...and several have made part of my point for me: you will even try to parse and degrade the critique of one of your own, because I advocate using some critical thinking, proving you remain within the "us vs. them" mentality.
What exactly do you mean? I'm afraid I don't follow you. What way would you advocate NOT to have an "us vs. them mentality" in moving forward?
Love Uncle Ted and most of his music, but he's no spokesman of mine for gun rights: anybody who dodged the draft has ZERO placement in a discussion where judgement is critical, and has decided at a critical point in world history to run for the hills. (Spare me the ..." he was just a kid who made a mistake..." rhetoric.)
Well, Ted and his actions back in the day aren't really relevant to discussions that might arise now, and as I pointed out, he won't be "at the table." (Where ever this "table" is...) He'll be one voice holding the hard line, which is a necessary and proper part of any social movement. If we all stand on a "moderate" line, the "center" where things will probably shake out is likely to be not to our liking. If many of us take a much harder line, the "center" is closer to our goals.
(And hey, maybe Ted thought really critically about the conflict in Vietnam and decided he didn't support it. Why are you criticizing HIS critical thinking? Couldn't be bias...?)
No, Tea Party crazies seem to think that ending all social welfare programs, including public funding of mental health hospitals, will bring the country back in to balance even though those programs make up less than 1% of the budget. You can try and re-phrase this however you want, to your own perspective, but: these recent shootings were done by mentally ill people. It does NOT matter the individual circumstances per..."employee shooting, relationship killing", blah, blah, blah.
Nobody needs a professional degree to see that a person killing complete strangers at random, and then kills themselves is mentally ill. To try and debate that is similar to saying there's such a thing as "legitimate rape" or that a child born from a rape is "God's Will".
[Look, this isn't a site to debate the Tea party, or their principles. Don't know, don't care -- outside of the scope of THR. No more Tea Party discussion --- clear?]
No one is going to seriously argue that a killer of innocents like this is not mentally ill. Some of us may point out that such events are still so incredibly rare -- and already pretty well on the decline -- as to be probably not worth large-scale social change to combat.
Here's how it works: we don't get invited to the table because it is already known we need to "win", rather than have a reasonable discussion about solutions. Continue to act like you need to win every debate, and you'll lose our gun rights like never seen before.
Again, what are you proposing? We DO need to "win." We do NOT need to give up rights. It won't help prevent -- no, it CAN'T help prevent this. And it would represent a slowing or turning of the trend toward more personal freedom.
So, without knowing exactly what, if anything, you're proposing, it just sounds like you want to throw the other side "a bone" to make them feel better. And that "bone" is going to be some portion of our rights.
Or am I COMPLETELY misunderstanding you?
