Congresswoman ShotFollow

Do you have no concept of numbers at all? It's not all or nothing. Laws don't have to prevent every single offense to be effective, they need only reduce. You don't need to--and can't--make it impossible to kill someone with a gun. You can make it more unlikely or more difficult.

Murders are rarely brilliant masterwork plans carefully pondered on for months, trained for, and then executed with the utmost precision. Often they are spontaneous or heat of the moment occurrences. A wife assaulting her lecherous husband isn't necessarily hellbent--stopping at absolutely nothing--on murdering him, though she may try. She's angry and irrational. It's fully possible she just wants to make him suffer. If she has a gun, she will shoot at him. If all she has is a knife, she will attempt to stab him. If she has nothing else, she may try to punch and kick him. This is how many murders occur, not because she carefully premeditated the event, but because she had a more lethal tool available to her.

That's why gun suicides have the highest success rate, because often people aren't entirely gung-ho about killing themselves or others. Because when they try a slower and complicated method like overdosing on pills or cutting themselves they can easily fail or give up. The differences with guns is that it is hard to fail or give up.



This is why the "sure, blame the gun," argument fails. The presence of lethal weapons like guns doesn't increase the number of assaults, but it can upgrade a battery to a murder.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 8:56pm by Allegory

And yet, we use single offenses like this shooting to justify knee-jerk changes to the law. I don't know what RDM's point was, but to me, this is the relevant reason why we *shouldn't* use events like this to argue for legal changes. Show me the statistics and we can talk. But don't play on a single emotional event to push an agenda.






Sure. But that's not really relevant to this case, is it? This is a guy who was mentally disturbed, paranoid, hated the government, and had for some reason fixated on this congresswoman as a symbol of what he hated. Barring somehow managing to make it impossible for anyone to obtain any firearms of any sort, this guy was going to be able to obtain sufficient weapons to carry out his plan.

Unfortunately, in some cases, there's not a whole lot you can do to prevent bad things from happening. I know that's not a very satisfying answer, but running around insisting that we "do something" isn't the right answer either.

Heh.


I bet Mrs. Palin goes to bed every night thanking God for people like you who would say this with a straight face.


My heart breaks to think Gbaji might be spazzing out about those rascally liberals without knowing what he's talking about.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 9:19pm by Jophiel

oh gawd, is gbaji serious?

That symbol isn't a target. It's also not a surveyor's symbol, it's more of a civil engineering symbol; I see it on engineering plans but not on actual surveyor's plans. There's a surveyor's symbol for a boundary marker which looks close to it but the circle is offset depending on which side of the property you're on.

Out of context from a set of civil engineering drawings, the symbol would be meaningless as a plan marker. I see it on plans often enough but if you drew it on an index card and gave it to me, I'd say "gun sights" without hesitation. It's like drawing an arrow and then insisting that it was always meant to be a compass rose despite it not being on a map or having a "N" or anything else you'd associate with a compass rose. Even sillier since Palin had defended the map and language used numerous times previously.


Of course I would. But then, I'm not a complete tool.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 9:33pm by Jophiel

Sure. It is, however, relevant to the discussion I was having with rdm, the thing I was responding to as opposed to thing I was not responding to.

I haven't suggested any action be taken.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 9:37pm by Allegory

Not telescope sight? Or surveying sight. Or heck, *any* form of sight. They do put sights on things other than firearms you know. We "set our sights" on goals all the time, but no one assumes that saying so means you are asking people to shoot someone. Unless the person saying it is Sarah Palin and you are a liberal who wants to attack her for doing and saying and using symbols which everyone else uses all the time without anyone even taking note of it.



BS! You'd assume that a Democrat was telling her constituents to reload their guns? Why?

I simply don't believe you Joph. Any reasonable person being told to "reload" and then asked to visit a web site would interpret that in the context of reloading a web page. It would never enter anyone's head that it was about reloading a gun. I'm still baffled as to how anyone could read that and think that. That's a serious stretch that one can only make if it's pointed out to them and someone tells them that it's a reference to firearms. Barring that, no one would even make note of it.

And those don't look like gun sights either. They do look like targets though. Which again, only implies a gun if you start with that assumption inside your own head. I see a map with targets on it for districts that they are fighting to win. I don't see anything insidious much less a call for people to go around shooting anyone.


Your cart is leading your horse Joph.



And? I'm pretty sure that if you start with an assumption that someone is trying to get crazy gun totting people to shoot your political enemies, you can find some sort of hidden message calling for such things within *any* symbols or statements. You just have to look hard enough. Which is precisely what you are doing here.

And you asked how anyone could possibly figure out who to harm off Palin's map. I gave you a pretty simple answer. I'm guessing you weren't expecting such a simple answer given that your best response was "Uhh... AND??"

I never once said this is the case. You're insisting that I did, against all evidence to the contrary, because otherwise you'd have nothing to cry about. I was laughing at the ridiculous attempt by Camp Palin to spin damage control by saying it was a surveyor's symbol.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 9:50pm by Jophiel

Joph was in fact saying just that.

This might shock and surprise you but the lady from Oak Ridge, Tennessee isn't the same person as the guy from Chicago, Illinois.

I'm sorry. How am I supposed to 'act'?




But you support a political party whose agenda undeniably involves all those things I mentioned. And not only do you support it, but vehemently support it.




Yeah I 'get' it. But what you are supporting is no more 'conservative', than Tony Blairs government was 'labour', or Obamas govt is 'Democrat'. They may pay lip service to the ideals and aspirations of their traditional base voters in their rhetoric, but they do that only to retain their votes. Nothing more. What they say to get people to vote for them, has nothing to do with their actions when they are in power. They work for the world of 'Big Business'. they don't give a fUck about me or you. Yet you still cling to the belief that one 'side' has your interests at heart. Which is what my point was.



Surely, with all the evidence contrary to that belief in plain sight, it is delusional in the extreme to continue to believe that?




Absolutely untrue. I have very strong beliefs as to what a Govt. should and shouldn't be responsible for, and I suspect that those things are probably less than what you would have them in charge of.


That you believe that Government( of any stripe), the Corporate World and the Media working hand in hand together should have our best interests at heart when they plan what they are going to do for the next year(or 10 years)?

Yeah. I find that very strange indeed.

I don't think gbaji's delusions have ever shown themselves quite as baldly as they are in this thread. Palin wasn't mixing her metaphors. She did not mean "reload the webpage." I mean, even Alma wouldn't argue this sh*t. And if you honestly, honestly, honestly think she did mean that, well oh my. I happen to have some BEEEEEautiful ocean-front property to sell you, gbaji. Its smack dab in the middle of Arizona, and it's lovely, really.

MAN, that's some funny sh*t. I hope you don't really believe that and you're just fucking with people.

Edited, Jan 11th 2011 10:27pm by Belkira

Sarah Palin telling her daughter Bristol to visit her webpage (skip to the last few seconds if you'd like).

God, I bet Mrs. Palin LOVES useful idiots like Gbaji. What kind of blind devotion do you need to come up with the shit he comes up with to defend his precious icons?