Ok so this is a pretty good add http://www.nationalmemo.com/new-tv-ad-links-mitch-mcconnell-with-al-qaeda-for-opposing-gun-background-checks/
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
PoliGAF 2013 |OT1| Never mind, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
- Start date
- Status
Sarcasm? It's pretty much the left wing version of this image.
i.e. nothing to be proud of.
TacticalFox88
Banned
Sarcasm? It's pretty much the left wing version of this image.
i.e. nothing to be proud of.
Is that image fucking serious?
LOL @ the idea of having guns would've made ANY difference in whether or not those dictators would've taken over.
Sarcasm? It's pretty much the left wing version of this image.
i.e. nothing to be proud of.
Uh huh, when 82% of your constituency supports background checks then people have to wonder what masters you serve.
It's almost as if people have forgotten all of the toys the world's armies have gotten since WWI. The argument is even dumber in the modern era, as if a couple hundred guys with rifles will be able to stand up to a modern military.
Aaron Strife
Banned
The idea that a ragtag group of gun nuts could defend themselves against the US military has always been comical.
You have a gun, they have tanks.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
The forces of King Hussein Obama bin Chairman Mao will tremble at the might of the True American 7th Mounted Cavalry division and their MG-equipped Rascal scooters.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Obummer. That stupid. He's never even held a gun.CHEEZMO;53795835 said:
That was probably photoshopped.
Then attack him for serving the special interests and the NRA. Are you seriously saying that we should wonder whether or not he is serving al-queada?
And yes that picture is obviously stupid, that was the point. You shouldn't stoop to those levels.
This immigration "reform" is a joke. 13 year path to citizenship? lol
How about this. If you want to come to the US and can work you can, you get a work permit, can qualify for some benefits after 5 years and after 10 years you can earn a green card. Commit a crime or fail to find work in a reasonable amount if time then you may be deported.
Would certainly help our problem if low aggregate demand.
How about this. If you want to come to the US and can work you can, you get a work permit, can qualify for some benefits after 5 years and after 10 years you can earn a green card. Commit a crime or fail to find work in a reasonable amount if time then you may be deported.
Would certainly help our problem if low aggregate demand.
campfireweekend
Member
I'm not contesting your point for the U.S. as it would obviously go down with any rebels losing horribly to our army, but what about the situation in Syria? Is it because those rebels are supported by almost every other country in the world and the Syrian government is being isolated? Or are those rebels also losing horribly? Just want to better understand the situation.
The two arguments are not at the same level of validity. Mcconnell is literally for allowing a loophole that lets criminals and terrorists acquire guns easily.
Its ludacris to say that some people owning a few guns would prevent a hostile takeover of our country.
Americans tend to forget they had help in their own revolution.
rocketknight
Member
Romney played one-dimensional checkers and it totally worked for him.
TacticalFox88
Banned
I'm at a base right now where a single fighter wing BY ITSELF could put an end to any resistance that was gathered against so called government tyranny.
And ironically, the same team that wants to have this idea that having guns prevents government tyranny and what not are the same ones advocating pumping extreme amounts of money in the organization that would carry out and enforce said tyranny.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
No, the military is full of TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOTS who would defect en masse. The 0zero genocide dictatorship would be enforced by the DHS and roving bands of
This is what they really believe.
But the ad isn't attacking McConnell as wanting to help terrorists. They're attacking him as helping criminals and terrorists. Which he is. The obvious social value of universal background checks is why they enjoy such massive popular support. The ad is pretty clear about this distinction - it's "why is McConnell in such bad company" rather than "why does McConnell love terrorism".
Anyway, the whole reason it's problematic that "special interests and the NRA" exercise so much power in the gun control debate is that they want policies that produce lots of gun deaths, in large part because criminals and terrorists (not many Al-Qaeda members, admittedly) get their hands on guns. They don't want these policies because they lead to lots of death, but their major moral failing is their indifference to this death. That the special interests are helping criminals and terrorists is exactly how they should be criticized too.
The picture you posted only works as an attack on gun control advocates' motivations. It's saying that Obama wants to take your guns so that he can later put you in a death camp. If you really stretch, maybe you can read it as only saying that gun control will make it much easier for someone to come along later and be an evil dictator, but that's just not supported by history. Plus it leaves out very relevant evidence on the other side - (almost?) every other first-world country has stricter gun control than the US, and they also execute fewer people and put fewer people in prison. It matters that the ad is a lie. It's not quite as ridiculous as "Hitler hated cigarettes too!", but it comes close.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Well he's still super rich so he's got that going for him.
cooljeanius
Member
In the competition for dying with the most stuff, I guess...
I don't think that "why is McConnell in such bad company" i.e. "why do terrorists agree with him". Is a very constructive ad. The loophole has negative consequences and he should rightly be attacked for not weighing those concerns heavily enough, but obviously Al-Qaeda and Mcconell have very different reasons for supporting lax gun control laws and lumping them together instead of attacking his position individually is silly. I mean if they referenced an actual killing by a terrorist committed with a gun bought from America without a background check, then I would be fine with that. Instead they play up his ideological similarities with Al-Qaeda.
Edit: I will admit that the "Experts agree, gun control works" image is probably stupider than the ad, but I don't think either is constructive.
But they don't, really. Their reasons are closely connected. Al-Qaeda likes lax gun control laws because they make it easier for people who should not be allowed to buy guns, such as Al-Qaeda terrorists, to buy guns. McConnell likes lax gun control laws because they make it easier for people who should not be allowed to buy guns to buy guns. Al-Qaeda sees the violence that can result from this as a good thing and doesn't care much about the profits of gun manufacturers, whereas McConnell sees the profits as a good thing and doesn't care much about the violence, but this is what they're both about and McConnell wills both just as surely as Al-Qaeda does (in the he who wills the ends wills the means sense).
It's just ridiculously implausible that the NRA is pulling an ACLU here and thinks that liberty requires that there be these background check loopholes even though they wish that no one who wouldn't pass a background check would end up with a gun. The NRA is against background checks because their funders want to sell guns to people who wouldn't end up with guns if there were universal background checks. McConnell is acting as an agent of the NRA against the interests and opinions of his own constituents. Maybe there's room for some distinction here, in that McConnell is acting as a paid supporter of evil even while he may be "personally" opposed, in some sense, but this is not usually a distinction we care much about in politics.
I'd like to hear your argument for the bolded, because it's certainly not his public position and I don't see what evidence you are inferring it from. The arguments I've seen put forward by Republicans are that there are already enough gun laws and we are better off focusing on enforcing those, privacy concerns, that the law is too broad and an innocent gun owner could too easily inadvertently run afoul of the law and veterans with psychological issues could be afraid to get help for fear of their right to own guns being taken away. I'm for universal background checks and don't agree with these reasons, but I certainly don't see any evidence that they are lying and it's all a conspiracy to keep the profits of gun manufacturers up.
And we both know they weren't making the same nuanced argument you are making when they played an Al-Qaeda recruiting video and then asked why is Mcconell in such bad company.
They argue that we should be enforcing the laws we have while simultaneously making it difficult to enforce the laws we have (by refusing to appoint an ATF director, among other things) and while relying on public misunderstanding of the gun laws we have (at least prior to the current controversy, and probably still, many people are just totally unaware that we don't do something so obvious as requiring background checks for all gun sales). The people opposing universal background checks now are often the same people who, in the relatively recent past, were advocating in favor of universal background checks as simply "being reasonable". You're suggesting that they're more concerned about veterans than veterans are (91% of whom support universal background checks). It's awfully coincidental that pretty much the only people who seem concerned about these things directly profit from gun sales. You don't see any evidence that they're lying? What did you think about Big Tobacco?
But you're right; the video's not making this same argument. It's making a much less provocative one. It's not even asserting that McConnell is willing gun sales to criminals and terrorists. It's just saying that McConnell is enabling criminals and terrorists - that they're on the same side of the issue. Maybe he really does have high-minded reasons for opposing universal background checks, but it should still be noted that there's a downside to this opposition, which is that it enables bad people in doing bad things. A natural way to establish that is with video where bad people explain how the policy McConnell is supporting is helpful to them in doing bad things. That shouldn't even be that controversial. Again, the point of the video is just that McConnell hasn't justified his support of something that helps terrorists; it's not saying that he loves helping terrorists, and it's not going as far as I am in arguing that helping terrorists is integral to what he's doing.
zero shift
Banned
Sarcasm? It's pretty much the left wing version of this image.
i.e. nothing to be proud of.
Hitler didn't ban guns. Just from Jews.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
And OBOZO would "only" ban
Again, I ain't making shit up this is what they say.
campfireweekend
Member
And that we didn't win because Britain was unequivocally defeated. The king wanted to keep fighting but parliament wouldn't let him. There were many facets to how we managed to win our revolution.
How are the Syrian rebels managing though?
So congress watered down that insider trading bill.
There was suppose to be a database that kept track of disclosures from politicians. People would use this info to see if it's related to movements of the stock market. Seemed like a good way to keep insider trading in check. But that's out so...yep.
There was suppose to be a database that kept track of disclosures from politicians. People would use this info to see if it's related to movements of the stock market. Seemed like a good way to keep insider trading in check. But that's out so...yep.
A natural way to establish that the law enables terrorists would be with clear cut examples. As far as I can tell, I can't find a single case of domestic terrorism committed with a firearm purchased through the gun show loophole. The only thing they are doing is associating Mcconell with a scary terrorist organization. They aren't adding anything constructive to the discussion.
We woulda' been royally screwed without the French's help, that's for sure. And while I've seen some people argue that the French's involvement in our revolution means that we should do likewise... the French only helped us because they wanted to shank the British any way they could, and bankrupted and destabilized themselves in the process, so not exactly history that should be repeated without some introspection.
This is a little unfair. We don't keep records of gun sales, so it's hard to say for sure where lots of guns are coming from. But even so: convicted felon Buford Furrow killed one man and shot several other people in 1999 in "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews" using a gun he bought from an unlicensed seller at a gun show (according to the Brady Center). It's also not clear where convicted felon James von Brunn got the gun he used in the Holocaust Museum shooting in 2009.
This is also a weird standard. Domestic terrorism is pretty rare and pretty diverse, so it's really silly to do counter-terrorism by only defending against the sorts of attacks that we've already seen happen. Proper counter-terrorism is about figuring out what terrorists might actually want to do. We don't always get lucky enough to have a video of them describing what they see as a weakness in our security. But when we do have that, it's something that we should look into.
Jesus?
Even if all that is true, it is clear that attacks by terrorists are an insignificant portion of the gun violence that might slip through the cracks because of a lack of background checks on transfers between private parties. We shouldn't be too reactionary to these public statements by terrorists organizations. The statement played in the video even falsely claims that you can buy a fully automatic rifle at a gun show without a background check.
Even if I give the motivations of the ad makers the benefit of the doubt; this is clearly not the best argument they could be using against lax gun control and they would be much better off just referencing the clear difference between the will of his constituency and his position on the matter. As it is, it looks like scare mongering.
RustyNails
Member
Some legal immigrants actually do wait 12-13 years for citizenship, if not more.
I know, it should be much shorter for legal immigrants. 10 should be the maximum if you are making good faith progress on all the requirements.
And more people should be allowed to legally immigrate IMO
To be fair, I've never heard anybody try to argue that the colonies could have defeated Britain's full armed forces. They simply did well enough to make Britain not care enough about these specific ocean-separated colonies.
And the Jews who kept their guns and fought back still generally lost.
Fat load of good the second Amendment did for Japanese Americans in WW2 and the slaves. Didn't help the CSA or the Whiskey rebellion either.
TheHeretic
Banned
And we all know insurgent forces in Iraq couldn't stand up to the might of the US military.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
The insurgent forces of Iraq weren't a bunch of obese Rascal-bound geriatrics who are still bitter about Loving v. Virginia.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Do US citizens have easy access to explosives? I'm pretty sure most of the damage being dealt to our tanks and equipment was from bombs, not gunfire.
cartoon_soldier
Member
They can kill people. They aren't going to throw down the US government or meet the US army in open conflict.
Link
The Autumn Wind
Hmm, someone needs to ask if the slaves should have had guns to fight tyranny.
Sure, it makes no sense, but any answer someone gives should be quite amusing.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
I've seen people say that. And then immediately go pn about how slavery wasn't actually all that bad and it meant all those black people got to live in AMERICA instead of smelly Africa where all those black people who sold slaves to Europeans are from anyway so dont blame white people, racist LIEberal.
Exactly, which is why everyone should have easy access to military grade explosives to protect our freedom. The second amendment said so.
tekumseh
a mass of phermones, hormones and adrenaline just waiting to explode
The truth is somewhat more complicated than that, in that guns were banned before Hitler had any say about it. After WW1, the Weimar government, in order to comply with the Treaty of Versailles, banned gun ownership for everyone, which included the surrender of any weapons already in possession. In the late 20's, this was relaxed slightly, in order to allow to handgun ownership only, and then only to "citizens of high trustworthiness." It also required separate licenses for both the purchase and the actual ownership. In the late 30's, after the Nazis were in power, this law was relaxed to allow long guns and ammunition as well, but required stringent record keeping, ownership and serial number information, to be kept and turned over to the police yearly. Oh, and of course, no Jewish gun ownership of any kind.
RustyNails
Member
Anyone else find it amusing that waterboy is trying to own the Immigration reform by hopping on all 6 major sunday news programs? It's set to unveil this coming tuesday and I find it hilarious to see him desperately trying to become the father of immigration reform. Not happening buddy.
adamsappel
Member
Wait, who is waterboy again?
StopMakingSense
Member
Rubio.
Oh, that guy.
- Status