Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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Captain Kirk
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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I've seen and heard nothing that suggests to me that any of the politicians are in any way going to do anything substantive to change the situation. What was Trump's best effort? "Possibly ban devices which turn rifles into automatics? Worthless. Rubio? " Thinking about changing my position on guns which discharge 15-30 shots per minute.?"

In both cases I smell bullshit.

I will just add that the politicians are doing a grand job of pretending to give a fuck.
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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PeterUK wrote:what hope of teachers doing any better? Terrible idea.
Not only that, but if a gun toting teacher makes a mistake and shoots the wrong person(s), that teacher would have to live with that the rest of his life. Also, it's one thing to be trained to use a gun, but it's quite another to be able to count on being able to actually use it when confronted with a situation. And I'm just waiting to see a teacher using a gun, but shooting the wrong person ending up charged at least with manslaughter, along with having to fight a wrongful death lawsuit.

If I was a teacher, I would refuse to carry a weapon or even have access to a weapon in school. The job of a teacher is just that, to teach. It's neither the job nor the responsibility of a teacher to become part of that "well regulated militia" and I'd be damned if I'd allow Trump and his ilk to impose such a responsibility on me.

Trump, you can add idea to the rest of your very long list of absurdities.

Another thing - I would be very wary of any teacher jumping at the chance to have a firearm in school.
Captain Kirk wrote:the politicians are doing a grand job of pretending to give a fuck.
And some are doing a piss poor job of pretending they will no longer accept money from NRA or any other pro-gun group.
fountainhall

Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

Post by fountainhall »

As mentioned in an earlier post, it has now come to light that the school's armed security guard stayed outside as the students inside were being murdered! He must have heard the shots, but he clearly froze. How many teachers if armed with some sort of weapon would similarly freeze? How many others who actually started to fire would as a result attract the killer's attention to his class and end up being themselves murdered along with the children they were trying to protect?

The temptation is to suggest that many Americans are just plain nuts! When a country permits anyone 18 and over to possess killing machines that are weapons for the battlefield and not city centres, it will never stop the killing of innocents.
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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fountainhall wrote:When a country permits anyone 18 and over to possess killing machines that are weapons for the battlefield and not city centres, it will never stop the killing of innocents.
It gets worse. So far there has been no talk about idiot parents who own such weapons and actually teach their children, often much younger than 18, how to use them and often don't even keep the weapons locked up.

Too many gun owners think of gun ownership as nothing more than a game. This is not a game.

By the way, that security officer, the one who did not even enter the school, rather than endure an investigation, simply retired.

The two police officers who had investigated Nikolas Cruz, but never followed up on it, have been placed on restricted duty while they too are being investigated.

Needless to say, the parents of the victims are absolutely outraged, especially when now it is coming more and more to light just how preventable this incident actually was.
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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To take the argument to the next point, what happens if all teachers refuse to be the school shooter?

To be honest, I just find the whole school shooting thing thoroughly depressing. Seems to me that America hasn't really evolved much from the Wild West days. Was it Rubio the other day who was saying he was changing his opinion on automatic weapons because there was 'evidence' that it might have saved three or four lives on the day of the shooting? What a ridiculous argument to make. So that would only have been 13 dead instead of 17. What a success story that would have been. Can you not just hear Trump saying after the next one (which is an out and out certainty to happen again before he leaves office) that "Yeah 23 people died but if it hadn't been for his administration it would have been real bad"?
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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Evangelicals Hold Event To 'Bless' Assault Rifles, Invite People To Bring AR-15s To Church

While the responses to the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida have varied, one church is actually inviting its members to bring their guns to church for a blessing ceremony. Even though many gun control advocates are fighting for stricter guns laws, and even President Trump is supportive of stricter background checks and a bump stock ban, one Pennsylvania church is inviting their congregation to bring their semi-automatic rifles to church for an event next week Wednesday.

According to Sanctuary Church president Richard Panzer, the event will take place at the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pa. in an effort "to show their willingness to defend their familiars, communities, and nation."

However, Panzer did say that they will also be inviting police officers to come in an effort to make sure everything "goes safely." “All of the weapons in the ceremony will be checked to make sure they are unloaded, with a zip tie so that no bullets can be inserted,” the Church's president said.

Despite the fact that this event is being held just one week after a former student used an AR-15 he bought legally to savagely gun down 17 of his former teachers and classmates, Panzer says his gun blessing has "no ill intent." Panzer went on to argue that these firearms are for self-defense" and therefore there is no connection to the mass shootings that have been plaguing America.

He even went as far to say that if the teachers at the Florida school had been armed, lives could have been saved. "If any of the teachers had been allowed to carry a firearm, many lives could have been saved. Several states have passed legislation to allow exactly that," he insisted.

While the Constitution does grant freedom of religion, this event seems like a direct slap in the face the survivors who are pressuring lawmakers to pass effective gun control legislation to make sure another shooting never happens in again in an American school.

https://www.polityke.com/archives/2018/ ... -to-church

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Jesus for Guns? No. First of all, this is not an Evangelical Church. This particular Pennsylvania church is one of the Unification Sanctuary cult "churches" of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who founded the Unification Church. Unification Sanctuary operates a pro-gun group called Rod of Iron Ministries. The Rev. Sean Moon's brother founded Kahr Arms, a gun manufacturer.
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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[quote="thaiworthy"one church is actually inviting its members to bring their guns to church for a blessing ceremony.[/quote]
Unfortunately the USA has no shortage of idiots and crazies. Blessing guns. That's a new one.

I won't even be surprised if organized terrorist groups see the current situation as an opportunity and inspiration to try to simultaneously attack several schools.

And this NRA spokeswoman, Dana Loesch (who I had never heard of until the Town Hall), keeps coming out with more and more bizarre statements, such as:



I truly believe that if the people who saw a need for and wrote the Second Amendment could have had any idea what it would lead to in the future, they at least would have come up with a different way to write it. I don't believe the present situation in the USA is what they had in mind or would have supported.

The way the Second Amendment is written, it would be perfectly legal to keep a loaded and ready-to-fire Howitzer on your front lawn.
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

Post by thaiworthy »

Has Evangelical Christianity Become Sociopathic?

Since Evangelical Christianity began infiltrating politics, officially in the late 1970s, there has been a disturbing trend to limit or remove rights from those who don’t meet the conservative idea of an American. Many of these initiatives come in the form of “religious freedom” laws, which empower discrimination, while other legislation targets immigrants who believe differently. The result has been a sharp division in American culture, and the redefinition of Christian theology.

Evangelical speaker, author, and university professor, Tony Campolo, said Christianity was redefined in the mid-70s by positions of “pro-life” and opposing gay marriage. “Suddenly theology fell to the background,” he said. And somewhere in the middle of all the change, Evangelical Christianity crossed the line of faith and belief to hatred and abuse. Those who cruelly implement the actions of their faith are oblivious to the destruction they cause to their religion, or the people their beliefs impact. Is it fair to call it sociopathic?

Psychology Today listed sixteen characteristics of sociopathic behaviors, which include: Untruthfulness and insincerity, superficial charm and good intelligence, lack of remorse or shame, poor judgment and failure to learn by experience, pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love, unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations, specific loss of insight, and general poverty in major affective reactions (in other words, appropriate emotional responses).

We see examples of these kinds of behaviors in church leaders and followers. Franklin Graham, for example, stated that immigration was “not a Bible issue.” His stand fits well with his conservative politics and vocal support of Donald Trump, but his callousness toward immigrants and those seeking asylum in the United States goes against everything he says he believes (Lev. 19:33-34, Mark 12:30-31). Yet, Graham doesn’t see one bit of irony between his political stance and his religious belief. Nor does he seem to notice the horrific casualties in war-torn countries these immigrants are desperately trying to flee.

Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento said after the Orlando, Florida terrorist attack on a gay nightclub, “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!” This “minister of God” showed no compassion for the families of the men and women who died. He appeared incapable of laying aside his religious beliefs for even a moment of shared human connection to a tragic event.

And recently, Kim Higginbotham, a minister’s wife and teacher with a master’s degree in special education, according to her website, wrote a public blog called “Giving Your Child to the Devil.” She claimed, “Being a disciple of Jesus demands our relationship to him be greater than our relationship to our own family, even our own children.” She listed Matthew 10:37 as justification, which says, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

In a self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, martyr’s rant, she claims her son turned his back on God, and she was left with no other option but to abandon him. It turns out her son is gay and – it turns out – the day the diatribe was posted was his wedding day. Sharon Hambrick, a Christian writer, posted a wonderful response to this mom.

But mostly, rather than calling these people out for sociopathic behavior fellow Christians agree. Many of the comments on Higginbotham’s website say, “So sorry for your loss,” or, “Praying for you and your son.”

It’s common for us to avoid cognitive dissonance, when our beliefs dictate one thing, but our experiences show us something else is true. We call this living in denial, and we all do it on one level or another. But when we choose our “truth” while coldly watching a fellow human being suffer, we’ve crossed a line of mental health.

The 2016 election demonstrated an especially high level of insincerity, shamelessness, poor judgment and pathological egocentricity among Christian evangelicals. James Dobson, who once said of Bill Clinton, “Character does matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world,” and then said of Donald Trump, “I’m not under any illusions that he is an outstanding moral example. It’s a cliché but true: We are electing a commander-in-chief, not a theologian-in-chief.”

The evangelical Christian message is loud and clear. They care for no one but themselves. Their devotion is to the version of Christianity they have created, which calls for ruthless abandonment of immigrants, women, children – even their own – and anyone else who doesn’t fall inline with their message. Social justice, which is mentioned in Bible verses over two thousand times, has been replaced with hardline political ideology. Principle over people. Indifference over involvement. Judgment over generosity.

Every generation redefines what it means to be, or belong to a religious group. Religious ideologies, interpretations, and doctrines are fluid. But whatever it is, or whatever it becomes, is made by the people who belong to the religion and what they collectively decide to make it.

http://churchandstate.org.uk/2017/05/ha ... ociopathic
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Re: Florida High School Shooting and Gun Control

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thaiworthy wrote:Has Evangelical Christianity Become Sociopathic?
"The only good thing to ever come from religion was the music."
- George Carlin
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