The Rude Pundit on the latest mass shooting

[Va Lefty]

Last edited Fri Jul 8, 2016, 03:21 PM - Edit history (1)

"This is who we are as a nation. We have decided, and we keep affirming, that it is so important that untrained gun owners be able to defend themselves from phantoms that it is worth all the blood that is spilled...
Some of us, many of us, want to be able to move through this nation without wondering if someone has a gun on them. Some of us, many of us, don't want anyone to be gunned down, not black men by cops, not cops by black men, not people at clubs, at schools, at movie theaters, at all the places where we die. Some of us, many of us, believe that guns are the opposite of freedom and that you shouldn't have them and most, if not all, of them should be taken away from you, even if, yes, we have to pry them from your idiot hands."

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/07/bleed-american.html

[StrictlyRockers]

1. "Guns are the opposite of freedom"

Word. I feel waaay less free in my own country with the knowledge that any of my countrymen might have a legally sanctioned concealed killing device on their person at any time. That's not freedom. That's making all of us less safe and less free. Fear is not freedom.

[MisterP]

4. if you're in country where every corner has a guy with a gun on it,

that's a dictatorship

[MiddleRiverRefugee]

2. The Money Quote

"We live in a prison of guns, floors slick with the blood of our dead, and we keep sliding around instead of cleaning up."

[calimary]

12. That's how it feels to me. I feel like a frickin' HOSTAGE sometimes.

Hostage to the paranoiacs and gun goons and the NRA and the DAMNED FUCKING 2nd Amendment.

[Indydem]

15. Then repeal it.

But you know that's not an option.

[calimary]

17. But it's certainly an aim.

[niyad]

3. RP is, as usual, spot on!

[underpants]

5. That was really good

[Botany]

6. bingo

There is no way this doesn't, ultimately, come back to the insane proliferation of guns and the madness of our current gun laws.

[tomfodw]

7. Outstanding

Well thought out, well written.

So therefore it (and anything similar) will go totally ignored...

[passiveporcupine]

8. what kind of dance is this

We now have new steps in our deathdance with firearms in the United States

It's obviously improv, and I'd not call it a rumba, but a rumble.

I'm tired of dancing this dance. Can't we all just sit this next one out?

(And, no, the cops who killed Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shouldn't be killed. They should be charged with a crime, arrested, and stand trial.)

The problem here is that we all know, even if they stand trial, they will be found innocent. That has become the standard answer to these shootings, so why should people expect anything else? No wonder some people just can't take it any more and go ballistic. It's the same reason terrorist groups are attracting family members or idealistic youth.

[passiveporcupine]

9. Just for comparison sake

In the United Kingdom, access by the general public to firearms is tightly controlled by law, but it is less restrictive in Northern Ireland. The country has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world.[1] There were 0.05 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in the five years to 2011 (15 to 38 people per annum). Gun homicides accounted for 2.4% of all homicides in the year 2011.[2] There is some concern over the availability of illegal firearms.[3][4][5]

Members of the public may own sporting rifles and shotguns, subject to licensing, but handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996. Dunblane was the UK's first and only school shooting. There has been one spree killing since Dunblane, in June 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom

It's the guns stupid!

[Demobrat]

10. He's right.

We have decided as a nation that black lives don't matter, gay lives don't matter, cop's lives don't matter, kid's lives don't matter, NO life matters. ALL that matters is that Americans continue to buy guns and ammo, faster and faster, the more the better. That's it. Done. End of story. Please buy more guns. Thank you very much.

[Fast Walker 52]

11. I will be rude-- FUCK THE NRA

[Iggo]

14. Every single one of them. (n/t)

[LuckyLib]

13. Very well said. This needs to be out there

so that those of us who feel we are prisoners in a gun humping nation know there are many more like us.

[TeAmo]

16. The pundit!

You have always been ahead of the issues. Motivated me after many years to join DU.