Didn't one of the RW liars on this board say that the bushmaster was left in the car? It is amazing how low these idiots will stoop...
I remember that, and it was way more than one as I recall. I still think this is an obfuscation tactic. We should be asking ourselves "why do we have all these mass shootings?", and instead there's a gaggle of wags asking "which weapon did he use? What color was it? Did he have a backpack or a vest? How could he get that if it's illegal? What's the action like on that one?" ... ad nauseum.
It's a way of denying that the elephant in the room is in the room; when the elephant walks in the room, talk about the wallpaper and the ceiling and what's going on outside the window. Anything but the e-word.
You have to be fair about that though. That question was not asked when this occurred; it was asked when we were faced with legislators that were demanding ‘assault’ weapon bans because of this incident. In that context, the weapon used has some bearing.
If the weapon bans never arose, those questions would never have been asked. To frame the questions without the context is dishonest. It was the original intent of those that saw this as a chance to bend law to their agendas that have steered the national conversation on this. There has been little talk of real changes, of looking at things differently and the societal undertones that drive this behavior because that does not fit anyone’s agenda or allow anyone to grab more power.
TBH, I think that we could make a MASSIVE difference if these tragedies were not reported like they are. EVERYONE knows who the shooter is. That is a big draw for these people. It is a type of immortality. Almost no one can name a single victim though. It is not the Media’s fault though – they report what WE demand they report and that is communicated to them through ratings. As you pointed out earlier – WE need to make changes. It is sad though, I don’t think that they population at large is willing. They eat this shit up like candy all the while claiming that they don’t.
There are a lot of worthy thoughts in here.
The relationship to an assault weapons ban, OK I can see that, but it doesn't explain the tangents off to whether a shooter was wearing a vest or a backpack, or how this particular model compares to that one. It also raises a flag when we think back to all the vehement denials about Lanza using the Bushmaster, insisting that was not the case and he left it in the car. Red flags because it reveals that the paramount issue to those insisters is not the safety of schoolchildren, but how will this affect Numero Uno's toys. And that belies a value that's related to the underlying values of the death culture I brought up in the first place; it strongly implies that Numero Uno's Toys (NUT for short) are more important that twenty six-year-olds getting gunned down in cold blood.
I'll have to disagree with the implication (if I read it correctly) that Newtown served anyone as a catalyst to advance a pre-existing agenda; I'm far more sympathetic to the view that these wanker politicians are taking a
reactive stance, posturing to appear to do something, and that absent a string of shooting events, the issue would simply not have come up at all.
Finally I'm skeptical of the 'immortality' concept, given that the shooters are guaranteed to end up either jailed in infamy for life, or resolved to take their own life, ensuring that they'll be gone before the first news story breaks, which means they'll never get to taste that perverse fame. It seems much more to me that the goal is "I'll take as many out as I can before I
have to take myself out". Much like shooting as many of the last video game aliens as you can while time is running out and you know you don't have enough points to continue, so you go out with guns blazing. The price he pays for indulgence in carnage.
(and this is another point I keep harping on -- these shooters are not out for murder, they're out for
carnage. That's why they do it with guns)
Besides, we must understand the shooter and what drove him (and we notice, it's always a him, and that's unquestionably a large part of it). We can't do that if he's anonymous. The innocent victims did nothing to stand out as abnormal; the shooter did. Therefore we must know his name and try to know what made him tick. That's not glorifying what he did; the glorification is something we made sure was in place before he ever picked up his weapon. Had we not done that, he wouldn't have either.
whoooosh - went right over my head. Guess I've seen that same thing posted too many times with a straight face. 
