Posts by Simon

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

Gun control does work.

Again, you can't take a law and simply transplant it somewhere else and expect the equivalent outcomes.

Has Australia had a revolutionary war? An armed civil war? Are Australians constitutionally granted the right to bear arms? How many guns were owned before and after the controls?

It's not as simple as just saying "oh, ban them, problem solved". Who collects all the guns for instance?

If gun control works, why were there still 2,519 (adjusted) gun deaths?

You're making an assumption that if you remove a lot of guns from society, that the number of gun deaths is guaranteed to go down and couldn't go up.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

I don’t want Tibor to be unemployed.

I wonder if he'll still be considered one of the "gracious class" if he gets himself a proper job and tells Lloyd to shove it?

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

Bullying at school, social isolation, drug-addicted mother, absent father, self-injury, random acts and statements of violence...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-gunman/

I wonder what the school did about the bullying? Or if they did anything ...

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

So you were creating the type of thing you say other people shouldn't have? Doesn't sound too logical.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

A military style weapon.

So it's about styling? So the exact same weapon with a polished wooden stock would be "OK"?

Higher than needed mags.

I believe high-capacity magazines are already illegal in most places.

I had an SKS converted I had not much use for it.

I don't know what that is, what does the conversion entail and why if you didn't have much use for it?

Are you a gun owner? I understand. I like guns. I'm just troubled by what's going down.

I've owned guns and like shooting. People should be taught gun safety, it used to be taught in schools in the US and kids would bring their guns into school without incident. That was before it was prevents ... to make things "safer".

I think most people are troubled by what has happened. But what we need are real solutions that will prevent it, not opportunistic politicians taking advantage of a tragedy to push an agenda that's been shown to make things worse.

Reminder: this is a terrible event but far more people were shot and killed that day and every day in places where gun control is pushed as the solution.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

I live here, have done for 66 yrs . We are not scared of guns or knives.

Is that because you not in an area of high knife crime or one of their target demographic? If you were a young male living in an inner city area it might be more of a concern.

It is a fact that you are less likely to be murdered by any means in the UK than in the US

I don't think people care how they are killed and it's unfair to compare the UK with the US. There are places in the UK that are far more dangerous than some places in the US. The UK does not have the same problems that the US has and vice versa.

Yes you could secure schools but should a civilised society have to do that?

Yes, they should. Shouldn't protecting kids be higher up than protecting banks, shopping malls, politicians etc...?

What would the downside of protecting them be? (other than the loss of democratic talking point)

You can't secure shops and restaurants .

No, but then they are not as likely to be filled with vulnerable small children. They may even contain other people with guns. Mass shootings frequently target gun-free zones for a reason.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

No one needs an assult rifle.

Please explain what you think an assault rifle is.

117

14 kids dead and one teacher at Texas school shooting.

by jojorabbit in

another shooting, this time 14 kids dead more wounded and a teacher dead.

i am all for the second amendment and this does not change my mind.

but i do hate this kind of thing, makes my stomach turn.

Simon

It's pointless comparing the gun laws and shootings between the US and UK.

The UK was never "frontier territory" where a gun was an important tool. We didn't have civil wars after modern guns were invented. Gun ownership has always been relatively rare so "controlling" it was simple and easy.

Any solution that involves magically disappearing all guns from existence is pointless to debate. Why not also solve it with magical invisible nano-bot bullet shields?

Assume any solution has to align with people having the right to own guns and work backward from there. The problem isn't really people having access to guns, because people have access to guns in lots of places, and there are not the same mass shooting incidents. Likewise, if guns used are already owned illegally, making more laws to make them even more illegal isn't going to do much.

Look at who does the shootings, why, what warning signs existed, who could & should have noticed them, who did but didn't act, and which politicians stand to benefit from mass-shooting events.

Who makes hay when the bullets fly? Who stands to gain? Who sets what policies and why? Who stops criminal accountability?

32

Can you list the positive points of being a JW as against the negative points of being a JW in your experience ?

by smiddy3 in

i was a twenty y/old when i converted to the jw religion and was a problem drinker and i was a chain smoker .when i was baptized at a circuit assembly a year later , my conversion and change in lifestyle was given as an example of the effectiveness of incidental witnessing to the audience.. so i can point to the 2 positives becoming a jw .. 1.i gave up smoking.

2.i gave up drinking for a while ,but because i still had association with my wife`s and my family who were not jw`s ,i learnt to control my social drinking when i started again.. and i have been a responsible drinker ever since ,even though i left the religion 29 years ago.. the negative points of being a jw in my 32 years of being one ?

are far too great to list here .. love to hear your thoughts..

Simon

I can't think of a single positive experience that is unique to the JW faith

Likewise, they wouldn't be unique to whatever other group also instilled them.

There are good things I could point to from my time as a JW, but I could have gotten those from other religious (or possibly even secular) groups. And perhaps it would not have come with the baggage that I am left with.

Did you get them from those other groups? Unless you did, you have to thank the JW upbringing for them.

You may find that sticks in the throat, but trust me, it's healthier to give fair credit for the benefits than to only look for negatives.

32

Can you list the positive points of being a JW as against the negative points of being a JW in your experience ?

by smiddy3 in

i was a twenty y/old when i converted to the jw religion and was a problem drinker and i was a chain smoker .when i was baptized at a circuit assembly a year later , my conversion and change in lifestyle was given as an example of the effectiveness of incidental witnessing to the audience.. so i can point to the 2 positives becoming a jw .. 1.i gave up smoking.

2.i gave up drinking for a while ,but because i still had association with my wife`s and my family who were not jw`s ,i learnt to control my social drinking when i started again.. and i have been a responsible drinker ever since ,even though i left the religion 29 years ago.. the negative points of being a jw in my 32 years of being one ?

are far too great to list here .. love to hear your thoughts..

Simon

The average naïve pro-Nazi individual in 20th century Europe probably enjoyed certain personal perks & benefits, and may have even transformed into a more disciplined person as a result of the ideology; yet any such personal betterment is blemished by crimes of the broader organisation and its leadership.

Did you honestly just compare the JWs to being nazis? Such a ridiculous claim. Totally unbalanced and unobjective.

The vast majority of JWs are there because they want to be good people, try to be good people, and I think are more law-abiding on average and certainly don't go around committing war-crimes.

These kind of comparison-claims just make us look like nutters.