In another episode of DXP that neither of us was in the mood for, we wax a bit personal and answer a caller’s question about the various father-figures in our lives (Jason’s will SHOCK you), and then address another listener’s suggestion that the reason Hillary is garnering such scrutiny is that she has a vagina. We briefly revisit the topic of protecting ourselves against the evil gub-mint, after which we introduce a new segment called “Livin’ Lodge,” during which (tipping his hat to his car lot days) Jason tells stories about the crazy goings-on at the Salish Lodge and Spa. Christian’s “Feeding Friendsy” reflects on the wisdom of Honest Abe, while our “Dick Move, God” segment explores the depths of wickedness on the part of antediluvian natives of South America. Christian’s bieber focuses on the overly hushed tones of actors, while Jason is biebered by bedtime attire.
Also, our podcast title this time is anything but mere exaggeration.
Podcast #135: Trump and Christianity
Podcast #431: You Say You Want a Revolution?
Podcast #345: Polygamy, Polyamory, and Punishing Singles
Podcast #417: Politicians, Theocracy, and Parenthood
I’m bored of the gun debate, but I’ll say one thing. Pro-gun folks appealing to the constitution have a losing argument because as you guys pointed out, the 2nd amendment is out of date. People being able to possess arms sufficient for the citizenry to defend themselves against the government is simply nonsensical. To me, the best argument for pro-gun folks that I don’t hear any of them making is that you have a right to do whatever the hell you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. Owning a gun doesn’t hurt anyone. “But you you don’t NEED an assault rifle” is what people might say in response to that. I also don’t need highly processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods and those are much more harmful to public health than guns, but no one would call for banning those because we live in a free society and people are allowed to make choices in their own lives. If I want to own an assault rifle and shoot tin cans on my own property, then I should be free to do so. Corpus delicti. No victim, no crime.
Now, that being said, compromise is in order, and the NRA lobby refusing to even discus gun control is asinine. Here’s what I would propose:
1. Expand and fund background checks so 100% of all gun sales, including private sales, require a background check.
2. No gun sales to anyone convicted of violent crime
3. No gun sales to anyone convicted of domestic abuse
4. Build due process into the no-fly list and deny gun sales to anyone on that list
I tend towards libertarian ideals. I think that until you hurt someone else, you can do pretty much whatever the hell you want. But, there are steps that we could take to reduce the risk of mass shootings while preserving individual liberties.
The place I notice sexist coverage of women in the media, is when they talk about tone. Hillary is consistently critiqued about either speaking to loud, or yelling, or even speaking too softly. While Bernie practically screams every time he talks. Jimmy Kimmel did a great bit about it!
1. Hillary Clinton will get a tidal wave of media support for the simple fact that she is a woman. If she teams with Warren even more so. The media is completely Leftist with the exception of Fox News so there should be no cry baby dems on media coverage.
2. The founding fathers also couldn’t have envisioned smartphones, social media, and internet. Should the first amendment also be revised?
3. Honestly guys, big government facism just happened like 60 years ago on a scale the world has never known before. That’s not ancient history and it definitely doesn’t help your case that the 2nd ammendment is out of date. An IPhone wouldn’t have stopped the holocaust just like it doesn’t stop ISIS from burning people alive. If the marines, for whatever reason, are against the citizenry we should be able to defend ourselves. We should have the RIGHT to defend ourselves. Even if its a lost cause and they have better weapons.
4. I need a semiautomic AR15 so that if a street gang storms my house I can kill them efficiently. I think we should all be free to defend ourselves efficiently. In a world without guns 3 men with baseball bats can rob rape and kill my whole family and I could do nothing about it. A gun levels the playing field.
5. You know how many people die from mass shootings a year? Its like 1% of all gun violence. People die from blunt objects more often than AR15s or mass shootings. In Switzerland the government actually GIVES everyone a gun with extensive training and they have very low gun violence. Vermont and New Hampshire have almost no gun laws and hardly any violence. Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, DC, etc with large African American populations are where we find all the gun deaths. The gun isn’t the issue. The culture is the issue. Not the culture of John Wayne. The culture of NWA and cash money records.
6. All of differences boil down to freedom. The left wants to control society because of an intellectual elitism that says “we know better than the common folk what’s good for them”. The right thinks just the opposite. From economics to guns to social justice its all the same issue in a different light. The party of Jim Crow has always been about control. Its just better at salesmanship these days.
On a totally unrelated note…. Does anyone understand why Hillary Clinton wasn’t indicted today?!?
Every defense of her actions was categorized as totally untrue. There was top secret information sent AT THE TIME that she sent it. She didn’t just have one blackberry but many. Her servers weren’t even as secure as GMAIL according to Comey. And all you need is gross negligence for prosecution. Instead of using the term gross negligence…. He calls it “extremely irresponsible” and then doesn’t recommend indictment……
What. The. Fuck.
She should be disqualified legally from holding office.
18 U.S. Code § 2071
The FBI director says they didn’t find evidence that the lawyers destroyed documents intentionally…… But I don’t understand how she didn’t get indicted when everything that was supposed to get her off the hook wasn’t true?!? Its bizaar
There’s quite a bit of research on this issue of gendered scrutiny and judgment, although it’s not in the political arena. First there’s all the research on attitudes toward women’s speech versus men’s speech in boardroom situations. In that context it’s been shown that a woman can say the exact same words in the exact same tone as a man, and it will be judged much more harshly. She will be described as bitchy, demanding, or overbearing while he will be described as decisive. Women are also perceived as talking way more than men even when they talk the exact same amount or even a bit less.
A similar dynamic has been studied in teaching evaluations at the college level. Students perceive female instructors as either bitchy and demanding or lacking in confidence and less competent than male counterparts. So you have to have high expectations of students and be a tough grader or you’ll be perceived as incompetent and less knowledgeable, but having those high expectations makes you a bitch, because there’s a latent expectation that women will be nurturing or something. There’s a razor thin line right in the middle, but one step in either direction sends you hurtling to the extreme position.
So these are two different contexts, but I don’t think it’s stretch to expect a similar dynamic in politics. It seems like more of a stretch to expect that there wouldn’t be at least a little bit of a double standard.
But isn’t there a difference between processed junk foods and firearms? You’re not directly harming me with your twinkies (except that in the long term it impacts my health insurance rates) but guns have been repeatedly used to harm others in a big way. It seems that at least the potential for creating harm (and the magnitude of that harm) has to factor in. Otherwise, why not RPGs and tanks?
I think both conversations are complicated by the flaws in our system that allows the money to do the talking. At the end of the day, the NRA doesn’t give a fuck about second amendment rights. It cares about selling guns. And the guns that make the most money for the gun manufacturers just happen to be the same ones used most often in mass shootings. So no compromise is possible, and being reasonable is off the table because it’s all about the money. Same goes for processed foods. The food lobby is insanely powerful and has successfully influenced legislation and public policy for years. If it was really just about public health, we would already have an evidence-based system, we would subsidize the foods that are actually nourishing, etc. But that’s not the system we’re working in.
Also, the whole calling AR-15s sporting rifles is a marketing ploy by the manufacturer.
So, I’m okay with increased gun control. However, I get confused about all the talk about AR-15s. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but AR-15s aren’t that much different from other rifles people don’t have a problem with. They fire the same ammo, same firing rate, same size as many other hunting rifles. The only difference is that they look like military assault rifles. I would like to see limits on lethality (caliber, rate of fire, clip capacity..), not aesthetics.
People like me say “AR-15” because it’s the one whose name we know. For my part, it’s just code for “those guns that are way more powerful than anyone with a normal-sized wiener needs.”
Why is it bizarre? The powerful are almost never held to account for anything they do.
I’m not harming you with my twinkies and I’m not harming you with my gun. That’s my point. I have the right to do whatever I like as long as I’m not hurting anyone.
You are correct that this is an immensely complex issue with the NRA playing a very nefarious role. I’m probably the only gun-rights advocate you’ll find who can’t stand the NRA. Shutting down lobbyists would resolve so many problems in this country. I’m not sure how to do that, though.
As far as tanks and RPGs, I’d say it’s difficult/impossible to use those things without significant risk of harm to others so it makes sense to ban those from public ownership. Id use drunk driving as a comparison. By itself, it’s hurts no one, but the risk of harm to others is so high that it makes sense to outlaw it. The risk of harm from an AR-15 is very low statistically.
I don’t know man I just didn’t think Comey would make it so obvious if he wasn’t going to press charges. I hope I live long enough to read the actual history of this tale.
http://thedailybanter.com/2016/07/heres-why-hillary-clinton-isnt-a-liar-and-james-comey-needs-to-shut-the-entire-fck-up/
http://wonkette.com/603709/why-hillary-clinton-will-not-rot-in-jail-for-aggravated-emailing-your-ultimate-emails-wonksplainer#iDTH7WiIE59Arifl.01
I would hazard two reasons.
The first, is that the case against her is weak. There is a dispute about the number of classified emails, whether they were classified before or after they were sent, and the distinction between emails that were not classified, but contained classified information (before or after the fact.)
A good lawyer, and I have no doubt the Clintons know a few good lawyers by now, would have a good chance at acquittal sowing doubts to the jury. Which leads to the second reason: politics.
It’s certainly possible that Comey wasn’t prepared to risk an indictment of a major party presidential candidate based on the evidence he had, but would have indicted someone lower down on the totem pole which, if the case was lost, wouldn’t have the political impact on the FBI that a Clinton case loss would have. The Dems would have claimed that the entire thing was a political hack job by the GOP, the GOP would claim that the FBI tanked the case to help Clinton.
As it stands now, Comey may have chosen the more cautious path and tried to toss both parties a bone by not indicting Clinton, but publicly castigating her.
3. Muskets didn’t help the Americans defeat Great Britain as much as Prussian military training from Von Steuben and the French Navy did.
4. Other than the 1990’s depicted in 80’s action movies, when is an armed street gang likely to invade your house?
5. For some reason, I can’t see the NRA or the GOP being happy with arming and training a large number of black and Latino men with military weapons.
6. Not quite. Both sides approach the issue with what they think entails the common good. The GOP believes that unfettered access to guns is in the interest of the common good, the Dems believe that the ~40,000 gun deaths and greater number of gun injuries per year is too much to pay and think guns should be more strictly controlled to bring those numbers down.
I don’t agree that the case against her is weak. There are many, many, many, documented instances of people getting indicted for far less. But I think your last statement on Comey taking the safe road is a possibility I hadn’t considered. It fits the evidence well. Its a dangerous gamble either way. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. They are already dragging him before congress to answer for his decision. If what he says about Clinton is true……
She lied about absolutely everything (no shocker)
She traded top secret information on a server less secure that gmail
She is majorly lacking in the common sense department
She will get crucified for the rest of her campaign for this. Let’s see how much anyone cares
The email thing will be about the only personal thing they have on her, so yeah, I’d expect the money men to hit her hard on it regardless.
My gut feeling is that those people who hated her already or were on the GOP leaning side will care and everyone else will not.
That said, who knows anymore. The GOP nominated a reality TV show buffoon con man. Anything is possible now.
Crooked Hillary vs Dangerous Donald
One for the books
For the most part I would agree, except that as we’ve seen, a single individual with an AR-15 can do a lot of damage very quickly, where other firearms (like the type you would actually use for hunting or home defense) would not.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/01/02/gun_control_ar_15_rifle_the_nra_claims_the_ar_15_rifle_is_for_hunting_and.html
I’ve asked my friends who are avid Wyoming hunters and gun owners about this, and they laugh at the idea of using an assault rifle for hunting.
I stopped reading when they claimed that the Orlando shooter used an AR-15. He didn’t. He used a Sig Sauer MCX .223-caliber rifle with a magazine capacity of 30 rounds.
“they laugh at the idea of using an assault rifle for hunting.”
And define your terms. What is an “assault weapon”. Just because an AR-15 looks like an M16 used by Marines, doesn’t mean it is one. Which is my point. Don’t put restrictions on aesthetics.
Of course, getting one minor detail wrong totally invalidates your entire argument. LOL. I sometimes forget I’m in black-and-white world again here.
A semi-automatic military grade weapon is useful for people who are terrible hunters who are working at fairly close range and don’t care about being humane, haven’t considered the possibility that there may be other humans out in the woods, etc. It’s also good for mowing down lots of people at fairly close range, like in a school for instance. If your interests are hunting and home security, a hunting rifle and a handgun are what you need.
Which is not to say there aren’t people around here who own AR-15s and other similar weapons. But mostly they’re not the type who are out hunting, and they’re not originally from here. They’re interested in owning sexy weapons as an ego boost or a hobby. They also often own big loud pickup trucks that have no actual purpose since they’re not used to haul anything. And they brag about their firearm toys and post selfies with them on social media. It’s about their identity (or their doomsday prepping, or whatever) rather than a utilitarian thing. The people around here who actually use firearms for hunting and home protection will post photos on social media with their kid or their grandkid or their dog, but never with their gun. It’s not that kind of a thing to them.
So the NRA claims to represent people who are interested in hunting and personal protection, but for the most part they’ve completely moved away from the culture and values of that demographic. And of course it has everything to do with the money. There’s not that much money in hunting rifles and handguns, but there’s a shitload in the toy market. They’re just incredibly dangerous toys, and they appeal to the sector of the population with a tendency toward poor judgment and impulsive ego-feeding behavior. What could go wrong?
I’m not an NRA member, or supporter. I’m very much fine with smart gun control laws. Everyone makes all these assumptions about AR15s. But, other than aesthetics, they don’t seem too much different than typical hunting rifles. Limit clip size, fine. Limit firing rate and caliber bullets, great! Limit aesthetics? Stupid.
https://www.policeone.com/the-tacticalist/articles/7209499-Assault-weapons-vs-sporting-weapons-Whats-the-difference/
I’ve heard the line about semi-automatic assault weapons being the same as hunting rifles except in appearance. But the two gunsmiths I know, who tend to have very different cultural and political views than I do, claim that the “aesthetics” argument isn’t true. A hunting rifle is accurate at a much longer range and is more powerful in terms of penetration at longer ranges. Something like an AR-15 is a civilian version of an M-16 type of military weapon that was intended for closer range, shooting quickly, and penetrating protective gear at close range. But according to them, what it takes to penetrate protective gear at close range is very different from penetrating animal flesh from a distance. What they tell me is that mechanically the military weapon and the civilian assault rifle are basically the same except that the assault rifles don’t come equipped to be fully automatic. In some cases AR-15 and M-16 parts are interchangeable, which is usually OK unless the swapout makes the AR-15 fully automatic, which isn’t allowed under civilian permitting rules. And also there was a thing about bolt-action guns versus combat weapons but I was a little bit drunk by then and this conversation was a couple of years ago so I don’t remember all of that part.
As far as home protection, the AR-15 could maybe be used for that if you live alone and some distance from your neighbors’ houses. But basically you’re better off with a handgun for home defense because it’s more manageable in a small space and also more accurate.