I won't comment on the fentanyl, but the great majority of drug smuggling is marijuana. Plenty of people are ODing on fentanyl they get in the USA and my impression is that this is just another Republican bogeyman, but I don't have the figures.
You know full well that conservative Americans are not going to agree to any migrant worker pr…
I won't comment on the fentanyl, but the great majority of drug smuggling is marijuana. Plenty of people are ODing on fentanyl they get in the USA and my impression is that this is just another Republican bogeyman, but I don't have the figures.
You know full well that conservative Americans are not going to agree to any migrant worker program any more than they are going to take jobs picking fruit. That ship has sailed. It used to work but then Republicans turned immigration into one of their many fuels for hate. They go into rage if they hear a foreign language.
If violent crime is increasing, what do you think the reason is? Every time they turn on the TV they are stoked into resentment and rage, and guns are a step away from vending machines.
You've seen the graphs and the maps and you know as well as I that the states with the most lax gun laws have the most gun death. You know how many thousands have been shot just in the last few months. You know how much different it is in countries that don't have that psychotic Second Amendment. And I know you are smarter than you are sounding here with that tired "only outlaws will have guns" stuff.
If things keep going on this way, everyone will have to go armed all the time, everywhere, even if they hate guns. And the deaths will keep rising as conditions get worse (we are not far away from droughts raising the price of food above the rent/mortgage; when people are really hungry, not just "ready for supper," things are going to get a lot worse).
Yes there is a gun cult and yes there are many who would take on the cops rather than give up their arsenals. I can't bring myself to shed too many tears for people like that.
The gun culture and the proliferation of people with enough guns to mount an invasion is something we are going to have to deal with sometime, and by letting it get as far as it has with nutjobs like Gov. Abbott we have let all the better options expire. As with AGW, the longer we wait the worse and the more inhumane the solutions are going to be.
I do understand what you're saying; you've been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns, I didn't; you don't ever want to find yourself helpless in the face of an armed intruder, I don't entertain scenarios like that. I respect your opinions on a lot of issues and I in no way regard you as a gun kook.
But America has millions of gun kooks and we need to take their guns away, and that cannot be done as long a the damned things are freely available.
Religion will dwindle. Fundamentalists are too much its face and in a lot of Europe religion affiliation is on life support. I do know a few people who are moved to goodness by it, but we both know that they are outnumbered by the religious bigots and psychos like Amy Barrett.
With increasing marijuana legalization and the fact that meth and fentanyl can return higher dollar amounts on much less bulk I suspect that marijuana is no longer the top drug coming across. This year in the Phoenix PD's biggest drug bust it was one million fentanyl pills worth orders of magnitude more money than the same volume of pot. The thing is marijuana isn't a direct cause of death. I don't dismiss it as a political talking point. Both parties have talking points that are a mixture of truth, hyperbole and BS.
Migrant workers. I guess I could ask which conservatives and what percentage? Not a monolith. Some Republican conservatives think that the Democrats favor open borders under the assumption that they will vote for democrats. They might change their mind as the number of "minority" yellow dog Democrats continues to decrease. More a matter of partisan politics rearing its ugly head than racial bigotry? I don't know the ratio.
Guns. In some/many ways I agree with you, implementation is the turd in the punchbowl. I don't have a solution. The current method for identifying kooks is arrest records which are sealed for the minors who shoot up their school. Legal gun purchase is stricter than at any time in my life. At one time I could order a gun from Shotgun News and have it shipped to a kitchen table FFL friend. Those days are long gone. Stolen firearms are a commodity.
Most "gun deaths" are suicides and most of them are men. Women typically choose intentional overdosing on pills. Would the disappearance of firearms reduce the suicide rate? I don't know but I doubt it would make a big difference.
Religion is fading. I don't know the ratio of goodness vs. bigotry. Before I retired, I sat in a lunch table group comprised of a Catholic who was far more open minded than the stereotype, a protestant fundamentalist, a bisexual wink and a nod pagan and me, a marginal Buddhist. Sounds like the start of a joke without the rabbi. We were able to have civil discussion about all things. No racists, the fundamentalist was strongly anti-abortion, and a marriage is between one man and one-woman guy. My none of my business who you love and want to spend your life with didn't sour our friendship. Given the heterosexual divorce rate I don't see how same sex marriage is going to do any damage. His reference came from his religion. The pagan was in the closet about his sexuality although he had confided in me. I'm safe to confide in.
The point of that paragraph is that while my personal experience is not a viable statistic, my circle includes more conservatives than you or most in this group of people which probably gives me a more charitable view of them than you although I can understand since you have most likely faced more bigotry than me.
Two thirds of gun deaths are suicides and firearm suicide is 90% effective; other forms, 10%. Cut your wrists you are likelier to cripple your hands than die.
About 41% (last I checked) of Americans own guns, yet there are 3-400 million of them in private possession, which means a lot of people own arsenals, in no way defensible as self-protection. Some people went out and bought five new guns every time Obama got something through Congress. People like that are sick, sick, sick.
I never said it was be easy, not with the intensity of fanaticism around them, even having one's children murdered doesn't shake RKBA devotion much. What I did say is that we have to start now, and I don't mean performative crap like raising the assault rifle age to 21, I mean a great restriction on ownership. At the time you could mail order them we didn't have tens of millions of clinically insane people one trigger away from turning kindergartners into hamburger.
OK so you have known some fundamentalists who were not crazy. So have I. But we both know better than to be on the next one we meet being sane and reasonable.
The abortion thing: this is garbage. Same people who say aborting an eight-cell blastula is murder will stridently oppose a nickel of tax on Elon the Mess to keep the born baby fed for a week. This is just own-the-libs/conservative-membership stuff, like Trump Won.
Of the successful suicides in my world, one was a firearm, the others; single vehicle "accident" (left room for doubt for his family), poison, pills (overdose), and one hanging. Where there is a will, there is a way.
With regard to arsenals. Many gun owners own more than one gun. Hunters will typically own a .22 rimfire for small game and inexpensive plinking, a shotgun (birds and other game), a high-powered bolt action rifle for large game, a pistol for protection, a semiautomatic sporter rifle for many utility occasions (hunters are moving away from bolt actions). That's five and a common number for hunters. Some people collect more like guitar players collect guitars. You might call that an arsenal, but I wouldn't.
An obstacle that I see for gun control is the obsession with "assault weapons." You are more likely to be killed by fist, feet or other personal weapons than any rifle, let alone a so-called assault rifle. When I was on active duty there was nothing with that designation in the military, it is a political phrase. For some people it is cosmetics. Black, looks military, has a detachable magazine, etc. where the restrictions are absurd. The real desire is to ban semiautomatic firearms in general, but probably something like 90% of the firearms sold today are semiautomatic. Will the taxpayers reimburse gun owners for the banned 400 million banned guns, or will the government just steal them?
I agree with you that some people shouldn't have them. How do we identify them? There are many people designated as prohibited possessors, felons etc. They buy stolen ones on the street or have their girlfriend carry it for them. Implementation is largely a failure.
The devil is in the details.
The anti-abortion crowd has a very powerful tool, ultrasound and pictures of the legally aborted that undeniably look like little humans. Cute as puppies and kittens. I see that more as vicious emotional punishment of women who had abortions for good reason than a preventative. Ending abortions is as vain a goal as getting rid of lethal weapons. They have both been with us for all of recorded history and will continue to be so.
I won't comment on the fentanyl, but the great majority of drug smuggling is marijuana. Plenty of people are ODing on fentanyl they get in the USA and my impression is that this is just another Republican bogeyman, but I don't have the figures.
You know full well that conservative Americans are not going to agree to any migrant worker program any more than they are going to take jobs picking fruit. That ship has sailed. It used to work but then Republicans turned immigration into one of their many fuels for hate. They go into rage if they hear a foreign language.
If violent crime is increasing, what do you think the reason is? Every time they turn on the TV they are stoked into resentment and rage, and guns are a step away from vending machines.
You've seen the graphs and the maps and you know as well as I that the states with the most lax gun laws have the most gun death. You know how many thousands have been shot just in the last few months. You know how much different it is in countries that don't have that psychotic Second Amendment. And I know you are smarter than you are sounding here with that tired "only outlaws will have guns" stuff.
If things keep going on this way, everyone will have to go armed all the time, everywhere, even if they hate guns. And the deaths will keep rising as conditions get worse (we are not far away from droughts raising the price of food above the rent/mortgage; when people are really hungry, not just "ready for supper," things are going to get a lot worse).
Yes there is a gun cult and yes there are many who would take on the cops rather than give up their arsenals. I can't bring myself to shed too many tears for people like that.
The gun culture and the proliferation of people with enough guns to mount an invasion is something we are going to have to deal with sometime, and by letting it get as far as it has with nutjobs like Gov. Abbott we have let all the better options expire. As with AGW, the longer we wait the worse and the more inhumane the solutions are going to be.
I do understand what you're saying; you've been in combat, I haven't; you grew up with guns, I didn't; you don't ever want to find yourself helpless in the face of an armed intruder, I don't entertain scenarios like that. I respect your opinions on a lot of issues and I in no way regard you as a gun kook.
But America has millions of gun kooks and we need to take their guns away, and that cannot be done as long a the damned things are freely available.
Religion will dwindle. Fundamentalists are too much its face and in a lot of Europe religion affiliation is on life support. I do know a few people who are moved to goodness by it, but we both know that they are outnumbered by the religious bigots and psychos like Amy Barrett.
With increasing marijuana legalization and the fact that meth and fentanyl can return higher dollar amounts on much less bulk I suspect that marijuana is no longer the top drug coming across. This year in the Phoenix PD's biggest drug bust it was one million fentanyl pills worth orders of magnitude more money than the same volume of pot. The thing is marijuana isn't a direct cause of death. I don't dismiss it as a political talking point. Both parties have talking points that are a mixture of truth, hyperbole and BS.
Migrant workers. I guess I could ask which conservatives and what percentage? Not a monolith. Some Republican conservatives think that the Democrats favor open borders under the assumption that they will vote for democrats. They might change their mind as the number of "minority" yellow dog Democrats continues to decrease. More a matter of partisan politics rearing its ugly head than racial bigotry? I don't know the ratio.
Guns. In some/many ways I agree with you, implementation is the turd in the punchbowl. I don't have a solution. The current method for identifying kooks is arrest records which are sealed for the minors who shoot up their school. Legal gun purchase is stricter than at any time in my life. At one time I could order a gun from Shotgun News and have it shipped to a kitchen table FFL friend. Those days are long gone. Stolen firearms are a commodity.
Most "gun deaths" are suicides and most of them are men. Women typically choose intentional overdosing on pills. Would the disappearance of firearms reduce the suicide rate? I don't know but I doubt it would make a big difference.
Religion is fading. I don't know the ratio of goodness vs. bigotry. Before I retired, I sat in a lunch table group comprised of a Catholic who was far more open minded than the stereotype, a protestant fundamentalist, a bisexual wink and a nod pagan and me, a marginal Buddhist. Sounds like the start of a joke without the rabbi. We were able to have civil discussion about all things. No racists, the fundamentalist was strongly anti-abortion, and a marriage is between one man and one-woman guy. My none of my business who you love and want to spend your life with didn't sour our friendship. Given the heterosexual divorce rate I don't see how same sex marriage is going to do any damage. His reference came from his religion. The pagan was in the closet about his sexuality although he had confided in me. I'm safe to confide in.
The point of that paragraph is that while my personal experience is not a viable statistic, my circle includes more conservatives than you or most in this group of people which probably gives me a more charitable view of them than you although I can understand since you have most likely faced more bigotry than me.
Two thirds of gun deaths are suicides and firearm suicide is 90% effective; other forms, 10%. Cut your wrists you are likelier to cripple your hands than die.
About 41% (last I checked) of Americans own guns, yet there are 3-400 million of them in private possession, which means a lot of people own arsenals, in no way defensible as self-protection. Some people went out and bought five new guns every time Obama got something through Congress. People like that are sick, sick, sick.
I never said it was be easy, not with the intensity of fanaticism around them, even having one's children murdered doesn't shake RKBA devotion much. What I did say is that we have to start now, and I don't mean performative crap like raising the assault rifle age to 21, I mean a great restriction on ownership. At the time you could mail order them we didn't have tens of millions of clinically insane people one trigger away from turning kindergartners into hamburger.
OK so you have known some fundamentalists who were not crazy. So have I. But we both know better than to be on the next one we meet being sane and reasonable.
The abortion thing: this is garbage. Same people who say aborting an eight-cell blastula is murder will stridently oppose a nickel of tax on Elon the Mess to keep the born baby fed for a week. This is just own-the-libs/conservative-membership stuff, like Trump Won.
Of the successful suicides in my world, one was a firearm, the others; single vehicle "accident" (left room for doubt for his family), poison, pills (overdose), and one hanging. Where there is a will, there is a way.
With regard to arsenals. Many gun owners own more than one gun. Hunters will typically own a .22 rimfire for small game and inexpensive plinking, a shotgun (birds and other game), a high-powered bolt action rifle for large game, a pistol for protection, a semiautomatic sporter rifle for many utility occasions (hunters are moving away from bolt actions). That's five and a common number for hunters. Some people collect more like guitar players collect guitars. You might call that an arsenal, but I wouldn't.
An obstacle that I see for gun control is the obsession with "assault weapons." You are more likely to be killed by fist, feet or other personal weapons than any rifle, let alone a so-called assault rifle. When I was on active duty there was nothing with that designation in the military, it is a political phrase. For some people it is cosmetics. Black, looks military, has a detachable magazine, etc. where the restrictions are absurd. The real desire is to ban semiautomatic firearms in general, but probably something like 90% of the firearms sold today are semiautomatic. Will the taxpayers reimburse gun owners for the banned 400 million banned guns, or will the government just steal them?
I agree with you that some people shouldn't have them. How do we identify them? There are many people designated as prohibited possessors, felons etc. They buy stolen ones on the street or have their girlfriend carry it for them. Implementation is largely a failure.
The devil is in the details.
The anti-abortion crowd has a very powerful tool, ultrasound and pictures of the legally aborted that undeniably look like little humans. Cute as puppies and kittens. I see that more as vicious emotional punishment of women who had abortions for good reason than a preventative. Ending abortions is as vain a goal as getting rid of lethal weapons. They have both been with us for all of recorded history and will continue to be so.