Another Texas Church shooting

[simplybill]

39 minutes ago, skliss said:

One piece of homework we give our students is to look at people and see who's looking back....you'd be surprised again. One study of inmates and violent offenders says that fully 60% will dismiss someone as a potential target based on eye contact alone.

That’s an interesting statistic! I’ll add it to my ‘awareness game’. Lol

The Gift of Fear is the only book I’ve read three times. It’s fascinating.

 

[Setton]

7 hours ago, simplybill said:

Setton-

Living in ‘preparedness’ is different than living in fear. When a person is confident that they’re prepared for a dangerous encounter, it often shows in the way they walk. That alone can discourage the bad actors. 

The same goes for people with bad intentions: they often unconsciously develop a recognizable gait, a posture, a habit of averting their eyes. 

Situational awareness becomes second nature after a while. It becomes more like a game. Your learn how to scan a crowd without being obtrusive, you become aware of secondary exits in buildings, maybe even memorize the first three numbers of the license plate on a car that has circled the parking lot more than once. This may sound ridiculous to you, but all of that is tremendous fun for me.

I highly recommend the book in the link below. I encourage you to at least download the free sample on Kindle. Gavin de Becker is a wonderful story-teller.

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Survival-Signals-Violence/dp/0440226198

 

Thanks but I don't need you to teach me that. 

Yes, it is fun and practical. But it shouldn't be necessary for the everyday citizen. 

[simplybill]

11 hours ago, Setton said:

 But it shouldn't be necessary for the everyday citizen. 

I disagree. Situational awareness absolutely is necessary. It’s as basic as teaching children to run away from strangers that offer them candy, and teaching young women to keep an eye on their drinks when they’re in a pub. As criminals become more aggressive, we citizens have to respond by increasing our awareness of criminal behavior. 

[Setton]

51 minutes ago, simplybill said:

I disagree. Situational awareness absolutely is necessary. It’s as basic as teaching children to run away from strangers that offer them candy, and teaching young women to keep an eye on their drinks when they’re in a pub. As criminals become more aggressive, we citizens have to respond by increasing our awareness of criminal behavior. 

Or by reducing their criminal behaviour. 

That's the difference. We take action to prevent their behaviour, you surrender to it and change your life to fit their world. 

[simplybill]

1 hour ago, Setton said:

Or by reducing their criminal behaviour. 

That's the difference. We take action to prevent their behaviour, you surrender to it and change your life to fit their world. 

Behavior modification can work for people who want to change their lives for the better, but it won’t even faze someone who has a criminal mind. We could disarm every criminal in the US and send them all to charm school, but there will always be a subculture of violent people who live to inflict violence on other people. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by simplybill

[psyche101]

42 minutes ago, simplybill said:

Behavior modification can work for people who want to change their lives for the better, but it won’t even faze someone who has a criminal mind. We could disarm every criminal in the US and send them all to charm school, but there will always be a subculture of violent people who live to inflict violence on other people. 

Why not make it difficult as possible for a criminal mind to act? In current threads I see a stabbing incident that resulted in none dead. I see a father burst into tears as his 8 year old makes a kill. None of this supports a sensible rational outcome regarding gun culture. It's breeding a wild west mentality. 

[simplybill]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

Why not make it difficult as possible for a criminal mind to act? In current threads I see a stabbing incident that resulted in none dead. I see a father burst into tears as his 8 year old makes a kill. None of this supports a sensible rational outcome regarding gun culture. It's breeding a wild west mentality. 

It’s not just American criminals that we’re dealing with anymore. Our southern border is so porous that criminal gangs are freely relocating from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, and they’ve been recruiting and organizing in our cities. 

This is a long article, but here are a few quotes that summarize the kind of threats that Honduras has been dealing with it for years:

“MS 13’s recent success is derived in part from a strategy, begun at least four years ago, of infiltrating members into the police and military, and sending selected cadres to universities to become lawyers, accountants, and MBAs. These members are now in positions to exercise influence on behalf of the gang in multiple spheres, with a far more sophisticated understanding of the world.”

“The capacity of MS 13 in San Pedro Sula to carry out new military action is owed in part to the increased military training they are receiving and the improved weaponry they can now routinely access, including Uzi submachine guns, C4 explosives, RPGs, and new AK–47 and AR–15 assault rifles. This capacity has in turn strengthened the gang’s ties to Mexican cartels seeking to move their cocaine through the region. According to regional law enforcement officials and gang leaders interviewed by the authors, this successful expansion is because of the unintended consequences of two actions by the U.S. and Honduran governments that are widely viewed as successes:

In an effort to build a credible police force, the Honduran government, with U.S. support, has dismissed more than 1,000 policemen suspected of corruption and/or human rights violations. A core of more rigorously vetted and trained policemen are to fill the void in new police structures. However, the massive firings have been a boon to MS 13 because the gang now has money to hire many of them as security and trainers for gang activities. According to a policeman who has been offered work by MS 13 and has several friends who have accepted the offer, MS 13 pays roughly 2.5 times what the policemen were making inside the police force.”

“Each step entails carrying out specific, usually violent acts, including murders, to prove loyalty to the gang.17 Young females who enter the gang, either by choice or force (and there is very little choice) are known as jainas who are by and large relegated to the role of sex slaves. While the homicide rates in the Northern Triangle have been well-documented and remain among the highest in the world, the economic and social costs of the violence, largely now driven by gangs, are also among the highest in the world.”

The full article:

 https://cco.ndu.edu/News/Article/1298326/the-evolution-of-ms-13-in-el-salvador-and-honduras/

———————————————————————————————————

[RavenHawk]

On 12/29/2019 at 8:08 PM, ChrLzs said:

Here's a few, starting with the hardest and likely to be the most ridiculed by 'andthenners':

Not just @and theners, but anyone with common sense and even someone with a very basic understanding of human nature.  That pretty much rules out everyone on the left or leans Left.

 

- begin the long slow process of returning the USA to a happy and fair democracy,

We were never a democracy.  And happiness is only realized if *ALL* our Rights remain intact. 

 

and reduce the almost maniacal desire to have a gun as if it's a god-given right and essential to 'freedom'. 

The Right to bear arms *IS* a GOD-given right and it *IS* essential to freedom.  That was the whole point to our maniacal Revolution.  That is a set-in-stone fact that you can’t ignore!  Government does not give us our Rights as most other places do.  It may try to take them but then another of our Rights (Duty) is to prevent a government from trying to take our Rights.  The function of our government is to protect our Rights, not grant them.

 

Some countries manage to do this, and have very low gun ownership *and* people who do not fear their government want to remove their right to shoot others...

Maybe they should fear their government especially when the state has defeated the will of the people in giving up its arms.  It is not wise to not fear one’s government.  It is not a matter of if, but of when, when a government decides to take a few more freedoms from the people and keeps taking them until only slavery exists.  If you think that the Right to bear arms is actually the Right to shoot others, then you do not understand the problem or what a Right is.

 

- begin the long slow process of improving your mental health system,

That can be achieved by focusing on building up the family.  Without a stable environment growing up, children don’t have good coping skills.

 

and encourage the neighbourly practice of reporting people who seem to be struggling, or who post odd or scary facebook/insta-twitter stuff.  And give the authorities the funds they need to investigate reports

Now if that isn’t the next step to a police state.  This will make it open season on anybody and everybody.  We all struggle in our lives.  That doesn’t mean that we are suicidal.  But we’ll all end up reporting each other.  And who will you get to enforce it?

 

- begin the long slow process of changing the way social media is used primarily as a hate forum

Now go after our 1^st Amendment Rights.  Why not change the way people respect each other.  If they did that, then social media will be more respectful.  If you end up dictating what is hate speech and then restrict it, you are adding to the problem because that will alienate more people and the anger and hatred will fester under the surface until it explodes in an epidemic of deaths.

 

- begin the long slow process (are you noticing a theme?)

Noticed it right off.  Typical Socialist mentality.  Make that slow left-hand turn into dictatorship. 

of changing the attitudes towards minorities, foreigners, unemployed, etc etc.  There but for the grace of your favourite deity, could be you one day

And what are those attitudes?  Once we eliminate the Plantation mentality that is foisted upon the inner cities, then those people will have a better attitude about themselves.  And then others will view things differently.  The only thing holding back minorities are the minorities themselves.  And in a healthy economy such as we have now, the unemployed are not in a permanent sedentary lifestyle.  People have been returning to the workforce and jobs are coming back.  So much for the new normal and the manufactured crisis that lost jobs aren’t coming back.

 

- begin the .. process of changing the way gun ownership is viewed. 

You are very right.  There needs to be safety classes in schools teaching respect and responsibility.  People that wish to carry need training and annual qual.  Teach people the importance of guns as a bulwark of our freedoms and that they are not some toy to be a solution to petty problems.

 

Maybe it's not as cool and vitally important as some seem to think? 

I don’t know about being cool, but it is vitally important.  Without it, our freedom is but one dictator away from being taken from us.

 

In the US, it seems being able to 'carry' is a badge of importance and responsibility. 

Exactly!  Responsibility is the key to changing attitudes.

 

- begin the .. process of slowing, then reducing the amount of (rapid fire) weapons out there

You do realize that the vast majority of multiple killings are under four?  I.e. not by ‘rapid fire’ weapons.  Murders by firearms are already a small portion of total deaths and those from ‘rapid fire’ weapons are negligible.  Rapid fire weapons are pretty good at thwarting a government becoming tyrannical, though.

 

- roll out *proper* background checks for all new and existing gun owners

Ah, here we go.  How often do you want to run a background check on existing gun owners?  Where are you going to pay for the workforce to do that?  What are the thresholds for pass or fail?  This is what Obamacare was setup to do.  Not to deal with mental health, just simply a way to confiscate guns.  That threshold would be tweaked so tight that no one would be able to own a firearm.  We would become a nation of mentally unstable people.  We would be in fact imprisoned within our own nation.  It would be in effect, a police state.  The Constitution would be null and void.  I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to happen.  There would be revolution in the streets before that happened.

 

- change legislation to tighten controls of sales and 'disposal' of weapons

And do you think that will stop people from killing people?  If you remove guns, people will find other ways to kill.  The murder rate will not go down.  You’ll have to start regulation of knives, baseball bats, heavy pipes, bows and arrows, swords, pressure cookers, automobiles, poisons, blunt objects, etc.

 

You'll notice that my suggestions tend more towards changing attitudes,

You are right on this suggestion.  We need to change attitudes, but your suggestion is more about gun confiscation rather than what is needed to change attitudes.  People need to start learning to be responsible for their actions.  We need to stop attacking the family.

 

and looking at why people feel so alienated,

When people become dependent on the government, people become easily alienated.  Government does not bring purpose, only family and community does.

 

and why they might think that guns are a solution... 

If these types know and understand that other people might be armed, they would give up on the idea that guns are a solution.

 

To me, they are a sign that the person is a lowlife coward of extraordinary proportions, and that there were, most likely, many indications in their upbringing that they had 'issues'. 

They are usually those that were not brought up learning discipline or self-reliance and from a broken family.  A boy growing up without that father figure, doesn’t have an easy time learning how to be a man, if they do at all.

 

It seems to me that for what may be numerous and complex reasons, they are not being recognised in time. 

It’s usually because of Liberal policies, they prefer to ignore the complex reasons.  Unruly children in school are not punished when intervention is needed.  And that enables them to continue to act out.

 

Well, gee ... duh!  But if these things are not being discussed, and all we get is "You''l need to prise my gun from my dead hands" ...... well, that's why this will simply continue (and currently does continue).

Yes, this is something to be discussed but when the talk automatically jumps to gun confiscation, then that talk isn’t going anywhere.  What you don’t understand is that even if you takeaway all guns, the coward is still there.  If they can’t get a gun then something else will become the solution to their problems.  Most multiple killings are still less than four.  Don’t you think that if someone has the desire to kill, they’ll be able to get two or three or more with something other than a gun?  Have you thought it out that far?

 

If you don't think things need to change, and that the root causes need some attention, well, just keep posting the new reports of deaths as they come in...

Things do change, but that won’t stop the deaths.  People kill people and always will.  What needs to change is putting value to life.  You do that by respecting everybody’s Rights as opposed to restricting them.

 

Oh, and as an aside, forgive me for being pleased to see the NRA is currently thigh deep in manure and will hopefully sink *much* further...

Don’t fret, the attacks on this organization won’t last forever.  There aren’t that many organizations intent on defending the Constitution.

 

[ChrLzs]

I don't generally talk to brick walls, but I can't let this pass.....

37 minutes ago, RavenHawk said:

People kill people and always will.

Not at the ludicrous rate that you have over there, you lucky, lucky folks.

[+and-then]

On 12/30/2019 at 2:41 PM, ChrLzs said:

fixate on just one thing that suits your worldview.

You do the same.  You're dismayed by the idea that free people must first be responsible to themselves, then to the nation at large.  Enjoy your Nanny State, Chuck.  Hope it's everything you don't believe it could be.  Meanwhile, as you wax philosophical about the shortcomings of others just remember that no one over here actually gives a damn what you or your mates think of us.  In fact, just the opposite.  Try an antacid, it might help when the next shooting occurs.  I'd rather put my bet down on trained, armed responders  

That scum that started his moment of fame only got to enjoy it for SIX SECONDS  

[+and-then]

On 12/30/2019 at 7:45 PM, Gunn said:

Can you guarantee the Cartels won't smuggle semi-autos (usually with drugs) across the border to circumvent that while that is in the process, so we don't end up like failed South African gun control policies?

This reality is inconvenient for their argument so they tend to ignore it.  The answer is always "MORE" control.  They seem quite comfortable on their knees.

[Gunn]

1 hour ago, ChrLzs said:

I don't generally talk to brick walls, but I can't let this pass.....

Not at the ludicrous rate that you have over there, you lucky, lucky folks.

You need to really educate yourself about who has the ludicrous rate of killing/murder in the world. We don't even come close to countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Belize and South Africa - remember South Africa, ChrLzs? The one with more gun control then U.S.?

Murder Rate By Country 2019

[Gunn]

25 minutes ago, and then said:

This reality is inconvenient for their argument so they tend to ignore it.  The answer is always "MORE" control.  They seem quite comfortable on their knees.

Because it would be difficult for socialist to influence Americans to give up their guns and eventually turn the U.S. into full blown Democratic Socialism if they start acknowledging the facts we present to them. That screws with their dream of a perfect socialist world, you see.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Gunn

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, and then said:

This reality is inconvenient for their argument so they tend to ignore it.  The answer is always "MORE" control.  They seem quite comfortable on their knees.

You're the one on your knees, worshipping guns.

[psyche101]

5 hours ago, simplybill said:

It’s not just American criminals that we’re dealing with anymore. Our southern border is so porous that criminal gangs are freely relocating from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, and they’ve been recruiting and organizing in our cities. 

This is a long article, but here are a few quotes that summarize the kind of threats that Honduras has been dealing with it for years:

“MS 13’s recent success is derived in part from a strategy, begun at least four years ago, of infiltrating members into the police and military, and sending selected cadres to universities to become lawyers, accountants, and MBAs. These members are now in positions to exercise influence on behalf of the gang in multiple spheres, with a far more sophisticated understanding of the world.”

“The capacity of MS 13 in San Pedro Sula to carry out new military action is owed in part to the increased military training they are receiving and the improved weaponry they can now routinely access, including Uzi submachine guns, C4 explosives, RPGs, and new AK–47 and AR–15 assault rifles. This capacity has in turn strengthened the gang’s ties to Mexican cartels seeking to move their cocaine through the region. According to regional law enforcement officials and gang leaders interviewed by the authors, this successful expansion is because of the unintended consequences of two actions by the U.S. and Honduran governments that are widely viewed as successes:

In an effort to build a credible police force, the Honduran government, with U.S. support, has dismissed more than 1,000 policemen suspected of corruption and/or human rights violations. A core of more rigorously vetted and trained policemen are to fill the void in new police structures. However, the massive firings have been a boon to MS 13 because the gang now has money to hire many of them as security and trainers for gang activities. According to a policeman who has been offered work by MS 13 and has several friends who have accepted the offer, MS 13 pays roughly 2.5 times what the policemen were making inside the police force.”

“Each step entails carrying out specific, usually violent acts, including murders, to prove loyalty to the gang.17 Young females who enter the gang, either by choice or force (and there is very little choice) are known as jainas who are by and large relegated to the role of sex slaves. While the homicide rates in the Northern Triangle have been well-documented and remain among the highest in the world, the economic and social costs of the violence, largely now driven by gangs, are also among the highest in the world.”

The full article:

 https://cco.ndu.edu/News/Article/1298326/the-evolution-of-ms-13-in-el-salvador-and-honduras/

———————————————————————————————————

And yet Trump made the hollow gesture of offering the US might to do some good and wage war in cartels. The offer was refused. I strongly suspect economy has a say in this at the expense of the population. 

Scumbags and school shooters do not fall into this category. American 'insurance' ensures they have a never ending gun supply. The two quoted incidents speak for themselves. Where a gun was present, people died. Where one wasn't, nobody did. If there are less guns in circulation, less can be used nefariously.

[Black Red Devil]

On 12/30/2019 at 1:16 PM, and then said:

No, just have no patience with smart asses who think they understand a foreign nation better than its own citizens do.  Spew whatever line you like but had those two ARMED VOLUNTEERS not been there today, that death toll might have been posted by you or someone like you who rejoices over the bloody aftermath so you can wax philosophical about how much wiser you are than "Mercuns"...  Trash haulers, the lot of you.

Armed volunteers in a church??     3 dead and...you're gloating about it??

 

 

[RavenHawk]

6 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

I don't generally talk to brick walls, but I can't let this pass.....

Not at the ludicrous rate that you have over there, you lucky, lucky folks.

looking at @Gunn's link, it isn't so ludicrous.  It is pretty much in the middle of the pack at 5.35.  There are about a dozen nations on that list that could be described as 'ludicrous'.

[RoofGardener]

3 hours ago, Black Red Devil said:

Armed volunteers in a church??     3 dead and...you're gloating about it??

I don't think he was gloating ? 

[simplybill]

@psyche101 @Black Red Devil

You guys are from an island nation. You don’t share a common border with other countries. You don’t have to deal with cartel criminals that have easy access to your country, other than Chinese triads that use cargo ships to transport slave laborers.

The recent attack at the Hanukkah celebration in New York was carried out by a man with a sword. One of the victims was an elderly man who was stabbed in the brain. Even if he survives, he’ll be brain-damaged for the rest of his life. If an armed citizen had been there, he could have ended the attack just by displaying his weapon and shouting commands. That’s what happens in the majority of ‘criminal vs. armed citizen’ interactions. The presence of a gun is enough to thwart an attack, even when no bullets are fired.

 

 

 

 

[Myles]

7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

And yet Trump made the hollow gesture of offering the US might to do some good and wage war in cartels. The offer was refused. I strongly suspect economy has a say in this at the expense of the population. 

 

How do you know it was a "hollow gesture"?

[RavenHawk]

10 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

I don't generally talk to brick walls, but I can't let this pass.....

That’s funny because such a forum as this was designed to do just that.  And that is what I do on a daily basis especially with types like you.  Types like you need to have the facts continually explained to you because you just don’t listen.  Considering that this was the best response you had for my reply seems to indicate that it was all over your head.  For example, when discussing what Natural Rights are and the protections that the Bill of Rights provides, the vast majority of the world’s population just simply does not understand.  And that is part of the problem, because that majority also includes many Americans.  Only those that have had their freedoms taken but had escaped that environment and then immigrated to this country and have realized their full Rights AND those Americans that have studied and have latched onto the original intent that the Founding Fathers had expressed and don’t take their Rights for granted, are the only two groups that truly understands what Natural Rights are.  Thomas Jefferson wrote about this phenomenon fairly succinctly in the Declaration of Independence, when he refereed to it as “…and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  People are willing to live in a gilded cage rather than being free.  People do not like to get out of their comfort zone.  And that is the same reaction when people insist that we need to ‘discuss’ the murder rate but then automatically go to gun confiscation.

[Grey Area]

2 hours ago, RavenHawk said:

That’s funny because such a forum as this was designed to do just that.  And that is what I do on a daily basis especially with types like you.  Types like you need to have the facts continually explained to you because you just don’t listen.  Considering that this was the best response you had for my reply seems to indicate that it was all over your head.  For example, when discussing what Natural Rights are and the protections that the Bill of Rights provides, the vast majority of the world’s population just simply does not understand.  And that is part of the problem, because that majority also includes many Americans.  Only those that have had their freedoms taken but had escaped that environment and then immigrated to this country and have realized their full Rights AND those Americans that have studied and have latched onto the original intent that the Founding Fathers had expressed and don’t take their Rights for granted, are the only two groups that truly understands what Natural Rights are.  Thomas Jefferson wrote about this phenomenon fairly succinctly in the Declaration of Independence, when he refereed to it as “…and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  People are willing to live in a gilded cage rather than being free.  People do not like to get out of their comfort zone.  And that is the same reaction when people insist that we need to ‘discuss’ the murder rate but then automatically go to gun confiscation.

I find it paradoxical that you refer to gun ownership as a freedom, but does having a gun give you freedom?  Are there more places you can go with a gun than without?  Here’s the funny bit, there are quite a few places you cannot access while carrying, so in actual fact exercising your government, sorry, god given freedom to carry a gun removes quite a bit of freedom.

I also find it paradoxical that you mention natural rights.  I assume you are referring to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  Tell me, which of those natural rights does owning a gun refer to?  And you do realise that even in the states there is open formal debate around the intent of the 2nd amendment?  There’s a jolly good reason why people find it hard to understand.

So, do you think it is logical that in a civilised nation such as America, able to fund law enforcement, with a stable government, that reducing the amount of firearms available overall will make it harder for people who might want to do terrible things to get hold of firearms?

[+and-then]

On 12/30/2019 at 7:45 PM, Gunn said:

Yeah but there is another organization rising up to take it's place. So nothing will change except for the name of the organization.

GOA - GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA.  I joined last year   

[+and-then]

15 hours ago, RavenHawk said:

It may try to take them but then another of our Rights (Duty) is to prevent a government from trying to take our Rights.  The function of our government is to protect our Rights, not grant them.

 

 

 

This is it in a nutshell and they don't accept that human beings have God-given rights because they don't accept the premise that God exists.  That IS their choice but taking arms away from Americans is most certainly NOT their choice and they are incapable of doing it even if they tried.  They just expect better men and women than they to do that "job" for them.  It's all about raw power and the frustration that gun rights cause them when they're seeking it.

[+and-then]

Another snowflake losing her mind over an American being armed in church.  The only conclusion we can draw here is that she actually thinks it better to have let the nutter kill many more.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/usa-today-article-terrifying-that-texas-churchgoers-were-armed-when-they-were-attacked?itm_source=parsely-api?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=010220-news&utm_campaign=position3

This demonstrates just how mentally unbalanced they've become on the issue of gun rights and the role of armed citizens in America.