Reply #89: Yeah, I have enchanting eyes

[krispos42]

But that's besides the point. The only hard numbers in the opening post were the time period between the shootings (exactly 4 years) and the age of the victim. The rest is generalizations bemoaning the recent uptick in violent crime. Something which, incidently, is also happening here in Minneapolis. Fortunately the CNN post further down had some hard information about numbers.

I do know that here in the Minneapolis the murder rate is up, and it is blamed in part on recent major cutbacks in the Minneapolis Police Department in response to budget constraints.

Unless you are refering to the reply to the original post, which has been deleted by the moderater but if I recall went something like this:

{b}Subject:
Facts? Okay, start looking around a little

Body:
How does garbage like you get up and actually function everyday? I mean, it's incredible. You basically have no understanding or grasp of the world around you, and yet you still walk around and somehow function.

The Walking Dead.

There are far too many of you idiots above ground.

Go crawl back in your hole, before you get verbally beaten into the hamburger meat that passes for brain matter in your head.

This is the post I was responding to, just for any latecomers to the thread.

I don't know, I'm not a mental health worker, but it sure looks to me like this person is not open to new ideas on this topic. This person apparently wants to believe that every year the violent crime rate increases exponentially and nearly all of it is done by honest citizens who touch a gun and become compelled murder. And God help you if you disagree with him.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but that does not change the fact that this person's reply to the "that's bullshit" poster was uncalled for. Most threads take several heated exhanges before they get to this level of vitriol.

There is no denying that the "that's bullshit" poster should have thrown some numbers in there. I spent a little time on the NIJ website and found out that "intimate partner" homicides are estimated to be 40-50% of all female homicides, but it does not mention total numbers. I do know that there are about 15,000 homicides per year in the US, but I do not know the percentage of those that are female. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/jr000250e.pdf

It is not that is person does not like guns. It is that this person by all appearances HATES both guns and the people who own them, and would rather threaten and bluster rather than letting different opinions or discussion near his brain. Hate on a level that is not entirely rational.

What really irritates me is that this kind of person is exactly the kind of person held up as an example of what will happen when Democrats take power in Washington. Several times during the 2004 election I heard people say when I mentioned that Bush "won" reelection the answer I got was "Good, now we'll get to keep our guns". It is not even because they think Bush is a good president, it was because they were disgusted with both candidates but that was the tipping point. One guy even said that either of them would run the country into the gutter, but at least when the economy collapsed he's be armed. And that kind of mentality will continue to cost us votes.

This may be my pet peeve. I know Kerry really won Ohio, so a relative handful of disgusted pro-gun voters in the Midwest didn't cost the election. At least, I doubt it. That Blackwell powermonger did (read the Rolling Stone article on him. It's not pleasant). But if that had cost Gore (trying to shake off the Clinton gun ban legacy) enough votes so that he didn't take his home state of Tennessee, then it cost us enormously. If Gore had taken his home state, then all the GOP staffers flown down to Florida to stage "stop the recount" rallies would have amounted to exactly zip, because that would pushed Gore cleanly over the 270 needed electoral votes. And history would have been significantly different and most likely much, much better.

This is, in my opinion, a third-rail for Democrats. Virtually no Republicans support gun restrictions beyond what already exist federally, and such a large number of Democrats feel the same way it is an issue that divides us. And that makes Karl Rove happy, and THAT pisses me off! Leave it to the states, increase enforcement of existing laws, and concentrate on BushCo screwups and criminal activity to swing the Congress to the Democrat's side in November.

Iverglas, you I can talk with and have intelligent (if verbose) discourse. Although we disagree, we have not gotten insulting or hateful. Nothing in this persons post give me such hope.