When people are repeatedly told to be afraid of everything and to arm themselves...

AvgMSUJoe wrote:If anyone at the nra had a soul they would feel responsibility for this. (they don't)

According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 21% of Americans have been threatened with a gun, 19% tell researchers a family member was killed by a gun, and 17% say they’ve seen someone shot in front of them. Fully 54 percent of Americans or members of their family have had one of these experiences.

Eighty-four percent of Americans consider how to avoid getting shot when they go out in public.

But why?

Why would Republican members of Congress remove the flag pins from their lapels and replace them with little metal pins of AR-15 mass slaughter machines designed for modern warfare?

“You go back to, there was a guy named Harlon Carter, who was living on the border in Texas back in the 50s. There was some racial tension with Mexicans nearby, he ended up murdering a 15-year-old boy with a shotgun, was convicted of murder, but then released from jail two years early because the judge didn’t explain to the jury the proper definition of self-defense.

“At that time, Harlon Carter went on to be the head of the NRA. At the time, they pivoted from a club that was for marksmanship into a political wing that gave their first endorsement after 100 years to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Now, that’s 180 million guns ago in this country. The political force of that decision — who took the NRA in a place to fortify for a race war instead of a civic gun safety organization — was a key moment in history.”

Motown Spartan wrote:Hey now, those victims could have been drag queens. You don’t know.

Hitler’s sales pitch to the German people was grounded in the idea that average German working people were victims and Hitler was their champion.

He claimed Jews, homosexuals, and socialists had “stabbed Germany in the back” by participating in negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles that imposed punitive conditions on the country, producing widespread poverty and an economic crisis.

If the German people were victims, Hitler told them, the villains were German minorities, promoting degeneracy like jazz and swing music, tolerance of homosexuality and transgender people, and the “international Jewish conspiracy.”

Once the Nazis took power they banned books, outlawed drag shows and homosexuality, changed school curricula to remove mention of their atrocities in WWI, and rewrote election laws so they’d never again lose an election.

TravelinMan wrote:

Floyd Robertson wrote:[tw]1648404613048025093[/tw]

Man, what in the hell. Two similar incidents within days in disparate parts of the country.

You know the old guy was racist as hell and about pissed himself when a young black man appeared at his door. But this one makes no sense whatsoever.

Turtleneck wrote:WTF? Has this always been a thing? Also, in once case no charges and misdemeanor charges in another. Both happened months ago, but decisions about charges announced in the past few days.

College student thought he was getting in his Uber. He’s dead.
https://www.fox13news.com/news/man-wont-face-charges-for-university-of-tampa-student-shot-killed-after-mistakenly-getting-into-wrong-car.amp

Got into the wrong car when leaving the grocery store. Shot and killed. It sounds like his fiancé was right there to see or hear everything.
https://amp.www.complex.com/life/atlanta-man-shot-killed-mistakenly-entered-wrong-car-gas-station

Jake from State Farm wrote:

Turtleneck wrote:WTF? Has this always been a thing? Also, in once case no charges and misdemeanor charges in another. Both happened months ago, but decisions about charges announced in the past few days.

College student thought he was getting in his Uber. He’s dead.
https://www.fox13news.com/news/man-wont-face-charges-for-university-of-tampa-student-shot-killed-after-mistakenly-getting-into-wrong-car.amp

Got into the wrong car when leaving the grocery store. Shot and killed. It sounds like his fiancé was right there to see or hear everything.
https://amp.www.complex.com/life/atlanta-man-shot-killed-mistakenly-entered-wrong-car-gas-station

Exhibit number 20,138 of why this is getting way way way out of hand
(The estimated number of firearm deaths, excluding suicides, in 2022)

Just like heroin provides a biochemical jolt that takes away the cares of the day and replaces them with itself, hate-talk radio and Fox “News” jolt their consumers with the dopamine rush of hate and bigotry while providing the assurance that they’re part of an exclusive in-group that — unlike the rest of the nation — truly understands what’s happening.

...

Astonishing research reported four months ago in The Washington Post found that Fox “News” is so frequently associated with bigotry and hate that “just tuning in to Fox News might be enough to activate racial bias.”

...

Here in America, national rightwing hate radio took off with the Rush Limbaugh Program in 1988 (the year after President Ronald Reagan suspended enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine) and, on television, the 1996 roll-out of Fox “News” after President Reagan had expedited Rupert Murdoch’s naturalization in 1985 so he could own US-based television stations.

Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest was one of those barred from the conference. He watched from his hotel room and wrote in Politico, “Throughout, the idea was clear: Liberalism is synonymous with tyranny.”

This ideology is behind the right-wing attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ Americans, the media, reproductive rights, and education. Florida, led by governor Ron DeSantis, has been out front on these issues, but other Republican-dominated states are following suit. Eager to stay at the head of the “movement,” Trump recently claimed that universities are “dominated by marxist maniacs & lunatics” and vowed to bring them under control of the radical right. “He will impose real standards on American colleges and universities,” his website says, “to include defending the American tradition and Western civilization.”

DWags wrote:This is what we’ve become

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