Oh, the bizarre logic. Republicans in Maryland talking about how something just has to be done about video games:
“These video games are out of control. They are way too violent,” Parrott said.
But they are against any gun regulation in the state. Right, because it was the video game packaging that was used to kill in the Newtown massacre.
Republicans are adding to their weird list of deadly objects every day. Cars are just as deadly as guns! Pencils! Spoons! After all, stabbing 20 people to death with a spork is so much easier than shooting them. But move right along, everybody–no gun problem to see here.
I’m assuming guys like Parrott would like to propose warnings or restrictions for video games. I don’t like violent video games either–but if we’re going to say they contributed to the problem and something needs to be done about them, what about the actual weapons used in the shootings? A cartoon portrayal of violence is more dangerous than the real-life tool used to do violence? Conservatives like to poke fun at liberals for not being logical, but this makes no sense to me.
01/26/2013 at 11:41 am
What they ought to be looking at are the many psychotropic drugs (like SSRIs and Ritalin) that are now being prescribed legally to a lot of young boys and men. Some have serious warnings about aggression and violent ideation. Not enough has been done to investigate that as a cause for perhaps also inhibiting empathy and moral sense. Maybe not all, but it only takes a few very adversely affected to create the mass murders in schools we have seen in recent years.
We used to have lots of guns around and didn’t have these mass murders. But we didn’t drug our kids like that back in the 1950s and 1960s either.
lwk
Who Needs An Assault Rifle?
http://free2beinamerica2.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/who-needs-an-assault-rifle/
01/26/2013 at 11:47 am
I agree on the psychotropic drugs. It would be nice if we looked into other ways of working on depression and psychological issues, rather than just drugging the kids. Still, the guns remain a problem as well. Perhaps society has changed and is no longer suited for an excess of large deadly weapons floating around.
01/27/2013 at 11:10 am
You know what so sad about the gun control issue is that I read somewhere that there are already 300 million guns floating around in our country. That means the only people not packing heat are you and me! Yikes! I’m afraid to say anything to anybody anymore because you never know what is going to motivate someone to pull out a concealed weapon and come after me just because they are mad at life, have anger issues, on drugs, or just plain weird. God help us!
01/27/2013 at 6:46 pm
Yeah, people say that an armed society is a polite society. Well, yes…because you’re scared to have a conversation or interact with anyone..at least I kind of am, lol.
01/30/2013 at 5:13 pm
You wrote:
“I’m afraid to say anything to anybody anymore because you never know what is going to motivate someone to pull out a concealed weapon and come after me just because they are mad at life, have anger issues, on drugs, or just plain weird.”
Where do you live? If you live anywhere in the U.S. _other_ than some areas in major cities with lots of illegal drugs and gangs then you are safer than people in many European countries vaunted for their low crime and or murder rates. But blacks and hispanics are murdering each other at astronomical rates. Read the other day where New Orleans murder rate was something like 47 per 100,000. Now in my town it averages way less than 1 per 100,000, and some years 0 per 100,000.
It is the crime and murder rates in inner cities, predominantly black and hispanic that account for the numbers that make America look so bad compared to some countries. And of course these areas typically have lots of gun control. Whereas the safer areas have lots of guns. Just the facts.
I took the concealed carry course in Texas last weekend. In about 7 weeks I will legally become one of those people carrying a concealed handgun. The fact is, when the concealed carry movement started a couple decades ago a lot of people said the same thing you are saying. They expected the streets to run with blood, what with people popping each other off over every minor incident.
Didn’t happen. People _legally_ carrying concealed weapons are some of the safest, and most non-violent people around, and where concealed carry is legal violent street crimes always goes down. That is a fact. Search on “John Lott,” a mathematician who did a very detailed analysis of the statistics.
And you wrote:
“God help us!”
Yes, he will help us when we help our selves. Where legal responsible citizens should take on the responsibility to carry a concealed weapon. Society would be a lot safer. If you want to end the “gun problem” in America then you need to solve the “drug problem” and the “gang problem” first.
lwk
01/30/2013 at 6:43 pm
But don’t you think it’s kinda sad that we have to help ourselves this way? I thought I was moving to a civilized Western nation, not Africa or the Middle East, where you *have* to carry a weapon to be part of society. Also, before coming here I lived in one of those European nations with gun restrictions. Life for me there was just as peaceful as it is here, even though I didn’t know anybody who owned a gun, and there was no suggestion that one had to have a gun in order to keep the peace. So isn’t the belief that guns are a necessity for daily life an exaggeration?
01/31/2013 at 8:27 am
eurobrat wrote:
“But don’t you think it’s kinda sad that we have to help ourselves this way?”
Consider that a large portion of the problem of violence is due to a “War on Drugs.” We have major Mexican drug cartels which have set up shop in our major cities. Yes, we have problems, and those problems are sad, but an emotional approach without a serious look at the root causes will solve nothing.
“So isn’t the belief that guns are a necessity for daily life an exaggeration?”
It is simply a fact that a relatively small percerntage of the populace carrying a concealed handgun has had a statistical effect of lowering violence. Where I live in Texas the crime rate is low, so you don’t absolutely need a gun to be safe on the streets. But that is not true in certain areas, particularly if you are white and go in areas where black teen mob violence is becoming more common (an often under-reported stat).
Also, in my suburb there are lots of guns in houses. We don’t have crimes of “home invasion” around here. So maybe we don’t think the guns are “necssary,” but in fact their very prescence in homes makes us safer.
lwk
http://free2beinamerica2.wordpress.com
01/31/2013 at 7:10 pm
Right, but what I am saying is that gun ownership doesn’t seem to be necessary for increasing safety. Why is it that Holland, where I grew up, has stricter gun regulations yet a lower murder rate per capita than the United States? They don’t seem to need guns to be safe. Is it really strictly a racial issue? I’d be curious to see what the crime stats would be in Dutch cities with high immigrant populations, such as large amounts of Turkish immigrants, but am having trouble finding those stats right now.
02/01/2013 at 12:49 am
Eurobrat wrote:
“… gun ownership doesn’t seem to be necessary for increasing safety. Why is it that Holland, where I grew up, has stricter gun regulations yet a lower murder rate per capita than the United States?”
Vastly different cultures for one thing. Does Holland have the social problems the U.S. has in inner cities with a drug war fueled by ultra-violent Mexican drug cartels? Does Holland have a welfare system that destroys families (as our did to black families)?
And wrote:
“Is it really strictly a racial issue?”
Here is an interesting book by Thomas Sowell.
Black Rednecks and White Liberals
A lot of the violent inner city culture – per Sowell – was inherited from white rednecks in the south.
Whatever the case though, black culture in the inner cities is hugely dysfunctional, and that is where the vast predominance of crime and murder takes place. No, I don’t think there is genetic reason blacks suffer from this. It is in large part an unintended consequence of educated white liberals who always think they know what is best, and in the process destroyed the black family in large part.
lwk
02/01/2013 at 8:49 pm
Interesting question about the drug problem. Holland, of course, is famous for some of their lax drug rules, especially when it comes to pot. I’d be tempted to say that perhaps the lack of a “war on drugs” contributes to their lower levels of violence–except that the Dutch government is now backing away from their permissive marijuana policies, because they are attracting professional gangs of growers, and thus gang violence, to the country. I’ve looked at the murder rate numbers and it does appear that they went up ever so slightly over the past few years. However, they are still far behind us here in the States.
As far as welfare/social benefits, that is far more extensive in Holland than it is here–as it is in most of Western Europe. Unless that is now changing, too. Which does lead me to wonder why the big welfare state over there didn’t lead to the high levels of gang affiliation/violent crime like it has here.
Overall, though, I have to say that I always get slightly confused when I get the “It’s a different culture” response. I get that generic reply a lot when I bring this up, and everyone seems to have a different definition of what this means. The general impression I get is that I’m being told Americans are somehow more violent than other people in the world? I can’t quite believe this is true.
01/27/2013 at 8:51 pm
Absolute cocksuckers.
01/28/2013 at 2:07 pm
Not much to add there…pretty much sums it up.
01/30/2013 at 5:55 pm
Eurobrat: I think lwk2431 proved your point! Wow! This is why guns will continue to take over our culture because of this type of mindset (an eye for an eye). In the meantime, the little boy who just killed his entire family in New Mexico, the son who just murdered his mother and sister in Texas, all the mass shootings over the last year have had nothing to do with being black or Hispanic (all white and living in the suburbs)–but all had to do with people easily getting ahold of guns. I suppose when we’ve all shot each other up with our concealed weapons (no matter what race we are), common sense laws will be passed. In the meantime, we best better stay away from Texas and this commenter!
01/31/2013 at 8:33 am
etomczyk wrote:
“this type of mindset (an eye for an eye).”
Self defense is not “an eye for eye.” Even Jesus had some of his disciples sell their cloak to buy a sword.
And:
“all the mass shootings over the last year have had nothing to do with being black or Hispanic…”
Blacks, despite being about 10% of the population in the U.S. commit about half the murders.
“A United States Department of Justice report which surveyed homicide statistics between 1974 and 2004 stated that of the crimes surveyed, 52.2% of the offenders were Black.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Murder
Finally:
“better stay away from Texas”
Ok with me, but where I live in Texas is a lot safer than New Orleans or the South side of Chicago.
lwk
http://free2beinamerica2.wordpress.com
01/30/2013 at 6:44 pm
Thank you Eleanor, very good point about race–yes, the crime rates in the inner city are high, and way too many kids there sadly get killed–but the vast majority of the spectacular mass shootings which we hear about seem to originate with mentally disturbed white guys. So this is a mental health and not a race issue…
01/31/2013 at 8:37 am
The inner cities murders, young black and hispanic men in gang wars over drug turf, is a drug problem – an illegal drug problem.
It may be that the young white shooters is also a drug problem – a legally prescribed psychotropic drug problem that coupled with inherent mental illness and violent video games. But statistically these are a “drop in the bucket” compared to the crime rates of blacks overall.
It is a race problem really only in the sense that failed government policies have created an environment ideal for this to happen. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
Writer Thomas Sowell has made the point in his books, lectures, and articles over and over again that the “War on Poverty” ought to be renamed “The War on Blacks.”
lwk
http://free2beinamerica2.wordpress.com
01/30/2013 at 6:45 pm
And I’m sure you knew I wasn’t smart enough to stay away from the commenter…