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@ILikePie5
They can go buy a gun for themselves. Oh wait...
Not after these felony riot convictions, they can't
>:D
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@ILikePie5
@Dr.Franklin
I love all of the retarded commies being like "but but but but... mUh libertarians wanted guns to protect us from tyranny." Like taking rioting mini bolsheviks off of the streets is somehow tyranny.
And even if this was unjust, they want me to risk my skin to protect them so they can be free to fight for more gun control and destroy our American way of life? No thanks, lmfao
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@Username
Who lied?
They still push his death in their material as an unjust police killing. He reached for a cop’s gun after beating up a store clerk, then got shot.
Then there is Tamir Rice, who they say got shot while pointing a toy gun at cops. What they don’t mention is that the kid took off the orange part that shows it is a toy.
Many such cases. They push them to gain political power and ignore those inconvenient facts. So these lies make people angry, and angry people do stupid and violent things.... like attack random White people and cops
BLM is about police on black violence, not white on black violence.
And you could count how many unarmed black people are killed by police per year on your hands.
Not all of these were even unjustified.
And perhaps I may have missed some, but I have never seen them march/riot/give a damn unless it was a white officer involved in the killing of a black person.
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@Username
Yes, anti-white.
By perpetuating lies and hyper-focusing on only white-on-black crimes to cause racial hatred of white people, I consider you anti-white.
And when you lie to people in order to anger them, I’d say that you are at least somewhat responsible for their actions. The whole big starting point for their movement was lying about Michael Brown’s shooting
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@HistoryBuff
Where did I mention cops? I said “if the races were reversed”. If that was the case, there would probably be federal hate crime charges and had their family doxxed and permanently unemployable
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@HistoryBuff
Well Oromagi was criticizing a “pro Trump” source, so I provided another link to someone else.
Despite the whole tiresome “if the races were reversed, we wouldn’t hear the end of it” (@ fake hate crimes), there isn’t much more to it.
There is a clear narrative they want to push in lefty media “black man good. White man bad oppressor who attacks black man in the streets” despite that not being the case at all. Anything that strays from that narrative gets ignored and flushed down the memory hole.
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@Username
So an anti-White and anti-cop movement has no responsibility when their supporters abuse White people and kill cops?
Does that mean that the KKK (they don’t really exist anymore, but insert random “hate group”) isn’t responsible when one of their members attacks people?
Just trying to get a feel for how this works.
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@Stephen
Here is another small outlet detailing the event:
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@TheUnderdog
So do immigrants, like when they are blood donors.
And they also take plenty of lives, crash cars, etc that would require a need for blood transfusions.
You're obsessed with blood donation lol.
That was done to make sure that the immigrants learn English. Granted, if we opened up our borders with the whole world, many of the immigrants would already know English since the English language is incredibly widespread amongst the world population. More people know English than the number that know Chinese(around 20%). Also, there is some instinctual assilimination that immigrants as a group already go through that would ensure that this number is over 20%. I say this because here is my line of thinking:-The US doesn't filter on the basis of religion. Despite that, immigrants from India are more likely to be Christian if they reside in the US (around 20%) than if they aren't immigrants (around 2%).I therefore think that if the US didn't filter on the basis of English proficiency, we would still get more English knowledge among the immigrants than random earthlings would present. Immigrants tend to in many respects emulate the country they immigrate too.
20% of the world's population speaks English. So, you want to open the borders to 99% of the world's population and hope that they actually speak the language?
Think of it more like this: if you let in 50 million Latin Americans into the Southwestern US, who all speak native Spanish, do you really expect them to learn English when they don't need to, and can meet all of their needs and live comfortably with other Spanish speakers? No, they only learn it when they need to and have the ability to.
There aren't that many areas in the US where this is the case. There are some, but not many. Most people in CA and TX know only English in terms of languages. Moreover, with open borders, people are mostly going to live in big metropolitan cities, far from the US border, and other immigrants would come so English would be used as a lingua franca and eventually as a primary language amongst the descendants of immigrants.
There aren't currently many areas of the US where you need to speak Spanish to get by, you are correct. But that is right now, when we have 1,000,000 immigrants per year. Now, if you let in 50x that from south of the border, that is obviously going to change. Not many cities that speak only Italian, German, or French in the US. You know why? Because we don't have 600,000 German speakers immigrating here every year.
A lebanese person and a Bolivian person having a kid will mean that the kid will easily learn ENglish and may be bilingual, but English would be their primary language.
How would they easily learn English if neither of their parents are proficient in the language? That is just silly.
Immigrants are more likely to own businesses than native born people.
They are also much more likely to strain the welfare system than native citizens.
And according to your very source, the quality of immigrant-owned businesses is worse:
Immigrant-owned firms have $435,000 in average annual sales and receipts,which is roughly 70 percent of the level of non-immigrant owned firms at$609,000. Examining the full distribution of sales reveals that 11.4 percent of iiiimmigrant firms have sales of $500,000 or more, which is similar to thepercentage of non-immigrant firms at this level.
4. Immigrant-owned businesses are slightly more likely to hire employees than arenon-immigrant owned businesses, however, they tend to hire fewer employees onaverage. Among immigrant owned businesses that hire employees these firms hirean average of 8.0 employees with an average payroll of $253,000. Employer firmsowned by non-immigrants hire an average of 11.9 employees with an averagepayroll of $429,000.
So, these immigrant-owned businesses employ less people on average, pay them less on average, and have lower sales (meaning less tax revenue and less benefit) on average.
Then why haven't we?
We haven't paid off the debt because of two reasons: we spend too much based on how much we tax. We generally lower taxes and raise spending. Also, we let in 1,000,000 immigrants every year and half of their households use welfare.
I'd abolish the income tax and replace it with a sales tax and a capitol gains tax. Anyone that buys anything for any reason would have to pay a tax on it. This applies to native born people and immigrants. I'd show them how to get good paying jobs with the education they have (there are so many jobs you can get with no college education, so hook the immigrants and anyone else who needs one with a job and they should be set). They also could own a business, creating jobs for many other people (which immigrants are more likely to do) and unemployment would plummet.
Not saying I think this is necessarily a good point, but it is true that sales taxes are regressive taxes, meaning they harm the poor and are lenient on the rich. That may hurt efforts to alleviate poverty, since the EITC (earned income tax credit) which is a tax credit for income tax has really been one of the best policies of helping lower poverty.
And unemployment is really a bad measure. It doesn't include people who aren't searching for work or those who are unemployed. You know what makes people stop searching for work? Immigrant laborers undercutting wages and making your labor near worthless.
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@Dr.Franklin
@HistoryBuff
Apparently the virus can shoot people now, too.
Also from Washington:
106 (13 percent) deaths involved persons who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 but did not have the virus listed anywhere on their death certificate as either causing or contributing to death.
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@Dr.Franklin
It is political. Most of the spikes are probably due to riots and "pRoTeStS"
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@ILikePie5
Lol, my thread is about why taxing is very low priority right now and only Frank hasn’t tried to justify a tax scheme to me.
Yeah, the Reagan revolution brought us to this point, I think. Lots of talk about keeping your money. It is all true, but this cannot come at the cost of our culture. If we have to sacrifice on economic issues like having a UBI, I would support it if that means we keep America as America. We need to win, and having 4-8 years of our enemies winning is unacceptable.
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@Dr.Franklin
As for egalitarianism, we should be treated equal under the law, but not much else. Egalitarianism is the belief that we are all equal and that any evidence of disparities between groups must be because one group committed an injustice against another. Right-wingers believe that there are natural hierarchies and trying too hard to correct those is disastrous. I’ll leave you with another quote on the matter:
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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@Dr.Franklin
It brings a smile to my face that some people are noticing. Maybe there is hope for America. :)
The corporations turned on us as soon as economies could be globalized. As soon as they could choose cheap labor over American workers they did. Their goals need to be aligned with Americas. Brutal punishment for outsourcing.
But not only did they ship off jobs, the lobbied for masses of third world immigrants coming here so that it was now American workers who felt lucky to get jobs, rather than the other way around. We became expendable. And they created divisiveness, as these immigrants had cultures not compatible with ours. The American worker is trapped. A tight labor market gives us leverage. A unified culture gives us strength and direction for policy.
And fauxlaw, he is just too old. All that matters to him is his 401k and IRA accounts. He had his life in a suitable America. That is a common theme among boomers, that they only care about their stocks. We are left with the mess they started in the 1960s when public schools were turned into atheist organizations and the sexual revolution and welfare state devastated the family.
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@Dr.Franklin
That reminds me of a quote that describes exactly what you are saying:
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
- G. Michael Hopf
It is very cyclical.
And true, during the pandemic, we heard nothing about transphobe this or sexist that. But we can't honestly expect a collapse to be our salvation. There is a beauty to conserving your country. It just needs to be a main goal of the public school system to instill patriotism in the kids. That is how you win the youth: by taking back education.
We have had too good of times. We are now in the time of weak men, spineless politicians bartering away our future for a few more years of power. It is truly sickening.
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@Dr.Franklin
Eh, I just saw a thread complaining about Biden raising taxes, and I'm just thinking "is that what we really care about"? We are losing our country and all we can think about is keeping another 5% of our paycheck?
That isn't how you win the hearts of the youth and embolden them to cherish American values as they grow up. That isn't how you maintain your culture. This is why conservatives don't conserve anything and our country shifts further left, loss after loss in the courts and legislature.
It needs to end now!
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@Greyparrot
Most leftists believe the "cure" for capitalism is taxation. Most people on the Right are capitalists. Most on the left are Marxist socialists.
The issue is that welfare programs aren't actually designed to lift people from poverty. They just string them along to their next check. Decent scam going on.
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@n8nrgmi
it's stupid to push for lower taxes unless there's first lower spending. it just adds to the debt. i saw poll that economists are unanimous that overall government revenue goes down if there's tax cuts in this environment. there's not some magic voodoo that will pay for the tax cuts.
In most cases, raising taxes will raise tax revenue. The only time it doesn't is when people become discouraged to work and take more based on how much more they will earn. The laffer curve explains this, it is just likely further along the line than they are saying.
we pay less in taxes than most other countries anyway. i dont think it's too much to expect a tax system that is similar to the rest of the developed world. if you notice other countries are not overburdened by our debt load like we are. so of course not only should taxes not go down, they should go up. there's room for spending cuts, but our welfare system is far from run amok. it's mostly bare bones aid.
In most countries, the poor actually pay taxes. The middle class and rich are taking on the whole burden.
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@Crocodile
Ah, I remember you, pal.
I just come back around when I have time.
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@HistoryBuff
oh yeah that would go well. Trump is looking at a historic defeat because he is an idiotic, loudmouth, racist, reality tv show personality. So we should replace him with an idiotic, loudmouth, racist, entertainment tv show personality. That is definitely what america wants....
Trump will probably lose because he sh*t the bed and tried to appeal to conservative Democrats and black voters instead of his actual base. We want reduced immigration, an end to tech censorship, fixing the opioid crisis, a wall, but he gave us criminal justice reform and more funding to "historically black colleges".
And Tucker is the highest rated cable news program out there, so obviously his ideas are popular. I'm sure you'd agree with at least a quarter of what he says. He has mass populist appeal.
righties hated him before he was even elected. Fox news treated him as the anti-christ for proposing what was essentially a republican healthcare plan. It didn't matter what he said or did, the right was going to vilify him. As for democrats, they liked him because he talked a good game. He was eloquent. He made people feel like things would get better. But he fundamentally failed to actually fix those things.
And lefties decided to hate Trump even before he was elected. You see a pattern? The country is so divided, they only care if there is an R or a D next to their name.
agreed. But until we get money out of politics it is extremely difficult to do that. As long as billionaires can funnel huge amounts of money into super pacs to fund campaigns for their lackeys, it is extremely hard for people to get elected who aren't bought and paid for.
Yeah, and the very people with the power to get money out of politics are the ones with everything to lose from doing so. Interesting how that works.....
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@HistoryBuff
my argument was not that all rich people support the republicans, it is that the republicans only care about rich people.
I know your point wasn't that rich people only support Republicans. I was showing that, since a decent amount of rich people support Democrats, obviously the Democrats have something to offer them as well.
The Republicans since Reagan have, in terms of economics, shafted a lot of their supporters. And this thread is mainly how they are also failing on the cultural front. They lure them in with the patriotism, yet conserve nothing and don't really help them get out of poverty.
I'm happy about the party becoming more nationalistic in trade policy and labor economics, but they have a long way to go. Hopefully Tucker Carlson 2024 :P
nope. Obama was right wing on alot of issues, like alot of the establishment Dems.
Righties hate him, so I would find that surprising. Especially since the moderate Democrat voters treat him like a god.
agreed. And the establishment of both parties will do anything in their power to keep that from happening. They would much rather lose to the other party, than lose ground to anti-establishment people in their own party. for example, the dems have made huge sums of money telling every donor that trump is a fundamental threat to america. The republicans did the same thing by telling everyone Obama wanted "death panels" or Benghazi, or whatever stupid outrages they came up with.They have designed the political system to recycle the same people into power over and over and over. This ensures that no one who isn't bought and paid for gains any real power.
Exactly. Mitch McConnell is sending millions of dollars to smear Chris Kobach in Kansas in favor of an establishment type. From what I understand, the Democrats do that too against Left-wing candidates. Very frustrating. Although I would probably disagree more with those types of candidates on economic policy, it is refreshing to see people who aren't paid off getting power.
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@TheUnderdog
Consistent in baby murder. So, if you are pro-life, presumably you would want to save life.
Therefore, save lives by sterilizing those who would kill a baby.
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@Dr.Franklin
Interesting in a good or bad way?
What was interesting about it? :P
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@HistoryBuff
I don't think "conservative" actually means anything any more. The term has become so watered down it means nothing.
I am unfortunately thinking that is the case, myself.
The republican party (the leadership of it anyway) is about serving rich people. (please note the dems are a whole lot better). So that is why they are so obsessed with taxes. Rich people don't particularly need the services of the government. They have the money to do whatever they want anyway, so why would they want to pay into that system? Also, they know they can make the government borrow money to bail them out anyway (see 2008 financial crisis as well as current crisis). So even if they don't pay any taxes, they know they can still get the things they want from the government anyway.
I'm not sure one party is much better than the other. They just have different masters. While Republicans have low taxes, for instance, Democrats get lobbied to give valuable deductions and credits.
And this isn't about billionaires not wanting government services. According to politifact "Among the top 100 donors in the Open Secrets list, 33 were billionaires, and of those, 14 gave primarily to liberal groups while 19 gave to conservative groups." That isn't a clear split one way or the other.
There are plenty of regulations that Dems put in place that only large companies can afford, so Democrats eliminate the small competition. The lockdowns, with Democrats being the harshest, have seen thousands of small businesses closing permanently, while Amazon, Google, and Facebook are reaching their all-time highs on the stock market.
And I don't think you would argue only the Republicans would bail these companies out. Obama had his own stimulus package.
The republican party have used "conservatives" for a long time. They might agree with them (or might not), but they don't actually fight for them. They will put up a token fight to fire up their base, but then they go back to what they actually care about. Making the rich richer.
Yeah, the GOP is corrupt as f*ck (has been for decades), and I have no idea why GOP voters don't do anything about it. They care. Both parties are corrupt, though. That is why Bernie was popular among Dems. That is why an outsider, Trump, was popular among Republicans. They offered what people perceived as an escape from the "establishment".
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@Vader
Exactly, and it maintains unity within communities. The values of the Church and the universal morality that come with it bring Americans together and offers consistency.
Leftists attempt to destroy the Church and then destroy the family by having a government check replace the father.
They destroy two of the most important units in our country and offer nothing to replace it, except for *surprise surprise* the big government and the power they love so much.
The whole Democrat platform and their power is only sustainable if people are perpetually reliant on the government for its check.
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@TheUnderdog
"Should the people who wouldn't murder their baby get a vasectomy?"
Hm... interesting. I think you have this backwards. If you are pro-life, shouldn't you support sterilization of pro-baby murder people?
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@ebuc
Alright, buddy. People still have group identities even if they reside within the same "nation". Check out Quebec and Catalonia.
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This is partially taken from another thread, as I wasn't given an answer at all.
But honestly: why do conservatives only seem to care about low taxes, or at least make that their main priority?
I can understand why GOP politicians do it, whether that be from being corrupt or appeasing self-interested voters.
Having low taxes is good, but that isn't related to what "conservatism" is. It is about maintaining order, promoting traditional American values, preserving culture/the family, and rejecting egalitarianism, to simplify it for the thread.
Was it the "Reagan Revolution" that hyperfocused us on taxation?
As cultural marxism and moral relativism are penetrating the American consciousness, as the cornerstone of our communities- the Church- is being spit on and demonized by the media and religion is dying off, our history is being erased as monuments are defiled and destroyed, big tech is censoring conservative opinions, universities are indoctrinating students, among other things.
All neocons can seem to advocate for is war and raising our debt by lowering taxes. Why have the majority of supposed "conservatives" ignored all of these much more pressing social issues?
What have conservatives actually "conserved" over the past 50 years? I am starting to think the meme of "conservatives are the liberals from ten years ago" is reality and not just a joke.
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@HistoryBuff
oh, so all those native Americans spoke English? And the Chinese immigrants, they spoke English too right? And all the Mexicans who became Americans when the Texas joined the US. America was founded on immigration. That means people from all over the world. It has never had a unified culture.
Back before the 1965 Hart-Celler Act made American citizenship nothing more than a piece of paper, yes we did.
And while the English language wasn't forced on people, we didn't throw welfare money at immigrants who made little money because they didn't learn the language. The de facto official language has always been English.
And Native Americans weren't ever Americans. They have their own tribes and reservations and are separate from America.
That is not how anything works. People don't just forget their heritage when they move.
That is an issue. I agree, first generation immigrants can never fully assimilate into another culture. But you should design citizenship and public schooling to be based on American values such as the aforementioned Bill of Rights, ensuring they have English proficiency, patriotism, etc.
yeah, absolutely. Bakers should not have the right to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation. you don't have to like someone's life or approve of it. But if you discriminate against them, absolutely they should be able to sue you.
You have absolutely no right to someone else's labor. You cannot force Christian bakers to make a gay wedding cake. They were even accommodating to the gay couple. They offered to make a cake without putting two grooms on top, but that just wasn't even for them. They want to force acceptance on other people. So much for it just being about "what consenting adults do behind closed doors", huh?
what does this even mean?
Forcing small children to have gay and transgender ideals taught to them in schools. That "sexualizing" children.
you forgot to try to hide the racism.
No, I'm just not going to mince words with you. Some cultures are absolutely savage and disgusting and have no place being in America. If you're perfectly fine with people coming into the country who believe in Sharia Law, and you don't want to force assimilation, then it is obvious that you have no care for the future of America. You want un-unified subcultures that hate each other, living in close proximity, and pretend things will work out jusssst fine.
well you need laborers to work and die for you. that is what america was founded on. Ruled by the whites with lots of people of color for labor.
Slavery was a mistake. It held the US economy back and was a partial cause of our bloodiest war.
And the Irish were treated worse than slaves, so don't give me any of that crap.
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@HistoryBuff
believing you have the right and obligation to enslave others is certainly a value. One which america was founded with.
Permitting something isn't the same as treating it as a value. The 3/5 compromise was a limit on slave state power by not counting slaves as a whole population point for determining representation in the US House.
Because america has never had a unified culture. The idea that you can crush people's cultural identity and subsume them into your own is a sick joke.
Yeah, we did have a unified culture. We had universal appreciation of the Bill of Rights, a common language: English, among other things.
Now, if you want to look at America in a solely post-1960 lens in which everything unraveled, that's fine, I suppose.
But "crushing" cultural identity is hardly what needs to occur. If you come to another country, you leave your old country and culture behind. You become an American. Not a Columbian who just so happens to reside here because they wanted a better job.
it's weird that you think respecting people and protecting them and their rights are qualities of a "degenerate third world shithole". Perhaps you would be happier in a "whites only" police state where the scary brown people could be properly suppressed?
Respecting gay people's rights to sue bakers repeatedly who won't accommodate their lifestyle?
Respect their right to sexualize children?
Third world shithole via letting in a constant flow of immigration from the third world and granting amnesty to illegals. From the guy who thinks we shouldn't "crush their culture", I bet you have no problem letting backwards ass peoples come here and maintaining their backwards ass culture because that is the "nice" and "tolerant" thing to do. You just love that morally superior feeling at the cost of a country, don't you?
A "whites only" police state wouldn't have brown people by the way. That is just silly.
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@TheUnderdog
Not going to happen. Guns kill more people than immigrants do on a per capita basis and I'm pro 2nd amendment.
Guns also save a ton of lives.
Not going to happen because the immigrants would assimilate on their own or if they don't, their kids will end up doing that. Open borders means every person in the entire world can come to the US. There will be multiple different cultures, which will mix and their culture will be American by default. This is why despite NYC being heavily influenced with Italians, there is no mafia, and the region is American.
You know what happened after that Ellis Island wave of immigration? We stopped letting in new immigrants. That is why they were forced to assimilate. A constant flow, if you look at the Southwestern US, doesn't allow that. There are areas in the US that you must speak Spanish to get by.
And Middle Eastern culture mixing with Latin American culture is not American culture.
How? It would expand the middle class if anything.
By forcing them to compete with slave wages.....
All this helps is businesses in cutting down wages and immigrants getting slightly better wages than their home country.
It's not a bad policy; I've met plenty who support the idea. It's consistent small government ethic, and gets us out of debt with low taxes as well since there would be more taxpayers in the nation, making the tax burden per American less.
There are plenty of popular policies that are terrible ideas. I have met many people advocating for Marxism, but that doesn't make it smart.
Our nation is experiencing debt because of welfare programs and the fact that the lower earning 50% of Americans pay essentially no taxes.
We can easily pay off the debt with what who we have.
Plus, most of the people flooding in from Central and South America are going to have little education and will be very poor, so our current tax code wouldn't apply to them, either.
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@TheUnderdog
I mean, if you want to bring crime, a destruction of American culture, obliterate the working and middle class, and make our culture much less cohesive than it already is, then go on ahead and support the worst policy anybody could ever fathom.
Is enriching owners of corporations with cheap, low skill workers really worth all of that?
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@HistoryBuff
one of those values was slavery. So no, what the values were at the time of the creation of the country has nothing to do with what our values are now.
Slavery isn’t a value of... anything really.
That is a horrendous idea. You can believe whatever you want, but the US government needs to represent everyone. That includes christians, muslims, Atheists, everyone. Trying to make the government more christian just makes it a government that does not represent millions of it's own citizens.
Why are you so offended by Christian values? We are and have always been a Christian majority country. Cultural homogeneity is a strength and diversity is a weakness, so why are you against having a unified culture?
blah, blah, blah, culture war bullshit. i get it. You hate change.
If by “change” you mean see my beloved country become a degenerate third world shithole before my very eyes, then yes, I do hate your so called “change”.
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@HistoryBuff
I think you misunderstood my first post. I said I worship the state- as in America. It was a joke, and I don't think we should have a theocracy.
no, i mean secular. As in a separation of church and state.
As in there should be no government sponsored religion, probably. But should the government be run with consideration of the values (Christian values) upon which it was built? Yes.
and every citizen can trust any god they want to.
It still supports religion, aka not atheism.
ok. but it is banned and has been for over 50 years.
And it was allowed and practiced for most of the history of the country until things went to crap in the early 1960s.
secularization has been pushed in most modern countries. Because having a country where religion is involved in the state creates serious problems.
I'd say we need more religious influence in politics now. And by that, I don't mean quoting the Bible as proof of why we should do things.
Now, as "secularization" occurs in our governments, now you have "drag queen story hour", some even pushing to allow "gender reassignment" for children, pushing the culture of casual sex which results in higher divorce rates/unwanted pregnancies/objectification of women.
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@TheUnderdog
Both parties are bought by the military-industrial complex. The Democrats might give more lip service to withdrawal, but both parties will come together to keep troops there indefinitely when tested.
Trump, not the Republican party, wanted to take about 1/3 of our troops from Afghanistan. Democrats AND Republicans blocked it.
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@ILikePie5
@HistoryBuff
It is because they throw some wicked dance parties!
Google "dancing Israelis".
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@HistoryBuff
that is completely unamerican. America, along with the rest of the western world, is a secular state. A division of church and state is critically important.
Only if you are arguing that it is a "secular" state meaning "not a religious theocracy".
"In God We Trust" is our official country motto.
Country built by Christians based on Christian values.
Heck, school prayer wasn't even banned until 1962.
This secularization of the country has been a major push by lefties for a little less than a century.
I am a history buff. No one in the history of the world has ever been perfect. Everyone has their flaws. Everyone has done things that are wrong. If we can only have monuments to people who are perfect, there will be no monuments. I think that, as a society, we can have a real conversation about what things we value and what we want to memorialize.
I completely agree.
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@HistoryBuff
Well I worship the state, so if you take down George Washington, that is a religious act against me.
Lil surprised you are against taking down Washington (or “don’t think it is necessary”). Why is that?
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@Greyparrot
I mean, feminists keep saying that fathers don’t matter.
Now let’s check the results on imprisonment, poverty, scholastic success.....
Now let’s check the results on imprisonment, poverty, scholastic success.....
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@oromagi
While I could bring up heinous statements and actions from BLM members, as there are a plethora of those available, I think what is more important to discuss is what they actually believe
From their website:
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
It is interesting that a stated goal of this organization is to "disrupt" the most important unit in our society, which is the family.
Notice, how they specifically mention mothers, which are by definition a parent, yet they intentionally leave out fathers. The word "father" is never mentioned once because they simply don't care about them unless they can unload their carcass onto the national spotlight to push their political agenda.
we set out together on the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride to Ferguson, in search of justice for Mike Brown and all of those who have been torn apart by state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism.
They still push the long-debunked Michael Brown "unjustified killing" case, as it was proven that he reached for a police officer's weapon. Why would an organization that cares about justice push false narratives of racial violence?
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@ILikePie5
Also, crazy that an instructor for the NRA stopped an attempted mass shooting at a church
https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-chased-fired-church-shooting-suspect-describes-tense/story?id=50972010
But, I've been told that the good guy with a gun argument isn't valid so just ignore that link above.
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@HistoryBuff
guns massively increase the odds of critical injury and death.
And guns are used somewhere between 500,000 and 3,000,000 times per year in a defensive fashion according to the CDC.
They prevent crimes from even happening.
And if it increases the likelihood of death for a criminal- good.
See this is the problem. The systemically racist system collects the stats. If they choose not to note their racist interactions, or choose to misclassify it, then there is no stats to prove anything. So saying you won't believe it without stats is like saying you won't believe a crime happened unless the criminal describes in detail what they did.
Ok, and I am not going to take the word of people who have a ton to gain from this movement, whether that be reparations, more forced diversity programs, or whatever else they want.
If there is no quantifiable proof that something is happening, and the best argument you can give me is "well of course they won't record it", I am not going to give credence to your argument.
no. It says right to bear arms in order to be part of a well regulated militia. It doesn't say that citizens can own any weapons they want. It says they can own weapons for the purpose of being part of a regulated militia. The intention was that the US military would be tiny and would need a large militia force to back it up. Since that is no longer true, the entire amendment is pointless.
"District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee."
Guess you are a better Constitutional analyst than the Supreme Court, huh?
so your argument is that because people die in other ways, we should do nothing about them dying in this way? So because people die in car accidents, we should stop all cancer research.... sounds logical.
I further proved that you are placing blame on objects. Clearly hammers and fists aren't the problem, while killing more than rifles. But for some reason the rifle itself is a problem?
true. Switzerland does more to deal with the underlying issues that cause crime. They also treat gun ownership as a significant responsibility. Everyone must get training and education on proper use of firearms. They don't wander around out in public with their assault rifles just to prove they have a tiny penis as the right loves to do.
Lol, why are you lefties so obsessed with penises. "I tell them that their penises are small so they get mad and gimme the guns. Super big brain move"
Do the Black Panther terrorists also have tiny wee wees?
And I would have no problem with requiring a training course before getting a firearms license as long as it wasn't used as a form of "gun control"- meaning they make it super rigorous for the mere reason of stopping normal people from legally acquiring a gun. If it was merely a course on safe storage and use, that's fine.
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@Nemiroff
If right-wing economics were so bad, how come Red states have less homeless people and better costs of living?
How come so many more people are leaving Blue states to immigrate to Red states than the other way around?
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@zedvictor4
Who does and doesn't own guns absolutely matters. It shows which groups are more representative of gun owners.
The link between guns and homicides is rather slim. Links between homicide and different groups in the US is rather strong.
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@HistoryBuff
I mostly just wanted to point out that you seem to understand your other argument about how "if they can't get a gun they will use a knife" is completely bullshit. You understand that knives are much less deadly, but when it suits you, you will pretend that they aren't.
These are not mutually exclusive arguments. Criminals will use knives if they cannot get guns. Since that means that civilians also cannot get guns, they are more disadvantaged than the career criminal if they have to fight them.
A gun puts them on equal footing. Guns are more deadly. That is why one person can fend off multiple attackers with them.
ok, but do you live in a neighborhood with lots of black people? Or do you live in a predominantly white neighborhood and have no idea what you are talking about?
I have black neighbors, but I don't see how the anecdotal evidence that you are sure to spew at me will prove anything as a general trend for every black person in the country.
the point is to show that your argument is ridiculous. You believe you should have an unquestionable right to own weapons that no government has any right to curtail in any way. But you also accept that the government absolutely has the right to curtail what weapons people can have (grenade launchers, nukes etc). You want to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and pretend like it is inviolable. But that line keeps moving all the time and you just pretend it doesn't and that anyone who thinks that line should be somewhere else is attacking the constitution.
Something about bearing arms and not being VIOLATED. Arms referred to guns. So, drawing the line anywhere else is attacking the constitution.
And stop projecting some whack positions. I don't think that you should be able to own any weapon you want. I don't think anybody should be able to own any weapon they want.
There are laws preventing felons from buying guns. Guns aren't the same thing as explosives.
An assault rifle is not a particularly useful weapon for self defense. no one is going to announce they are attacking and give you time to get your weapon and then use it at an effective range. They are designed to assault enemy positions and put down high rates of fire. There is no reason for a civilian to own that. If your dividing line is things that are useful for self defense and hunting, then you should advocate for only handguns and hunting rifles. Is that your position?
They are a useful weapon. Do you not remember why this whole thread was started? It is effective for defending your home and life during a riot.
You can use an "assault rifle", whatever that means other than 'scary-looking gun', at a close range.
"High rates of fire"- most of what you would consider assault rifles are semi-automatic. Very few are fully automatic.
And many people use the AR-15 to hunt. The 2nd Amendment was for a whole lot more than hunting, though.
And if you are complaining about gun homicide still, I'll let you in on a little fun fact:
Blunt objects like hammers kill more people than all rifles combined. Fists and feet kill more people than all rifles combined (NOT just "assault rifles".)
I keep repeating this for you. I understand that there are underlying causes of crime that need to be addressed. You would likely oppose the methods needed to do that, but that is a separate argument. But you will never get crime down to 0. No matter how well we do, there will be criminals. And right now, virtually any criminal can arm himself to the teeth with little to no problem. Until the supply of guns is brought under control, it will never be possible to prevent this.
And even if you get rid of guns, you won't get those crime rates down to zero.
I went to extensive lengths to compare gun ownership rates to homicide rates in other countries. I showed how #19 in the world for most guns per capita, Switzerland, had one of the lowest homicide rates in the world, and much lower than UK that had gotten rid of most guns.
Switzerland is a great and safe country to live in, and it has a lot of guns. Obviously the two aren't mutually exclusive.
And if your solution boils down to "give lazy people more handouts", I probably would oppose it, yes. If it is a real solution that provides a good job and they work themselves out of poverty, then I would support it.
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@HistoryBuff
If someone is attempting to modify a weapon to suppress the sound it makes, I think that should be illegal. So i would support that.
Ok, if you want to ban oil filters for cars, then fair enough.
Those are absolutely police tasks. But those make up a relatively small percent of what police spend their time doing. Stats can be hard to come by because lots of police forces don't report on this. But here is an article discussing how police in these specific locations that actually report on this, spend about 4% of their time dealing with violent crime. A large percent of what they spend their time doing could be better handled by other agencies.
Really the only thing that I would agree with taking police off of from the article would be homeless/mentally ill calls.
Traffic stops can involve other crimes if the individual is drunk, has drugs/other illegal materials in their car. Domestic disturbances should probably also have police in addition to other "agencies" because those can get violent. I don't feel comfortable sending a marriage counselor into that type of situation alone.
so you admit that guns are much more deadly than a knife?
That is the point. It allows someone who is weak to defend themselves from larger people.
so you turn a situation where she may get hurt into a situation where she is very likely to be killed. I don't see that as an improvement.
It is up to the discretion of the firearm owner. But if a group of people want to "beat me up" potentially causing permanent damage to me or even killing me, I'd rather have a gun and them have one than getting jumped by four guys with knives. At least that gives me a chance instead of being at the complete mercy of a group of thugs.
agreed. But that is a core part of the problem. Police do this all the time. Many police see being black as a reasonable reason to stop, question or arrest people. They need a reason to do this, but since there is little to no enforcement of this, they can make up any flimsy pretext they want to question or arrest someone.
Outside of stop and frisk, I see little evidence of just pulling people over for no reason. And that was a preventative measure meant to deter gun crime by making people with illegal firearms leave them at home. The rates at which they were stopped were commensurate with their share of the city's homicides. Not a great program, to be fair, but that was the design of it.
ok. so we should have the freedom to own nuclear weapons? I mean it will be the end of the human race, but hey, at least we will be free as we die.
Why is it all or nothing with you people? It is either "you must support getting rid of all guns" or "I bet you want everyone to own nukes".
Add a little nuance. Firearms are adequate to defend oneself, hunt, and fend off government tyranny without getting all psycho.
Strict penalties on their own are completely worthless. They don't work. People don't think they will get caught, or they wouldn't have committed the crime in the 1st place. Just slapping harsher punishments on them will do nothing. You need to actually get the guns out of circulation.
No, strict penalties do deter crime. It is more like:
In both situations, there is a 50% chance of getting caught for murdering someone.
A: Punishment is $1 fine.
B: Punishment is death penalty.
You make a determination on both the chance of getting caught and the punishment/payoff.
They aren't the only issue, but i have never argued that they are. The underlying causes of crime also need to be fought. But the guns themselves are a problem too. Nuclear weapons and grenade launchers are also "tools". But they also would cause way more problems than they solve if we were allowed to own them.
Nuclear weapons and grenades aren't self-defense or hunting tools. They really have no use outside of blowing things up.
If the murder rate, let us say it is <2.0 among white people as calculated above, the largest and therefore most representative population of gun owners, and that rate is comparable to gun control countries in Europe, I really don't see why they should be gotten rid of.
Clearly the underlying issues are the cause of murder and not guns if murder rates are near identical. Sweden: 1.1, Denmark/UK: 1.2, Belgium: 1.7. All very strict gun law countries.
White people in US: 1.38
Switzerland, which has pretty lax gun laws compared to those European countries homicide rate: .5 (one of the lowest).
Now, the number of guns per 100 residents in these countries: Sweden: 23.1, Denmark: 9.9, UK: 5.03, Belgium: 12.7, Switzerland: 27.6, US: 120.5
Notice how in Switzerland, there are many more guns than the other European countries, yet there are lower homicide rates.
If we want to stop people being killed by guns, we need to do something about the guns.
Again, it isn't the guns. That is like saying "men beating women is a problem. We need to do something about those fists". Awfully like UK blaming stabbings on knives and not the people. Much easier and convenient to blame inanimate objects instead of people.
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@HistoryBuff
Well presumably if this sort of law were passed, suppressors would also be super illegal. I mean there is absolutely no reason why a law abiding citizen should need to be able to fire a weapon suppressed.
Well, you can use an oil filter as a suppressor. Are you banning those, too?
why? It would probably make it easier. When you remove tasks that they are unsuited for you both take funding away from them and refocus them on actual policing tasks.
Gangs poisoning children with drugs, doing drive-by shootings, and robbing stores/people does sound like actual policing tasks.
Or do you need counselors to take down organized crime?
ok but the inverse is also true. What if you are a small women being attacked by a group of men with guns? If you draw your weapon you are likely to be killed. Adding guns into that scenario does not improve the outcome.
Assuming the intent is to cause bodily harm, she would be better off than if none of them had guns. At least she would have a chance if she had a gun.
Why can't someone defend themself with a knife? or a baseball bat?
Because guns are an "equilizer". No matter how small you are, you can adequately defend yourself against any attacker if you have a gun. That isn't the case with a golf club, bat,etc as those depend on your dexterity, size, and strength.
wait, aren't you the same person always railing against abuse of authority by the government? Why are you fine arguing that people should just submit to police when there is no reasonable reason for them to have to? Police have to have a lawful reason to stop you, search you etc. They are not allowed to harass anyone they want.
Police do have to have a reason to stop you. If they don't, they can't legally arrest you. They should be punished for arresting people without reason.
But first off, do you really think these teenagers know they didn't break any of the thousands of laws in their state when they are resisting arrest? Tell me, what good comes from telling people that they shouldn't have to submit if they think they didn't do anything wrong? That is when people get violent with cops and get shot or beaten.
ok, so people are peacefully protesting, then a guy tries to murder them, they attack the guy who tried to murder them. And you think the peaceful protesters are the issue? Not the driver trying to run people down?
He stopped the truck. If he tried to murder someone, he would have kept going and even swerved to try to hit people. He wouldn't have blared his horn to warn them to get out of the way. Stop being silly.
You have no right to block roadways. They are known for pulling people out of cars and beating them.
because the fact that they are so readily available makes sure that it is impossible to keep them out of the hands of criminals. No matter what laws we put in place, what checks we do, as long as guns are so readily available they will always be available to criminals.
A cost of freedom worth the risks.
Just make examples out of straw purchasers and gun runners. If those guns are used to kill somebody, give them both the death penalty.
Absolutely we need to fight the underlying causes of crime. But the 2 things go hand in hand. They are in no way contrary to each other. You need to work to fight the causes of crime, but no matter how well we do there will still be crime. So we need to make sure that those criminals have as much difficulty as possible in securing deadly weapons.
As I pointed out in an above post, white people own way more guns and have a homicide rate of less than 1.5 per 100,000. Black people own less guns and have an 11.4 per 100,000 rate. Obviously, guns aren't the issue. They are a tool.
Fixing the issue of killing somebody because they wear a different colored bandana would be a good start.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Absolutely. People never put the responsibility of death where it actually belongs. It can’t be because he joined a gang and robbed a house. Nope, it’s the guns fault.
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@zedvictor4
Even under the assumption that we could get rid of all guns for civilians and that would prevent deaths, a major reason we own them is so that we could overthrow our government if they become despots. Of course, there is the self-defense portion of it.
Perhaps time for a lil productive racism:
White people are the biggest gun-owning group. 50% of them live in a household that owns a gun and are a country majority. https://www.statista.com/statistics/623356/gun-ownership-in-the-us-by-ethnicity/
Now people like to point out how our homicide rate is much higher than European countries. However:
According to the FBI, the WHITE group (including hispanics and caucasians) committed 4,188 homicides. Take out the 1,462 under the latino category and you get 2726. With just under 200,000,000 population, that brings us to 1.38 homicides per 100,000 white people. Even if you kept Latino homicides and didn't adjust for their population, you would get 2.12. These rates are very comparable with European countries.
Black Homicide Rate: (5,025/43,978,800)*100,000= 11.4
Now, whatever you want to blame this on, whether that be fatherless homes/poverty/genes/culture, it is clear that there are some factors at play causing this disparity, and this shows that you can live in a peaceful country WITH half of your country owning firearms. You just need to fix the problem causing these murders, if it is possible to fix.
Power trips aren't the issue, and there are many uses for guns outside of self-defense. :^)
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