Desperately attempting to keep thread on topic in face of usual suspects convinced it's all about them. More news about killer. He had troubles, serious ones, from early childhood. As early as third grade, reported repeated violent behavior towards other children with sexual overtones. I'm no headshrinker but it sure sounds like some history of sexual abuse. No, not saying that to excuse him, just saying this was clearly a VERY disturbed person aside from being a racist homophobe gun nut. Although being a racist homophobe gun nut was part of his dysfunction. And yet he had no trouble assembling an arsenal and being hired as an armed private guard.
Yet this guy bought an assault rifle legally and you don't know that he could have picked up an illegal one easily. Also, like with the last shooter who had a neighbor that bought weapons for him, they can get them quite easily since they are legally obtainable. My question is why is an assault rifle even necessary? It is not a sport rifle, which I 100% support the ownership of. It is meant to kill other humans and is damn good at it. Why can't we have some reasonable laws that prevent mentally ill, suspected terrorists, watch list, et al from getting weapons and similar gun paraphernalia? A normal adult can legally get a gun easily and considering the potential danger of the item it seems reasonable to have to wait to have a background check done. If for some reason the process hits a snag for a normal buyer and they have to wait even a month longer than typical in order to do due diligence then so be it. If someone has the desire to get a gun it shouldn't be an impulse buy in the first place. Talking about buying an expensive item on principle to stick it to the powers that be sounds like hot air mixed with frustration and a dash of kool-aid. The NRA has political clout way beyond it's importance. I wouldn't be surprised if some gun fans would like to have the NRA become a government agency ala the EPA. Better yet replace the EPA with the NRA, they might suggest. What is so wrong with having a reasonable balance? Guns are not all bad and their ownership is protected, so they are here to stay contrary to what you hear from some. So the extremes need to get mature and stop playing a game of I have to get everything I want or I will flip the table.
As long as they are the Pink Pistols and not the Pink Assault Rifles I think it is a fine idea. Gun safety, sport shooting, and the like is legit. Just the absurd notions of "I deserve to be able to shoot a howitzer" mentality needs some toning down, to put it mildly. Guns are fine, just tone down the rhetoric, gun fans.
It doesn't even matter if the gun is "necessary". This is America, and we are free to do and purchase what we want. Having the Government infringe upon that is not something I agree with. You give an inch, they take a mile. It just doesn't sit right with me. But.... You hit the nail on the head. "reasonable balance". I am totally okay with that. Meaning, I support banning mentally ill people, people on watch lists, and the normal background checks in order to get weapons. Just like with any weapon, car, or plane, there is an assumption of responsibility and respect that the tool requires. If people cannot demonstrate that then they should not be able to attain said tool until they can. I however do not support a ban on assault rifles, because I think the logic behind that is fucking stupid and shortsighted. These people that continue to steer the topic toward gun control are missing the bigger issue at hand, which is domestic terrorist attacks due to the USA as a nation allowing people like him to exist in our country. The FBI really dropped the fucking ball on this guy big time.
True. I do not own mine for sporting purposes. But it is not an assault rifle, the M16 is and so is the AK47. Mine is just a semi auto. I really like the old Thompson, but geez, it cost too much to shoot, and those magazines loaded with 230 grain bullets are too heavy to pack many.
No not part, a whole lot of it came from here; http://www.radianceweekly.com/171/4...-ii/story-detail/hadith-on-homosexuality.html You might fine other idiots saying similar things, I am sure you have. But you won't find Jesus teaching this sickness.
Oh I know the fools and dumb asses exist, I won't even try to explain why. But I can't finds any where that Jesus teaches anything untoward about homosexuals. I am sure crandc find the idea that marriage is the joining of a man and woman (Matthew) unfair. But I think that is just defining the union. Mohammad on the other hand, doubled down on Leviticus and the story Lot(Lut in Arabic), and specified harsh treatment in his Hadith. Where as, Jesus teaches not to judge and to absolutely leave vengeance to God.
I can tell you are good guy, MarAzul, but it is avoiding the issue to say, "Our teacher Jesus said this and that pleasant thing" when the actual actions of more than a handful of the followers of the faith of christianity in all of it's various incarnations are not in line with his teachings. All of you have to own up to what the religion on the whole says. Here is an exaggeration to hammer home my thought. Please follow along with my thought experiment. If christianity had 1 million followers and only one of them followed the teachings properly, and the rest were, for example, still burning "witches" at the stake. Would you be willing to say that the religion was not worthy of continuing, since only one person was following the religion the way _you_ saw fit? That one person following the religion the "right way" would be the infidel according to all of the rest of the faithful. So you see, it's all a matter of what works for the group and what they want to take and add to the religion. There is no one "right way" to follow a religion. As I'm sure there are things Jesus had supposedly said you think are immoral or plain stupid. To wit: "And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." "Ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. ... Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? ... Upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar." The reality is that christianity has morphed over the years and your interpretation of what is right and what should be followed in order to be considered a "good christian" is not the same as millions of others that consider themselves "good christians". It is extremely common to get defensive when one of the more absurd variations of christianity does something screwed up, like http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ic-burnt-witches-at-stake-says-UN-report.html or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism with it's rituals of snake handling and talking in tongues. I am an equal opportunity disliker of religion, so please don't think I am singling out christianity. Eventually I will get on the case of islam and how it is essentially the worst game in town. What I'm just trying to impress upon you here is that you can't use "But the religion is just not being followed properly. These fake christians just aren't doing it right". Sounds really similar to what muslims say about their religion. "It's not the Quran that says these things that ISIS espouse. The Quran teaches peace and to treat others with respect. These terrorists aren't real muslims, they are perverting the word of Allah" etc. While it's obvious that I don't believe in a god, please don't think that I'm trying to single you out for ridicule. I'm just trying to open a discussion about what appears to be hypocritical and fallacious so that we all can learn something along the way. If I'm off base, I'm always willing to alter my views to reflect a new understanding of the subject. Cheers
>>>Why not? I just did. I am not a Christian and I sure am not the expert to defend it. However, as a student of religion, I think the teaching of Jesus are very good for people to live by. As are the teaching of Buddha and Krishna. By the way, the passages of the Torah (Old Testament) you referred to are not the teachings of Jesus. >>>Better read the Koran again, it is very exclusionary. The teaching on how to treat the infidel are extreme without any extremist bending it at all. Then you have to check out the Hadiths, the saying of Muhammad, some really harsh shit there. Example; http://www.radianceweekly.com/171/4...-ii/story-detail/hadith-on-homosexuality.html
The bigger picture here in my humble opinion is this; Both Jesus and Muhammad created a reformation of the old Jewish religion, using it as the starting point. Jesus took the harshness out of the religion and taught people to be less judging, to love one another and to leave punishment and vengeance to God. The world would be a much better place if men followed the teachings of Jesus. Muhammad seems to be teaching his followers to exclude all other, to treat them as a lower class of beings. Instead of teach men not to judge one another and to leave punishment to God, he calls upon his followers to enforce the will of God as Muhammad sees it. I don't think it should be a surprise to anyone that we see these harsh extreme atrocities are committed by the followers of Islam. It seems people have difficulty seeing a difference between the two religion when viewing the actions of the followers. But I don't see it that way, I see some "Christians" not following the teaching of Jesus, but most do. Then on the other hand I see many Muslims following the teachings of Muhammad and harsh it is. Then we see some that apparently don't follow the Koran or the Hadiths and they even speak of Islam needing a reformation. I look at the teaching not the action of the followers as the guide to the worthiness of the religion while not a devotee of any. And I will admit that my view of Islam was set in the negative years ago in my mind, when I was part of a couple hostage rescue missions, to extract captives for Muslim pirates. Kaffers they called them, It seem they feel it is moral to capture and ransom infidels (Kaffers). Nasty bastards!
You misunderstood what I was saying there about Islam. I was pointing out what muslim apologists all say about islam. That is why I had it in quotes as an example of what THEY will say. I certainly don't agree with what they are saying about the so-called religion of peace. And that is part of what makes my point. Christians, and followers of Jesus as you seem to be at least in part, will pick and choose what they like and say that those that follow the parts that YOU don't like are the ones that aren't getting it right. They very well can say the same thing about anyone else that doesn't agree with their doctrine. It is illogical to say that your variation of a religious system is better than another variation, that is just immutable fact since we ultimately can never know what the original thoughts and motivations of a god are. No single book could ever do justice to the inner workings of god. If any human suggests such an absurd notion that one could possibly understand the god of the old testament from the bible, may they be struck down by lightning! After all, who the fuck can even begin to understand a woman let alone the motivations and goals of a god from reading an ancient book of translations and mis-translations with omissions and additions?! I predicted, to myself, that you would say that about those passages not being his teachings. They are actually from the New Testament though, all from Matthew and are about him at the very least whether you want to consider them worthy of his majesty is once again your call and not what most other believers of the bible would omit. However, my point wasn't about them being his teachings. It was pointing out the absurdity of passages in general in the bible and they certainly come across as circumspect to any thinking person. Jonah and the whale? Who can begin to believe such nonsense? Denying the existence of the holy ghost gets you a direct passage to hell no matter your good deeds, but you can deny the existence of Jesus and still get in to heaven? Then the last where it's blaming the Jews... The bible is tiresome hateful drivel. If it were not for the new word the whole of the bible would be so utterly disgusting as to be unfit for a child with the worst culprit being the god itself. Jesus is the only redeeming part of it. I do agree that Jesus does have some generally good ideas about caring for others, but it's nothing we as modern man don't already know from simply existing day by day. Observe the golden rule and pretty much everything else falls in to place. What else do we need to know about ancient belief systems at this point? The bible, if you feel it did anything to get society where it is today, has nothing new to add. We in society have written down and pass along the ideas in culture that matter, so let's continue to cherry pick the religions bones of whatever remains that is good and just place the holy texts in the libraries to be perused by old codgers that get off on that sort of thing. We got better things to do.
It's obvious to the impartial that Mohammad is the more violent of the two and IMO is more like a Joseph Smith of the Mormons than anything. But, because the followers of Islam take the teachings so seriously it makes for some really serious problems. The quran and the hadiths are full of passages that, if taken to heart, give followers clear instructions on how to make a mess of things for those that don't follow. It's like it was a religion designed to be spread by any means necessary in a time in history where brutality was the status quo. Once again, I just want us all to not be hypocritical about our own ideologies. If you are anyone is using the same fallacious arguments to say "my way is right, and your way is wrong", then they should be called out on it. Because, in my view, if we set a stage for the most intolerant religion to spread because we are too concerned with protecting our own ideology that is full of holes, we are dooming everyone ultimately. Open up and let your ideology be criticized without getting all bent out of shape and stand up against all other religions that are infringing on the ideologies that are the core of a strong resilient society. Freedom of speech > freedom of religion. Just have a religion and you can get away with absurdities. "My religion says we can't support birth control, so my business will not support an insurance policy that gives out birth control" and such. What is the limit to the nonsense? What if a religion said "My religion says that Canadians are the offspring of the devil and so I will not hire any Canadians"... Anyway, I get where you are coming from, I'm just venting. Correct me if I am wrong. You really like the good parts of what Jesus has to say, you don't really want to bother reading the book in its entirety to see any of the dirty underbelly of whatever Jesus was up to. You have had bad experience with muslim people in the past and have a negative image of some of them and from what you have read of the quran and Jesus, Jesus comes out on top. That's fine. Jesus was better than most, overall, so I'm not going to be a hater.
>>>I see we have much in agreement, that is good. You can help get the word around. >>> Oh but I have! Rather hard to understand why the first Ecumenical Council included some of the drivel in the Cannon except people need to know where Jesus was coming from and what needed to be reformed. As you say, to see the dirty underbelly of whatever Jesus was up to. Another good read is the book "Who Wrote the Bible". It helps understand some of the construction.
So you are ok with semi automatic pistols with high capacity magazines as long as they dont look scary like an evil ar-15?
Youll notice to discredit a christian the athiest will quote from leviticus primarily, however the mere fact that they identify as a christ follower or christian means they take the new testament as the current rule, while they recognize the old teastament as inspired scripture, it is "old" for a reason. If they want to get mad at leviticus they should probably pick a fight with a muslim or practicing jew who rejects the new testament and still believes they are under levitical law (even though contextually the book was only rules for priests of levi) if you want to talk about the law for everyone, i.e. the 10 commandments, please, explain to me how dont lie and kill people is a mean God.
How convenient. ”You can't disrespect the caterpillar by only raving about the butterfly" As much as I can't stand Mark Jackson, it seemed appropriate to invoke his quote. Please answer my questions. We all can read the book and have the scholars break down every passage until the meanings are clear as possible. Why is it appropriate to ignore the old testament when it says something inconvenient for your updated Jesus is the best narrative? If I can find similarly dastardly passages in the new testament are you going to disavow the NT as well? Why do you think your interpretation of christianity is the right one?
