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Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting (wired.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: In the wake of Wednesday's Parkland, Florida school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. On RoBhat Labs' Botcheck.me, a website created by two Berkeley students to track 1500 political propaganda bots, all of the top two-word phrases used in the last 24 hours -- excluding President Trump's name -- are related to the tragedy: School shooting, gun control, high school, Florida school. The top hashtags from the last 24 hours include Parkland, guncontrol, and guncontrolnow.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
You ain't seen propaganda until the NRA starts rolling.
Maybe you are confusing the agenda. Maybe it's not pushing an agenda rather than shit stirring. I've been under the impression Putin would like nothing more than America to have Civil War 2.0
And that doesn't necessarily mean a hot war, but a war of ideology, which we definitely have that right now, and thanks in some part to Putin and his troll army
Be honest. It would take ALOT more power to the anti-gun lobby to stop an adult with no criminal record from buying a gun.
What we need is news control laws. When the Constitution was written, there were no high speed presses, no electronic news, no way people could be flooded 24/7 with "news" and commentary.
It's clear that these school shootings are driven by crazies wanting to "copy-cat" other school shooting they're heard about, sometimes just to get their own 24 hours of fame. Yet, the modern media irresponsibly continues to glorify these events and saturate every media channel with them, just encouraging more copy-cats. That clearly needs to change.
We have to do something. We already have lots of gun laws. We now need some reasonable, common-sense, media control laws. Just as an private citizen can't get and has no reason to have a machine gun, no media needs a high speed Internet web site - when the "right to a free press" was created, it was in reference to Gutenberg presses. Same with radio/tv/cable. Such powerful methods of communication, so easily abused, should be highly regulated for private use. Only the government is responsible enough to be allowed to use them. Journalists should be licensed, subject to a background check to make sure they're not mentally ill, and don't have a criminal history. Photocopy machines should be registered. Scented magazine inserts should be outlawed. Cheap, Saturday night special, smartphones should be outlawed. A license should be required to carry a concealed smartphone.
As a bonus, such restrictions would also solve all of this "Russian facebook/twitter" cruft.
None of these reasonable, common-sense actions would infringe on 1st Amendment or natural rights in any way, but would go a long way to ending the bloodshed. Think of the children.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I completely agree with you. The right to bear arms for anyone in a state-sanctioned militia must not be infringed.
So, just curious: which state militia was this nutjob in? Or do you hate the constitution so much that you plan on misrepresent what it says?
I'm a liberal. Liberals don't care about what guns you own. All liberals want is to reduce the crazy number of violent deaths in the USA.
So what is your plan for reducing the violent deaths? Because all I've heard is "well, 100 million guns hasn't reduced the killing, so we clearly need 300 million!"
do you support ending all weapons regulations? After all, arms are arms. I've got gun nut friends who want to own grenade launchers and rocket launchers and RPGs and mortars and artillery pieces (cannons were 'arms' in the 1700s weren't they?).
Is there a line (short of chem weapons, since they're not arms)?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In the mind of this "patriot", killing classmates is "fighting back".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, you're not wrong, but you're stupid and your argument is even stupider. If you were smart, you'd have brought up some solutions. Or even a diagnosis of the problem. Here, let me try for you:
Melania Trump is right about something you've completely lost perspective on. The biggest problem facing our nation right now, if you boil it down to the root cause, is actually bullying. That's right, I said it; Guns didn't cause this tragedy - bullying did. Maybe she's smarter than she looks. She's clearly smarter than you and this poor tard that just shot up his school. Maybe she's smarter than all of us... now that's a truly horrifying thought.
Its probably more like American groups have bought thousands of twitter bots from the cheapest bidder to tweet, like and whatever and it just happens that the cheapest (and technically savvy) people running these twitter bot farms are Russians. (you can search the internet yourself to see how much it costs to have an "internet marketing agency" run a social media campaign for you - its remarkably cheap)
So of course it looks like the Russians are coming - but they're not coming with their own pro-gun messages, they're simply providing the service twitter now relies on for profitability.
I guess the Russians had better invest in an American server to post their social media bots, then nobody would know.
If they can detect these bots then why isn't Twitter immediately wiping them out?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Why is it exactly that Russia supposedly has the monopoly on propaganda bots?
Why is it exactly that Russia's propaganda bots are the only ones supposed to be effective?
We need to start facing the fact that the leftist side of the population is literally mentally defective. They cannot handle having the same rights as sane people. All that giving them civil liberties does is cheapen the value of liberty for all of us, because the first thing they do with their liberty given a chance is self-destruct it to sabotage other people's liberties, because a leftist has no idea what to do with freedom because they are the product of brainwashing. Their free will has been stamped out.
We need a schism immediately. If you're so docile as to not see or care about the divide in mental stability and integrity, you are going to fall on the wrong side. You have to take a stand and say enough is enough, "equality" does not work and never will, and the "progress" of "progressivism" in the last 100+ years was really just a complete farce and a brazen attack on western civilization and all of its citizens.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
I think this is part of it... Putin's goal is to "mess with us", whatever stirs the pot.
However, my observation on my Facebook feed (with friends on both Right and Left) is that almost all of the chatter about this is of the "Ban Guns!!!" sort. The conservative types were almost a full day behind the leftist ones.
Doesn't stop the leftist types from shrieking "How **DARE** you **POLITICIZE** this **TRAGEDY**!!!" the moment anyone not so leftist demurs from their politicizing in favor of their solution of banning all guns.
Remember the days when it was just linux nerds in here instead of bots and trolls?
Ahh. A sophist. "Militia" doesn't mean what you think it means, and a prefatory clause isn't binding.
As a self professed liberal, do you also support other laws which would restrict civil liberties? How about the 1st A? It starts with "Congress shall make no law...". So, that means that the States (which definitely aren't "Congress") can make laws establishing religion, restricting speech and press, etc. Right?
Living in a system with the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty means you accept more risk. Fortunately for you, you can move to almost anywhere else and trade that freedom and liberty for less risk and more security. Your choice.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The CIA director talked about them 'disrupting' the election.
I know to those on the Left, this is synonymous with "got Trump elected."
I don't know that's necessarily what he meant.
The fact is, whatever they can dump onto American social media to enhance outrage, to enhance division, to gin up anger - that all counts as 'disrupting'.
-Styopa
If you look at Hamilton 68 (http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/) which only tracks the known Russian twitter bots, the very top (i.e most frequent) hashtag is gunreformnow, and at #8 is guncontrol, and there's zero sign of any pro-gun hashtags.
I'm not seeing anything that actually justifies the Wired article's obviously liberal-biassed claims.
Looking at the sources linked in the article there were 57 tweets linked to Russian backed accounts with the hashtag #guncontrolnow.
57 tweets? Seriously?
All that from only 600 tracked accounts. I hope the bots get a day off because that is some serious tweeting. I think Wired might want to review the definition of the word "flood". The bots have learned the lessons of communism well, Russia pretends to pay the bots and the bots pretend to work.
why not? i am certain our alphabet agencies are guity of the exact same shit. I am not making excuses for russia, but lets at least own the kind of fucking bastards our intelligence agencies can be.
The Constitution also says that Congress how the power to conscript the Militia to enforce laws, repel invasion and suppress insurrection. Upon doing so, the called-upon Militias are placed under direct command of the President.
So any notion that the militias are there to fight back against the government is right out the fucking window considering the government has explicit authority to use those same militias to fight against any such attempt. I can think of two historical examples where this has happened; The Whiskey Rebellion, and the Civil War.
And it's not about "free society" either. Among the enumerated powers that Congress has, it's also explicit that a federal army can't be funded for more than two years. The founding fathers were justifiably wary of a perpetual, professional army. Instead, the idea was clearly to use militias of armed citizens, trained and organized at the state level, to be the first line of defense against invaders and insurgents (aka threats to the free state). The militias would hopefully either be able to resolve the conflict, or buy enough time for Congress to fund and organize a proper army.
Just sayin' - if you're not willing to pick up your weapons and fight upon orders of the federal government, you are not part of a militia in the way the Constitution talks about them. You are at best a gun enthusiast, and at worst a potential domestic terrorist.
=Smidge=
Goddam, have you ever used a gun before? The reason guns took over the world is that their so simple even an idiot can use them. This same asshole would have never figured out how to build a bomb, and if he did, probably would have killed himself doing it.
Truck attacks are indeed extremely dangerous. Do you think we should do nothing to prevent Truck attacks? Trucks at least are harder to use than guns, more expensive, and are harder to get into schools.
Play Command HQ online
You're under that impression, because of the people in this country stirring the shit, attempting to keep the left and the right distracted and at each other's throats, while they continue to loot what's left of America.
Just about every war we've ever gotten into has started over a lie. You'd figure people would have learned by now. Yet all you have to say is that country X is looking at us the wrong way to get everyone back into the fighting mood again. Pro-gun Russian bots.....give me a break!
The EU has 60,000 suicides out of 551 million people.
The US has 43,000 suicides out of 323 million people.
Which perspective are we supposed to get?
Doesn't stop the leftist types from shrieking "How **DARE** you **POLITICIZE** this **TRAGEDY**!!!" the moment anyone not so leftist demurs from their politicizing in favor of their solution of banning all guns.
Huh? The only group shrieking about politicizing a tragedy after a shooting is the gun lobby and their buddies on the right.
Without taking sides, if a public shooting and innocent dead people aren't a good reason to discuss the issue of gun control and public safety, when is a good time?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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have you read the constitution? did you know that the constitution says we cannot have a standing army? Did you know that we can have a navy but not an army? That's why we are supposed to have a militia. you might be young. During hurricane andrew, there were a lot of devastation in miami. As a result there was a lot of crime. Neighborhoods would organize and barricade their neighborhoods and organize armed patrols to protect their neighbors. This is the very definition of a militia. Its not always the crazy rednecks wanting to overthrow the government.
you do realize that this is because there was not supposed to be a standing army. We didnt have a standing army until after WWI. It is entirely unconstitutional.
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed. DUI? Ban all cars, alcohol, and drugs (including medicines). Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports. Cyberbullying? Ban computers. Works for a lot of things!
I am a 6yr veteran of the first gulf war. Yes i have used many of the same guns you are talking about. This guy WAS smart enough to build a bomb. For fucks sake there are uneducated jihadists in Iraq building IEDs every day and their education extends to addition, some multiplication, and fucking their sisters. He was smart enough to use a fire alarm.. where do kids congregate after a fire alarm is pulled... in a parking lot. So yes a truck would have been a very effective tool for mass murder.
I don't want any gun control legislation. I don't care what tragedy occurred. It's unconstitutional. All of it.
If you want to restrict guns do it legally - amend the constitution first, then create laws that don't violate the constitution.
As it is, every single law, regulation, etc. that interferes with US citizens keeping and bearing firearms is unconstitutional. If you disagree you're incorrect. If you don't like that right guaranteed by the constitution, you're free to work to change the constitution. Any restriction at any other level is illegal.
Fine, you have the right to bare arms (lets forget about the militia qualifier since the courts have).
It doesn't follow that you the right to bare any arm you wish. You don't have the right to own assault weapons, semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks, high capacity magazines, etc, etc.
A low capacity, low power, handgun is perfectly sufficient for self-defence. A single shot rifle is perfectly adequate for hunting. Fancier guns locked up at a shooting range are good for recreational shooting. Mandatory background checks for any purchase cut down on some of the illegal weapons. Maybe even mandatory training would pass muster.
You'd still have the right to bear arms, but you'd cut out a lot of the mass shootings, and maybe you put a dent in the gun culture that kills so many people.
I stole this Sig
no, he tried to say this was a right wing nazi militia dude... its the whole undertones of trying to tie it back to a particular group. It turned out to be fake news that he was in that white supremist group. I wanted to point out that before someone jump to some right-wing-gun-toting conclusion, this county is overwhelmingly democrat. The chances of him being a right wing nut are not good so best not go there. The point is the dude was off his rocker, just like the columbine kids. BTW he was 19, so you might want to catch up here. He was old enough to vote and was old enough to buy his rifle nearly a year ago. His dad died a few years ago and he just lost his mom to pneumonia. He picked VALENTINES day for a very specific reason. We dont yet know why, but rest asured it was significant. He got expelled a while ago and it wasnt on valentines day. It _could_ be that his ex-girlfriend had a new boyfriend that ended up beating him up (maybe he had it coming) but that is still to be determined. My point is "Gun Toting Pro-Trump" is about as unlikely as it will get in Broward County.
Without taking sides, if a public shooting and innocent dead people aren't a good reason to discuss the issue of gun control and public safety, when is a good time?
Here's the problem: "Mass shootings" account for only about 0.1% of gun deaths, and are NOTHING like the normal quotidian killings that account for the other 99.9%:
* Mass shootings tend to be carefully planned and premeditated.
* Normal shootings tend to be impulsive and emotional.
* Mass shootings are often done by people with no prior violent criminal record.
* Normal shootings are usually by people with a history of violence.
* Mass shootings tend to be done with rifles.
* Normal shootings are mostly done with handguns.
* Mass shooters are usually crazy people.
* Normal shooters are usually stupid people.
So policies directed at mass shootings tend to be ineffective at actually reducing gun deaths. Because of the meticulous planning, mass shooters are difficult to detect. Because of their mental illnesses, they are difficult to deter. This is precisely where gun control will be least effective. The world's worst mass shooting was in Norway, not America.
Another problem with discussing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting, is that gun control advocates tend to let their emotions get away from them, and say a lot of silly things that are factually incorrect about "machine guns" and "automatic rifles" (both of which are illegal in America). This just exacerbates the feeling among gun owners that they belong to a different culture, and that there is no room for compromise or moderation.
The right to bear arms for anyone in a state-sanctioned militia must not be infringed.
It seems unlikely that you're actually as ignorant as you're pretending to be. But you seem to think it's rhetorically important to pretend you're unfamiliar with the constitution, so, sure, let's play.
The phrasing of the 2nd Amendment means the OPPOSITE of what you're transparently pretending it means. The people who wrote the Bill of Rights had just freed themselves from living under a regime that disarmed individuals, arguing that the crown's soldiers were all the law enforcement anyone in the colonies would need. Which was nonsense, of course. But the founders were absolutely dead set against allowing their new government to, for example, take a farmer's personal weapons away, or allow a local governor or other figure to have a monopoly on the ownership of weapons. The founders were very uncomfortable about there even being a standing army of any kind, even at the local militia level. But the realized it was going to be necessary, and - knowing there would be people like you - used some of that precious space in the Bill of Rights to explicitly pre-empt exactly the sort of thing you'd like to do.
If they were to write the amendment in today's conversational language, it would go like this: "Because a standing professional military, even if just local in scope, looks like an inevitable necessity, nobody with government power should use that as an excuse to infringe on a citizen's right to personally keep and bear their own arms."
You know, just like the 1st Amendment says that nobody in government can prevent you from speaking, assembling, etc. The Bill of Rights doesn't establish some standard for your right to speak, or your right to defend yourself. It anticipates people like you with a totalitarian mindset looking to use government power to control others, and they identified some potential hot spots (speech, self defense, privacy, etc) that merited specific language in the country's charter.
Of course you know all of this, because you've also read the many letters, transcripts, and papers authored by the people who wrote the Bill of Rights, who come right out and explain to you that you have it exactly wrong, and they tell you why they said what they said. So quit with the theatrics, and just admit that you're hoping nobody will notice when you're trying to mislead on the subject because you don't have the energy to try to amend the constitution in your effort to return the monopoly on the keeping and bearing of arms back to the way the British crown liked it.
Liberals don't care about what guns you own
Ah, that explains why we keep hearing so many liberals shouting,"Who needs an AR-15? They should be banned!" Please, now you're just embarrassing yourself. The country is littered with laws - written and passed by liberal legislators and governors - that explicitly DO care. States like California and Maryland prohibit, for example, any handgun that they haven't expressly listed (by make and model) as being acceptable. They consider things like 11 rounds to be illegal, but 10 or 8 to be less so, and so bits of sheet metal bent into different sizes to hold the ammo are very much what liberals care about. Which, again, you know, and are trying to pretend you don't.
So what is your plan for reducing the violent deaths?
Enforce existing laws. It's too politically incorrect in liberal circles to call crazy people crazy, so liberals would rather allow crazy people to buy guns than be forced to act all judgey and hurt a crazy person's feelings. Because people who are documented as being crazy are immediately stopped during their federal background checks from buying guns. While on that subject: the NICS system blocks tens of thousands of people from making gun purchases every year. The very act of submitting their federal paperwork to attempt such a purchase IS A FELONY. And yet
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
No. You've got it exactly wrong, and the founders who wrote the Bill of Rights explained it at length - and you can read it for yourself in copious papers, transcripts, and letters that explain their thinking. They reluctantly recognized that a standing military (a "well regulated militia") was going to be inevitably necessary. But - just like the rest of the big ones in the Bill of Rights - they recognized that some people would try to use the existence of a professional military as an excuse to deny citizens their rights to personal self defense. They had just shook OFF a government (the British crown) that did exactly that: took away all personal weapons from colonists, with the excuse that those red coats could be relied on to handle any reason someone might feel the need for one.
The second amendment says, essentially, "Well, it turns out that we'll probably need a standing military of some sort. People with government power may not use that as an excuse to infringe on citizens' personal rights to keep and bear arms."
I'm not sure how people keep getting this wrong.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
its amazing how many millions of dollars HRC spent on advertizing and yet $150k in facebook ads elected trump. If you could EVER make a case that Killary was NEVER qualified to be president, you just did. Why elect some bitter turd who would spend hundreds of millions of YOUR tax dollars on shit that could be done for just $150 THOUSAND???? Totally not qualified if anything you say is even remotely true.
please explain what gun was used to kill 50 people in France on Bastille day? Im still waiting. You cannot legislate crazy.
A low capacity, low power, handgun is perfectly sufficient for self-defence.
Yeah, that's why cops carry low power Glock .40s that can only hold 15+1 rounds.
yes it has
http://www.tallahassee.com/sto...
"Local law enforcement: No ties between militia and Florida high school shooter"
thats like someone doing something and then claiming alegience to Al Queda. Its not the same thing.
so Russia is pro-trump? Did you know all this false crap in the Trump Dossier is from Russia, kind of anti Trump. You know the setup where the Russians came to meet with Trump and met with Jr? This was a setup and he could smell the stink, so were these russians also on Trump's side trying to set him up. And now is Trump Pro-Russia? Trump is Pro US. The Dems including the media (most Dems and media) is anti US, or maybe they do not care about the US in a utilitarian way. Now this army of bots for hire is pro gun? does it make a difference? Will Trump get the blame for anything that is not looking like your point of view? Just blame Trump for everything happening in the world you don't like. These bots are probably controlled by a 14yo in his basement. Or quite possibly they are controlled from Clinton's server sited at the FBI which is being run by a DOJ intern trying to make news for the NYT who is hacked into some Russian PC and slaving it to control the bot army. Any decent hacker will try and lay the blame on an obvious target that is not them.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
because the people who oppose all gun regulation have a lobby (the NRA) telling them how to vote, they listen, they vote and above all they're single issuer voters.
You have that backwards. I know how I want the NRA to vote, they listen, and (mostly) lobby in my interest. As long as they do that I send them money (voluntarily, I might add). As for "single issue"? I don't know anyone who is a single issue voter. Then again, I don't hang out in churches, poetry readings, SJW meetings, nor white pride meetings.
>"It doesn't follow that you the right to bare any arm you wish. You don't have the right to own assault weapons, semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks, high capacity magazines, etc, etc."
I understand your point, but you undermine it with misinformation.
1) People don't generally have any access to "assault weapons". Those are AUTOMATIC fire, and HIGHLY restricted. If you are talking about something "scary looking" like an AR-15, that is just a modern rife, and is no more powerful or dangerous than any typical hunting rifle.
2) No right to semi-automatic? You do realize that ALL modern self-defense guns are semi-automatic, don't you? I mean, what, you want just revolvers? Do you know that revolvers fire almost as fast as semi-automatic guns? So you think people should defend themselves against bad people with semi-automatics using what, a flint-lock? A single shot, bolt-loading gun? You think you can just make semi-automatics disappear from the streets?
3) What do you define as a "high capacity magazine"? 5 shots? 10? 15? 20? 30? A typical full-sized handgun is 15 to 17 shots. Do realize it takes only a second to swap in a fresh magazine? Do you think laws limiting magazines to some arbitrary number like maybe 10 will stop a crazed person from obtaining and using something bigger, or 4 smaller ones instead?
Yeah, you're right. It's crazy how guns manage to keep shooting people all on their own. Serves you right for giving them artificial intelligence.
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed. DUI? Ban all cars, alcohol, and drugs (including medicines). Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports. Cyberbullying? Ban computers. Works for a lot of things!
Not sure which logical fallacy you're committing most here, reductio ad absurdum, straw-man, or what. There are people who would like to see weapons of WAR be illegal to posses by people not engaged in that profession, without banning ALL guns. Personally I'd love to see all guns banned, IF, IF, IIIIFFFFF you could somehow get ALL the guns off the streets and out of people's possessions, PERMANENTLY, which is physically impossible, so no, I don't actually want to see ALL guns banned, thank you very much. HOWEVER, civilians (and most police,) don't NEED to have or be able to have devices whose sole purpose is to kill LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE RAPIDLY. The COUNTERARGUMENT to this is that we NEED them because "freedom" and "murica". Well... then we ALSO need, by that same pair of, for want of a better word, argument, access, the right to have, keep, posses and bear, all manner of arms, too, besides just weapons of war, like assault rifles and machine guns. These include nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological, and energy weapons. Because... 'freedom'. Also, because... 'murica'. Will you be okay with everyone being allowed to grow anthrax and culture small pox, and walk around with things far more dangerous than these? Why is it just assault rifles that get this protection?
See how stupid that argument sounds? It goes both ways. But I digress... I actually came here to opine on Twitter, which is to say the following: if Twitter allows bots to post shit, what the fuck is the point of Twitter? If they let bots on, let bots keep it.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
"Militia" doesn't mean what you think it means
If you think there's only one plausible way to interpret the word as it was used in the second amendment, then you are making the same mistake.
In fact, with the way you're throwing around the word "freedom" I suspect that you're making a similar mistake there as well. Let's put this in non-gun terms: Which of the GPL or MIT license is more "free"? I don't want you to answer this question, rather I would like you to recognize that the answer isn't simple. There is more to freedom than individual rights.
And yet countries with gun control have far fewer mass shootings. That one in Norway had a high death toll, but it was very rare.
The NY Times reprinted an article today going over the stats. The number of guns (total, per capita, whatever) correlates with the number of mass shootings. It also correlates with the number of gun deaths (and violent deaths in general), which you're correct, is a bigger problem.
Mass shootings get the press because they're dramatic. But if you can use that impact to do something about the gun problem, go for it. It will help all around.
I'm not entirely certain you should count yourself among those who speak English...
Not that I support the position you're arguing against... But your argument is pretty absurd. You're comparing very dissimilar forms of advertising. The Russian trollvertising was rather brilliantly designed to go viral, amplify, and kill the immune system. The advertisement for of HIV.
Run-of-the-mill political advertising is really just annoying bullshit that most people roll their eyes at. The Russians built theirs to put us in ideological bunkers. They didn't want to change minds, they wanted to keep minds from changing.
Ahh. A sophist. "Militia" doesn't mean what you think it means, and a prefatory clause isn't binding.
As a self professed liberal, do you also support other laws which would restrict civil liberties? How about the 1st A? It starts with "Congress shall make no law...". So, that means that the States (which definitely aren't "Congress") can make laws establishing religion, restricting speech and press, etc. Right?
Living in a system with the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty means you accept more risk. Fortunately for you, you can move to almost anywhere else and trade that freedom and liberty for less risk and more security. Your choice.
Except you're not actually accepting of more risk in exchange for more freedom, at least not if you're like most people who oppose gun control.
People generally try to maintain a certain level of risk. If your car gets a seat belt you speed up, if you hit wet pavement you slow down. Guns and gun control are no different.
Ever notice the other things people who favour gun rights tend to believe? They think law enforcement should have a much freer hand to enforce order. They want to get rid of Mexicans, Muslims, and other outsiders who seem dangerous. They try to repress LGBTQ and people who live alternative lifestyles. This isn't a coincidence, they correctly realize that guns are dangerous, so at the same time they're trying to make guns more available they're trying to reduce the number of people whom they find threatening (particularly if they have a gun).
It's the same thing that's happening now, neither side wants school shootings. So one side wants gun control to reduce the number of shootings, the other wants guns in the classroom so the teachers can enforce greater order and they want those weird loner kids made normal so they're less likely to become a shooter.
Gun rights people don't have a greater belief in freedom, they're just willing to live with a higher perceived risk from firearms by accepting a lower perceived risk from other sources.
I stole this Sig
Your view that "assault rifles" have but one sole purpose is incorrect. The fact that military and police have a similar firearm does not mean that everyone else uses it the same way. I use mine for target competition. I know ranchers who use one for varmint control (prairie dogs, coyote, and the like). Korean shopowners used them to great effect in the defense of their property during the Rodney King riots. What we don't need is people deciding for us what we do or don't need.
I don't see why you got voted 'interesting' The leader of the 'Republic of Florida' Militia which advocates for white civil rights and an ethnostate confirmed we was a member but insisted he acted on his own. That same leader then walked those statements backward as the law enforcement agency that monitors the group can't confirm his membership either. For those not researching into it look up the 'Republic of Florida' Militia and decide for yourself before you believe an internet troll. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/f...
I don't read AC
None of this matters because the people who oppose all gun regulation have a lobby (the NRA) telling them how to vote, they listen, they vote and above all they're single issuer voters.
That's just wrong. Some of us prefer the highest law in the nation to be upheld as it's written. There are plenty of other rights enumerated in there that I don't want to see trampled on. Giving the government ability to ignore any part of it is a dangerous precedent and must be fought against at every step of the way.
If you want to get rid of the 2nd amendment, then do it the proper way with another amendment. If you think that's unreasonably hard, then hold a constitutional convention and write a new constitution that's easier to amend. And if you think that's too hard, then the only option you have left is to gather your fellow anti-gun folks, pick up your weapons and conquer everyone who disagrees with you.
As a fellow European coming from Finland that has more guns than the UK per capita (we have a large rural population and a lot of stuff that's hunted) I'm gonna try to be the guy to see both sides here.
You're correct in that, with no guns there's almost no school shootings. We've had 2 in the whole of 2000s (with a total of 18 dead including the 2 perps) and we have to my knowledge the most guns per capita of the western nations after the US. But the thing is since the constitution in the states is different, it makes very little sense in these discussions to hammer say, the British model because it's should be clear that something quite like that will never fly in the US, which is where the discussion usually ends. However thing is there is middle-ground between 'ban all guns' and status quo of the US. The whole gun control 'debate' in the US from what I've gathered is more of a shouting match of 2 sides neither of which are actually willing to work together to do something to repair the situation but are both insisting that the magical answer is somehow 'more guns' or 'less guns'. It's not just about the absolute number of firearms, it's more about what methods are taken to try and prevent mentally unstable people from acquiring weapons.
It ought to be obvious that as long as it is possible for nearly anyone to walk into a store and walk out with a gun or guns without any background checks, the amount of gun-crime will stay high. The standard counter-argument for requiring a background check and/or a doctor's statement of mental sanity (as is the case in here for example) is that it will not help because criminals will always get guns from the black market, but that's not true. I mean, obviously some segment of criminals will always be able to acquire guns illegally, but the point is that most people who commit crimes are not criminal masterminds that have the will or the ability or the mental stability to do so, so requiring some checks before one can walk out of the store with a weapon does provably reduce the amount of gun crime and deaths without removing the option of gun ownership from law-abiding, sane people. But related to this problem is the fact that all of this is handled on a local level which is what makes it so tricky. I mean, any amount of background checks or sensible vetting makes little to no difference if one can drive 30 miles out of town and get one's gun across the state line without a check. For gun control measures to work they have to be nation-wide, which means involving the federal government which immediately drives many on the right in the US into full paranoia mode.
Cars are sometimes evoked as a comparison with people pointing out that you need to see a doctor and take part in training before you're given a license to drive a vehicle. People then point out that well, owning a car is not a constitutional right so the comparison is not valid, but that's not true. Think for a moment if it was the case that owning a car was a constitutional right. Would that mean it would make sense to make it legal to just sell a vehicle to anyone who walks through the door as long as they're of a certain age? Would that be something that would make sense for public safety overall? If not, then how come the same attitude makes sense for guns?
So to summarize; dear fellow non-american westerners: stop throwing the 'ït's so obvious, just get rid of all the guns and the problem will be solved, duh!' -card onto the table as it's not helpful in the context of the american legal landscape and overall attitude towards guns. And dear Americans: stop treating all discussion about gun control as if the advocates wanna get rid of the 2nd amendment altogether and consider the fact that there are methods of limiting the availability of guns to mentally unstable individuals that could be implemented without confiscating all of the weapons from everyone or removing the 2nd amendment.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The bad wording of that clause in the 2nd amendment is part of the problem. Even if we accept your interpretation of it, "arms" is vague and was probably never intended to allow individuals to own WMD.
The US is uniquely unable to deal with mass shootings because of this, and because politically it is impossible to properly fund mental healthcare.
The US also has a problem with the far right, particularly supremacists. Elliot Rodger was probably the first young man to be radicalized by the far right on the internet, and since then we have seen a string of similar murderers and terrorists attacking schools. Again, the US seems to be finding it very hard to deal with, because any attempt to even study the problem is met with howls of "mah free speech!" and censorship. The marketplace of ideas has failed to deal with this problem, just like marketplaces always do.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Mass shootings get the press because they're dramatic. But if you can use that impact to do something about the gun problem, go for it. It will help all around.
Not true. The polarizing arguments that follow mass shootings do far more harm than good.
You might want to read up on the history on the gun control movement in America. In the 1980s, there was a strong advocacy movement for restrictions on handguns (responsible for 75% of gun homicides and even more gun suicides), and HCI and the Brady Campaign made it clear that they were not after "long guns" used for hunting. Their influence was growing.
That came to an abrupt end on the morning of January 17th, 1989, when Patrick Purdy walk onto a school playground in Stockton, California, opened fire with an SKS semi-automatic rifle, killing five children and wounding 32 more. The advocates took advantage of the publicity and outrage to completely abandon their assurances of focusing on handguns, and called for bans on "automatic rifles" (already illegal), and "AK-47s" (also already illegal). They got their "assault weapons" ban, but alienated millions of hunters and others that had supported them. The backlash swept dozens of gun control advocates from public office in the 1994 Republican mid-term landslide. The ban was repealed. NRA membership ballooned. Trust was gone. Willingness to compromise was gone. Any sort of new restriction on gun ownership is unthinkable in today's political climate.
Doesn't stop the leftist types from shrieking "How **DARE** you **POLITICIZE** this **TRAGEDY**!!!" the moment anyone not so leftist demurs from their politicizing in favor of their solution of banning all guns.
Seems to me it's the right wing that starts shrieking "How **DARE** you **POLITICIZE** this **TRAGEDY**!!!" the moment anybody suggests that allowing complete nutcases to own firearms might not be a good idea. Then, when they are done shrieking, they go back to handing out 'thoughts and prayers' which in their mind is the only real fix for the problem of mass shootings.
Russia's goal is to create division in the US, not to promote any particular ideology.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Maybe life on our side of the Atlantic pond is a tiny bit different than in the US, but...
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed.
...I see quite a bit of difference between gun and all the example you cite.
In the past couple of decade I've never been through any situation where I've been thinking I'm lucky/happy to have a gun because it really saved the situation, or thinking that I wish I could have had one.
Guns don't seem fundamentally important and useful objects in everyday life. They mostly bring in a danger and useless risk without bringing much benefit.
DUI? Ban all cars,
Yup. Cars kill people (Well technically, irresponsible drivers do, whatever, bla bla...)
But cars are tremendously useful, (even though our more densely populated city tend to enjoy better public transportations).
Lots of services and people could not get their job done without one.
There are risks to car, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
drugs (including medicines).
Medecine can kill people (errors, side effects, addiction to prescription drugs, development of drugs-resisting microbes due to industrial over-use and over-prescription, etc.)
Still, they save lives. A lot of them. Think the drastic reduction of death since the discovery and development of antibiotics.
There are risks to medecine, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports.
Do I really need to mention the health benefits of sports ?
Every day, countless of times bats get swung, and most of the time it's to hit a ball as part of some healthy outdoor sport.
(Then a tiny proportion is to hit a ball in front of a camera as part of a heavily corrupted televisual event in order to make money,
and a couple of times it's on someone else head).
There are risks to sports equipment, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
Cyberbullying? Ban computers.
You're writing on one. I don't think I even need to explain how my above logic applies also to this of your examples...
Works for a lot of things!
Yup, works even for kitchen implements:
knife kill people ! let's ban kitchen.
And again my argument works too :
- How many time did someone got stabbed with a kitchen knife in your neighborhood ?
- How many time did you yourself use your kitchen knife to make you a sandwich, cut some cheese, or any other common use to feed your self.
Yup, there are risks of having knife in your home. But the vast amount of time, they're mostly used to prepare food.
alcohol, and drugs
Here the situation is a bit different :
- the usefulness is a lot lower (mainly entertainment, and some social use)
- the risk aren't that great (there are long term risk on the health due to excessive use. But occasional and reasonable use isn't lethal).
End result ? These are heavily regulated.
Not everyone is allowed to acquire these (e.g.: minor aren't)
etc.
And now let's look at the gun :
like knifes they can be used to kill people.
But unlike knives, we're not in the situations (at least in our corner of the world) where everyday million of rounds are fired and thus making the life of everyone much easier.
There's no tremendous benefit in everyone of the population happily shooting each other.
Again, I've reached my current point in life without ever being in a situation where a gun was necessary, unlike any other of your example.
It seems to me that there are no obvious everyday use for guns for the vast majority of the population.
Thus in my opinion, it should go the same route as drugs :
it should be regulated.
Some professions (police enforcement) might n
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Ever heard of the Minutemen? Mujahedeen, Free French resistance, I could go on. Militia is not a bunch of old paranoid grey beards wearing camo and running around in the woods ready to stand off the government.
A militia is armed members of the community that help to defend that community and their nation against invaders and tyranny. A disarmed people cannot provide a militia. In the language of the late 1700's well regulated meant functional or working. A disarmed people cannot be a functional or well regulated militia. Only an armed populace can form an effective well regulated (functional) militia.
Thus the 2nd amendment to ensure that when and if needed the minutemen could respond to defend. That has not changed.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Yes Bin Laden did fight with the Mujahedeen in the 80's. He didn't turn against the US until the Saudi Government chose to let us help save Kuwait from Iraq in the first gulf war. Bin Laden took offense at letting the infidel west into Saudi Arabia and lead the fight against Iraq. At that point he started targeting us. But in the 80's he was an ally against the common enemy the Soviet Union. (as was Saddam Hussain for that matter).
Bin Laden did not create or significantly fund the Muj, he joined them a few years into the fight and lent his money to support but mostly he was there as a foreign Muj fighter, and yes we trained him as well as many other Muj fighters.
If you are going to try to cite history to make an argument you should know what you are talking about.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
yet he could buy an assault rifle, without even a responsible adult to agree to keep control of it most of the time, at age 18?
Average age of US combatants in Vietnam pisses all over that argument.
Every decent person in America should be down at their local NRA office and riding the people inside out of town
You're advocating violence against people because of their political views, and yet also want to remove their ability to defend themselves against you?
Nice way to justify their entire fucking position.
Well, if you guys would stop tying your hands while your children are getting murdered to fuck, maybe you'd get less condecension? "I'm sorry, parents, your children simply had to die, as some paragraph from 1789 written by onmiscient superhumans decreed that from that moment on, regardless of what problems society has, everyone is allowed to have guns. Have more kids and try again."
Very nicely said. However, one other aspect of American culture, which seems to be more or less unique, is "if you're not with us, you're against us". For some reason, everything has to be completely binary - if you're not "pro" guns, then you want to completely repeal the constitution and spend the rest of your days eating babies. If you're not anti-guns, then you're obviously a psychopath who's just working out how to kill as many men, women and children as possible.
It's hard to have any sort of sensible conversation about anything at all when there can only be two highly extreme views on any subject. Even a well reasoned and considered post such as yours looks pretty inflammatory when viewed with your binary glasses on, and that's a real shame.
I'll just end by saying that I'm a Brit, and I'm really fed up with hearing about shootings in the US. It turns out this 'officially' the 18th mass shooting this year (yeah, so that's one every 60 hours), and yet the first I've heard about - and even that's enough to piss me off. How on earth anyone in the USA isn't frothing at the mouth and having involuntary ticks by now is beyond me.
If you're going to shoot your neighbor for kicking your dog, you have mental issues. And I can understand kicking his ass, but not shooting him. Now the way to combat your train of thought, lets reverse your dream. Lets say everybody is mandated to CARRY a gun. Now neighbor kicks dog, owner thinks... I could just kick his ass, or I could pull out my gun.. Oh wait he has a gun too, now I also chance losing my life and the life of my loved ones. I think I'll go have a talk with my neighbor about why its not good to kick dogs.
Take suicides out of the numbers...if someone wants to 'off' themselves, they'll find a way.
And, if you take suicides out of the gun death numbers, you basically now have gun deaths less than car deaths annually.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If a dealer sells at a gun show, he still has to do background check and process Form 4473.
Private citizen to private citizen sales at a gun show do occur, but most private gun sales are between friends and family and many are not even sales, e.g. grandpa passing down a hunting rifle. Lots of other private sales are criminal-criminal sales, for which no new "universal background check" laws would do anything to prevent.
Plus, it is already a felony to give or sell a weapon to someone you know or should have known was not allowed to possess it.
18 U.S.C. 922 (d):
It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person— (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; (2) is a fugitive from justice; (3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)); (4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution; (5) who, being an alien— (A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or (B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(26))); (6) who [2] has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; (7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship; (8) is subject to a court order that restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child, except that this paragraph shall only apply to a court order that— (A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had the opportunity to participate; and (B) (i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or (ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or (9) has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
And also
(1) It shall be unlawful for a person to sell, deliver, or otherwise transfer to a person who the transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe is a juvenile—
(A) a handgun; or
(B) ammunition that is suitable for use only in a handgun.
(2) It shall be unlawful for any person who is a juvenile to knowingly possess—
(A) a handgun; or
(B) ammunition that is suitable for use only in a handgun
As an NRA Life Member, I would have no issue with requiring private sales to require background check, as long as there was an exception for family. Also need to consider actual transfers...Oregon's law is written such that if I say "Hold my rifle while I climb over this fence, then hand me both rifles, then you climb over the fence." we would both have committed illegal transfers.
As a fellow European coming from Finland that has more guns than the UK per capita (we have a large rural population and a lot of stuff that's hunted) I'm gonna try to be the guy to see both sides here.
You're correct in that, with no guns there's almost no school shootings. We've had 2 in the whole of 2000s (with a total of 18 dead including the 2 perps) and we have to my knowledge the most guns per capita of the western nations after the US.
Wow. If that's correct, then Finland is 6 times worse than the US per capita for school shootings.
Suicide is a human right.
It isn't the will of a few 'gun nuts' that prevents a fundamental shift of the basic rights of a U.S. citizen. Spare us the hyperbolic and breathless 'think of the children' concern trolling.
Furthermore, those who let their emotions and authoritarian leanings decide what was best for society, and failed to consider the unintended consequences, brought us Prohibition and the Drug War. The Drug War, which is still ongoing, where the massive amount of funding is spent for paramilitary police forces and strain legal and prison systems to the benefit of NO ONE. This money could have been used for mental health care and school counselors to help prevent exactly this type of event.
The solution will never be stripping people of their rights in order to treat the symptoms of a problem.