Posts by Billyblobber

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

And he brings up the NRA, which is a great point. I've rarely noticed a time when anyone on "anti-gun law" side wasn't jumping straight to the extreme and fighting a gun ban. I don't think anyone is actually advocating a complete ban on all fire arms.

I stated this earlier in the thread, but that's just a political ploy playing on people who haven't learned to think in anything but binaries.

They've (lobbyists + politicians) created a false dichotomy between OUR 2ND AMENDMENT GUNS and BAN GUNS, which frames anyone that says anything about any type of gun control as "ban guns." It's a nasty tactic that happens in a lot of instances in politics here that plays on average stupidity.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

You bashing an entire race dude.

Nope. If the subject is "what specific grop is more likely to kill me," the answer is "white Christian male."

If the subject is, per capita, what group is more likely to kill me, it would be "black males 16-24." (or something close with age)

If the subject is, who is most likely to commit an act of terrorism in the U.S., it's "white male."

Those stats are correct, and not bashing anyone. Saying that highlights the over exaggerated fear that some people feel about Muslim terrorism in America in general. That's the last thing the average person needs to worry about when it comes to being harmed or killed. That's why the discussion when it comes to mass shootings focuses on curtailing gun violence in general over anything for more rational people.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

edit: lost my quote here - this was a specific response about Muslims being the source of most of the crazy stuff around the world

Nah, most of the TERRORISM on the world stage is coming from the MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA, like it has been for the last century or so.

The biggest difference is that the global situation has changed since the 80s. Russia was a much, much bigger threat in many groups' minds, so they got the brunt of terrorism for a while. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western world got in many group's crosshairs, and they are more on an "attack" than a "defense."

On top of that, the U.S. keeps going around destabilizing other countries and bombing civilians, creating easy breeding grounds/reasons for terrorist recruiting.

Africa has been a pretty screwed up place in general for a while, partially do to imperialism in the past making things a lot worse.

The dominant religion in those areas happens to be Islam, but even when Christianity is dominant in unstable areas, the people do much of the same things (see mutilations in Africa).

How to fix that, I don't know. You basically have to fix half of the planet, politically, and socially, which may be near impossible.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

There are no bigger issues that you can address that will save everyone's life. Every bigger issue is a symptom to the flaws inherent in humanity. You can only minimize the effects of these flaws when they showcase themselves.

Also, it's not an either/or thing and you can do both at the same time.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

False dichotomy.

It's not either safe/not safe.

It's safER/LESS safe that is the question.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

Aside from the current debate, I can't understand how Americans don't want to do anything about this issue. A guy on a no fly list can still legally buy a gun in this country. Why do we accept this as the norm? If we aren't willing to try anything to stop American citizens from killing each other, why care if terrorists come here to do it?

America is gradually and far too slowly becoming more progressive. As newer generations become more educated (which correlates with being progressive), the far right is getting more desperate in motivating its voter base. At this point, all it can do with that is basically create a fear-based hot button issue rotation that concentrates on those voters -actually- being the ones persecuted or in danger. Therefore:

Regulating guns = taking your guns for you
Being more tolerant of other people = taking away your free speech
Making sure religion is removed from the government = banning Christianity
Allowing equal rights for homosexuals = taking away our way of life

etc.

It's not as bad as it seems, really. The issue is that what is dying screams the loudest, so you're basically hearing the last and loudest flailing of a dying breed as they try their best to hold on to things, and a machine caters to them. But due to how things are framed, and now that the political system is basically soundbyte based, there is just enough of this left to effectively block real movement on many issues.

238

Another mass shooting, three or four hours ago.

by James Mixon in

san bernardino california.

up to 12 people have been killed.. the center a private non-profit agency that assists people with developmental.

disabilities.

Billyblobber

There is no statistical proof that shows that armed people stop mass shootings any more than the counter, that they only add to the confusion and end up shooting innocents/getting themselves shot. Everyone wants to fantasize about being the hero of Die Hard, but in actuality, most gun owners haven't taken an ounce of target recognition training (which military and police have to do a TON of and still fail at), and would just be likely to get themselves and more people around them killed, making it more dangerous for everyone.

If it was even as hard to maintain a "gun license" as it was a car license, that would be a step ahead. Unfortunately, the political right has successfully convinced a ton of under-educated people that there is a false dichotomy of guns/they're taking all our guns so that any talks of ANY type of regulation becomes the "they're taking all our guns" side of the dichotomy to them, making it impossible to move forward on this issue.

Also, note how oddly silent the people who are trying to focus this on Muslim heritage were days ago when a white Christian shot up a Planned Parenthood partially because of falling for the misinformation circling around what those places actually do.

43

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories?

by adjusted knowledge in

jw
friends

my wife is taking a literature course at a local college.

this was her final topic of the semester: why rational people buy into conspiracy theories?i automatically thought of this site and of jws.

the jws i knew, were the kind of people that would believe in conspiracy theories, and i noticed a small following on this site.. the article that was referenced for this course was: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-rational-people-buy-into-conspiracy-theories.html?_r=0.

Billyblobber

Skepticism and conspiracy theory-ing are not the same thing. It's the difference between wondering and making bold statements.

Wondering if there was something more to 9-11 (ie. the government allowing the attacks to happen, whatever) is one thing. As long as it's just "wondering," it's fine. And if actual evidence actually comes out to support that view, then it's not a conspiracy theory, but actual fact.

However, making definitive statements, like, "it was faked" is stupid because there's no real evidence existing for that. The latter is what the point of the topic is, and it mostly comes from people with a lack of success attempting to build their ego in other ways.

27

Evolution and Creation—both are stories!

by lsw1961 in

there are number of nobel laureates and other great scientists in both the camps defending their respective theories of evolution and creation, which means both are just stories, and both suffer from having no eye-witnesses.

if either of them were true, all scientists would have accepted it unanimously as they do with rest of the laws such as law of gravity..

this does not mean that there is no god.

Billyblobber

What being is inferior to human beings? This whole premise is flawed, starting there.

And what the heck does any of this have to do with evolution?

30

"The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed"

by nicolaou in

presidential hopeful ben carson of course.

this isn't another gun control debate, i just thought it might be fun to have a topic where we can dump all the hysterical quotes from the candidates.. it's a deep and plentiful mine folks!

.

Billyblobber

There were several armed uprisings, like the Warsaw ghetto uprising, that worked as well for the Jews as you would figure. Or, as someone else put it; the U.S. put 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps in World War 2; how do you think it would have turned out if all of them were armed and fought back?