pacino wrote:but really, what's wrong with more background checks? what's to fear for law-abiding citizens?

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:but really, what's wrong with more background checks? what's to fear for law-abiding citizens?

Oregon has universal background checks. His guns were apparently bought legally. I personally don't get the gun culture thing and would be fine with more gun control legislation on background checks and magazine size and stuff along those lines. But we do this 'how dare you oppose gun control' thing after every mass shooting, and pretty much every time the 'common sense' solutions Obama and others tout would've done nothing to prevent the STUFF from happening. It strikes me as a weird disconnect.

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:John Boehner isn't good on TV, and there are 247 Republicans in the House.

Are you going for the mother of all non sequiturs here? As I understand it, his current official role in the US House of Representatives is essentially the same as yours or mine

And anyway, regarding TV skills, Boehner makes McCarthy look like - well, another McCarthy we both hate to see on TV because he's no good at it

McCarthy's skill set appears to be similar to Boehner's. The House GOP has been doing pretty good with people who cast votes as there are more House Republicans now than at any other point in the past 85 years. Having someone who excels at the Sunday show circuit doesn't seem important.

jerseyhoya wrote:the 'common sense' solutions Obama and others tout would've done nothing to prevent the STUFF from happening. It strikes me as a weird disconnect.

pacino wrote:Huckabee mentioned that one of the problems is gun-free zones. except this school wasn't gun-free. but, you know, stuff happens

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:but really, what's wrong with more background checks? what's to fear for law-abiding citizens?

Oregon has universal background checks. His guns were apparently bought legally. I personally don't get the gun culture thing and would be fine with more gun control legislation on background checks and magazine size and stuff along those lines. But we do this 'how dare you oppose gun control' thing after every mass shooting, and pretty much every time the 'common sense' solutions Obama and others tout would've done nothing to prevent the STUFF from happening. It strikes me as a weird disconnect.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:the 'common sense' solutions Obama and others tout would've done nothing to prevent the STUFF from happening. It strikes me as a weird disconnect.

Doing things that constrain gun access/use constrains gun access/use. So it's a probability function. You know, computer numbers

EDIT: because one of the ancillary effects of making gun fetishism repugnant, like relentlessly sending the message that smoking is revolting and failure to wear seatbelts is an index of mental deficiency, is that people will really be ashamed to be gun fetishists and so, even among the most disconnected among us, disinclined to flash their disgusting gun fetishism in real life. So this score or more of steps we might take to tie the gun fetishists in slightly more discomfiting knots are not collectively a 100% surefire bulwark against gun massacres, but hey, some stuff might not happen.

FURTHER EDIT: the truly weird disconnect is that having grown up in the US one would not understand that this is a country that can DO things when we decide to.

pacino wrote:'The underclasses'. God, you're insufferable.

CalvinBall wrote:It's gonna be hard and may take a generation. Might as well not try. Weird attitude to have.

pacino wrote:Ben Carson said Islam is not compatible with the Constitution and he wouldn't want a Muslim as president.

Watch the poll numbers rise.

Jim Roberts ✔ @nycjim
Obama on Jeb Bush’s “stuff happens” remark: “I don’t even think I have to react to that one… The American people should hear that.”

“A child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools,” he said, “Well it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event. And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it harder to protect liberty.”

A liberty-eroding, people-burdening law about pool fences is an oddly specific example. I wonder if any state has ever actually passed such a—

"After the House voted 109-8 for the bill on Friday, Preston met Gov. Jeb Bush, who committed to signing a bill that requires new pool owners to pick a way to keep unsupervised children out of the water."

Oh.

That’s the Sun-Sentinel’s Tallahassee bureau, reporting in May 2000 on a law requiring pool fences, named after a child—Preston de Ibern—who nearly drowned. Florida’s Preston de Ibern/McKenzie Merriam Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act was pushed for three years by then-state rep. (and current Democratic National Committee chair) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and finally signed by Gov. Jeb! despite its inherent imposition of burdens on large numbers of people.

jerseyhoya wrote:protect his caucus