Make the US Politics Thread Great Again

No argument at all with the 1st part but you can’t simply dismiss mental illness from the equation. I don’t think you can really have these types of massacres without the shooter being somewhat insane. Now of course I believe gun control is the only practical short term way to curb the severity & frequency of these attacks but I believe mental illness is the bigger picture issue thats way bigger & more complex than gun control. Even closer to home you can’t say mental illness had nothing to do with guys like Gargasoulas (running down pedestrians). Now I have little doubt if we had AR15’s available at KMart the same nutcase would have used that rather than his car, but in all of these cases mental illness is where it starts.

IF the US banned all assault riffles tomorrow people would still lose their minds & want to go on killing sprees - that part is not confined to the US. What is unique to the US is the combination of mental illness & easy access to weapons capable of turning a psychotic episode into a mass murder within minutes. Again, mental illness doesn’t in any way shape or form excuse the need for gun control but it is very much the catalyst & longer term a far wider ranging issue for every society.

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Who’s paying you to be this stupid and is it worth it?

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Throwing the FBI and McMaster under the bus in the matter of 2 tweets and a few minutes.

Hmm, kitchen getting too hot there, Dotard?

Excuse me. I have been saying for the last 12 months that this whole Russian ■■■■■ is a waste of time and resources.

Save your abuse for those who think a few Facebook memes made up by a few individuals overseas influenced an election.

Many people waking around with egg on their faces right now.

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Surely you still don’t believe this Russian nonsense?

I’d be interested to hear the next tin foil hat conspiracy.

Maybe time to suck it up and accept Trump won the election and let him get on with the job of running the country.

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I wonder what you’ll say in another 6.

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I dare say the same thing whilst people continue to trot out these ridiculous crackpot conspiracy theories.

There’s a difference between foreign journalists broadcasting to a foreign country and foreign espionage aimed at changing the political narrative at home.

The fact that a foreign nation intended to disrupt the election should be a massive issue, be it successful or not.

To discount the impact of Facebook and twitter completely misunderstands the advertising effectiveness of those platforms. Creating and promoting biased content and flooding comments sections with biased views is a pretty basic modern advertising strategy. Especially so if some of the American population shared this content between themselves, sending it viral and taking it hook line and sinker.

To compare that to an ABC or BBC news report that presented Trump as the flawed candidate he was, that’s comparing apples and oranges. One was an editorial decision outside government control, one was an intensional covert operation ordered by a President.

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How can you assert that mental illness is the catalyst for mass shootings? The catalyst for mass killings is the weapon capable of mass killings.

I refuse to believe E12’s a real person and that these are real feelings.

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Sorry, that is not a fact. It’s nowhere near a fact.
It’s your opinion and a pretty poor one at that.

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What?
Why are you trolling me?

I tend to agree with Jbomber. Addressing mental illness has to be part of it - identification, support, treatment, whatever is needed. As well as addressing the ease with which anyone can acquire incredibly destructive weapons obviously - though the US has such an unusual relationship with firearms that is strange water to swim through. The ability to go crazy fast from thought to force multiplied action is scary. Here you’d be able to lay your hands on a rolled up newspaper in the time they haul out an assault rifle.

In California they have what is essentially a variation the idea of an AVO which temporarily restricts access to firearms. I have seen at least one conservative columnist pushing this for wider acceptance.

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I can understand that there’s some people who agree with some or most of what trump says.

I can’t understand anyone that jumps up and down and ferociously defends everything he says and does and repeats his talking points verbatim.

It’s parody, not reality.

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Wait… what?

Russia’s intentions to mess with the American election is pretty widely accepted. The precedent is widespread interference in European elections over the past few years. All the intelligence services agree it happened in the 2016 election and is still happening. It’s widely accepted that the Russians hacked the DNC servers and released the contents to Wikileaks. Russian troll accounts are known and their activities easily tracked. The FBI has just charged a whole bunch of Russian businesses and individuals for their efforts at disrupting the 2016 election.

What parts of what I just said are my opinion?

What parts of that are false?

How does this not count as an intentional campaign to disrupt a foreign election?

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Ah because mental illness is the difference between a gun owner & a mass murderer. You can’t possibly make a reasoned argument to suggest that otherwise sane people suddenly develop the urge to kill once they posses a gun OR conversely that the urge to kill & even mass killings is restricted to people with guns. Now again let me be 100% clear - I am not arguing against gun control at all, I’m merely pointing out that the catalyst for wanting to murder lots of people is mental illness, the gun is the means to that end. I can’t believe that this latest shooter would have simply led a normal life rather than commit mass murder had he not had an AR15 at his disposal. We’ve seen examples here & all round the world of people having complete mental breaks with reality & going on rampages. What we don’t see outside the US is those rampages plus easy access to weapons that allow those rampages to have maximum impact on victims. Conversely there are thousands possibly even millions in the US who have these type guns but don’t go on killing sprees. Mental illness is not an excuse at all & again its not a one or the other scenario.

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In that time you may get a response to this…

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Here we go. Always the victim.

What shootings has the AR-15 been involved in?

The gun burst into the national gun control discussion in 2012 following the shooting of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

AR-15-style rifles have been used in recent mass shootings at in Aurora, Colo.; Santa Monica and San Bernardino, Calif.; Orlando, Florida and now Parkland.

Popular gun.

When you absolutely positively have to kill everybody in sight, accept no substitute.

too soon?

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