Thanks for the context. I guess that takes that off the table, along with the other fumbling ideas. I would have thought a journalist old enough to remember this may have stumbled upon it before. Clearly not. Doing a quick look around, it looks as if it's on news outlets' minds, but any attempts are just caught in the crossfire of the latest gridlock.I say levy a "mental health tax" of $2 per round on 7.62, .308, .223 and 9mm.
The shitty thing about the gun debate is any real change is going to involve real change. Real change is going to involve serious tragedy. Maybe a little racism besides. Should the Zetas cartel mow down a busload of white school kids, there will be gun reform. Barring that, though, we're gonna get window dressing. Statistically, guns are twice as likely to be used in suicides as murders or accidental shootings. On average, 30 people per day are murdered with a gun. That's 90 people dead, every single day, without a single national headline. If we want to change those statistics, we're going to need some serious restrictions on firearms. The top line mass shooting stuff grabs headlines but from a "total suffering" standpoint, the headline would have to be "mass shooting in Orlando raises daily death toll by 50%". THAT is the level of reform we need: the kind that recognizes that dozens of people die needlessly every single fucking day and makes it really hard to get a gun. You need a hunting permit every goddamn season. Have Fish'n'Game sell firearms permits, and let every sporting goods store stand as a buyback point for the the Feds to give you Kash for Killers. If they can get a 2002 Saturn off the streets surely they can throw some cash at a fuckin' AK-47. Behold. Now it's a stimulus program.
Driving in the car with my brother to visit for Father's Day this theme was brought up. My brother had read through some odd articles stating in the vaguest sense (or maybe it was the info filtered though his interpretation) that reform was Mateen's goal the whole time. As if to 'expose the flaw in the system'. My brother thought it was stupid. Cognitively invoking tragedy with the intent of gun reform? It's by nature the root of why the left wants gun reform, to prevent this exactly. Bare with me here, but the thing that came to mind for me was PsychoPass of all things - yes, anime. The intent of the villains to enact change through violent expositions of flaws... even though not too much changed afterward. I guess I'm 'squirreling' a bit here. But, yeah, I can see (unfortunately) how this is evident.The shitty thing about the gun debate is any real change is going to involve real change.
The older I get, the more Ockham's Razor becomes my philosophy. I think Mateen was a crazy fucker overfed on machismo and confrontational personal politics. I think he decided ISIS was the way to go because that took him out of the "crazy" column and tossed him in the "freedom fighter" column. Here we are, discussing terrorism over a guy whose allegiance to ISIS was watching some Youtube videos and spouting some talking points. By those standards, I'm a member of Coldplay. Nobody wants to die in vain, even people who desperately want to die. The Newtown shooter provoked a senseless tragedy. Mateen? He's got us all spun up over Syrian refugees and bullshit like that and all it took was a couple phone calls.
The media don't seem to understand the difference between terrorism and boilerplate mass murder. Politicians may understand but don't have an incentive to try to get the public to understand. Terrorism, as such, necessitates a political end. "Lone wolf terrorists" are by definition not terrorists. We've apparently redefined terrorism to be "murder committed by a Muslim." It's maddening, as is listening to Clinton and Trump have a dick measuring contest over who can combat "lone wolves" more effectively.