The Daily Show looks at how bizarre have become the policies and attitudes in the US about guns where safety measures concerning real that would seem so commonsensical are viewed as unthinkable impositions on gun ownership, while children merely pretending to play with guns are seem as a terrible threat.
(This clip aired on March 24, 2014. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
I cracked up at “Rebelle”
Dr. Murthy gets blasted for saying politicians are scared of the NRA and several Democrats prove he’s right. Which is why Murthy won’t be Surgeon General.
He makes a good point, it is absurd that kids are being suspended and expelled for making a “finger gun” or wearing a non-violent t-shirt that happens to say “NRA” or having a rescue knife (seat-belt cutter) in their car on school grounds.
One interesting thing about Mr Murthy as surgeon general is that the background check system he appears to support has a tremendously large false positive rate (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/231052.pdf). I cringe at the thought of our national “physician in chief” thinking that tests with large false positive rates are acceptable.
Sorry, not sure how to edit my comment, but I obviously should have written “Dr. Murthy”
In my experience it’s fantastically difficult to have a sensible conversation about firearms because the fringe nutjobs on either side of the argument tend to just start going at each other and riding roughshod over the bulk of people in the middle.
I have a very simple idea to solve the gun problem: Allow anyone to own as many guns as they like, as long as they all have a working “undo” function.
This would then have to be tested at regular intervals, by an official inspector shooting somebody with their own gun and then undo-ing the shooting.
Who exactly are you referring to on the gun control side, and which of their arguments brand them, in your head, as “fringe nutjobs”?
There are very sound practical arguments why banning “high capacity” magazines & “assault weapons” and mandating background checks won’t do a goddamned thing to reduce the number of firearms related murders & suicides in this country, never mind getting into the fact that you’re legislating a constitutionally protected right (whether you like it or not, it HAS been ruled an individual right and that severely hampers any kind of legislation you can throw at the problem, regardless of whether or not that legislation will actually be effective).
For the record, I’m in favor of universal background checks, but anyone who thinks they’ll stop mass shootings is delusional. Similarly, the deadliest mass shooting in US history use handguns (not assault weapons) and used magazines of 10 & 15 rounds (he was just carrying 40 of them), so I’m having trouble believing that limiting him to 10 rounds per magazine and banning assault weapons is going to do a damned thing either.
Yet, if you question any of this supposed logic, you’re automatically branded an NRA loving gun nut who thinks that hand grenades should be sold through vending machines. This part is really the behavior that defines fringe nutjobs in my mind, anyone who assumes that just because you disagree with them you’re clearly on “the other side” is a fringe nutjob, whether they’re pro or anti gun control.
I’ve been called a freedom hating liberal and an NRA gun lover in the same fucking conversation by different people, the aforementioned fringe nutjobs.
kyoseki@8,
I see you can’t actually cite any arguments on the gun control side which make someone a “fringe nutjob”, rather than simply (in your view) mistaken -- you’re just reacting to perceived slights.
I don’t believe I ever stated that it was the argument that was the problem, it’s the manner of how they go about pursuing the argument.
The nutjobs on the fringes only have one setting: hysteria, the NRA do it and the Brady bunch do it, anyone who doesn’t agree with them is clearly “the enemy” and must be treated as such.