Seems like Trump is always talking to his imaginary psychiatrist instead of real people at this point and no one can help him.

@newtboy @BSR I mean you can take ANY of those claims and pick them apart in short order.

You can burn churches? even in covid heavy places they are letting people go to church still, even though the rest of us think it's stupid and will cause more infections just so people can visit their imaginary friend.

Unless you don't feel that way, in which case stop spreading your hate propaganda.

I don't have to apologize for being white, but i can recognize history and when there is a disparity in the way the police enforce the law I can stand with them and say "THATS NOT FAIR" Standing up for people isn't me apologizing for myself, and it doesn't make me less of a person.

But I digress, he's been hearing this from people on this site for ~ ten years. Dont waste your time, let the dumb dumbs who think covid isn't real Darwin themselves.

So yeah, @bobknight33, go to a megachurch, go to a trump rally like she suggests. Prove you're done with our bullshit if you feel that way.

This is too good, almost as good on the imaginary decks as my wife.

You think this is exceptional?

Let's create an imaginary group, we'll call them Kopz. Now, Kopz are trusted. Kopz are rarely, if ever prosecuted if they commit crimes in the line of duty. If a member of Kopz does something bad, it's his friends, other Kopz who will investigate. If he's actually caught and his fellow Kopz turn him over for prosecution, well the Kopz have a very cozy relationship with prosecutors, so he'll probably have a friend there too. Oh and Kopz are allowed to carry guns and have a monopoly on legal violence.

What kind of person do you think would want to join Kopz?

Now, let's say the people who pick who is and who isn't allowed to join the Kopz, are themselves Kopz. After several generations of inbreeding, what sort of people do you think they'll select to join their fraternity?

These guys only ever get busted when there is absolute incontrovertible video evidence, and even then the first words out of every police chief's mouth inevitably are, "Well, the video doesn't tell the WHOLE story. We need to know the context before we can decide if the behaviour was inappropriate." (guess what, he's a Kopz too!)

What God is he? In which religion? Or is he the personification of God an atheist thinks God(s) would or could do if there really is a God of such power?

Having God-like powers is no God.

This short films series speak more of the misconception of God (as a religious symbol, real deity, imaginary fictional character) than real understanding OR rejection of God for the people involved in the project IMO. It's like they have a full-on hate-on of "God," whatever their definition is.

It's not advancing any intelligent argument for OR against God. It serves more to troll people into defending or attacking their or others' belief.

Or... or... if the intention is to setup a hypothetical scenario which "a grumpy old human being, senile in his neurological faculty, is given God-like powers, than what this person can and will do for self-serving pleasure?" then it makes all kinds of sense in a comic book sort of way.

@Ickster
"That we're equating that with something like gay people being refused service because of who they are says a lot about how skewed our perception of balance is."

This is the fundamental point. I DON'T equate the two at all.

But as soon as we open this door, we have to deal with the permutations of it.

Let's say that for the sake of argument, gender identity and sexual orientation are now protected classes (legally, they're not, but let's assume they are).

Ok, you can't discriminate against someone for being LGBTQ. Great, that is obviously correct.

But we're making the argument here that you CAN discriminate against someone based on their political affiliation. Would you be ok with someone refusing service to Obama? Hillary? Bernie? What about an employer in a Republican town who finds out their employee is a prominent local democrat?

I get the argument and honestly, I agree with most of what you've said. If any of Trump's cronies had shown up in my (completely imaginary) restaurant, I'd probably have turfed them out with a lot less civility than SHS was shown.

But I'm just not sure that the world following my example is a good idea....

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers. I love in the beginning of this trailer how he says he didnt feel like he needed to put on a funny hat. He wasn't a character. He was real, and that is what I liked about it. Don't get me wrong. When trolley, would take you to the imaginary castle, that was pretty awesome too.

It's not that Mr. Roger's Neighborhood are some of my fondest childhood memories, but thinking of the show, relates to so many other childhood memories...the look of the living room where I used to watch...my family being around...watching with friends...

Great....another afternoon of crying at my desk at work.

I have never even heard the term before a week ago, my aunt said I should check out "scientific pantheism", The page I read was that nature itself can provide spiritual nourishment, without any magic, superstition or deities. When we look at the milky way and our jaw drops in awe, that is a similar experience in the mind to "feeling a god". , that is what I took from it so far. "But we are not talking about supernatural powers or beings. We are saying this: We are part of nature. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into nature. We are at home in nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong. This is the only place where we can find and make our paradise, not in some imaginary world on the other side of the grave." https://www.pantheism.net/beliefs/

He didn't have full auto, he used a bump fire stock.
Full auto fires around 20hz. Well practiced bump firing is around 10hz. Well practiced semi auto pull is around 6hz.

Bump firing also sprays so bad it's not aimable beyond a few feet distance. The gun community is even more surprised than other people, most considered the bump stock as a joke doo dad for making noise and wasting money.





All vendors, even at a gun show, must do background checks.

All private sellers, regardless of where (at home, gun show, on the street, wherever), are not required to do checks - but are in practice held liable for subsequent gun crimes if they can't prove they had no idea the buyer was shady.

There is absolutely nothing special about gun shows. The gun show loophole is an entirely imaginary issue (I explained this earlier).




A traceable gun is just as capable of shooting a person as an untraceable gun.



Yes, anyone can put together that arsenal.
Especially anyone with a squeaky clean record who qualifies to be a gun owner no matter what the restriction - like the Vegas shooter.

Hence why *nothing proposed* would have had *any impact* on the Vegas events, short of confiscation raids nation wide and capital punishment for possession.





The reply was to : "You are more likely to be killed by a criminal if you have a gun than if you don't."

I have two interpretations of that chart

1) (my initial thought)
Assault understood as the legal meaning (brandishing, threatening, not necessarily killing).
Discharge understood as firing.
This is what the original math was based on.
But yes, it seems senseless because how can you die to brandishing?

You are correct regarding the "per year".
The original math does include the mistake of thinking it was cause of death, not per year chance of death.
That alters the result from 350'000 lifetimes for a 50/50 chance, down to 350'000 years for a 50/50 chance. AKA 4600 lifetimes worth of years for a 50/50 chance in the next year.

2) (your [likely correct] thought)
Assault understood as being fired upon.
Discharge understood as accidental (what else could it mean?)
This variant is computed below.
However, this challenges conventional assertion, because the common assertion is that accidents kill more than intentional. Maybe that assertion is crap.

1/24974 as caused by assault
That's a 99.995995835669095859694081845119% chance of dying by a cause OTHER than firearms.
Which requires around 17'000 trials for the chance of the next death to be 50% by firearm.
I.E. 99.995995835669095859694081845119% ^ 17'000 = 50.625%, or about 50/50.
AKA 226 lifetimes worth of years to have a 50/50 chance of death by firearm in the next year.

Referring to the study I linked earlier :
http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life
#2 version has a similar death chance to the polstats link, so the #2 variant is likely the appropriate understanding (not my initial understanding).

-schehearzade

Lol, I read "imaginary Hiller" (and assumed you meant Hillary). My bad.



We have reasonable laws already.
Most things people ask for either already exist (and anti-gunners just don't know because they don't have to follow those laws), or only screw collectors and sportsmen while not doing anything to reduce risk (which I already covered, I assume you read the earlier part, eg California compliant AR15, etc).



Nobody expects to need to form a militia.
Nobody expects the country to go to hell.

The seat belt analogy is about preparedness for unlikely events.
Like, you don't "need" flood insurance in Houston - unless you do.

Owning a gun also hurts nobody.
By definition, ownership is not a harm.

Almost all guns will never be used to do any harm.
The very statement that "guns are all about hurting other people" is a non-empirical assertion.

Just shy of every last gun owner doesn't imagine themselves as Bruce Willis. Asserting that they do is a straw man.


You remind me of Republicans that complain that Black people are welfare queens (so they can redirect money out of welfare). Or Republicans that complain that Trans people are pedophiles in hiding (so they can pander to religious zelot voters). Creating a straw man and then getting mad about the straw man (rather than the real people) is self serving.


* Only the rarest few people think they are Roy Rogers. That is a straw man that does not apply to just shy of every gun owner.
* You don't need a gun for home defense... unless you do.
* Differences in likelihood of death armed vs unarmed is happenstance.
(Doesn't matter either way. Googled some likelihoods : http://www.theblaze.com/news/2013/02/15/how-likely-are-you-to-die-from-gun-violence-this-interesting-chart-puts-it-in-perspective/
You'd have to suffer death 350'000 times before you're at a 50/50 chance of your next death being by firearms.)
[EDIT, math error. Should say 17'000 years lived to reach a 50/50 chance of death by firearms in the next year]
* Technically, even 1 vote gets someone elected. You don't control who is on the ballot.



NRA and NSSF are on life support. They have to fight the influence of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, most major newspapers. They are way outclassed. Current events don't help either.
The "big bad NRA" rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. As is the rhetoric that the NRA only represents the industry.

-sceherazade

And yet, gun laws DEMONSTRABLY work in other countries. There are plenty of other countries with high gun ownership rates (Canada, for instance), but nowhere outside the 3rd world has anything like the gun-related death rate of the US.

Meanwhile, you are caught up in some ridiculous fantasy where you save America from imaginary Hitler.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/6l4l6m/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-scapegoat-hunter---gun-control

edit: fine don't embed the video, then!

Gender reassignment and hormone therapy aren't covered by military healthcare, so that's not the issue. Honestly, I think Trump is either so misinformed that he believes they are covered, or he knows that by implying they are with the phrase "tremendous medical costs" his base will be outraged by an imaginary government expenditure on 'queers'.

The dictionary disagrees with you
homophobia
: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals

But for the sake of argument, elaborate.

Why is being anti-gay different from homophobia? And why isn't this preacher homophobic?

He clearly has an aversion to homosexuality and is advocating discrimination against it. Unless you can provide a rational reason for this (hint: "because my imaginary friend said so" does not count as a rational argument), I'd say he falls squarely under the definition of homophobic.