Gun Control? How about gun control for the Pentagon?

[dyingsun]

To be honest, it's not 'just' Americas deepest fear..We & these other silly countries just use kitchen knives when it comes to it.

 

[flipper]

I am replying Burnt State
I think you have made excellent points and I am interested in getting more of your thinking. I live in a country where guns are highly regulated and shootings are rare. The propaganda you refer to is the NRA? You support the empire? What does moving forward look like? I look forward to more of your understanding of how things work and should work.

 

[Burnt State]

I think the idea of empire and its pursuit is what has damned both the nations swallowed up and the imperial glutton that started the mess - everyone is psychologically damaged as a result for many generations to come. Whether the voice of fear comes from the NRA, the Tea Party or American militias or the tv, it's all the same voice of keep the status quo, the guns and the acceptable losses and collateral damage. Moving forward will only happen if the people can stop being afraid, unify, and argue for a more progressive approach to the role guns play in defining American culture.

 

[boomerang]

And therein lies the psychology of America's deepest fear, more acutely felt than any massacre perpetrated upon citizens.

Or, one could see it as the framers of our constitution having learned from the troubled history of older Europe. I would note also that this fear has been every bit as present throughout America's past as it is today. Including during those times of our greatest economic and social successes. Perhaps it is now more obvious to the world due to America's current over entanglement in misdirected foreign policy and today's shrinking world.

If there is a cause and effect line between Americans' right own guns (all arms are not guns) and aggressive foreign policy, it is a dotted one. The line on personal gun ownership during those centuries before the scepter of empire was laterally passed from Britain to America was toed much harder than it is today.

 

[pixelsmith]

And therein lies the psychology of America's deepest fear, more acutely felt than any massacre perpetrated upon citizens. So deep is this fear that there is not even any zeal to attempt to minimize citizen upon citizen slaughter through any regulations, restrictions or registries. No, America still holds deep in its heart the same distrust of its own leadership that spawned the nation, that one day papa gov't will come calling and take all the guns, emasculate the populous and leave men unable to protect their liberties.

I suggest that this thinking has resulted in not only a stagnant body politic, at the cost of citizen upon citizen mass murder, but has tunneled America into its own wall of division and the ultimate end of empire. Because fear and propaganda has perpetuated this distrust, there can be no agreement to move the country forward. Instead it will just keep shooting itself in the foot politically and socially while it stands by on the sidelines as individuals with easy access to weaponry shoot up communities, schools, navy yards etc. - this statistic is not going away. When will their be a collective desire that moves beyond the same motivations that define the local militia out in the woods preparing for the war against gov't? Are these fears justfied in any way or do people really believe in anachronistic NRA warnings and fear mongering?

Burnt... please.... Look to big pharma for the cause of mass shootings. Prescribed legal drugs are pulling the triggers.
Guns will ALWAYS be available to bad people who want them. You will never get rid of guns so deal with it. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

 

[flipper]

I think the idea of empire and its pursuit is what has damned both the nations swallowed up and the imperial glutton that started the mess - everyone is psychologically damaged as a result for many generations to come. Whether the voice of fear comes from the NRA, the Tea Party or American militias or the tv, it's all the same voice of keep the status quo, the guns and the acceptable losses and collateral damage. Moving forward will only happen if the people can stop being afraid, unify, and argue for a more progressive approach to the role guns play in defining American culture.

Your right the empire is killing the host (the U.S.) As the host dies people become more despite. I think part of moving forward is for people to ask "Who sent our jobs to China." I would futher suggest a new slogan for the NRA "Guns do not kill people, imperialism and social engineering does."

 

[Jeff Davis]

Sadly, weaponry is but a reflection of mankind's most powerful natural driver. Human Instinct. Fear proper, is humanities only real basis for and of it's species survival. Fear is perhaps the most important attribute of human kind's survival model.

What Burnt State is explaining philosophically is idealism. As an abstract concept, if such a concept does not exist as being readily discernible, or observable in nature, we have to very carefully weigh it's effectiveness in artificial systems of control in an effort to best understand how it plays out. Otherwise, the very implementation of such a design process may threaten the survival of those participating. Since mankind is inextricably bound to nature in the name of survival, anything that constitutes a response wherein there are no natural parallels, fails logically, due to our own natural disposition.

Greed generates the same behavior over and over. It attempts to control in an effort to increase specific value or numeration. More or less in short, it's as illusory as being compelled to artificially generate and contain a hurricane in a match box. Greed is the proverbial saboteurs wrench in the robot.

Greed is best described as an ill contrived human attribute that results from the diseased social control system context of an unethically implemented design by and of, a specific responsible agency. It is the very thing that brought our founding Fathers to this country. Sadly, due to human nature as it relates to artificial social forms of control, we've done a 180.

This would be a wonderful time to start observing just how effective nature is at forcing her hand.

Sadly, again as I have pointed out, guns are a reflection of mankind learning from nature how best to survive. Guns have a way of bolstering the notion of a "forced nature" wherein, when humanities artificial systems of control are shown for what they are, namely a staging game, built by the rich and powerful, to preserve the rich and powerful, they are an artificial restorative balancing mechanism available to right artificial failed systems of control.

In this sense, guns are a most ethical artificial attribute within what are artificial systems of control. The relationship and emergence of such are fully supported by logic.

 

[flipper]

Sadly, weaponry is but a reflection of mankind's most powerful natural driver. Human Instinct. Fear proper, is humanities only real basis for and of it's species survival. Fear is perhaps the most important attribute of human kind's survival model.

What Burnt State is explaining philosophically is idealism. As an abstract concept, if such a concept does not exist as being readily discernible, or observable in nature, we have to very carefully weigh it's effectiveness in artificial systems of control in an effort to best understand how it plays out. Otherwise, the very implementation of such a design process may threaten the survival of those participating. Since mankind is inextricably bound to nature in the name of survival, anything that constitutes a response wherein there are no natural parallels, fails logically, due to our own natural disposition.

Greed generates the same behavior over and over. It attempts to control in an effort to increase specific value or numeration. More or less in short, it's as illusory as being compelled to artificially generate and contain a hurricane in a match box. Greed is the proverbial saboteurs wrench in the robot.

Greed is best described as an ill contrived human attribute that results from the diseased social control system context of an unethically implemented design by and of, a specific responsible agency. It is the very thing that brought our founding Fathers to this country. Sadly, due to human nature as it relates to artificial social forms of control, we've done a 180.

This would be a wonderful time to start observing just how effective nature is at forcing her hand.

Sadly, again as I have pointed out, guns are a reflection of mankind learning from nature how best to survive. Guns have a way of bolstering the notion of a "forced nature" wherein, when humanities artificial systems of control are shown for what they are, namely a staging game, built by the rich and powerful, to preserve the rich and powerful, they are an artificial restorative balancing mechanism available to right artificial failed systems of control.

In this sense, guns are a most ethical artificial attribute within what are artificial systems of control. The relationship and emergence of such are fully supported by logic.

You will have to practice forgiveness and patients because I may not understand what you are saying. I think you are saying that personkind is nothing more than survivalist machines that have fear and greed as their fuel. However I think we are capable of making choices and those choices change who we are. For example in Frankl;'s "Man' search for Meaning," he describes man's freedom to transcend suffering and find meaning to his life regardless of circumstances. In "Demanding the Impossible" the assumption is that people are good and will mutually aid each other. In fact an anarchist state was working in Spain for a short time before Stalin saw it as a threat and help crush it. I loved George Orwell's account of this in Homage to Catalonia. The last book that I will mention is Michael Foxes Original Blessing. "What would Christianity look like if the focus were Original Blessing, not Original Sin; Creation Spirituality, not the Fall/Redemption story; and social justice, not individual perfectionism?"
Theology in a 13.7 Billion-Year-Old Universe: Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, and Creation Spirituality.
Yes it is true that reform happens and then corruption sets in and works to destroy it. However the human spirit will never be destroyed.

 

[Burnt State]

Burnt... please.... Look to big pharma for the cause of mass shootings. Prescribed legal drugs are pulling the triggers.
Guns will ALWAYS be available to bad people who want them. You will never get rid of guns so deal with it. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

While I blame Big Pharma for pushing a lot of unnecessary chemistry down the throats of children, the elderly, the distressed, and the still horny I don't see high percentages of mass shootings being carried out by those on strange steroids. Usually they cause men to take out the family and then themselves.

I agree that guns are interwoven with the fabric of the nation and will never leave. However, most law enforcement agencies know that regulations, restrictions regarding storage, and gun registries help to both solve and reduce crimes. I think that's a reasonable request, and the safety benefits should outweigh the unjustified paranoia that everyone's gun is going to get taken away one day. But, being conscious of someone's mental stability and violent behaviour could help with the prevention angle considerably.

The repeated argument that, "if criminals want to get guns they will," should not stop us from making it harder for those unstable citizens we know about who have easy access to purchase, store or simply take guns from the rack in the living room or from mom's dresser drawer.

I also understand the celebration of the just American vigilante as I grew up watching Clint Eastwood and Chuck Bronson movies in the 70's - still not sure if I'm good with my neighbors gearing down for a shoot out at a moment's notice though.

 

[Burnt State]

Sadly, again as I have pointed out, guns are a reflection of mankind learning from nature how best to survive. Guns have a way of bolstering the notion of a "forced nature" wherein, when humanities artificial systems of control are shown for what they are, namely a staging game, built by the rich and powerful, to preserve the rich and powerful, they are an artificial restorative balancing mechanism available to right artificial failed systems of control.

In this sense, guns are a most ethical artificial attribute within what are artificial systems of control. The relationship and emergence of such are fully supported by logic.

I definitely don't deny being an idealist or someone who likes to ride tall horses of morality, but I can be pragmatic too. I really like your reasoning here, Jeff, throughout this discussion, especially about the role of greed. But I stop short at the ethics of killing people as a means to balance out power's equation. For even the criminal argues that if I can't make money to buy a desired product then I'll take it. I don't see you sympathizing with the criminal, and for me, killing, is well -- killing. There must be better ways that we can treat each other.

An eye for an eye is a kind of blind animal thinking that humanity can surpass. I appreciate that line of thinking that Christopher O'Brien often mentions about why would the aliens want to communicate with a sexist, racist species still waging tribal warfare on each other even in its developed nations? We have not really come all that far as a civilization have we?

 

[Burnt State]

However I think we are capable of making choices and those choices change who we are. For example in Frankl;'s "Man' search for Meaning," he describes man's freedom to transcend suffering and find meaning to his life regardless of circumstances.

When I was in high school I read two books that forever changed my world view and my feelings about violence and hatred: Frankl's book and Black Like Me. They were simply life altering.

These are human practices than can stop. The willingness is all. Perhaps our brains have not yet evolved enough yet to have a different chemistry flowing through our heads. Maybe evolution will make us less competitive, retaliatory and reptilian in the next millennia?

I bet that if we made it mandatory for the whole globe to meditate (preferably simultaneously) we could get some better chemicals flowing down our neural pathways that would make us more collaborative. I suppose so long as we have religion and consumerism to guide us we will remain passively, indifferently and celebrationally violent.