I’m not at all qualified to be in charge of anything.
You’ve got my vote!
Thank god, finally someone to vote for with a good head on their shoulders.
This guy for president 2024!
I’m an ex-Mormon and Satanist, I’m largely a socialist, I am very pro-gun and would support revocation of the NFA of 1934, and also pro LGBTQ+, feminist, pro-abortion, in favor of raising top marginal tax rates to 95%, instituting wealth taxes on total assets owned or controlled in excess of $100M (and total seizure if convicted of trying to conceal the ownership), support revoking corporate personhood through constitutional amendment, I’m in favor if widespread public transit, and favor taxing oil companies out of existence to pay for it, support Ukraine without reservation, blah blah blah.
I am unelectable for any political party in the US.
Hello doppelganger. Except, I’m ex-JW, just a garden variety humanist, and have no clue what the nfa of 1934 is.
So in the US when we want to make something illegal, and that thing happens to be a constitutional right, we levy a tax against it. Then we only issue tax stamps to very select few people, or simply refuse to issue them at all. NFA 1934 is one of those weird tax scheme that makes you obtain a $200 tax stamp to have certain types of weapons. They are heavily controlled and non-transferable without going through a similar process.
Here’s more info about it if you care to look into it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
We also did this with Marijuana during that same time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937
You have my vote already!
You know, Im obviously one person so my input matters very little, but Id much rather vote for a candidate with your ideals than any of the present options. Hopefully one day there will be a candidate with these ideals and the recognition needed to win the election
Honestly, all of politics is compromise. It’s very unlikely that there’s ever going to be anyone that perfectly aligns with my personal opinions. So I have to pick and choose, and decide which things are absolutely critical for me, and which ones I will bend on. For me, church/state separation, reproductive choice, and LGBTQ rights are my tops for individual rights; gun rights matter to me, personally, but I’d be willing to bend on that if it meant removing the evangelical stranglehold over state and local gov’t.
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Consumerism is the third leading cause of why we’re boiling ourselves out of a planet
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Corporate culture of prioritizing quarterly growth and profits above all other factors
Excessive reliance on meat based meals
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Would you happen to have some idea what to do about all the school shootings?
I’d start by admitting that school shootings are, despite being extremely sensationalized, also extremely rare. Then I’d look at the risk factors that the FBI outlined after looking at “school shooters”. (In scare quotes, because the people that commit random acts of violence in schools—versus targeted violence–are so uncommon that it’s hard to draw definite conclusions about risk factors. School shootings are also used by certain organizations to include things like parents shooting each other in the parking lot at a football game.) There’s a myth that school shooters are always the victim of bullies, but IIRC it’s slightly more common that they’ll be bullies. Almost all of them ‘leak’ information in the days or weeks prior to murders; I do think that there needs to be a way to seriously investigate things like that, but I don’t know how you could do that in a way that doesn’t infringe on other, equally fundamental rights.
When you get right down to it, a lot of it is an issue of culture, where people feel like violence is a reasonable way to express feelings. That culture needs to be changed, and I believe that it can be changed without removing the tools used in the violent acts.
Violence in general is a very complicated problem, and it’s tempting to look at simple solutions and believe that there’s this one simple trick that the NRA hates that will turn everything into a utopia. But that’s just not so. (Case in point: the UK and Australia both have combined rates of violent crime–battery, forcible rape, robbery, murder–comparable to the US, and, in the case of rape in Australia, likely rather higher. The US does have a sharply higher murder rate though; our violence is more lethal.)
The unfortunate truth is that you can’t have rights without someone misusing those rights to hurt other people. If people can drive, sooner or later someone is going to drive a rental van into a crowd, just because they want to kill people and that’s the way they can do it. If you allow freedom of religion, eventually an L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, or Joe Smith is going to turn up.
I’d start by admitting that school shootings are, despite being extremely sensationalized, also extremely rare.
There have been multiple school shootings this year alone. Your statement would have been reasonable had you made it in the wake of the Columbine shooting, but to say it today is frankly absurd.
In scare quotes, because the people that commit random acts of violence in schools—versus targeted violence–are so uncommon that it’s hard to draw definite conclusions about risk factors.
That is not relevant. Targeted violence in school isn’t tolerable either.
Almost all of them ‘leak’ information in the days or weeks prior to murders; I do think that there needs to be a way to seriously investigate things like that, but I don’t know how you could do that in a way that doesn’t infringe on other, equally fundamental rights.
Indeed, so we’re going to have to solve this problem in whichever way minimizes harmful side effects. Unfortunately, that may involve inconveniencing gun owners, but it’s better than depriving everyone of privacy and going full Minority Report.
When you get right down to it, a lot of it is an issue of culture, where people feel like violence is a reasonable way to express feelings.
Mass shootings in particular are usually committed by someone who has no intention of still being alive afterward, and they do indeed almost always end in the shooter’s death. That’s not merely a “way to express feelings”.
the UK and Australia both have combined rates of violent crime–battery, forcible rape, robbery, murder–comparable to the US, and, in the case of rape in Australia, likely rather higher.
You’re contradicting yourself. How can American culture be uniquely violent if those other countries have similar rates of violence?
The US does have a sharply higher murder rate though; our violence is more lethal.
Because we have guns.
The unfortunate truth is that you can’t have rights without someone misusing those rights to hurt other people.
Yes, and we preserve those rights despite that because the alternative is worse.
The alternative we’re discussing right now is gun control. Is that worse than the status quo? If so, why?
If people can drive, sooner or later someone is going to drive a rental van into a crowd, just because they want to kill people and that’s the way they can do it.
This equivalence is questionable for two reasons:
- Unless I’m mistaken, that doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as shootings do.
- Cars have a purpose other than killing. Guns don’t.
There have been multiple school shootings this year alone.
That’s not actually really relevant to the point. First, despite there being multiple school shootings this year, school shootings are a tiny fraction of the overall homicides in the US, which are, in turn, dwarfed by the number of suicides committed with firearms. Second, looking at your link you provided, you see a lot of things like, “A gun was fired during a fight near a basketball game at Appoquinimink High School. No injuries were reported”, and “Bullets struck two windows of classrooms at PS 78 in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island. One classroom was occupied by ten adults, but no bullets entered the classrooms” being counted as "school shootings:, which you then compare to Columbine. You are intentionally, and in bad faith, conflating entirely different things, and placing them all under the heading of, “firearms near schools”.
That is not relevant. Targeted violence in school isn’t tolerable either.
It is relevant, because it has different causes, and is thus addressed differently.
Are you willing to engage in good faith, or have you already decided that the only solution is banning firearms?
First, despite there being multiple school shootings this year, school shootings are a tiny fraction of the overall homicides in the US
Which are also often committed with guns…
which are, in turn, dwarfed by the number of suicides committed with firearms.
I’m not talking about suicide.
Second, looking at your link you provided, you see a lot of things like, “A gun was fired during a fight near a basketball game at Appoquinimink High School. No injuries were reported”, and “Bullets struck two windows of classrooms at PS 78 in the Stapleton neighborhood of Staten Island. One classroom was occupied by ten adults, but no bullets entered the classrooms” being counted as "school shootings:, which you then compare to Columbine. You are intentionally, and in bad faith, conflating entirely different things, and placing them all under the heading of, “firearms near schools”.
I did nothing of the sort. There are multiple bona fide school shootings in that list, such as the Michigan State shooting and the Covenant shooting.
It is relevant, because it has different causes, and is thus addressed differently.
That’s not a meaningful answer. Let’s have some details.
Are you willing to engage in good faith, or have you already decided that the only solution is banning firearms?
Are you willing to engage in good faith? So far, you’ve argued based on false premises (namely that school shootings are rare, and that there are no bona fide school shootings in the previously linked Wikipedia list) and evasive non-answers (namely that targeted violence at school is to be “addressed differently”, with no explanation of how). Doesn’t seem like good faith to me.
namely that school shootings are rare
No matter how you define “school shooting”, they are rare. The total number of people killed in all shootings that occurred on school properties in 2022 was 40 people, over a total of 51 incidents (that number, BTW, includes suicides). This is in a country over 98,000 public schools (that does not include private schools), and 56M K-12 students.
Any way you want to look at it, that’s rare. It’s far more common than any other (western, 1st world) country, but it’s still objectively a very, very rare occurrence; the odds of any single student dying in a school shooting–including suicides at school–in a single school year are under one in a million.
Once you start removing suicides, parents shooting each other in school parking lots over football games, and other similar incidents, and look only at mass-casualty events–where a person intentionally targeted students at a school in order to murder as many people as they could–your numbers go down even more.
that there are no bona fide school shootings in the previously linked Wikipedia lis
I didn’t say that at all. I said that there were things on that list that do not fit the commonly-accepted definitions of “school shooting”. When you say “school shooting”, people hear Uvalde, or Newport. They don’t think, “a bullet went through a school wall at 3am on a Saturday morning when no one was in class”, or, “a cop shot himself in the leg” despite those being included on the list of “school shootings”.
namely that targeted violence at school is to be “addressed differently”, with no explanation of how
Because I don’t have the FBI report on mass casualty events at schools in front of me. But here’s one, I’d suggest giving it a read. The things that motivate mass shooters can’t be directly addressed by the kinds of things that are going to reduce ordinary violent crime; you need different approaches.
So no, you aren’t engaging in good faith argument. You’ve already reached a conclusion.
what controversial thing would the vettong process uncover about you?
Nice try, FBI!
:-)
I’m a filthy socialist, which is enough for almost half the US.
I’ve been putting a BA on my resume for decades, but I don’t have a degree.
I put my university, the years I attended, and my major and minor focus of study.
It’s not a lie, and if pressed, I always tell the truth. It’s become a non issue as my professional experience has mounted and now my resume and references speak for itself.
But, unless I’m asked directly…
Nobody needs to know I dropped out first semester of my senior year due to a crippling drug addiction. Or as I phrase it, a period in my life where I needed to tend to a family medical emergency.
I give a shit about minorities
On top of that, being a minority alone can be a huge disadvantage.
Drugs mostly. No criminal records or anything, but I’d probably have to pay out some hush money
I’ve shared so many nudes
Just gotta own it like LBJ, who was (apparently) naked somewhat frequently in office.
I know less than half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I’m trying to remember where you got this quote.
West Wing?
First line of Bilbo Baggins’s birthday speech.
Weed. I want to make thc drug tests for any reason including employment illegal just to see if it really does cause the world burn or not (it won’t)
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*Except the food industry. No restaurant or bar is dumb enough to drug test. They wouldn’t have any workers
It’s getting that way for warehousing too, besides pre-hire screening (which, if you ain’t savvy enough to slide past one of those you can fuck off anyway.) 20 years ago we got tested for looking at the boss funny, these days you have to REALLY fuck something up to get tested lol.
Get people to fund their own smear campaign? Creative!
Nice try, FBI.
Let’s see here… Trans, furry, poor mental health, unmarried, jaded, has made comments about “eating the rich” that have gotten a little too real, would absolutely instruct the CIA to create Operation Glass Ceiling: a highly illegal operation designed to keep any single american from getting too wealthy, would have the CIA stage accidents involving politicians too old or who’ve been in office too long.
I stand a very good chance of getting elected, don’t you think?
has made comments about “eating the rich” that have gotten a little too real
Elaborate …?
Raised atheist. It’s one thing to denounce a religion later in life but I never had one. Mom is ex Catholic and dad is entirely unreligious.
In the US it is incredibly rare for higher office officials to be atheist. There has never been a president that was atheist publically but a few were rumored to be privately.
Controversial to whom?
Party officials who want to make sure there aren’t any skeletons in your closet that will cause an issue on the campaign trail.
Which party… Die Partie? It’s the only one I would run for. (Or it’s Canadian equivalent: Rhinoceros)
