We are not being made more secure, we are being made more barbaric.

[Robb]

Standing Our Ground

(snip)

While it is proper and necessary to analyze the case in which George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin for what it says about profiling and police practices, it is possibly more important to analyze what it says about our increasingly vigilante-oriented gun culture.

The industry and its lobby have successfully pushed two fallacies: that the Second Amendment is under siege and so are law-abiding citizens.

They endlessly preach that more guns make us safer and any attempt at regulation is an injury to freedom. And while the rest of us have arguments about Constitutional intent and gun-use statistics, the streets run red with the blood of the slain, and the gun industry laughs all the way to the bank.

(snip)

Something is wrong here. We are not being made more secure, we are being made more barbaric. These laws are an abomination and an affront to morality and common sense. We can’t allow ourselves to be pawns in the gun industry’s profiteering. We are real people, and people have power.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/opinion/blow-standing-our-ground.html

[onehandle]

1. A tiny minority who want us all to fear the world as much as they do are shaping the present.

Sounds like the Republicans, eh? That's not coincidental.

All of them will lose in the future.

[BainsBane]

2. K and R

[JayhawkSD]

3. Actually, we are being made afraid, are becoming more barbaric

As we are being made more and more afraid, of "terrorism" and of "others," we react with barbarism; with support of the indiscriminate use of drones, and "stand your ground" laws, and knee jerk support of gun ownership, and spying, and militarism, and police authority, and border fences and...

We are not being made barbaric, we are being made afraid and are becoming barbaric as a result of that fear. We support the abuse of power in the name of being kept safe, which is precisely why the German people supported the Weimar government. The exercise of power is different and the abuses are not the same, but the mechanism is precisely the same.

[jwirr]

4. It is not just cases like Zimmerman either. Years ago we decided we would make torture a part of

our continuous wars of empire. This is not making us any safer either.

Empires expire and then the people of those empires feel the retribution for what they have created. And yes it is a small group who is pushing all of this but it will not be just them who suffer in the end.

[bemildred]

5. "Divide and Rule".

As long as we keep being suckers for all this xenophobic bullshit, they will keep feeding it to us.

[zeemike]

7. Yep....and it is working. n/t

[bemildred]

8. Seems to still work great.

This thread is a perfect example.

[The Magistrate]

6. Hear Hear, Sir

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

9. A mental health.....

.....epidemic is surely upon us in the form of gun manufacturers and owners. I don't feel a state a fear in everyday life except from the gun lobby. Yesterday I saw a pickup with an NRA sticker and a vanity plate that stated "Firem Up." I felt sick to my stomach.

[rrneck]

10. Have you been to a cat burning lately?

Me neither.

[bemildred]

11. Leaded gas. nt

[rrneck]

12. Yep.

And birth rate, diet, wealth, and a boatload of other factors. Certainly a certain law that applies to a tiny fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of the population isn't enough to run around with our hair on fire.

But it sells newspapers.

[bemildred]

13. And abortion on demand.

Fewer unwanted kids == less violence.

[rrneck]

14. Not to mention the "baby boom buldge" moving to the back of the snake. nt

[bemildred]

15. Yes, and we could go on.

And they want to change it all back. They long for the good old days.