In a thread this morning, esteemed commenter Amir Khalid pointed out a very stupid comment made by former TX Governor Rick Perry on the most recent theater shooting:
“These concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea. I think that you allow the citizens of this country — who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms — to carry them,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday. “I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.”
We’re used to very stupid comments from Rick Perry, but this one is particularly dumb, given the circumstances of the murders. The Lafayette shooter mortally wounded the two young women sitting directly in front of him immediately upon opening fire — women who, in the universally armed citizenry scenario hatched inside Perry’s lentil-sized brain, could hardly have been expected to both maintain readiness to suppress fire and watch a movie at the same time.
And even not particularly bright eight-year-olds should be able to imagine what might happen in a darkened theater if everyone was carrying a shootin’ arn on his or her hip to confront random shooters. A dull eight-year-old might even draw a picture of such an event that looked something like this:
To recap: Rick Perry. Dumb.
But here’s another item that illustrates the stupidity of our gun culture, this one from my home state: 911 calls capture panic of alleged road rage killing:
Robert Doyle was driving his truck on Thursday in Citrus County when he apparently called 911 to say another driver was “trying to run me off the road.”
Meanwhile, Candelerio Gonzalez, 44, was on the same road. His wife, Cathy Gonzalez, called 911 to report that another motorist was “driving like an idiot.”
On the recording, Gonzalez can be heard saying he’s going to follow Doyle to his house to get his address. The operator says, “No, no, no.”
Doyle seems to realize that Gonzalez intended to follow him to his home. He tells 911: “They’re following me to my house … and the guns are already out,” apparently referring to his own firearm or firearms.
When Doyle arrived back at his home, Gonzalez allegedly parked and got out of his truck. In a panicked voice, Cathy Gonzalez is heard telling the dispatcher that Doyle has a gun.
Doyle shot Gonzales dead and then ordered his victim’s wife, daughter and grandson out of the car at gunpoint to wait for the cops. Doyle was charged with second-degree murder, but he’s out on bail. Will he get off the hook by invoking Stand Your Ground? Maybe, but he possibly screwed himself by telling the dispatcher that his guns were already out.
Look, Gonzales was an idiot to a) follow Doyle to his house, and b) get out of his truck to confront Doyle. But before we became a nation of paranoid, hair-trigger morons, that brand of stupidity might have ended with one or both parties receiving a fat lip, a black eye and an assault charge.
Now a man is dead and his family is traumatized for life. Another man will be tried for murder. And nothing will change. The end.
rikyrah
The Donald and the Delusional
JULY 27, 2015 2:03 PM
By Paul Krugman
Nate Cohn cautions us not to make too much of the polls supposedly showing the Trump surge continuing, as many — but not all – were taken before the McCain affair. Fair point. But there’s enough genuine post-McCain polling to show that Trump hasn’t imploded, the way virtually every pundit predicted he would.
……………………………..
What I would argue is key to this situation — and, in particular, key to understanding how the conventional wisdom on Trump/McCain went so wrong — is the reality that a lot of people are, in effect, members of a delusional cult that is impervious to logic and evidence, and has lost touch with reality.
I am, of course, talking about pundits who prize themselves for their centrism.
Pundit centrism in modern America is a strange thing. It’s not about policy, as you can see from the many occasions when members of the cult have demanded that Barack Obama change his ways and advocate things that … he was already advocating. What defines the cult is, instead, the insistence that the parties are symmetric, that they are equally extreme, and that the responsible, virtuous position is always somewhere in between.
The trouble is that this isn’t remotely true. Democrats constitute a normal political party, with some spread between its left and right wings, but in general espousing moderate positions. The GOP, on the other hand, is a deeply radical faction; even its supposed moderates are moderate only in tone, not in policy positions, and its base is motivated by anger against Others.
What this means, in turn, is that to sustain their self-image centrists must misrepresent reality.
On one side, they can’t admit the moderation of the Democrats, which is why you had the spectacle of demands that Obama change course and support his own policies.
On the other side, they have had to invent an imaginary GOP that bears little resemblance to the real thing. This means being continually surprised by the radicalism of the base. It also means a determination to see various Republicans as Serious, Honest Conservatives — SHCs? — whom the centrists know, just know, have to exist.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/the-donald-and-the-delusional/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0
shell
I think you meant ‘lentil’. an appropriate substitute for ‘pea-brain’.
Yeah, I too was appalled at his suggestion of a shooting free for all in a pitch black theater. but I guess since they would have ‘appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded’, it would all magically turn out all right.
rikyrah
Boy Scouts End Nationwide Ban on Gay Leaders
By ERIK ECKHOLM
JULY 27, 2015
Seeking to resolve an issue that threatened to tear apart the organization and expose it to crippling lawsuits, the Boy Scouts of America on Monday ended its nationwide ban on openly gay adult leaders.
Discrimination based on sexual orientation will also be barred in all Boy Scout offices and for all paid jobs — a step that could head off looming lawsuits in New York, Colorado and other states that prohibit such discrimination in employment.
One legal threat was immediately averted. In response to the change, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, announced on Monday that his office was ending its investigation of the Scouts for violating state anti-discrimination laws.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/us/boy-scouts-end-nationwide-ban-on-gay-leaders.html?module=Notification&version=BreakingNews®ion=FixedTop&action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=38167036&pgtype=Blogs
Kropadope
My libertarian roommate today:
I pointed out that an armed person can implicitly exert force over a non-armed person. Naturally, his solution was to arm everyone.
rikyrah
Obama Brilliantly Throws Lit Firecrackers into GOP Presidential Chaos
Spandan Chakrabarti July 27, 2015
President Obama responded to Republican fit over the Iran nuclear deal from Ethiopia, namechecking GOP presidential candidates Mike Huckabee – who said the Iran deal was tantamount walking Israel to “the door of the oven”, a reference to mass cremation chambers in Nazi internment camps – and Donald Trump, who remains atop the Republican field despite his insult of POWs.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2015/7/27/obama-brilliantly-throws-firecrackers-into-gop-presidential-chaos
gf120581
The glasses clearly are not improving Perry’s IQ. It just leads credence to my theory that, like Homer Simpson, he found them in a toilet somewhere.
“Mr. Perry, you shouldn’t wear glasses that weren’t perscribed for you. It’s not healthy.”
“Look, just because you’re ten feet tall doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”
jl
The Boyle-Gonzalez affair ended tragically because it was a confused traffic situation, apparently in broad daylight, with too much time to think things through and only two people with guns involved.
It would have worked better with more armed people in a dark theater trying to get off rounds within a minute or two. Rick Perry’s glasses tell me so.
LWA
Everytime I argue with gun nuts, they assure me that they must, absolutely must carry a gun at all times, because the world is so scary and dangerous and fraught with peril that packing heat to Starbucks is perfectly reasonable.
This fear, this rage and anxiety is the main argument they have- and why we have to demolish it head on. Without the mind-numbing fear of zombies, darkies, or criminals, their passion for carrying guns is revealed to be absurdity.
An armed society is the result of a terrified society.
Kropadope
@shell:
The commonly cited evidence for this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Also, doesn’t the fact that they don’t let people carry weapons around on military bases, the very home of the appropriately trained and backgrounded, give lie to that assertion?
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
Which is comically, demonstrably wrong. It may be a bit harder, but people who are armed with guns are killed- surely the clearest example of having force exerted on them- every day. All it takes is somebody else getting the drop on you, and your gun is worthless.
Calouste
Maurice Clemmons, who thanks to Mike Huckabee was released early, managed to shoot and kill 4 police officers, who I would assume are people “who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms”, considering it is their fucking job. Yet those 4 police officers all died and Clemmons survived the shooting, even though he got shot.
The element of surprise will see quite a few people killed by any shooter before there is any chance of a reaction, and anyone who thinks otherwise is so delusional that they shouldn’t be allowed to own, let alone handle, firearms.
jl
@Kropadope:
” If you have a gun, then no one can exert force over you. ”
‘Having the gun’ is magic? Don’t you have to be able to aim the gun and shoot it first at the bad controlling other person with the gun?
Myiq2xu
So it was wrong for George Zimmerman to follow Trayvon Martin but it was okay for Candelerio Gonzalez to follow Robert Doyle?
Stillwater
@Kropadope: I pointed out that an armed person can implicitly exert force over a non-armed person. Naturally, his solution was to arm everyone.
Coercively, if it comes to that. (No contradiction!)
Gimlet
Back home news for the Cracker family
Pinellas County
Barbecue smoke is not allowed to cross over property lines
A bizarre video has emerged out of Florida showing a man who says he is a council official telling a resident that the smoke from their barbecue is not allowed to leave the property.
The resident tells the official that it’s only a barbecue and that most residents in the street ‘cook out’.
Then the official says: ‘Frankly, today, I can smell it, I can smell it again right now, but I’m on your property.
‘You’re allowed to have it smell on your property, so that doesn’t count, but when I’m on the street, that’s when it counts.’
cokane
But if only Cathy Gonzalez had a gun we could have two dead bodies! Or maybe more! Remember, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Who’s the good guy? Why the one who lives of course, Zimmerman taught us that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Myiq2xu: Who said that? Oh yeah, no one.
shell
Hey Betty. I hope the flooding isnt too bad by you.
Kropadope
@Stillwater:
No, he definitely wants it to be your choice. So, yes, you can choose to be at the mercy of every unhinged maniac who would be able to get a gun with no strings attached.
srv
I guess we can put Krugman in the rational McCain camp…
Or, not just leftist hippies think that McCain is a senile old blowhard who they don’t give a fuck about. What, you think all those people at Trump rallies tune in all the Sunday shows and shriek like Fall Out Boy fans for the Maverick?
Derp.
shell
And I dont understand this insistence on confrontation over a traffic incident. You think someone is driving crazy…get off the highway for five minutes and let them pass. Think youre being followed…drive to a well-lit busy place or a police station. Why does it so often escalate to this craziness.
RSA
We are talking about the U.S., though, right? Because I remember, not too long ago, how a long-time columnist for Guns and Ammo [Politico link] was fired for even suggesting that training be a requirement for gun ownership.
Stillwater
@Kropadope: So basically he’s just advocating for exactly what we have right now, yeah?: a handful of pro-gun folks getting CC permits and a majority of people freely choosing not to?
How is that different than the status quo?
Roger Moore
@shell:
It actually doesn’t escalate this far very often, which is why it’s news when it does. It still happens more often than it ought to, but the news can give you an inaccurate impression of dangers.
dmsilev
@Myiq2xu: From the original post,
Apparently your reading comprehension skills are at the same elevated level as your logic skills.
mtiffany
@jl:
Yeah, the minor details of “who’s the faster draw?” and “who’s the better shot?” always somehow get left out of that scenario.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kropadope:
Also, no packing at NRA conventions. Because hypocrisy.
Kropadope
@Stillwater: In his eyes, there should be no limitations; no permits, no registries, no submitting an application to the local sheriff, etc. Don’t you know that a registry is how Hitler took all the Jewish folk’s guns?
Betty Cracker
@shell: Right — fixed and thank you!
@Myiq2xu: Jesus, you’re dumb. No, Zimmerman should not have followed Martin. No, Gonzales should not have followed Doyle. I guess the “Gonzales was an idiot” part confused you. FFS.
Mike J
@Stillwater:
Actually Perry said the people should be well trained. So not at all like what we have now.
Eric S.
@LWA: I always just ask right up front, “What are scared of?”
Some politely look ashamed because they don’t want to say Others. Some start telling me how dangerous society is. I qive them FBI stats to the contrary society is as safe as it has been in memory. I ask them to look up the stats for where they live and work.
None of it works of course.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Very likely every wild west shootout had at least one dead person who was carrying a gun, most likely knew how to use it and was willing to do so.
And I still like that many towns and cities banned the open carrying of handguns. Mainly to stop so many shootings and especially to stop innocent people from being shot.
mtiffany
Obama sees evidence in Ethiopia that he’s related to Donald Trump. Priceless.
Redshift
@Kropadope: Libertarianism can generally be summed up as “I should have the right to do whatever I want, and I assume that no one else will use those same rights to interfere with me.”
Ruckus
@Eric S.:
I’ll keep repeating this:
If common sense was actually common, more people would have some.
Kropadope
@Redshift: He tells me that there should only be two crimes, assault and theft. I ask “what about subtler forms of harming other people, like pollution?” He says “don’t buy their products.”
Good luck with encouraging responsible business ownership that way.
Betty Cracker
@mtiffany: A lesser man might be felled from the shame of that. PBO will soldier on because he knows vast amounts of stupid lurk in everyone’s DNA.
Germy Shoemangler
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/battleground-america
schrodinger's cat
@shell: A pea is too big. How about a neutrino sized brain?
Kropadope
@Germy Shoemangler: So, can we put you down as an “open-carry” guy/gal in that case?
Chet
Heritage, not hate:
dmsilev
@mtiffany: Yes yes, but is he related to Trump’s _hair_? I’m not sure modern genetics is equipped to answer that crucial question.
Mike G
Let me run Perry’s statement through the Texas Translator:
“Anyone with a pulse, Because Freedom.”
Ella in New Mexico
OMG what Gonzales did was just plain, garden variety, adrenaline fed stupid. He didn’t deserve to die for it, but for Christ’s sake, why would anyone sane follow some guy home, get out of your car and walk up his driveway in the first place?
Seriously, road rage needs to be addressed far more seriously by law enforcement. Had he not died, he AND Doyle should have been hauled in front of a judge to explain just what the fuck was wrong with both of them.
Thoughtful David
@Calouste:
This is of course the major flaw in all of the “carry a gun to defend yourself” nutcases: The bad guy knows what he intends to do and you don’t. And he’s not going to tell you beforehand: “Hey, I’m going to start shooting people in this theater in 2 minutes, so draw your pieces and get ready to shoot back at me.”
So you, as the good guy, can never win. You can only lose. Either you blow away someone who meant you no harm (because you didn’t know what he intended) or he does mean you harm and blows you away first.
In neither case do you “win” and in both cases an innocent person is dead. I guess you could say “at least in one case the innocent dead person isn’t me,” but that doesn’t make you a fine human being.
The only way for all to win is if none has a gun.
mtiffany
@Betty Cracker:
Or perhaps he soldiers on because he believes that everyone can rise to the potential of their inner greatness — he did, after all, spend the first six years of his presidency reaching out to the Republicans, much to the profit of both the handyman that had to fix the many holes in my walls and my doctor who kept treating my head trauma.
@dmsilev:
If anything, Trump’s hair lends credence to theory that aliens have visited Earth and bred with humans.
Shakezula
Is he suggesting that only properly trained people be allowed to have guns? Because I could get behind that. So of course that’s not what he means.
@Roger Moore: And the drop may be had via means of such crude implements as a fist, knife or baseball bat. You can tell a Glockosexual from a sane gun owner by figuring out who doesn’t think that all confrontations begin with an attacker politely signally their intent and giving you enough time to draw, aim and fire.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mtiffany:
Har-de-har-har. Maybe you’ll stop chortling when you realize that according to that nothingburger article you, me, and everyone else are “related” to Donald Trump. How does that feel?
Kropadope
@Steeplejack (phone): Well, fortunately, most evolution-believing Americans have already absorbed and gotten over this fact.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Roger Moore:
Some old guy (70s) who was doing a good thing – guarding sea turtle nests – got into it with some drunk shithead (30s) who was destroying said nests (who the fuck does this? Florida is not an excuse. Who is THAT much of an asshole?)
Thought he’d flash his piece and that would “defuse” the situation, as surely the mighty power of the Keltec P32 pistol could not be denied.
Stupid. You pull, you kill. That’s the fucking rule. You don’t EVER show it. But Old Guy had it under control, right up until Young Guy took two steps forward and smacked old guy in the face. When Old Guy came to, Young Guy was standing over him with the pistol pointed right at Old Guy’s face. He rolled to the side, which is how he ended up shot in the ass, instead of dead.
It’s not a magic power stick and it’s REALLY easy to take a gun from someone.
I have been shooting for 40 years as of this year. I am for banning them all, no exceptions. Our society has proven beyond all doubt that we’re neither mature nor responsible enough to handle the responsibilities of gun ownership.
gelfling545
@LWA: I keep hearing that US society is terribly over medicated but this state of affairs causes me wonder if there aren’t a whole lot of folks who should be on anti-anxiety meds.
Linnaeus
@LWA:
A terrified society is exactly what the gun extremists want. They want people to know that any one of them could be armed, not for safety, but to intimidate.
Kropadope
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I heard this guy was a Vietnam vet. I have no way of knowing for sure what this guy’s exact background and line of thought were, but i bet it was something like:
“I can stop this guy, I’ve shot someone before and will do it again if I have to”
**Pulls gun**
“Oh, shit, that’s right, he’s American.”
**Smack**
LWA
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I owned and shot rifles as a child, and taught my son how to fire one at a range.
But I am to the point where the massive craven stupidity and cowardice of the gun nuts has convinced me that the 2nd Amendment needs to be repealed, and guns become a tightly regulated privilege.
LWA
@Linnaeus:
Not to mention that open carry really only applies to white people- a black man holding a gun can be shot dead on sight.
Kropadope
@LWA:
You mean “well-regulated?”
raven
@Kropadope: He is, and a Marine to boot.
Kropadope
@LWA: How better to tell a good guy with a gun from a bad guy with a gun?
/republican
Linnaeus
I was watching something on YouTube the other day, and as I sometimes do, I clicked on other videos to see what they were about. At some point, I got to several videos that were made to instruct people on what to do in the event of an active shooter where they are. I had to shake my head – we actually need videos on what to do if someone decides to shoot up the joint. Only in America.*
*Well, there was a Canadian video, too.
JPL
Went to a movie once where the person lost his cool because someone in front of me received a text. It was not comfortable and fortunately no one had a gun. It was during the previews.
Citizen Alan
@Kropadope:
How do you live with this jackass? I occasionally fantasize about killing one of my roommates because he obstinately refuses to wash the dishes when its his turn? And he’s another liberal democrat!
Kropadope
@Citizen Alan: He’s fun to be around and if I held out for friends with my own political views, I wouldn’t have any. Not even here in suburban MA.
ETA: We share hobbies and he’s been my closest friend for 11 years, I’ve known him for 16, about half my life.
Capri
@LWA: You don’t need to come up with zombies or aliens. See if any of those guys would be willing to ride a subway in any large city during rush hour. They aren’t terrified of the “other”, they are terrified of the “urban”
boatboy_srq
@RSA: That was my take as well. Where does this “appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded” process come from? Because if it comes from ATF, then every ammosexual shrieks about Gummint Overreach and databases to ID ammosexuals for future detainment and reeducation; if it comes from the states, well, we’ve seen what passes for “training” and “backgrounding” already; and if it comes from some private outfit [shudder] there’s just that many names and registered calibers to be resold to market kevlar bests / vehicle armor / MREs / bunker construction materials to (but at least your data’s still safe from Big Gummint).
A Ghost To Most
@rikyrah:
Leaving only atheists on the BSA discrimination shitlist.
Fuck the BSA.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: I had a roommate who was loosely speaking a libertarian (wasn’t as popular then to call yourself that as it is now) and a stoner (nothing loosely about that, cough cough sneeze) who entertained me greatly when he stated that he believed that George W. Bush ought to be given a second term to see if he could fix the mess he had made during the first.
Kropadope
@A Ghost To Most: Hey, I enjoyed my time with the Boy Scouts. Though, I had no idea what “gay” was at the time or that it was at all unusual that I liked the cuts of many other boys’ jibs.
mtiffany
@LWA:
From your lips to FSM’s Orecchietti. But the
easierless improbably difficult thing would be to tightly regulate and control ammunition: manufacture, sales, and possession. Let’s start legally defining threshold limits for stockpiling and what amount constitutes a credible threat of domestic terrorism. Nothing about a right to own, manufacture, or purchase ammo in theDeclaration of IndependenceBible2nd Amendment.Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human:
Good lord.
According to my political compass, I actually register as a libertarian, albeit a left one. My roomie, like most modern “libertarians” seems to be a right-wing libertarian.
ETA: Honestly, though, with these new, trendy, right libertarians; it seems like a lazy excuse to be Republicans without owning the handiwork of the modern Republican party. They come to all the same conclusions policy-wise, but are somehow different because they use different logic.
“Of course there should be no gay marriage, the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all. If you want those 1000s of rights, get a lawyer and make your own ridiculously complex contract.” Paraphrasing, of course, particularly on the end bit.
Jeffro
@Kropadope: Because what could go wrong?
Also as a (airquote) “Libertarian”, he should know there are other ways people can interact besides force and reason…like on a higher plane through the love and grace of Aqua Buddha, for instance.
Jeffro
@jl: Yeah, exactly what should one do in a movie theater? Unholster that weapon (in a well-trained manner of course) and lay the barrel backwards over one’s shoulder? Just in case the person behind you gets any ideas?
mtiffany
@Steeplejack (phone):
LOL, that’s just mean.
Doug R
@Kropadope: That is my HUGE problem with open carry
boatboy_srq
Since both Doyle and Gonzalez were driving trucks, and were both parked, does that make the incident a case of off-road rage?
/snark
Snark aside, this illustrates with tragic clarity the idiocy of “good guy with gun beats bad guy with gun” arguments. Neither of these guys was the good guy; neither was the bad guy. But they were both the guy with the gun. “good guy with gun” arguments completely forget that more often than not there’s no bad guy/girl and an otherwise-good-guy/girl can turn into a bad guy/girl just by drawing his/her piece in view of some other guy/girl with a gun.
redshirt
Most people are right handed and thus will lead with that hand.
Doug R
@shell: Never follow anyone home. Don’t get out of your car when you’re raging.
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: This was, I do hope, in 2003-4? Any later and you might want to mention that s/he was a stoner first…
RaflW
Every few days, sometimes if things are calmer once or twice a month, I think about moving to Sweden. Particularly around gun issues. I am visiting my cousins in October, third trip in 4 years (after a 20+ year gap). Between our utterly f*d up general American politics and our devastatingly cruel and insane gun culture, I do think pretty seriously about retiring to Sweden – high taxes, dark winters and all. It helps that my cousins are nice, of course.
Germy Shoemangler
@RaflW: I feel the same way whenever I watch “Rick Steves Europe” and I see the beautiful architecture, the spotless train stations, the pride the residents take in their surroundings, the history.. I’m not just talking about Sweden, I mean every damn European city he visits.
But then again, it’s a travel show, so he focuses on the most attractive places.
A Ghost To Most
@Kropadope:
My son had to leave his Scout troop because he would not profess belief in the big sky daddy..
Perfectly acceptable discrimination.
Enjoy your recent victories; some of us are still fighting.
Germy Shoemangler
@A Ghost To Most: Will they accept Ceiling Cat?
Linnaeus
@Kropadope:
No such thing as a left libertarian.
Another Holocene Human
@Jeffro: They’ve been watching too much anime.
Chris
@rikyrah:
The other problem is that this isn’t actually a fair description of American pundits. They may tell you that this is how they operate because both sides deserve a fair hearing, yada yada. Bur in practice, they’re partisan Republicans. Pundits who really believed that the Democratic and Republican parties were equally extreme might “demand that Barack Obama change his ways to advocate things that he was already advocating,” but at least they would have been similarly dogmatic in demanding moderation from Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush. They don’t. They never have. Demands for moderation are deployed against every Democrat who ever lived, but I can’t remember them ever being deployed against the Republican leadership, though they might be deployed against their challengers (e.g. Donald Trump).
Krugman is right that professional centrism isn’t a tenable philosophy, but it should also be mentioned that our punditsphere isn’t even that. They’re Republicans, plain and simple.
jl
OK, look, here is a true fact about the advantages of a universally armed citizenry taking care of things by themselves in a dark theater: good vision is totally taken out of the equation. Everyone is equal. And do you liberals hate equality? Huh?
Respond to that logic, if you can, sheeples.
/snark tag if needed.
aimai
@Kropadope: Also, if you have a gun “no one can exert reason over you.”
Chris
@Kropadope:
I still think “libertarians are what Republicans call themselves when they’re trying to get laid” is the best definition of the ideology I’ve heard yet.
Jeffro
@Linnaeus: Not true, as long as you remove the airquotes around “Libertarian”. Someone who believes in both less power for the state and less power for corporations, more individual freedom and liberty without inflicting one’s wishes on another, would be a ‘left libertarian’.
Try this https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
and if memory serves correctly, coming out in the lower left-hand of the ‘box’ means one leans left-libertarian
LWA
@mtiffany:
oh I am under no illusions that I will live to see a repeal of the 2nd.
But there is tremendous value in merely forcing the debate. Forcing people to justify something most never actually think about, to conceive of a different reality.
Is, actually, some naturally occurring moral “right” to own a deadly weapon? How is it justified? Under what circumstances may it be regulated or restricted?
And so on.Just as with gay marriage, the first step is just get what was unthinkable to become thinkable and tangible.
Another Holocene Human
@A Ghost To Most: As a gay atheist, it’s bothered me that the latter issue has basically gotten no press since the Mormon Church decided to get stupid about gays in Scouting.
This crap has been going on for years, while they in many places use public facilities, yet engage in discrimination on the basis of creed.
Germy Shoemangler
@Jeffro:
Is such a thing possible? If the state has less power (let’s say a libertarian president dismantles the EPA) do corporations suddenly do the right thing by the environment? On their own?
LWA
@mtiffany:
oh I am under no illusions that I will live to see a repeal of the 2nd.
But there is tremendous value in merely forcing the debate. Forcing people to justify something most never actually think about, to conceive of a different reality.
Is, actually, some naturally occurring moral “right” to own a deadly weapon? How is it justified? Under what circumstances may it be regulated or restricted?
And so on.Just as with gay marriage, the first step is just get what was unthinkable to become thinkable.
A Ghost To Most
@Germy Shoemangler:
No, but I welcome all cats as my alien overlords.
I still support the Girl Scouts; they have shown the way, but BSA needs to be dragged into this millennium.
gian
I’m reminded of the intro to the movie tombstone discussing the murder rate being astronomical. That and how Hobbes described life in the state of nature. Nasty. Brutish. Short
Kropadope
@Linnaeus: The two axes of the political compass are left/right (which I believe they define as individualistic v. communitarian) and libertarian/authoritarian.
I value community but am very decidedly not an authoritarian. Left libertarian. I don’t want to ban guns, I want more state autonomy, I believe in creating financial incentives rather than coercive laws to regulate business except in cases where there is explicit harm.
Jeffro
@Germy Shoemangler: Oh Germy…just try the test!
Another Holocene Human
@Linnaeus: left-libertarians from the 80s are now known as liberals
they gave us terms like “victimless crime” and “legislating morality”
they opposed drug prohibition, prohibitions against “cohabitation”, sex toy bans, police raids of BDSM dungeons, government censorship of pornography, and so on
the work isn’t done, but they persuaded most liberals and progressives to join them in their goals, so there really isn’t a separate faction any longer
you no longer score points in the Democratic party by championing the censorship of video games and music, for sure
Linnaeus
@Jeffro:
I know the “compass test” posits that, in theory, there are left libertarians, but in practice, I haven’t found any. If there are any, they’re vanishingly rare. They may be for less corporate power as well as less state power, but they also seem to be against the kinds of measures that would actually curtail corporate power (since this would also tend to require state action, as it’s the state that defines what a corporation is and what it can do). For them, corporate power is either a problem merely in the abstract, or it isn’t a very salient issue for them.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
As far as I’m concerned, those were liberals then.
RaflW
@Kropadope:
Your roommate is a first rate idiot (but you may already know that, even if he doesn’t). There have been plenty of occasions over time wherein both people carrying arms die. They shoot each other.
As long as there are no collateral casualties, I’m not so sure that’s a bad outcome.
Kropadope
@A Ghost To Most:
You know? I can’t remember them requiring us to make any such declarations, this despite the fact that we met in a Catholic church. Most of our focus was on athletics and life skills.
I wonder whether this is because we live in MA, so it’s frowned upon to make religious requirements of people or whether it’s because I was a practicing Catholic at the time and I forgot about it since it seemed unremarkable?
ETA: Sorry for your son, either way.
A Ghost To Most
@Another Holocene Human:
Indeed. The fight continues, at least for some of us.
Others will say their fight is over. Sigh.
Kropadope
@RaflW:
I’m occasionally clued in to this and will quite forcefully tell him so. Granted, he returns the favor in kind.
That seems like too much to hope for.
patrick II
Another favorite of mine from wingnut politicians is when, after a mass shooting the always say “now is not the time to talk about it”. “It” being any change to gun regulations.
Considering that we seem to be having mass shootings every couple of weeks, I guess there will never get be a time when we can talk about it.
Kropadope
@Linnaeus: Hillary Clinton demonstrates that there is still a home for left-authoritarians. You can be many things at the same time. For example, both Rs and Ds are liberal parties, as both parties by and large embrace capitalism. Ds are conservative liberals, Rs are radical liberals.
jl
@patrick II: Same thought I had when I heard the Jindal interview this weekend.
Linnaeus
@Kropadope:
To be fair, I really can’t gainsay how you’d like to identify yourself politically, so if that’s how you prefer it, it’s all good. I would say that dichotomies like individualist/communitarian and libertarian/authoritarian can be useful, but they have limits, and terms like “libertarian” and “authoritarian” can be very slippery.
Southern Beale
Ah, memories! May, 2014, Memphis Tennessee — IOW, a little over a year ago, in my home state:
Another of our safest, most responsible citizens evah strikes again. EVEN if you buy the “good guy with a gun/bad guy with a gun” bullshit — even if you do that — it’s basic statistics that the more people walking around with loaded guns, the more accidents are going to happen. I for one don’t want to get shot because one of our ammosexuals with a hero complex accidentally discharged his gun while reaching for the goddamn popcorn.
A Ghost To Most
@Kropadope:
Highly conservative town in wingnut rural MD around 2000. The people running the troop were christianist, and the BSA backed them up.
They haven’t seen a dollar from me since.
Fuck the BSA.
Kropadope
@patrick II:
Right? There are shootings pretty much any day, so the “taking advantage of tragedy” line always has backing. If, by some miracle, enough time managed to elapse with no shootings, I’m sure the response would be “See? The problem solved itself” or “Why are you just bringing this up out of the blue?”
Chris
@Kropadope:
My one year trying out the BSA was with a troop based at the American School of Paris (France, not Texas), so I always figured I got a more… relaxed version of Boy Scouting than people in most of the States would have. The first person I ever knew was gay was one of my fellow Troop members – it was perfectly well known and nobody gave a shit. (Heck, I shared a tent with him the first night camping and didn’t find out for years that there were people who thought I should’ve been creeped out by that. Or that BSA policy was against having gays at all). On the other hand, I do recall them explaining that you had to have some religion to be BSA. Though I don’t know what would’ve happened if anyone had really “come out of the closet” as an atheist.
mtiffany
@LWA:
Too bad the ones most in need of having to think about their positions are the ones that reflexively recite the last half of the 2nd, while conveniently refusing to acknowledge the first half of that amendment even exists. They probably wouldn’t even be able to tell you what ‘milita’ meant when that amendment was drafted.
larrybob
you would think that someone from the party of lincoln would pause for reflection before advocating for more guns in theaters.
dogwood
@Another Holocene Human:
Fifty years ago most non believers tolerated oaths and pledges that mentioned God because once they were recited that was pretty much it. You moved on to having fun, or working on projects. One of the most insidious things the religious right has done is to infiltrate and in some cases gain control of organizations like the Boy Scouts. Once that happened, reciting pledges wasn’t just something you did pro forma. It became serious business as part of the commitment to use these organizations as a vehicle for proselytizing.
WereBear
The road rage incident is the elusive Southern Honor in a nutshell; though it’s not restricted to the South.
Prior to institutions handling violent actions: You slapped the guy with your glove and had a duel. It was outlawed because it was stupid.
I wish we could have a nationwide Stupid Veto.
Steeplejack (phone)
@boatboy_srq:
I didn’t see anywhere in that story where it said Gonzales had a gun.
Kropadope
@larrybob:
I would say “party of Lincoln” very loosely describes Republicans, at best. They’re pretty much now the party of the Confederacy.
Kropadope
@Steeplejack (phone): Perhaps he would be alive if he did…and in jail for stalking and murdering the other fellow. However, if he was still killed, the other dude has an easy out in the form of much more easily proven self-defense.
A Ghost To Most
@Chris:
Well, now you know what the BSA did then; I assume that they will respond the same today, as their policies haven’t changed.
I’ll let the ‘in the closet’ remark slide.
Omnes Omnibus
@Germy Shoemangler: Libertarian in not messing with the freedom of individuals to do what they want up until it infringes on another’s rights.
RaflW
This is is magical unicornism beyond what I usually see here at BJ.
A Ghost To Most
@dogwood:
Indeed. In that same town in the mid-90s, because of my family connections, I was recruited by the local gauleiter of the League of the South. That was an awkward end to the evening.
Germy Shoemangler
@RaflW:
I remember a few years back reading a comment (it wasn’t here, some other blog) that the perfect presidential ticket would be Ron Paul president/Dennis Kucinich vice president.
I tried to explain they’d cancel each other out, like the calico cat and gingham dog, but I was unsuccessful.
Kropadope
@RaflW: I would say that the governments responsibilities with respect to corporations are to prevent them from direct harm and from exerting too much influence over their employees. A left libertarian might support things like protecting employees from union-busting, preventing pollution, financial incentives rather than coercive laws to encourage change where people aren’t being immediately harmed, tax reform that ties payments more closely to what service they are providing, things like that.
RaflW
@Another Holocene Human:
One of my all-time favorite college memories was from the mid-80s when Tipper Gore came to TCU as a spokesperson for the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center, though as a radio DJ I called it the Pregnant Mother’s Revolutionary Council). We pounced on her during the Q&A and she was actually very nice (in a plasticy sort of way) and we approached her again right after, kept on talking till the head of the Program Council came to whisk her off to the Chancellor’s reception.
I think she realized we were about the only potential Dems on campus (she had a campaign button on for Al), even if we thought she was nutso and a stupid censor about music lyrics, we could be votes for her hubby! Anyway she invited us up to the reception with her and I thought the Council person was gonna shit her britches.
Up we went in our grubby lefty garb pretty much mobbing Tipper, went in and pawed the fancy finger foods and made the Chancellor nervous.
I think the PMRC folded within a year, what a strange time that was.
RaflW
@Kropadope: What you describe sounds mostly pretty swell. But it also sounds like a lot of government action relative to what is the common usage of the term libertarian.
Financial incentives for example are roundly lampooned by most of the libertarian bent for their market-distorting effects. Plus you’d have to have taxes to have money about to give as incentives.
No, sadly I think you are a liberal, and like the libertarians who use that term to avoid being called a Republican!, I think you are in a defensive, don’t-call-me-a-Liberal! crouch.
ms_canadada
@@LWA: Strange. I never hear that logic(!) here in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. Nor have I heard it in Toronto, Ottawa, Kitchener, Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax, etc.
Ruckus
@Chris:
My scout troop met in a church. But not one word was ever spoken about religion. Not by the adults nor the kids. I don’t even remember if any of the kids went to that church, I vaguely remember some discussion about that once, something along the line of why do we met here? I think it was because the troop had for a number of years, maybe someone had at one time. And while I wouldn’t have called myself an atheist at the time I had for sure refused my mothers insistence to attend church for a number of years by then.
dogwood
Libertarianism is often the first political theory that appeals to teenagers. It glorifies the self, is simple to understand, and sounds intellectual. Most people outgrow it as they are confronted with the realities and complexities of the world. A few people remain eternal sophomores. One reason I can’t muster up any real hatred for Rand Paul is that he’s just a kid to me.
Kropadope
@RaflW: No, I’m just taking these words for what they really mean, not for what they were distorted into by our modern political discourse. Libertarian, liberal, conservative, progressive; these are not mutually exclusive.
Where I differ from right-libertarians is that I don’t see the government as the only source of power and certainly not the only source of power that uses it illegitimately. I look at questions such as regulations as a matter of balance-of-power, rather than “let everyone do what they want and it will all work out in the end.”
I use the term liberal to describe myself when it is the relevant descriptor. I am a capitalist, thereforeI am a liberal. I like personal freedoms, so I am a social liberal. I believe in instituting change in a slow, non-disruptive way, so I am conservative. However, I also believe that change can and should be guided by the government, where appropriate, in a way that leads to better standards of living for as many people as possible. In that I am progressive. However, I also believe that change should be done in as non-coercive a way as suffices to get the job done. That’s libertarian in that it is anti-authoritarian.
These ideas can coexist peacefully and don’t let the MSM or Rush Limpbaugh tell you otherwise.
Chris
@dogwood:
Exactly. That’s how it went for me. Conservative/libertarian as a teenager, outgrew it by the end of high school for a variety of reasons, many of which can simply be shorthanded to “growing up.”
Ruckus
@dogwood:
It’s one thing to be an eternal teen and not bother anyone but it’s quite another to think like one and run for public office, having not been a teen for a chronologically long time. Growing up doesn’t mean you have to be serious all the time but it should mean that one has at least a small understanding of how the world really works.
dogwood
@Ruckus:
Churches often have great meeting spaces, and I think it’s shows a good commitment to the community at large when they make them available to outside groups. When I was teaching and we started having more and more AP courses, we found that the library, which was the only appropriate space for that type of testing, was essentially shut down in May. We solved the problem by bussing the students to a local Methodist church which had a perfect room for the purpose. I have no problem with that.
catclub
I just thought of the joke. A woman has been watching the news and sees a report that a driver is driving the wrong way on the Interstate. She knows her husband is on the interstate so she calls to tell him there is someone driving the wrong way, so be careful. “One? There’s hundreds.” he says.
Ruckus
@catclub:
The punch line from the wife to the gun carrying moron, Shoot yourself, shoot yourself right now.
catclub
@Kropadope: The guys who wrote the book “Nudge” on behavioral economics and using human habits to get people to make better economic decisions, had an initial term before nudge: libertarian paternalism
Their example was opt out defaults. You are always free to opt out, but the default is always better for you than doing nothing – which is the usual default option for many things. 401k programs default to signing up for n% withholding plus increase it on every raise. you can always opt out – there is no compulsion. But this takes advantage of human laziness to get them a better result – saving more for retirement.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: There were some really simple but brilliant ideas in that book.
Kropadope
@catclub: Thanks, I’ll put it on my already-prohibitively-long reading list.
dogwood
@Ruckus:
Saying I can’t muster up hatred for someone doesn’t mean I support him, or think he’s fit for public office. He should be drummed out of office as soon as democrats can figure out how to do it, but I can’t be bothered to hate him.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus: Actually I did not read “Nudge”, I just read “Misbehaving” which is the more recent book. A good book, but a little too much score settling on the economics profession.
Suzanne
@Kropadope: Your roommate sounds lovely.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: Nudge was good. Like you said, there were some simple common sense flips like defaulting to signing up for the 401k. If you don’t want it, you actively need to chose to decline it. I like the thought process.
mclaren
That road rage story is how America runs its foreign policy.
If the enraged gun-happy driver weren’t on trial for second degree murder, he’d make a perfect secretary of state.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: You are a silly person.
dww44
@LWA
But a society which deliberately terrifies itself largely because there is a Black man in the White House. I’m sure everyone can remember back to 2007-2008 when guns weren’t the omnipresent political and policy issue they have now become. And, thanks to all these Republican controlled state legislatures there’s a whole coterie of laws expanding gun rights that will take a couple of generations to reverse.
The tide will have turned when guests and pundits on TV feel free to say “I don’t believe that the 2nd Amendment confers the right to carry and own guns with impunity.” Everybody now must caveat any support of sensible gun laws with “I believe in the 2nd Amendment……. “
Stillwater
@Kropadope: That’s a damn fine comment Kropadope. I like that taxonomy immensely.
Kropadope
@Stillwater: Thank you kindly.
Ruckus
@dogwood:
Who said anything about hate?
Pity is a much more realistic feeling for him. Pity that he’s such a moron, pity that he’s mentally 14, pity that he continues to show everyone both of those qualities.
BruinKid
Yeah, the gun nuts are claiming the Louisiana theater shooting is due to “gun-free zones”, and that if there were simply armed civilians there, it wouldn’t have happened. They’re now responding in droves to my comment on Facebook on one of Ezra Klein’s posts after the theater shooting.
They’re now claiming that CCW holders have NEVER shot an innocent bystander accidentally while trying to shoot the gunman. Now while reported instances of this happening are relatively rare (compared to how many people are shot and killed every single year here), it’s not like it’s never happened in the past. Or where the CCW holder readily admits that had they actually pulled out their gun, they would’ve shot the wrong person during the Tuscon massacre.
But hey, you know, facts.
TriassicSands
If only everyone was armed all the time, this kind of thing would never happen.
boatboy_srq
@Steeplejack (phone): I may have misread. If you’re right (and I suspect so), that just makes Doyle’s reaction worse, but still doesn’t put him immediately in the “bad guy with gun” category – until he started shooting. Vehicles do count as “deadly weapons”, and Doyle for all his bad driving did in effect tell 911 that Gonzalez was threatening him with his truck. Not excusing it, just trying to understand the mindset. Related: does this make “good guy with gun” the appropriate answer to “bad guy with car”? Because that means road rage is going to take a nasty turn if Doyle gets off.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: He sounds like he’d be real fun to argue with. I really mean that, as with his simplistic arguments, it would be easy to twist him into all forms of knots.
Paul in KY
@patrick II: The next question then should be ‘You agree then that there will be an appropriate time to talk about meaningful gun control?’
Just for laughs.