Gun Control Debate

[Primula Baggins]

People enjoy firing “automatic weapons” at firing ranges, apparently. Maybe a fantasy thing.

[RoseMorninStar]

Trump has been quietly (I didn't know he could do anything quietly) rolling back gun regulations (article from the Washington Post). He has been trying to dismantle all legislation from the Obama administration in order to wipe away any legacy from his administration. Yeah. He is that petty.

[Primula Baggins]

Yes, including eliminating things that were not at all controversial, simply necessary or commonsensical. If it came out of Obama's administration, it's in Trump's sights.

I believe he would fight to repeal the law of gravity, if Obama was the one who had signed it.

[River]

Probably just as well bin Laden was buried at sea, then. Otherwise he'd ben exhuming and cloning him or something.

[Jude]

Just to put things in perspective - gun deaths on a random day in the U.S.:

[RoseMorninStar]

What a waste. So very sad. So many very sad things happening in the world. And most of them have to do with greed.

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

The weird thing about the Las Vegas shooting is how many aspects of it don't fit any pattern. This guy had no discernible history or motive. No known strong political or religious motivation. The guy who shot the Republican baseball practice had the motivation of being a Bernie supporter. Not this guy. His choice of targets - a country music concert? There was a network executive who lost her job for saying publicly that she had no sympathy because these people were "probably Trump supporters".

[Primula Baggins]

Not every terrible deed is done for political reasons. Maybe he was simply insane and wanted to make a huge mark on the world before he died.

[RoseMorninStar]

Excerpted from article: Kaczynski motive: Rage, not politics

"I certainly don't claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the "good' (whatever that is) of the human race," Kaczynski wrote in an April 1971 journal entry. "I act merely from a desire for revenge."
Kaczynski's words paint a picture of a painfully isolated man who was bitter, deeply resentful of society and desperately seeking to release his rage at the world.

[Impenitent]

April 1971? I've heard that revenge is a dish best served cold, but that is a hell of a long time. A journal entry that is more than 40 years old has no bearing on this.

[Frelga]

Impish, Kaczynski was the Unabomber, the American terrorist who started his mail bomb campaign in the late 70s.

[RoseMorninStar]

April 1971? I've heard that revenge is a dish best served cold, but that is a hell of a long time. A journal entry that is more than 40 years old has no bearing on this.

Yes, I was responding to Cenedril_Gildinaur's comment regarding motive/politics/religion. In the case of Ted Kaczynski aka 'The Unabomber' his motive, at least according to his own journal entry, was rage and revenge.

Interestingly in Ted Kaczynski's case, he had been the subject of what has come to be considered an unethical human experiment while he was an undergraduate student at Harvard.

Wikipedia on Henry Murray Director of Psychology and Chief researcher, Harvard

From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for what have become widely considered unethical experiments, in which he used twenty-two Harvard undergraduates as research subjects.[4] Among other purposes, experiments focused on measuring people's reactions under extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Specifically-tailored assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were used to cause high levels of stress and distress. The subjects then viewed recorded footage of their reactions to this verbal abuse repeatedly.

Among them was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski, a mathematician who went on to become the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist targeting academics and technologists for 18 years.[5] Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career.[5]

Sounds like post traumatic stress syndrome, perhaps.

I am not implying that Stephen Paddock was the unwitting victim of a stress experiment (although he had an atypical childhood, his father being a notorious man), just pointing out that the motives for mass murder/terrorism at least sometimes extend beyond politics & religion. Interestingly something these 2 men had in common was a very high level of mathematical skills. Kaczynski was a mathematician and Paddock gambled playing the type of poker which did not rely on the traditional bluffing but a high level of precise mathematical calculation of odds.

I'm not suggesting those with high mathematical skills be prevented from owning guns I just found that to be an interesting coincidence. The point may be that we may never know what might tip someone who has lived a fairly 'normal' life over the edge.

[Dave_LF]

Maybe we should say that only those with high mathematical skill be permitted to own guns.

[RoseMorninStar]

? I am not sure what you are suggesting

[Dave_LF]

Just a (bad) attempt at levity--if gun ownership required mastery of advanced mathematics, then hardly anyone would be able to get them. And Kaczynski and Paddock notwithstanding, most of those individuals would be too lost in abstraction to commit as concrete a crime as murder.

[RoseMorninStar]

It would certainly disqualify me. Although I really have no desire for a gun anyway (correlation?)
BTW, that's kinda what I thought you were inferring Dave, but I wasn't certain.

[Maria]

I need guns. I'm against any rule that would disqualify me.

[Inanna]

Just a (bad) attempt at levity--if gun ownership required mastery of advanced mathematics, then hardly anyone would be able to get them. And Kaczynski and Paddock notwithstanding, most of those individuals would be too lost in abstraction to commit as concrete a crime as murder.

And they would have to submit a new paper to a journal every two years. To be reviewed.

[Frelga]

Or there's this approach.

uploadfromtaptalk1508879658823.jpg (179.56 KiB) Viewed 6015 times

[Sunsilver]

Oh, yeah, I could get behind that protocol...