20 Dead In Florida Night Club Shooting...

[Leonhard]

All violent crime all across the Western world has been going down for the last 30 years. The most convincing theory I've seen to explain it, was the removal of lead from petrol (lead causes brain damage and makes people violent).

I very much doubt its that simple.

[seer]

Oh... pleeeaaasssse!!!!
A religious homophobic nutter goes out and buys an ASSAULT RIFLE, which he then uses to shoot over a hundred people, killing 50, and leaving thousands of loving relatives in a state of total shock and loss.......

........... and you don't seem to support the idea that a Firearms Control Officer and a Criminal Records Office might..... just might...... have managed to make this dreadful crime more difficult.

....please........

What are you taking about? I would say that this man should have been more closely watched - the FBI knew about him, and they, I believe, dropped the ball.

[Leonhard]

Considering that you're not on the receiving end of that term, I don't think you're qualified to explain to me how the term is used. The way it is used to me, is that I'm called a 'homophobe' and that's the end of the discussion. Its just homophobic. No you don't get to talk, shut up.

That's my experience, and likely the experience of a lot of other Christians on this forum.

In a further addendum to this, I will say its been getting rarer, in as much as you're currently almost always banned for even opening a thread about a topic like that on anything other than a Christian website.

[fm93]

Pure baloney no matter how thin you slice it.

His father reported that he seemed irrationally upset after seeing two men kissing in Miami. Hardly seems like baloney.

That simply supports what I said. No one justified anything. It was just a comparison.

An utterly useless comparison that only diverts the topic. If I say "It's unfortunate that some women here in America are aborting out of convenience. I wish we could put an end to it," it makes no sense to retort with "Yeah, well even more women on the other side of the world abort out of convenience!" That sounds as if you simply don't care about American women aborting out of convenience.

He is a jihadist. By definition they hate gays.

That doesn't exclude the notion that the hatred in part derives from a fear.

[Abigail]

Not to mention that her posts 178 and 180 are each responding to half of my post... for some reason.

I don't have to respond to every point you make ...because I just don't. Especially when some things need a whole discussion on their own to be addressed.

[eider]

What are you taking about? I would say that this man should have been more closely watched - the FBI knew about him, and they, I believe, dropped the ball.

.......... so that's ok, then. Just blame the FBI and do snuff all about a proper FC Officer visit and cro check, before issuing a licence for an assault rifle.

What does anybody need an assault-rifle for??? !!! Wildfowling? This is crazy-silly!

[fm93]

gun crimes are down across the board:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/08/us/stu...ide/index.html

So...increased gun control legislation was passed twenty years ago and gun violence has subsequently decreased? Interesting.

[fm93]

Let's keep in mind, by the way, that as this shooter was born in the US and is thereby an American citizen, a certain candidate's plan to ban Muslims from entering would not have stopped the attack. But making it more difficult for him to obtain a weapon as powerful as an assault rifle may have stopped it, or at least substantially limited the damage.

[seer]

.......... so that's ok, then. Just blame the FBI and do snuff all about a proper FC Officer visit and cro check, before issuing a licence for an assault rifle.

What does anybody need an assault-rifle for??? !!! Wildfowling? This is crazy-silly!

Well that is the point, who are you to decide which rifle I buy? And we don't issue licences for specific weapons. If you have a permit you can purchase the firearm of your choice.

[lilpixieofterror]

.......... so that's ok, then. Just blame the FBI and do snuff all about a proper FC Officer visit and cro check, before issuing a licence for an assault rifle.

What does anybody need an assault-rifle for??? !!! Wildfowling? This is crazy-silly!

Do you even know what an 'assault rifle' is? It's a rifle with a lot of 'scary looking' plastic parts attached to it. The 'scary looking' assault rifle functions exactly like the non scary 'regular rifle'. I do wish anti gun idiots would actually learn something about fire arms before they say such obviously stupid things. If you don't believe me, look up kits to make regular rifles into 'scary looking assault rifles'. Here is a rifle I own, for target shooting. Here is a kit to make it look like a 'scary looking assault rifle' that doesn't change any functionality of the rifle, but makes it look 'scary'. Seriously, stop talking, you're making yourself look like an uneducated moron.

[lilpixieofterror]

Well that is the point, who are you to decide which rifle I buy? And we don't issue licences for specific weapons. If you have a permit you can purchase the firearm of your choice.

What's funny is that 'assault rifles' just are guns that look scary, but are not any different than a 'regular' rifle. An actual 'assault rifle' is a select fire weapon (that means it can go from semi auto to full auto or 3 round burst) and since automatic guns are illegal to own (without a permit) his argument falls apart. What he actually means is the 'scary looking guns' that are not called AR's for 'assault rifle', but for Armalite.

[seer]

So...increased gun control legislation was passed twenty years ago and gun violence has subsequently decreased? Interesting.

Except, there are more legal firearms in society today than back then.

The number of firearms available for sale to or possessed by U.S. civilians (about 310 million in 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service) has grown in recent years, and the 2009 per capita rate of one person per gun had roughly doubled since 1968. It is not clear, though, how many U.S. households own guns or whether that share has changed over time. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/...ublic-unaware/

Perhaps the decrease in gun crime has more to do with truth in sentencing laws and three strikes laws. Keeping the criminal locked up longer.

[lilpixieofterror]

Except, there are more legal firearms in society today than back then.



Perhaps the decrease in gun crime has more to do with truth in sentencing laws and three strikes laws. Keeping the criminal locked up longer.

Considering that gun ownership has increased, more people have CC permits than ever before (around 14 million, from what I heard), and there's more guns in the US than there was 20 years ago...

[lilpixieofterror]

You see it as crazy, we see it as a Constitutional right.

You're talking to somebody who wants it to be legal to murder 1 year old children. Don't waste your time talking morality to a disgusting psychopath, who wants to kill children.

[Starlight]

Considering that you're not on the receiving end of that term, I don't think you're qualified to explain to me how the term is used.

It's usually Christians who misunderstand the meaning of the term, as this thread demonstrates.

Obviously a word is defined by what the group of people speaking it is meaning by it. They're they ones using the word, so it carries their meaning. If the hearers understand it to have a different meaning, then a miscommunication has occurred. However, it can't ever be the case that the group hearing the word is the one that gets to define the meaning - that's not how language works.

The way it is used to me, is that I'm called a 'homophobe' and that's the end of the discussion.

So? That's how a lot of people use the word "racist" too. They say "that's racist!" and it has some social overtones of "that view is not allowed. Be quiet." The word racist itself doesn't mean that, but the body-language of how its delivered carries those connotations.

Some people in our society do exactly the same thing by calling out sexism or homophobia. The basic idea behind it is that society operates with a joint understanding that racism, sexism, homophobia etc and all other kinds of bigotry are wrong, and thus to identify something as those things is enough to have proven that it is wrong.

What you are wanting to do is challenge that presupposition that one of those things are wrong. So you would have to do that explicitly - you would have to say "yes, I am homophobic, but I disagree with your assumption that homophobia is a bad thing because..." in order to communicate properly with your critics.

That's my experience, and likely the experience of a lot of other Christians on this forum.

Right, and I'm agreeing that the social body-language surrounding the usage of the word can carry strong tones of "shut up, your view is invalid" , but that's not what the word itself means. It's simply the case that like "racist", or "sexist", "homophobe" is an easy-to-make accusation that tars someone with the stigma of holding to socially unacceptable views. But it's only because of the pre-existing social assumption that holding such views is bad that using "racist", or "sexist", or "homophobe" in a name-calling way carries social stigma. The dictionary meaning of the words themselves isn't that stigma.