365 Comments
founding

Off topic: I don’t hear anyone saying, perhaps repubs can’t face another of their

Own, first being Nixon, being removed From office, this the craziness.

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What I mind about movies in which every protagonist has a weapon is that there is no accountability. Big shootouts, in the middle of big cities, numerous times throughout the 2 hours...and the viewer never sees any cops arriving, any arrests..nothing. The shooters, both good and bad guys, continue on with their day. That's skewed.

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Short, actionable goals is how I started keeping myself out of deep depression. Sometimes you just have to shorten your timeline and focus on what's directly in front of you.

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You're right. I wouldn't know that stuff either. Why would that change my arguments? You say my attempt at refuting it is bad but provide nothing in the way of persuasive arguments, or any arguments at all really. In short, your comment is nothing at all.

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Jun 5, 2022·edited Jun 5, 2022

1. The first piece. Clearly the author went out to demonize the people who had guns. He didn’t take pictures of people in the south who have antique tool collections. Secondly, “can own bazzokas legally,”…uh, no.

And funny how - despite their arsenals broke no laws and didn’t go shoot up the town.

2. Replace NRA/guns with gay/homosexuals and that price could have been written by Rush L/Falwell/any right wing culture warrior of the past 50 years. Not a good look.

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Jun 5, 2022·edited Jun 5, 2022

I question the entire premise of the piece, because Mr. Last has no way to judge who made guns "central to their identity" and who just collects guns like Leno collects cars. Last said right off the bat that Leno collects many, many cars but that's not a fetish. I agree. Why do you tar gun owners with the same hobby as having a fetish?

Yes, there are lots of photos of people showing off their large collections. But none of the photographed were crazy; the photographer says they were normal and nice. And none of them used their guns against innocent people. So why do you describe them as fetishists?

They aren't.

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founding

The Japanese watch a ton of violent movies and play violent videos games, etc. They don’t have the same gun problem we have in the US. Although I agree Hollywood glorifies violence, we can’t lay the blame for mass shootings on their shoulders.

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A+ choices from JvL

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I don’t see how the gun issue isn’t a crime/public safety issue. Please, democratic legislators, grab these issues by the horns and save our democracy.

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I'm not inclined to accept the argument that Hollywood is partially to blame, and I think the idea to approach gun control with a PR campaign based on anti-smoking efforts is a bit of a stretch. That said, the gun violence problem is plainly complex to analyze, and I'm certainly not opposed to efforts to identify and treat its causes. What I think folks who argue about other causes and how to deal with them miss is one huge factor, however: TIME. All of the suggestions in this article and numerous others take a lot of it. The simple things--raise age, ban high capacity magazines, cooling-off periods. Could be done tomorrow. That's what makes them more impactful.

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"Or we could just pound on the table and feel good about ourselves by pointing fingers at others."

This is basically what I think is wrong with modern progressivism. We used to focus on real, practical things like "economic disadvantage", "equal opportunity", quality of education, etc. Now we've oriented all of our politics around the cartoon villains of racism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, etc. because it's easier to indulge in playing the hero in an imagined morality tale than to actually make progress in improving people's lives. Which was acceptable when these two things supported the same basic goals, but not so when the latter now works toward unhelpful or even harmful ends, like defunding police, eliminating standardized tests, or suppressing constructive discussion of important issues.

We would be wise to learn that same lesson in approaching gun control. Pushing back against the NRA and the gun lobbyists is important, but so is looking for incremental but real progress where we can find it. Speak to the concerns of Republican moms. Talk to supposedly "responsible" gun owners about how their rights are actually being endangered by extremists who've made guns more dangerous. Engage with this issue outside the parameters of our culture wars, because culture wars are how we got here in the first place.

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Jun 4, 2022·edited Jun 4, 2022

Re culture and 50 years ago, that was the beginning of the Dirty Harry movies, lots of violence on TV. Adam-12 had already aired its 'let's dress in bullet-proof gear and point M-16s at bad guys' episode, Police Story had either already begun or was about to do so, the WW2 TV shows were winding down, and there were still plenty of Westerns on TV. That doesn't include all the WW2 theme movies on TV afternoons and weekends.

My own cultural divide occurred upon the unexpected death of the actor Michael Conrad, so the end of 'Phil Esterhaus' on Hill Street Blues warning his police "Let's be careful out there." to Robert Prosky's 'Stan Jablonski' admonishing them 'Let's do it to them before they do it to us.'

It wasn't the 1970s which changed the US, it was the 1980s. And the TV show which was the better measure of the US cultural atrophy was the McLaughlin Group which made Robert Novak and Patrick Buchanan household names. To be fair, I still believe that when one's confronted with an adversary like the Soviet Union, it's good to have Novaks and Buchanans on your side. By 1992, not so much.

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How we used to see guns portrayed:

https://youtu.be/4Fer9ql7itc

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Thanks for the excellent newsletter. For awhile I have been saying that we should use the anti smoking campaign on guns. Back in the 70's and 80's ot was cool to smoke. Everyone smoked. In high school you couldn't see the sink in the bathroom during lunch break for all the smoke. Then non smokers said enough when it came out that cigarettes caused cancer. We knew they weren't good for you, but the nonsmokers had a wedge. We went from a couple non tables in restaurant, a law that smoking wasn't in restaurants. Then advertising was banned. And the smoking on tv shows and movies was controled. We could ban gun advertisement. Then anti smoking ads. One had Brook Shields with a cigarette in her nostril "smoking is sexy". Finally, it became so socially unacceptable to smoke that smokers looked sick. I remember a few of us huddled in an alley behind the bar like drug addicts, freezing our buns off in the middle of a Chicago winter.

Society can be made to see that guns are a stupid disgusting habit that makes the owner of one a pariah.

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Old runners - me - tend to get hurt more. I’m much more careful with my goals now. More ‘can I run 8 miles’ and ‘can I run 10’ than ‘let’s try 6.50 mile repeats today’

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