100% we should be showing the graphic images. The only way you get people off of their asses to do something is if they are confronted with images so horrible that it just instantly registers with them that shit like this needs to stop. It repulses them into action. We should have done this with CV too. Show the anti-vaxxers graphic video of other anti-vaxxers dying of oxygen loss in hospitals while saying goodbye to confused families via Skype. Because the Trumpers never had this reality shoved into their faces, they could ignore the horror. If you start shoving pictures of dead kids whose leg muscles and arm muscles are sheered off from the bullets basically vaporizing the muscle off of their body, they won't be able to look at AR-15s the same way again. If they see enough mutilated bodies of children, it will burrow into their minds and they will see those images every time they look at an AR-15. You're basically planting flashbacks into their mind in order to get them to be repulsed by the same items they are trying to defend.
My own experience with graphic images of children and never being able to see certain objects the same way again:
In October of 2005, we were setting up security barriers for the constitutional election in Barwana, Iraq. The KBR trucks who hauled the concrete barriers out from their cushy FOB at Al Assad air base couldn't fit their trucks through the town's narrow streets, so we had to offload them outside of town and haul them in a few at a time with forklifts that had escort humvees attached as they made their trips back and forth from the KBR trucks to the voting center inside of town. Once we had been static outside of the town guarding the KBR trucks for about 15 minutes, kids started coming out to ask the KBR drivers for candy while we were sitting there. A few moments later, mortar fire started landing next to the KBR trucks. Two kids were vaporized instantly, with only shoes being left behind by one of them. The other two kids were riddled with shrapnel and expired before the casevac helos landed at our position about 40 minutes later. I learned the price of democracy that day--having just turned 19 the month before, but I also earned one of my first flashbacks that would follow me for life. I cannot see a child's shoes to this day without mentally drifting off into disassociation land and going back to that moment.
Point being: the imagery of dead kids tied to imagery of assault rifles is a powerful psychological deterrent, if we're willing to use it. The GOP will howl foul play, but they will understand that they will lose that fight against that kind of imagery and the emotion it invokes.
We lost our son in a violent, unnatural way. I can only too vividly imagine the scene. If I actually saw him, I don’t think I’d be here now. That’s me. Other parents may feel differently. But please don’t leave those left behind out of this discussion. And give them each 2 votes to our 1.
With regard to graphic representations of the effects of gun violence.
Emmett Till's mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that others including the press could see what had been done to her child.
Anti-abortion activists love to publish the pictures of aborted fetuses to great effect.
War propagandists distribute images of war crimes perpetrated by enemies... and the press doesn't hesitate to publish them.
Ted Cruz's social media platforms should be littered with images of mass shootings every time they happen. Those who oppose REASONABLE gun regulation should be inundated with images of the carnage they protect.
The subject should be “What the AR-15 Does to a Child’s Mind”.
Every proposal to get ones arms around the gun-violence issues in the US results in comparison to other high-gun-ownership countries like Switzerland which have far lower rates of gun violence. Fair enough. What is rarely examined is how guns are perceived in the USA relative to other countries. Here they have been painted as the only line of defence standing between menfolk attempting to protect their families and the marauding hordes outside. They are a measure of manhood and our feeble 21st century attempt to hark back to Frontiersville of 1870 or the British troops suppressing and taxing in 1760. Without our guns we are serfs under the thumb of the baddies outside. In other countries they assume that role is filled by state-defined law. To some extent we do too which is why we spend so much time suing each other but when it comes to guns, we slip back into that visceral image of the lonely protector facing off against the powers of darkness. This testosterone projection is what fuels the debate
I have said this since Sandy Hook. Emmett Till's mother had the courage to do the unthinkable. I do believe it would shock the country into getting serious. Having that courage is very hard and I understand why people don't.
"Russian generals need to carve out a victory—or at least a semblance of one—for Putin to be able to stay in power and the current order to be preserved. The Russian men dying on the battlefield are being sacrificed to help achieve that goal."
Really, Vance? Porn? That's your biggest problem right now? Somebody goes shaky-shaky in front of the camera, and your hands start to wander? For fuck's sake. Can't *one* person hired on this God-forsaken Trump Train not be an unremittent loses?
Gun deaths. Prescription prices. Voting. Pick something fruitful for once this decade.
There's tons of fake violence on TV and in movies. People, I think, unless they're impacted, think real life wounds are just like them. They have zero idea what damage is actually done to real people by those weapons. Yes, we do need to see them - all of us. There are pictures of wounds caused by weapons of all kinds on line - google it. How graphic depends on your stomach. Even ordinary weapons can/will cause unbelievable damage to the body. There are pictures of wounds inflicted by WWI - they will turn your stomach. For God's sake, I saw a South Vietnamese soldier shoot a man in the head - it was broadcast practically live on TV in the 60s! Pictures of Holocaust victims were plastered all over US newspapers when the camps were discovered. The cowards kowtowing to the NRA will hide their eyes - I don't think the public will. And there are far more of us than those people.
This is a very powerful argument for banning the AR-15, and assault rifles in general, as it negates the "They'll just find something else to use." or, "A handgun would even be worse" talking points that I've been hearing lately. It's funny, when I talk about gun regulations despite my lack of expertise in the more arcane aspects of the subject, my opinion can be dismissed as irrelevant by 2A fundamentalists. But when someone like Megyn Kelly, to whom the masochist in me will listen on occasion, says she's absolutely not a 2A fundamentalist, but banning assault rifles is pointless because all guns are the same, her opinion is very highly valued.
Again, I cannot comprehend what value there is to society in having these weapons available for any civilian to own.
Let's remind ourselves of recent history, specifically, of the Iraq War and how Dubya Bush would not allow either film or photos of fallen soldiers, or of the flag-covered coffins containing the remains of those service members being unloaded from cargo planes. He implemented this policy to prevent the public from seeing what that war's cost was, in the lives of Americans. There has to be some kind of confrontation with the reality of assault rifle deaths; it cannot continue to be an abstract matter consisting of numbers and weeping parents.
I'm sure Congress has seen many photos of what these weapons do to the human body. The issue of assault rifles is not a new one, but the NRA just seems to keep on buying up Republicans in Congress faster than the shooters can kill innocent people.
"More than sixteen months into the Biden administration, the DOJ remains saddled with Durham."
Actually that may not be true. The special counsel law requires that the counsel who is appointed be outside the Department of Justice. When AG Bill Barr elevated Durham to special counsel in October of 2020, he violated that law because Durham worked for the DOJ at the time as US Attorney for Connecticut and had, in fact, worked at the DOJ for 35 years. Current AG Merrick Garland could use that as a basis to remove Durham. But that would involve Garland having a spine, which I'm not sure he has.
I would start by banning all firearms with detachable magazines, and limit the number of rounds that any one firearm could carry when fully loaded. Tax ammunition heavily except when used in a licensed shooting range, so the ammosexuals could blaze away. Hunters could be issued rounds sufficient for a hunting trip, with a requirement that unfired rounds be returned. Rounds for home defense should be expensive, because they are a form of insurance.
It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it would make a start.
Give a one year grace period for surrender of non-compliant weapons, coupled with a tax credit for the value of the firearm, after which time possession would be a felony, punishable by a year's worth of community service in a county hospital.
The kinetic energy of a bullet is 1/2 times the mass times the velocity squared. Triple the velocity of a bullet of the same mass, and the energy increases by a factor of nine.
I absolutely agree that politicians should see the damages down to young bodies from being hit by AR-15 gunshots. Seeing young bodies being shredded would be quite powerful indeed.
We know that because of their brain development that many young people have very poor judgment skills before they are in their twenties. What is the big deal about limiting young people’s to weapons of mass destruction until they are over 21, unless supervised. The military trains it’s forces, limits when they can carry powerful weapons - soldiers just do not hang out playing around with those weapons.
Finally, the number of dead young people from suicide far exceeds that of deaths from homicides and is growing faster. Young men mainly use guns to kill themselves, now more and more young women are using guns because suicide by gun in 99% successful. We do need laws to force gun owners to secure their guns or be liable for any deaths that occur because of it. Guns are just too easily available to young people who have volatile moods, raging hormones, can’t believe that anything can change, and who are very influenced by events near them ( suicide contagion and copycats) and on social media. Social media can target ads to you by what you post. Why cannot they do a much better job at identifying at risk kids and situations. Clearly many shooters and suicides share their intentions. These children do not need to be turned into police, what they need is to have a trained mental health professional approach them non-confrontationally to learn what is going on with them. Very often if asked, kids will say. It’s novelty of having someone care enough to ask how are they really doing
100% we should be showing the graphic images. The only way you get people off of their asses to do something is if they are confronted with images so horrible that it just instantly registers with them that shit like this needs to stop. It repulses them into action. We should have done this with CV too. Show the anti-vaxxers graphic video of other anti-vaxxers dying of oxygen loss in hospitals while saying goodbye to confused families via Skype. Because the Trumpers never had this reality shoved into their faces, they could ignore the horror. If you start shoving pictures of dead kids whose leg muscles and arm muscles are sheered off from the bullets basically vaporizing the muscle off of their body, they won't be able to look at AR-15s the same way again. If they see enough mutilated bodies of children, it will burrow into their minds and they will see those images every time they look at an AR-15. You're basically planting flashbacks into their mind in order to get them to be repulsed by the same items they are trying to defend.
My own experience with graphic images of children and never being able to see certain objects the same way again:
In October of 2005, we were setting up security barriers for the constitutional election in Barwana, Iraq. The KBR trucks who hauled the concrete barriers out from their cushy FOB at Al Assad air base couldn't fit their trucks through the town's narrow streets, so we had to offload them outside of town and haul them in a few at a time with forklifts that had escort humvees attached as they made their trips back and forth from the KBR trucks to the voting center inside of town. Once we had been static outside of the town guarding the KBR trucks for about 15 minutes, kids started coming out to ask the KBR drivers for candy while we were sitting there. A few moments later, mortar fire started landing next to the KBR trucks. Two kids were vaporized instantly, with only shoes being left behind by one of them. The other two kids were riddled with shrapnel and expired before the casevac helos landed at our position about 40 minutes later. I learned the price of democracy that day--having just turned 19 the month before, but I also earned one of my first flashbacks that would follow me for life. I cannot see a child's shoes to this day without mentally drifting off into disassociation land and going back to that moment.
Point being: the imagery of dead kids tied to imagery of assault rifles is a powerful psychological deterrent, if we're willing to use it. The GOP will howl foul play, but they will understand that they will lose that fight against that kind of imagery and the emotion it invokes.
We lost our son in a violent, unnatural way. I can only too vividly imagine the scene. If I actually saw him, I don’t think I’d be here now. That’s me. Other parents may feel differently. But please don’t leave those left behind out of this discussion. And give them each 2 votes to our 1.
With regard to graphic representations of the effects of gun violence.
Emmett Till's mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that others including the press could see what had been done to her child.
Anti-abortion activists love to publish the pictures of aborted fetuses to great effect.
War propagandists distribute images of war crimes perpetrated by enemies... and the press doesn't hesitate to publish them.
Ted Cruz's social media platforms should be littered with images of mass shootings every time they happen. Those who oppose REASONABLE gun regulation should be inundated with images of the carnage they protect.
The subject should be “What the AR-15 Does to a Child’s Mind”.
Every proposal to get ones arms around the gun-violence issues in the US results in comparison to other high-gun-ownership countries like Switzerland which have far lower rates of gun violence. Fair enough. What is rarely examined is how guns are perceived in the USA relative to other countries. Here they have been painted as the only line of defence standing between menfolk attempting to protect their families and the marauding hordes outside. They are a measure of manhood and our feeble 21st century attempt to hark back to Frontiersville of 1870 or the British troops suppressing and taxing in 1760. Without our guns we are serfs under the thumb of the baddies outside. In other countries they assume that role is filled by state-defined law. To some extent we do too which is why we spend so much time suing each other but when it comes to guns, we slip back into that visceral image of the lonely protector facing off against the powers of darkness. This testosterone projection is what fuels the debate
I have said this since Sandy Hook. Emmett Till's mother had the courage to do the unthinkable. I do believe it would shock the country into getting serious. Having that courage is very hard and I understand why people don't.
"Russian generals need to carve out a victory—or at least a semblance of one—for Putin to be able to stay in power and the current order to be preserved. The Russian men dying on the battlefield are being sacrificed to help achieve that goal."
I just need to find... 11,780 votes...
Really, Vance? Porn? That's your biggest problem right now? Somebody goes shaky-shaky in front of the camera, and your hands start to wander? For fuck's sake. Can't *one* person hired on this God-forsaken Trump Train not be an unremittent loses?
Gun deaths. Prescription prices. Voting. Pick something fruitful for once this decade.
There's tons of fake violence on TV and in movies. People, I think, unless they're impacted, think real life wounds are just like them. They have zero idea what damage is actually done to real people by those weapons. Yes, we do need to see them - all of us. There are pictures of wounds caused by weapons of all kinds on line - google it. How graphic depends on your stomach. Even ordinary weapons can/will cause unbelievable damage to the body. There are pictures of wounds inflicted by WWI - they will turn your stomach. For God's sake, I saw a South Vietnamese soldier shoot a man in the head - it was broadcast practically live on TV in the 60s! Pictures of Holocaust victims were plastered all over US newspapers when the camps were discovered. The cowards kowtowing to the NRA will hide their eyes - I don't think the public will. And there are far more of us than those people.
This is a very powerful argument for banning the AR-15, and assault rifles in general, as it negates the "They'll just find something else to use." or, "A handgun would even be worse" talking points that I've been hearing lately. It's funny, when I talk about gun regulations despite my lack of expertise in the more arcane aspects of the subject, my opinion can be dismissed as irrelevant by 2A fundamentalists. But when someone like Megyn Kelly, to whom the masochist in me will listen on occasion, says she's absolutely not a 2A fundamentalist, but banning assault rifles is pointless because all guns are the same, her opinion is very highly valued.
Again, I cannot comprehend what value there is to society in having these weapons available for any civilian to own.
JD Vance's eyes are dead. He's an unfeeling psychopath.
Let's remind ourselves of recent history, specifically, of the Iraq War and how Dubya Bush would not allow either film or photos of fallen soldiers, or of the flag-covered coffins containing the remains of those service members being unloaded from cargo planes. He implemented this policy to prevent the public from seeing what that war's cost was, in the lives of Americans. There has to be some kind of confrontation with the reality of assault rifle deaths; it cannot continue to be an abstract matter consisting of numbers and weeping parents.
I'm sure Congress has seen many photos of what these weapons do to the human body. The issue of assault rifles is not a new one, but the NRA just seems to keep on buying up Republicans in Congress faster than the shooters can kill innocent people.
Re: Durham. At what point does his lack of any meaningful result amount to defrauding the American people?
"More than sixteen months into the Biden administration, the DOJ remains saddled with Durham."
Actually that may not be true. The special counsel law requires that the counsel who is appointed be outside the Department of Justice. When AG Bill Barr elevated Durham to special counsel in October of 2020, he violated that law because Durham worked for the DOJ at the time as US Attorney for Connecticut and had, in fact, worked at the DOJ for 35 years. Current AG Merrick Garland could use that as a basis to remove Durham. But that would involve Garland having a spine, which I'm not sure he has.
I would start by banning all firearms with detachable magazines, and limit the number of rounds that any one firearm could carry when fully loaded. Tax ammunition heavily except when used in a licensed shooting range, so the ammosexuals could blaze away. Hunters could be issued rounds sufficient for a hunting trip, with a requirement that unfired rounds be returned. Rounds for home defense should be expensive, because they are a form of insurance.
It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it would make a start.
Give a one year grace period for surrender of non-compliant weapons, coupled with a tax credit for the value of the firearm, after which time possession would be a felony, punishable by a year's worth of community service in a county hospital.
The kinetic energy of a bullet is 1/2 times the mass times the velocity squared. Triple the velocity of a bullet of the same mass, and the energy increases by a factor of nine.
I absolutely agree that politicians should see the damages down to young bodies from being hit by AR-15 gunshots. Seeing young bodies being shredded would be quite powerful indeed.
We know that because of their brain development that many young people have very poor judgment skills before they are in their twenties. What is the big deal about limiting young people’s to weapons of mass destruction until they are over 21, unless supervised. The military trains it’s forces, limits when they can carry powerful weapons - soldiers just do not hang out playing around with those weapons.
Finally, the number of dead young people from suicide far exceeds that of deaths from homicides and is growing faster. Young men mainly use guns to kill themselves, now more and more young women are using guns because suicide by gun in 99% successful. We do need laws to force gun owners to secure their guns or be liable for any deaths that occur because of it. Guns are just too easily available to young people who have volatile moods, raging hormones, can’t believe that anything can change, and who are very influenced by events near them ( suicide contagion and copycats) and on social media. Social media can target ads to you by what you post. Why cannot they do a much better job at identifying at risk kids and situations. Clearly many shooters and suicides share their intentions. These children do not need to be turned into police, what they need is to have a trained mental health professional approach them non-confrontationally to learn what is going on with them. Very often if asked, kids will say. It’s novelty of having someone care enough to ask how are they really doing