 with box mag is a world deadlier than an ar15. An M1A looks like a hunting rifle, and is likewise deadlier than an ar15. Neither are viewed as evil or dangerous.

You can also get hunting rifles that shoot intermediate cartridges (eg. Ruger Mini14). The lethality is identical to an ar15, but because it doesn't look black and scary, no one complains.

In practice, what makes the ar15 scary is its appearance. The pistol grip, the adjustable stock, the muzzle device, the black color, all are visual identifiers, and those visuals have become politically more important than what it actually does.

You can see the lack of firearms awareness in the proposed laws - proposed bans focus on those visual features. No pistol grips, no adjustable stocks, etc. Basically a listing of ancillary features that evoke scary appearance, and nothing to do with the core capabilities of a firearm.

What has made the ar15 the most popular rifle in the country, is that it has very good ergonomics, and is very friendly to new shooters. The low recoil doesn't scare new shooters away, and the great customizability makes it like a gun version of a tuner-car.

I think its massive success, popularity, and widespread adoption, have made it the most likely candidate to be used in a shooting. It's cursed to be on-hand whenever events like Fla happen.

-scheherazade

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Let's talk about Syria (Politics Talk Post)

chingalera says...

All for amping-up the civil disobedience phase of a revolution before more social meltdown and a slow, ugly decline. Larry Wilkerson's perspective seems the most palatable though, unlikely. Arms embargoes, diplomacy and discussions about details of scenarios that have already been set into motion won't change the push forward into that direction I suspect.
The best form of civil and economic disobedience peeps can flex is through collective boycott/embargo/non-participation in failed or toxic systems. Stop watching television firstly and groom a thinking generation off the teat of their programming. Change the shit-think and the obvious answers appear. Welcome to planet earth it's a dangerous place, don't panic.

Colin Powell Talks About WMD Speech at UN

Tea Party Racism

longde says...

Looks like a successful attempt by the teabaggers to scapegoat one of the good guys to cover their own egregious racism. If this is what passes for black "racism", I bet black folks wish the Klan could follow her example:



Sherrod identified the white farmer as Roger Spooner. CNN today interviewed his wife, Eloise Spooner, who said Sherrod had helped her and her husband save their farm.

"She's a good friend ... she helped save her farm," Spooner said, adding that Sherrod did all she could to help them. "They have not treated her right."

From the article: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/usda_appointee_forced_to_resign_after_discussing_r.php?ref=fpa

But Sherrod told first to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and then CNN that her comments were taken out of context. She says that the anecdote was part of a larger story, one in which she explains how she overcame her initial prejudice.

"The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race," she told the AJC, adding that she went on to help other white farmers.

Big Government has not posted the full speech. The Douglas, Ga., company which filmed the banquet for the local NAACP has refused to release it to TPMmuckraker. The owner of the video company, Johnny Wilkerson, says he is sending the full video to the national NAACP, and hopes to post it in full once he gets permission.

Wilkerson also told us that the full speech is exactly as Sherrod described, and that she goes on to explain learning the error of her initial impression and helping the farmer keep his farm.

In 1986, at the time of the incident, Sherrod worked for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund, a job she held until she was appointed to the USDA last year.

Cheney Blocked Talks With Iran

Wilkerson, Levin Say Bush Administration Is Worst Ever

Stupidest Guy on Earth Speaks Out

Why did they Disband the Iraqi Army?

qruel says...

I saw this movie the other night and after example after example, all i could think was... how fucking incompetent can this administration be ?
not only did they botch the reasons to go to war... but it seems they knowingly and willfully fucked up that country beyond all repair on purpose.

No End in Sight is a documentary film that concentrates on alleged mistakes made by the Bush administration in the two-to-three-month period following the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The film portrays these errors as the cause of ensuing problems in Iraq, such as the rise of the insurgency, a lack of security and basic utilities for many Iraqis, sectarian violence and the risk of complete civil war.

To a large extent the film consists of interviews with the people who were involved in the initial Iraqi occupation authority and the ORHA (the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later replaced by the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority). 35 people are interviewed, many of them former Bush loyalists who have since become disillusioned by what they experienced at the time. In particular, many of those interviewed claim that the inexperience of the core members of the Bush administration—and their refusal to seek, acknowledge or accept input from more experienced outsiders—was at the root of the disastrous occupation effort.

Among those interviewed are

General Jay Garner, who briefly ran the reconstruction before being replaced by L. Paul Bremer
Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was placed in charge of the Baghdad embassy
Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of the State Department
Robert Hutchings, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff
Col. Paul Hughes, who worked in the ORHA and then the CPA
According to No End in Sight, there were three especially grave mistakes made by L. Paul Bremer, the head of the CPA:

A move toward "De-Ba'thification" in the early stages of the occupation. Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party counted as its members a huge majority of Iraq's governmental employees, including educational officials and some teachers. By order of the CPA, these skilled and ultimately apolitical individuals were to be banned from holding any positions in Iraq's new government.
Not providing enough troops to maintain order. The looting of Iraqi museums sent chilling signals to the average Iraqi, telling them that the American forces did not intend to maintain law and order. And arms depots were available for pillaging by anyone who wanted weapons and explosives.
The disbanding of the Iraqi Army, which made 500,000 young men with weapons and training unemployed and bitter. Many of them decided that their best chance for a future was to join or, together with the rest of their unit, become a militia force.
The film cites these three mistakes, as well as many others, as the cause of the rapid deterioration of occupied Iraq into chaos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_end_in_sight



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