Green Arrow wrote:Cars? They do cause accidents even though they are meant to be driven slowly.

And people have to pass a test to legally drive one, have to have it insured for at least 3rd Party, and face all sorts of legal restrictions on how and where they drive.

Trains? Collisions make this a dangerous travel method.

But only trained employees are allowed to drive one, and there are frequent checks on the safety of the operators.

Airplanes? Don't even get me started.

Safest method of travel. But training pilots takes longer than learning to drive a car or train. Huge number of safety regulations

We don't live in Mamby-pamby land...

No, you live in the major Western nation with an unusually high rate of murder, most of which is through shooting. The western nation with the highest proportion of people in prison. The western nation where someone you would see as a complete nutjob, with several people observing him to be in some way disturbed, can easily and legally buy a gun and use it to kill and injure people outside a supermarket.

But there is nothing wrong with that picture, apparently.

Yep! You got it. It is such a terrible place that everyone is coming to this country to live. Must be horrible. Maybe they are coming for the freedom.

Green Arrow wrote:Yep! You got it. It is such a terrible place that everyone is coming to this country to live. Must be horrible. Maybe they are coming for the freedom.

Not everybody. Plenty of other countries are seeing immigration, and illegal immigration.

What they are coming for is the money, mainly. Some come from unsafe places, but these tend to be Third World nations in which violence is an even greater problem than the USA. Being more attractive than the Mexican drug-cartel warzone is not really something to be proud of.

Some of the events in Arizona at least potentially contributed to the shooter going over the edge (from the Monday edition of the Los Angeles Times)...

(1) The candidate that ran against Giffords had a fund-raiser where participants were offered a chance to shoot a M-16 to help remove Giffords from office;
(2) The judge who was killed received U.S. Marshall protection after ruling that a lawsuit by illegal immigrants against a rancher could go forward;
(3) Gifford's office was vandalized after she voted for the healthcare bill;
(4) passage of SB 1070, requiring police officers to investigate the status of persons they suspect of being illegal;
(5) Popularity of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the result of rounding up illegal immigrants.
(6) Sarah Palin had a gunsight over Gifford's district.

The Los Angeles Times also mentioned a potential connection to a far-right wing David Wynn Miller. This was based on the shooter's ramblings that the government controls us by use of grammer, an idea put forth my Miller. The shooter's ramblings about federalist and treasonous laws seem to closer to far right-wing beliefs than leftist ones.

Of course, trying to prove a causal link is darn near impossible. But leaders in the U.S. who are proposing profound change tend to have a short life expectancy. FDR survived an assassination attempt while John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King were killed. Huey Long was shot and killed in Lousiana. Harvey Milk was shot in San Franciso. Of course, there was McVeigh, a mass murderer, who operated during the overheated Clinton years. Where are the right-wing politicians who have been killed by leftists in this country? While there might have been strong rhetoric against Bush it was not violent nor did it inspire violence.

Talk radio is mostly a right-wing phenomenon in the U.S. There are a lot of angry white males in the U.S. Republicans have benefited from that anger, pretty much making the South a one-party section and moving the country more to the right. You have commentators that have become very rich by stoking this anger like Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly. (O'Reilly railed against this late-term abortion doctor in Kansas multiple times --a doctor who was shot and killed by a crazy white male.) And, by the way, these angry white males tend to like guns; the image by Palin of a gunsight over Gilfford and other Democratic district with her don't retreat, reload rhetoric was surely intended to appeal to white males who at least fantasize about solving problems with violence. (Oh, I know, it's supposed to be funny to joke about shooting those on the other side but it's kind of a bad joke don't you think?) It is inevitable that some of those white males that might not be mentally balanced might decide to take matters into their own hands. (It is not coincidental that Sarah Palin is most popular with white males while every other group cannot stand her)

Danivon conceded the point that over-heated rhetoric happens on both sides. I don't. The people who have shot liberals are always considered to be lone crazies. But they operated in a climate that contributed in part to what happened. For some odd reason politically based shootings in the U.S. seem to be almost exclusively against liberal politicians...Crazy people just happen to hate liberals?

wow, you guys just don't "get it" overwhelmingly people point to the evidence and realize this is a case of a nut being a nut. It's tragic and horrible, please do not get the idea I am saying this is no big deal, but to attempt to twist and turn everything to make this a supposed political angle is beyond stretching truth. So far Ricky and Danivon have shown zero evidence, zero, zip, nada, nothing relating this idiot to any political rhetoric. They go on to prove... nothing. Just rants and raves about things that have absolutely nothing to do with this event. But do facts stop them from their rants?

read their posts, you tell me.

Oh, nice "news" posted from the LA Times, some events that might have contributed to the event. They are simply events that happened in Arizona, few have anything to do with rhetoric and none can be linked to this man. Why not mention the Arizona cardinals not making the playoffs? It's just as germane to this situation.

Oh, and notice the reference to right wing talk radio and FOX. Once again, zero linkage to this man and if we dare come back with anything about liberal news sources, we brought it up first. You guys are freely allowed to use the name FOX and complain about talk radio but we can not complain about CNN or MSNBC or Keith Olberman or Rachel Maddow or so many other liberal sources. I for one am more than a bit tired of the continuous unfounded complaints about sources you guys have trouble competing against. Lets just try to stick to the subject please. This individual shows no links to FOX, no links to news talk radio, no links to Sara Palin, no links to anything you guys are talking about. Please stick to facts and discuss the facts not guesses and opinions that are unfounded.

Freeman wrote:For some odd reason politically based shootings in the U.S. seem to be almost exclusively against liberal politicians...

Hmmm....

I suppose that makes Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford (who was only shot at) and George Wallace all "liberal politicians," eh?

The Gipper is spinning in his casket.

It's worth mentioning that not only do liberals use violent rhetoric, they used it about Ms. Giffords (the Daily Kos post "targeting" her as insufficiently liberal has been widely discussed). While I don't think it makes much sense to try to find reasons behind the actions of what appears to be an essentially irrational person, if we must do so, it seems just as likely that he was motivated by left-wing rhetoric as right-wing (which is to say, not very f-ing likely at all). So what this whole hullaballoo boils down to is that the Dems are bummed that the voters have rejected their message (largely because of the effective rhetoric used by the Republicans) and are looking for a way to handicap their opponents. Good luck with that.

Careful Mach, handicapping my be rhetoric for "knee-capping" and therefore supporting violence.

<Kerrigan voice>: Why me! WWWHHHYYY! WWWHHHYYY!

Let's not forget about the assassination of William McKinley, that was by a far leftist for very political reasons.

Has anyone posted this one yet?

Dem Congressman who called for GOP Gov. to be put against a wall and shot now pleads for civility

If one liberal can be a hypocrite doesn't that mean that all of them are? Such a question is at the same level of absurdity as most of this thread. Consider: both right and left employ the word "target" in what might be a bad way. It's a sign of rampant partisanship where each side paints the other as not simply wrong, but evil. And what do we have in this thread? Every leftie here coming out of the cupboards doing their utmost to paint righties as evil. Can y'all grasp the irony?

When it comes to intemperate language that might influence a weak mind to do something violent, the worst example I can think of from my entire lifetime is the body of criticism leveled against George W. Bush. HERE are the known attempts against Bush's life. The Secret Service is an effective organization. I'd guess that there are some attempts that never got far enough to make this list. Shall we start trying to link these attempts to the rhetoric employed by Bush's enemies on the left? I've seen nothing in my lifetime that exceeds that anti-Bush rhetoric for venom, cruelty, and intemperance. Suggestions of violence? They even made a full-length feature movie based on a fictionalized assassination! In 2007, at the International Women's Peace Conference in, of all places, Dallas, in front of 1,000 people, a speaker said, "Right now, I could kill George Bush." Who was she? Betty Williams, winner of a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.

Violent imagery, rabid partisanship, and excessive emotionality are not limited to one end of the political spectrum.

There is a correlation between political conservatism and "gun culture". REAL DATA - personal ownership of a gun:
liberal: 18.4%
moderate: 24%
conservative: 26.9%

Do these numbers support the laying of blame for gun violence at the doorstep of conservatives? In this last election cycle the NRA endorsed 14 Democrat congressional candidates over their GOP opponents. And HERE is a newspaper report with this lede:

President Obama and his allies in Congress have given the gun lobby a string of victories - from forgoing new gun laws to easing restrictions already on the books - since Mr. Obama took office and Democrats assumed complete command of political power in Washington.

Don't try to turn the story from Arizona into a partisan diatribe. It's unseemly, unjustified, and sufficiently unkind to actually contribute to the overall level of animosity you're criticizing.

green

Or we can act like adults, have some personal responsibility, and be held accountable

And what better way for a responsible law abiding adult to be held accountable than to register his firearms and pass gun safety and gun use courses in order to be able to keep their firearms?
Or is it accountable only after the fact of commiting murder? Thats really a pointless accountability when it comes to insane mass murder isn't it? Who's death does that prevent?
On the one hand responsibility would reduce the numbers of insane and violent people who hold guns, and ensure those who do have guns are trained in their safe use. You don't need to do that anywhere in the US right now.
And yes, at some point there would be a lot of people who are holding guns illegally. They would be irresponsible and should be held to account for that irresponsibility don't you think?
Responsible adults are held to account every day to register vehciles, license vehciles, complete certification courses for operating equipment or performing professional services....to scuba dive for crying out loud.
Why are weapons not treated with the same respect Green?
Whats so scary about that kind of accountability?

I have always accepted licensing and training. Just not limitation for those qualifying. If you want to fire "full auto" go for it! It is a rush to put out a great deal of lead is a short period of time.

Why do you want to limit ownership. You don't want people to have weapons regardless of licensing and training.

Minister X wrote:Violent imagery, rabid partisanship, and excessive emotionality are not limited to one end of the political spectrum.

No it's not, that's why it might be a really good time to take a look at what the rheothoric would look like if someone put it into practice and then conclude that a little more decency and respect in the public debate could be a good thing. I mean is it really so hard to admit that your opponent is not Hitler, an enemy of freedom and America or a traitor and therefor you shouldn't call him that or paint a target on his back to get more donations or votes ?
Crazy people will do crazy things they don't need a special reason, but i really find it disturbing if politcal debate sounds very much like the rantings of such crazy persons.

Green Arrow wrote:I have always accepted licensing and training. Just not limitation for those qualifying. If you want to fire "full auto" go for it! It is a rush to put out a great deal of lead is a short period of time.
Why do you want to limit ownership. You don't want people to have weapons regardless of licensing and training.

A dream come true. Instead of shooting 10 people with a handgun, crazies can now kill 100 people with some military grade hardware. No civilian needs nor should he have acess to military grade weapons it's that simple. I can fully accept the need for handguns for protection or hunting rifles for well hunting or sports guns, but the only reason you need a military grade rifle is for killing.

Green Arrow wrote:I have always accepted licensing and training. Just not limitation for those qualifying.

No limitations at all? So would you not even restrict any of the following groups:

1) Minors
2) Felons
3) Drug users
4) Illegal Immigrants
5) People with reduced mental capacity
6) People with impaired eyesight that cannot be corrected with lenses
7) People with motor function conditions that mean they do not have full control of their hands

If you want to fire "full auto" go for it! It is a rush to put out a great deal of lead is a short period of time.

Yes, you make an excellent case here, guns are great because of how they make the shooter of them feel at the time. I'm sure that Jared Lee Loughner got a mighty adrenaline rush as he put out a few ounces of lead into 20 people. Imagine how much more cathartic it would have been for him with a fully automatic instead of a Glock!

Why do you want to limit ownership. You don't want people to have weapons regardless of licensing and training.

Why do you want felons and the mentally deranged to have guns? It seems to be that you at the very least oppose legal attempts to stop them.

Some limits does not necessarily mean a complete ban, ok? Increased limits do not necessarily mean a complete ban, ok?