[Pops]

On request I split off the Crazies gun debate to here. Let's stay with the San Bernardo Crazies in this one...

[Plantagenet]

Farook was a radical Islamist and he was in contact with other known terrorists by email and phone----but the Feds screwed up and he was never investigated

Oooopsies.

san-bernardino-shooter-radicalized

It was just a few days ago Obama assured the nation there was no imminent terror threat in the USA. Looks like the Feds never investigated this guy and missed this little terror cell in San Bernadino. Farook had big plans---he was busy making "pressure cooker bombs" like the Islamist nuts who blew up the Boston marathon---.

[Subjectivist]

Thanx Pops! What I want to know about is the interview with the neighbor who said there were a bunch of visitors in and out at all hours. The implication being those people whomever they were helped plan or at least might have heard hints about the attack before time.

Have we learned anything about them?

[Sixstrings]

It was just a few days ago Obama assured the nation there was no imminent terror threat in the USA.

Well I'm in favor of what Ash Carter wants to do and think there should be more of that.

It has to be defeated at the source, ISIS has to get pushed out of the cities they hold and their bunkers and holes in the ground and strongholds.

That requires some boots on the ground to do that and a greenlight for them to do the job they've been trained to do.

It does not help anything and it is pointless for this terrorism issue to just be a domestic issue for both parties to play politics on yet half the conservatives won't support a war effort either. *It should not even be a domestic issue*, it should be defeated over there so that we don't have it over here.

For people that say it's not worth even one US soldier's life -- what about the San Bernardino police department? Should they not have responded to that attack in their town, because responding is such a dangerous job and not worth the risk to police officers? Or is that a police officer's job and duty, just as American soldiers have their job and duty?

So let them do their job, and protect this country.

As a voter I don't care about petty arguments back and forth, what I'd like to hear about is everything that's being done to defeat ISIS at the source and victories against ISIS and how the US Army is taking hills and the air force is blowing up bunkers and the Marines are taking over ISIS held cities. That's the news I'd like to hear about, rather than just terrorist attacks in this country.

[Sixstrings]

@Cog
You were right, the left is turning it into a gun control debate:

Hillary ClintonVerified account
‏@HillaryClinton Hillary Clinton Retweeted The New York Times
I refuse to accept this as normal. We must take action to stop gun violence now. -H

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders seek gun control reform after shootings
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-gun-control/

But with all due respect Cog, where are you wrong is that you don't support a boots on the ground war effort to defeat ISIS at the source.

America doesn't put up with this sh*t, we're not like other places. It's time to send in the Army:

Johnny Cash - I Won't Back Down (US Army Tribute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-RnI8W4xY

[Sixstrings]

I agree with Jeb Bush:

Gov. Jeb Bush: We Should Declare War on ISIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InXMkwrf9vA

There are a lot of issues I don't agree with him on, actually from a domestically lefty perspective and Bush is too far right on some things, whereas someone like Cog thinks Bush is too far left, BUT look folks.. watch that little clip.. how can anyone not agree with Bush, on this issue?

On the issue of ISIS and all the foreign problems going on and terrorist attacks in the country now and nobody is handling it, Jeb Bush is the BEST.

Jeb Bush: Declare war on Islamic State

“They have declared war on us, and we need to declare war on them,” the former Florida governor told a forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The Islamic State has taken over territory in Syria and Iraq — “a caliphate the size of Indiana” — and has to be stopped with leadership from the United States, Bush said.
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/12/03/jeb-bush-declare-war-on-islamic-state/

Jeb Bush: As leader of the free world I will stand with Israel in terror fight
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/12/03/jeb-bush-as-leader-free-world-will-stand-with-israel-in-terror-fight.html

Have any of you noticed before, how in seven years Obama never says "leader of the free world?"

[Newfie]

Just a bit of news tid bits, somewhat contradictory.

1. The Wife apparently made a face book posting under an alias, just before the shooting, praising the leader of IS.

A Facebook executive told The Associated Press that Tashfeen Malik posted the material under an alias account at 11 a.m. Wednesday. That was about the time the first 911 calls came in and when the couple were believed to have stormed into the San Bernardino social service center and opened fire during a holiday party.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/califor ... sis-praise

2. NPR this morning interviewed the shooters Iman. According to him the shooter was very observent and a quiet person. But also, and this is interesting, one of the people shot was a member of his own congregation know personally to the shooter. She took 4 bullets but is alive. Maybe the Wife shot her, not recognizing her? Maybe he shot her, knowing who she was? Someone did. So it does not seem like they were sorting out Muslims as occurs in so many other incidents.

[Cog]

ISIS kills fellow Muslims in Iraq and Syria. Maybe the Muslim at the party was one not following Islam strictly enough.

[Tanada]

ISIS kills fellow Muslims in Iraq and Syria. Maybe the Muslim at the party was one not following Islam strictly enough.

I had the same thought, to a fanatic willing to kill the slightest deviation from 'the cause' can be enough to get you killed as a bystander labeled traitor by the fanatic.

Point of inquiry, my understanding is in Mosque services men and women are strictly segregated and worship separately in different sections of the building. If that is true then she would have been known much more by the wife than the husband for statements made in the Mosque that might rub a fanatic the wrong way.

[Newfie]

Yeah, who knows. It is an interesting incident. No word yet on the nature of the dispute before he left.

[Synapsid]

If the shooters were Ahmadi then pretty much all Muslims would, shall we say, view them with disfavor. I expect that the view would be returned by the shooters.

[Plantagenet]

I think the title of this thread should be changed. These shooters weren't crazy---they were observant Muslims. Even their own local Imam says they were nice decent observant Muslims.

Since the two shooters were supporters of the Caliphate, in their own minds they were doing the right thing by following their Caliph's instructions to attack people in the west in order to defend the Moslem Caliphate.


Moslems aren't crazy---they just have different religious beliefs then Christians or Hindus or most people who aren't Moslems.

[Newfie]

There is something to that argument.

One could say something similar about most of us.

I think it is widely accepted on this forum that we are driving Earth to significant change which will be very negative for humanity, possibly fatal. It's widely accepted that economic growth is, in the long run, poisionious to the planet and our species. Yet our greatest and most admired leaders all strongly support strong economic growth. Growth which may well lead to our own extinction. Sounds pretty bat shit crazy to me.

[Loki]

I think the title of this thread should be changed. These shooters weren't crazy---they were observant Muslims. Even their own local Imam says they were nice decent observant Muslims.

Since the two shooters were supporters of the Caliphate, in their own minds they were doing the right thing by following their Caliph's instructions to attack people in the west in order to defend the Moslem Caliphate.

Yep. A nice whitewashing of yet another act of Muslim terrorism. It's just "crazies on the loose."

[Loki]

Might as well, "being serious" does nothing.

The NRA says mass shootings are covered under the bill of rights.

Give me a fucking break dude. You really should be ashamed of yourself. How drunk were you when you posted this?

More than one a day.

That is how often, on average, shootings that left four or more people wounded or dead occurred in the United States this year, according to compilations of episodes derived from news reports.

Including the worst mass shooting of the year, which unfolded horrifically on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a total of 462 people have died and 1,314 have been wounded in such attacks this year, many of which occurred on streets or in public settings, the databases indicate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/us/ho ... -show.html

A bullshit article from the biggest purveyor of bullshit in the US. Violent crime rates are a fraction of what they were in the 90s in the US. But yep, still lots of "gun violence" in the US, the great majority of it black-on-black gang and drug related. Did ya know Chicago has a higher murder rate than Liberia? Detroit has a homicide rate of 43.5/100,000. Rwanda? 23.1.

Portland, Oregon? 4.2. And a substantial chunk of that is black-on-black, despite Portland's lily white stereotype.

From Wiki:

According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ ... ted_States

Hmmm. Weird. And let's not mention that a significant portion of those "whites" are actually mestizo HIspanics.

There's a problem with "gun violence" in the US, yep, but it has very little to do with guns. And nothing to do with those evil white NRA gun nuts the media loves to hate.

Yet we need to gut the 2nd Amendment so some folks stop killing each other. And so the Muslim terrorists won't kill us. Got it.

You know, if folks want to ban all the guns, we have a process for that, it's outlined in the US Constitution. Check out the history of the 18th Amendment. We overturned it in 1933. The gun haters can do the same for the 2nd. If they were honest.

[Cog]

Here is the NRA Mission Statement:

The purposes and objectives of the National Rifle Association of America are: 1. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially with reference to the inalienable right of the individual American citizen guaranteed by such Constitution to acquire, possess, collect, exhibit, transport, carry, transfer ownership of, and enjoy the right to use arms, in order that the people may always be in a position to exercise their legitimate individual rights of self-preservation and defense of family, person, and property, as well as to serve effectively in the appropriate militia for the common defense of the Republic and the individual liberty of its citizens; 2. To promote public safety, law and order, and the national defense; 3. To train members of law enforcement agencies, the armed forces, the militia, and people of good repute in marksmanship and in the safe handling and efficient use of small arms; 4. To foster and promote the shooting sports, including the advancement of amateur competitions in marksmanship at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels; 5. To promote hunter safety, and to promote and defend hunting as a shooting sport and as a viable and necessary method of fostering the propagation, growth and conservation, and wise use of our renewable wildlife resources. The Association may take all actions necessary and proper in the furtherance of these purposes and objectives.

How Pops turns that into the NRA believes mass killings are covered by the Bill of Rights must require some prodigious mental gymnastics.

[Newfie]

The whole gun argument is more than likely a red herring. It is something that polarizes folks and gets them worked up but has little to do with the real problem.

I'm trying to develop these thoughts so I many wander a bit.

The "real problem" has much more to do with how we function as a society or culture. It may well be that the "real problem" is that we are loosing faith in our government's ability to function.

Jared Diamond makes the point (very well) that governments function is to keep us from killing one another. The smaller the governmental unit the higher the incidence of personal violence. In short small hunter gatherer groups have continual low level warfare between adjacent tribes. Governments set rules for resolving disputes without murder. As the government's get bigger (chief, lord, King, kingdoms, empires) they get better at this kind of control. More laws, more government intervention, less death.

Of course in order to gain this law and order the citizen needs to agree to the controls and in the process forfeits some personal liberty.

In the USA we have a patchwork: in many areas the citizens adhere to the normal rules and things go along fairly well. However there are other areas where governmental control is shaky at best. This is where you see a lot of interpersonal violence, the murder by gunfire inside the ghettos.

There are other signs of this. The ghettos are also typified by the rise of some pseudo government. The Mafia, or similar organizations come to mind. But so do groups like the Hells Angles. Or the various inner city gangs. Each of these groups has its own internal set of laws, rules to live by within the group. If you abide, the group protects you from outsiders. If not, you are dealt with. But, because the groups are smaller there is more interaction with other adjacent groups, there is more opportunity for violent interaction.

That's what's going on here, the government is loosing its grip on ever larger segments of the population.

We may not be having a rational national debate about this, the topic has not been "outed." But I think folks are intuitively picking up on the trend. This then makes those folks who live in law abiding areas nervous, and they react by saying "I think I'll get a gun, just in case." Just in case of what? Anarchy, societal collapse, government shut own.....caused by peak oil, climate change, stock market crash, racial unrest, whatever?

The government likes to keep us jacked up and afraid because they are selling security. Security is their "product." There are two camps of reaction to this. On the one hand more and more folks are getting the idea that it is hollow promise, they are starting to arm themselves. Others, for what ever reason, perhaps they feel unable to protect themselves, turn ever more to the government asking for more control, more protection.

I think this accounts for the dynamics we see unfolding.

As a consequence we have a lot of guns in the country. I heard a stat today, someone please correct me if wrong, that just about half of gun related deaths are suicide. This is an artifact of having a well armed but depressive society.

Most of the rest are young black males on young black males, those most likely to not feel a part of the larger society, as described above.

Then there is a smaller set of murders due to domestic violence, armed robbery, assault, etc.

All this does little or nothing to address the mass shootings, which although horrific, really account for relatively few deaths.

[Cog]

About 64% of gun related deaths are suicides according to this link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... homicides/

[Newfie]

Thanks Cog.

I'm at the hunting cabin, 1bar 1x connection.

Searching the Internet is out of the question.

Unfortunately the DSL at the house is not much better. But as we are moving shortly I'll suffer through.

[careinke]

About 64% of gun related deaths are suicides according to this link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... homicides/

And as far as suicides go, gunshot is pretty effective and quick. Probably a good choice until we get the suicide clinics depicted in Soylent Green. That was an awesome scene.