It’s been eight days since the Orlando massacre. Has it changed the gun control debate in the US? Not according to the Senate, which just voted down four measures to improve background checks and restrict weapon sales to people on terrorist watch lists. Two of the measures were sponsored by Democrats, and two by Republicans,…
via Orlando changed nothing: The Senate just voted down four gun control measures — Quartz
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About acflory
I am the kind of person who always has to know why things are the way they are so my interests range from genetics and biology to politics and what makes people tick.
For fun I play online mmorpgs, read, listen to a music, dance when I get the chance and landscape my rather large block.
Work is writing. When a story I am working on is going well I'm on cloud nine. On bad days I go out and dig big holes...
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Meeka's Mind 
June 22nd, 2016 at 4:38 am
I’m not the least bit surprised. I’m disturbed, even ashamed, of my country’s inability to put gun rights in the context of the real world, and not to interpret the second amendment to our constitution as the right for all Americans to carry firearms wherever and whenever they please.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about the gun culture in the U.S. is that more people are killed in “small incidents” (less than 4 people killed or injured by guns). I hope that one day, the gun fanatics realize that most of the people killed by guns are members of gun owning families, their neighbors and friends, as death by accidental shooting, shootings in anger and suicides account for most of the gun deaths in the U.S. It may feel like the big terrorist events are the problem, but it is the ease of resorting to a weapon at bad moments that kills more American citizens.
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June 22nd, 2016 at 10:39 am
Ugh, yes, that’s the other side of the whole gun control debate. As you say, it claims more lives but goes unreported because it’s not ‘sexy’.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the US gun control situation [again] since Orlando and someone made one comment that stuck in my mind. It was that most of the big cosmopolitan cities are in favour of gun control but that the huge midwest and south are not, so the senate will never reach the magic 60% number required to pass a bill.
I understand the needs of a democracy but this seems like an impossible ask. 😦
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June 22nd, 2016 at 1:49 am
Of course it changed nothing. That’s because the “other”, the one they want us to see as the enemy, isn’t “one of us” as they see it. It only entrenched their attitudes even more deeply. That’s what prejudice does. It’s self-fulfilling.
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June 22nd, 2016 at 10:44 am
Yes, and if there isn’t an obvious ‘other’ to begin with, people like Donald Trump will happily manufacture one. I know I’m going to get into terrible trouble for saying this, but has no one noticed that a certain megalomaniac with a tiny black moustache did exactly the same thing 70 odd years ago? He too was a powerful orator who told people what they wanted to hear…:/
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June 22nd, 2016 at 11:28 pm
The idea of the similarities between them has certainly been floated here. We live in a scary time where anything could happen. The election will be interesting, to say the least.
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June 23rd, 2016 at 12:19 am
We have an election coming up in a week and a half? I think we’ll be more interested in yours. 😦
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June 21st, 2016 at 5:47 pm
Unfortunately, I’m not really surprised. As much as I’d like to think they’ll one day see the light, if they couldn’t bring themselves to change things after Sandy Hook, when so many small children and the people protecting them were killed, I doubt any other kind of massacre will ever stir them to do it.
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June 21st, 2016 at 6:14 pm
I get why they have those gun rights and why some love their guns so much. It’s down to the history of the place. But when they passed those laws, their guns couldn’t shoot they way they shoot now. They didn’t have magazines, they were front loaded. So by the time anyone could do anything he was down. And they don’t have the same enemies anymore. But people are way to resistant to change.
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June 21st, 2016 at 8:55 pm
I was watching The Drum this evening and one of the commentators seemed to think that racial relations might also have something to do with it – i.e. a certain type of white male feeling that he had to protect his ‘female’ from dangerous black men.
Given how many young black men are killed for no apparent reason, I suspect they may be the ones in need of protection from a certain kind of white male.
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June 22nd, 2016 at 3:18 am
You know what they say. People are scared of what is different. That, or that some want to feel superior and i guess that is the way they choose.
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June 22nd, 2016 at 10:40 am
-sigh- Yes, fear of the Other is always a biggie, and as for ego….. 😦
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June 21st, 2016 at 8:51 pm
Yes. -sigh- You’re right and I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but the blind optimist in me still thinks it’s wrong, wrong, wrong…
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June 21st, 2016 at 5:42 pm
Something is off here as well. The “hunters lobby” thing is trying to change the law, to allow 14year olds to have a hunting license and carry hunting shotguns when supervised.
Now you know i have a real military assault rifle at home.
But at the idea of a 14 year old having a hunting gun license under the premise of “well their dad is already giving them the gun, lets make it legal for them” sounds extremely stupid. Not only because of safety issues, but also for game issues. My dad saw a teenager trying to shoot an eagle because he didn’t know what it was. He just saw a bird…
The first thing that should be hammered into someone’s head when owning a gun is “never raise up the gun’s boom and doom side”
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June 21st, 2016 at 8:49 pm
That’s something I’ve always found really interesting about Cyprus – the almost? universal military service means that almost all? young men are trained how to handle guns properly. Could this be why you don’t have similar shooting massacres there? I don’t know but the thought of a 14 year old having the right to say ‘I’ve got a licence and I’m going out with my gun, and there’s nothing you can do about it’ scares me. A lot.
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