Comments

1
Clearly freedom of speech is not a right, but a privilege that only natural-born US citizens ought to be permitted to exercise. It could be worse, though. At least Morgan isn't exercising his right as a US resident to own a gun.
2
Your country booted out Chaplin too. I bet you can't justify that one either.
3
I wonder how many of these dolts wanted to secede from the Bill of Rights?
4
I wouldn't mind having him deported for other reasons.
6
well yes, dangerous, stupid idiots, but have progressives gotten a petition up on the white house site calling for banning all semiautomatic or other assault weapons?

nearly every day we see the left whining that the right commits politics. often, it's reactive. the nra did this! the right wingers did that! rarely does the left just go forward and do politics.

we have the senate. why wasn't a ban on assault weapons passed in the senate already??

why isn't the president setting forth a three point plan and putting it on the white house web site and asking us, to you know, sign petitions demanding it? we'd have 40 million fucking signatures by now.
7
48,000 is only a drop in the ocean.
8
@5 - Yes, if you speak out against US droid killings of civilians, including children, then there's a reasonable chance you'll be refused admiitance into the US. However, Morgan's position on guns isn't that far from the President, so I think he's okay.

However, it's worth noting that years of cowering to the NRA, despite a lot of lost American lives, has made their influence disproportate in a deadly way. It's like a teacher adjusting her instruction to appease the class bully - it emboldens fanaticism.
9
@5 When it comes to protected free speech, "I'm going to blow up a school" is a million miles away from "America would be safer without guns".
10
If you need to deport your opponent to win an argument, you probably didn't have any valid points to begin with. And if you want to deport someone specifically for political speech, you are probably a fascist. Lots of people are arguing right now of whether it would be legal or not. This is a typical fascist trick. What they should be asking themselves is if it is ethical to persecute someone for their speech.
11
B-but... Larry Pratt IS an unbelievably stupid man!
13
In 2004 the state of Ohio configured it's election process so that in case of a system failure the votes would be sent to a mirror site run by SmarTech in Chattanooga Tennessee for backup. Turns out, there were "system failures" caused by deliberate bottlenecking of data, shortly before midnight on election night and the tabulations were routed to the SmarTech system and when they came back the results were flipped for Bush. SmarTech ran a middle site that had the ability to alter the data.

Similar "system failures" happened again this election at the same time as in 2004 (probably about the time the vote tabulations start turning in favor of Obama). Anonymous claims the transmission of data to the Tennnesse server was blocked so the vote totals could not be altered, instead there was only a delay in what-was-to-become the accurate tabulations.

Karl Rove's behavior late on election night certainly fits with Anonymous's claim. He seemed irrationally and stubbornly confident that the busy districts that were bottlenecking were going to come out in favor of Romney, despite the polling data. I must say, although I didn't understand his stubborn refusal to face facts at the time, I was nonetheless pleased at seeing him squirm.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/dis…...
14
There are so many other better reasons for deporting Piers Morgan. This isn't one of them. And actually this may nullify a couple of the better reasons for deporting him.
15
@6: "calling for banning all semiautomatic or other assault weapons" - what are you defining as an "assault weapon?" Are you calling for a ban on all semiautomatic guns in the US? As in, confiscating a couple of hundred million of them? Or just ones that are black, intermediate caliber, and look scary to non-gun people?
16
@13. Dammit! Obviously the wrong thread.
17
@15 fuck you asshole. non gun people versus gun people. it's only gun loving assholes like you that divert to minutiae while ignoring the obvious facts:

-guns kill
-having 280 million guns around causes our elevated rates of gun death and massacre, and
--assholes like you don't want to do anything about it, therefore blood is on your hands, asshole.

I would define as assault weapon any weapon that's useful for killing groups of people or deer at a time, including any capable of being fitted with large capacity magazine.

law is full of terms like "unreasonable risk of death" or "material information" that are often in criminal statutes. line drawing is a problem in ALL laws, not just guns.

if you're saying we have a couple hundred million semiautomatic weapons in the us, I am calling for them to be: largely bought back, and the rest (amounting to an ownership rate of a few percentage points) to be so highly restricted that our system is like england or canada.

non gun people. fuck you.
18
@12 HAH!
19
@15 you're saying a bushmaster like lanza's only "looks scary" and it's not scary in fact? are you out of your mind?

we have gotten to the point where military grade weapons are all over. this is the problem. and that people like you don't see it as a problem. and wish to disqualify from debate anyone who's not a gun loving gun fanatic.

I don't need to be adept in computers to know that a smart nation invests in computer skills among its students. i don't need to be a general to know invading iraq was an act of monumental stupidity, while not resisting the nazi's in the 1930's also was stupid andelped bring about ww2. and I don't need to fucking know technical details of guns to know it's our EZ access to guns that has a causal link to our super high rates of gun death, massacres, and violence which are in fact not equalled in other advanced nations that generally have stronger gun controls. many of those nations don't ban guns, but do highly limit them, and all nations ban CERTAIN weapons including nukes, tanks, bazookas, automatic machine guns -- so adding semiautomatic to the list makes sense. if you truly cared to educate others you'd be discussing details and not referring to scary looking guns or what looks scary to non gun people like a big asshole. those kids in newtown I bet were plenty scared before the bullets ripped their bodies to shreds. and you'd mock them for being non gun people, unlike say, the super highly informed gun people in the story -- mrs. lanza.

yeah, she wasn't scared of the bushmaster. that's what we need jack, less fear of the bushmaster, because currently we're doing so fucking well on the safety stats the murder stats and the massacre stats. what an asshole.
20
Huh. I just discovered that it's perfectly legal to own a flamethrower. No background check or anything. Guess I need to get one.
21
@17: It was an honest question, believe it or not.

What I'm honestly asking is what the "it" is that assholes like me don't want to do anything about?

Guns exist. I didn't create them. I don't love them, or any other objects, for that matter.

But they exist, and bad people everywhere have them. I DO very much love my family, and my friends, and my neighbors. I will protect them as long as criminals have access to guns that can hurt us. If you or someone else could wave a wand and make bad people go away, I'd be all for it. But you can't.

I also grew up knowing how to use guns responsibly from a very early age. And you may call this minutiae, but by your definition, essentially all modern guns would be assault weapons. All of 'em. When you don't make any distinction, you are basically telling gun owners you want them to disarm, while criminals by definition will not.

And at the risk of throwing more gas on the fire, the other thing that people who don't have experience with actual guns seem to be getting hung up on is large capacity magazines. I am not saying this to be inflammatory, but it's essentially a meaningless issue. The difference in time to fire 30 shots from a single magazine, or 30 shots from three 10 round magazines, is maybe an extra 10-20 seconds for anyone who practices for 5 minutes. Go ahead and ban them. Just keep in mind that a) the only ones who pay any attention to the ban will be boring suburban douchebags like me who respect the law, and b) it will make essentially no difference in situations like the Sandy Hook shooting.

I guess what I'm ultimately looking for is for someone to present a realistic way to put the genie back in the bottle. Criminals aren't going to sell back or turn in their guns. Guys like me aren't going to sit here and be sitting ducks while that's the case. I don't know who is going to knock on 80 million doors and tell people to hand them over. And hurling invective at people like me doesn't and won't help get anything meaningful done, because as much as I try to help out, I'm being defined as the problem.

I don't have an answer, beyond providing layered security and teaching people how to be safe. I wish I did.
22
I just had this thought. What if there was a law that said that all handguns and semiautomatic rifles had to be... pink!
23
@21

A 10-20 second delay could mean a lifetime.....or three.
24
@21 Can I interest you in a grenade launcher? See if the "bad people" (love that expression, its so easy and without shades) have guns that they may have stolen from honest gun owners - you need to kick it up a notch!
See its easy - the logic that you magicly protect your family and not your own sense of disconnection with a society you feel more and more threatened by through a piece of machinery designed to murder anyone that happens to blunder into its path would easily cover grenade launchers too.
And what would be more intimidating than a sign on your door saying "This house is protected by a guy who owns a grenade launcher"? It's perfect!

Plus what are you gonna do in that oh so common scenario where "bad people" storm your house, armed like an old soviet satellite state, looking for cash or human flesh? Return fire with your puny little pistol or shotgun? Pfft! What you need is something that just shreds the "bad people" - kevlar vest or not!
Just set it up at the top of the stairs and the second you hear someone fiddling with the lock late at night - knowing full well that your kids would never-ever disobey you and sneak out - you just blast that front room taking the door with it.
Legalize Grenade Launchers for worried home owners NOW!

And yeah whiny wishy-washy hand wringers will complain about "grenade launcher related deaths" but that has NOTHING to do with the sudden availability of grenade launchers! No its video games... or psychos... or some magical difference between the US and the rest of the world that causes it. Rap music maybe? Who knows? Who cares? Not a guy with a grenade launcher! Think how safe you'll be with that shiny tube and box of prepped grenades sitting ready, in a flimsy unlocked closet, perhaps hidden under the desk or maybe under your pillow.
25
Let's just hope Obama doesn't cave again.
26
@21: Your argument is basically: "it can't be solved because it is too massive, so what is the point of doing anything." The truth is that it can be solved, just not quickly, cheaply, or easily. The realistic effort to remove guns from most of the general public is going to take decades of work. It will be an enormous undertaking. And while we may never get our gun violence to that of the rest of the developed world, we can sure as hell get it down to a more reasonable value that what it is today.

Here is the rough outline:
1. End the War on Drugs
2. Require licenses for owning a gun
3. Track firearms from birth to destruction. Use the FBI and ATF to root out all untrackable firearm producers. Any person who possesses an untrackable firearm will be jailed, even if the firearm was never used or if it was used in self defense. Owners must also immediately report stolen firearms. Any injury caused by a licensed firearm can be used in a civil suit against the person who held the license.
4. Enhance licensing standards and increase the cost of licensing to make owning a firearm be considered a luxury.
5. Maintain the above actions and slowly squeeze out the amount of guns the general public possesses.
27
@19: I may not be coming across very well, but I am trying to educate.

FYI, I'm a dad of two young kids, and I can not imagine what those parents are going through. I do have to say, at the risk of inflaming people here, I wish the principal of that school (and of our school now) had been trained and had access to a high quality pistol when she confronted this piece of shit, rather than just her bare hands. Might have worked, might not, but if she was anything like the principal at our school I have a feeling she would have flattened his ass.

An AR-15 is what's called an intermediate caliber (i.e., not especially powerful). They very much look scary, but in terms of capability they are not nearly destructive as a good deer rifle or hunting shotgun, believe it or not. In a lot of states they're banned for hunting deer because they are not considered humane (i.e. they are not likely to kill a large animal reliably without suffering). Please read up on this - I promise I am not trolling.

They are used very widely in smaller game hunting and pest control, for things like feral pigs, coyotes, etc..

People enjoy using them because they are highly modular, reasonably accurate, affordable, and a great defense gun for when a piece of shit like the Sandy Hook shooter or someone intent on doing your family harm shows up.

I'm not trying to disqualify anyone from any debate. What I am telling you is that you owe it to yourself to learn how this stuff works, and not get distracted by doing "something," where it turns out that the something that gets done is useless and makes responsible people like me into criminals.

Adding some extra layers of security in the right places, taking down "Gun Free Zone" signs that tell a piece of shit madman that a shooting gallery is waiting, and putting violent people in jail and keeping them there (vs, say, completely harmless drug users who hurt nobody) all seem like good places to start, to me.
28
He should be deported on the basis of being an insufferable cunt disliked on 2 continents. Plus he sucked Rupert's wang....nasty.
29
@27: You are looking at one limited case and trying to draw a very broad conclusion. Think of the case where students disarm teachers or teachers have accidents with their firearms around students. Think of the case where a teacher loses a firearm and a student finds it. Your imaginary gun-trained soldier-principal might have saved those 20 kids. But how many more will be lost every year by trying to implement your insane plan? Basically, I'm critiquing your logic: you can't use a very limited case to draw a broad conclusion without thinking about its implications.
30
@27: I don't think you, I or anyone else would set up that kind of a system. It would probably look a lot like the home protection setup that the vast majority of responsible parents I know (who choose to have an armed layer) do it. Alarm, locked doors, possibly a discreet camera, and a good quality gun safe. You're just trying to have options when things go bad.
31
This current story with Piers reminded me of a sort-of-famous occasion on which he tried to get a laugh on a (UK) quiz show with an joke Eddie Izzard had used the previous week and was met with crickets.

Here 'tis!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQr90AjKV…
32
re: 49,000. Snort. The movie 'Freddy Got Fingered" has 89,00 "likes" on facebook. More than 490,000 people clicked "like" about Paris Hilton's last t.v. show. I wish the last zero was a typo, and also that I hadn't just looked it up.
33
Deportation is such a hassle.

Why not just lock him up?

Like Obama did that guy who made the horrible horrible video we'll never get over....

Liberals are such hypocritical cunts.....
34
Goldy, what is your source for the assertion you made in the Morning News that Crapo is a Bishop?
35
@34, you could have determined that yourself. But here is one source:

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/…
36
I've started a petition to place moderate restrictions on guns while preserving the right to bear arms. Please share.
http://wh.gov/QN1T
37
Boring isn't the only adjective I would use to describe boring dad is boring.
38
35

Thank you Sarah.
That article says he was a Bishop 30 years ago.
Goldy said he currently is a Bishop.
39
@38

"Crapo was named a bishop in the church at age 31"

So by your logic, I was a Michael 21 years ago but now I'm something else. At least read the article someone fetched for you.
40
@30: you are @27. you're talking to yourself.
41
39

bishop is not his name, sport.

you were a junior high student 21 years ago. are you still?

by your logic, that is.....

mormon bishops typically serve about 5 years.

Crapo is 61 years old.
42
sigh... I know it would cost more, but I'd much rather deport the 48,000
43
I was an infant 21 years ago, and by maturity level am still am, so my logic holds true.
44
@31: that is why i love ian hislop.
45
@20 - they sold them at Home Depot, last time I checked.
46
Boring Dad - thank you for your comments, it's been hard to find reasonable sounding gun owners on the internet lately. Why do you think other countries, like Scotland and Australia, were able to implement voluntary gun handing in programs and what do you think about there being significantly reduced gun violence afterwards, even though, in Australia's case, only 1/5 of it's assault weapons were turned in, probably by responsible gun owners like you, and the laws which had been pretty loose like ours, were tightened?
47
46: Thank you for the comment, I appreciate it.

I'm not a sociologist or statistician, and so anything I say on the topic should be taken with an appropriately large grain of salt.

Some observations, though, based on what I do know:

It seems that both Scotland and Australia have gone at least part way down the path of what they call "harm minimisation" as it relates to illegal drugs. From the evidence I can piece together there, here and elsewhere, I believe that keeping drugs illegal (as opposed to treating them as we do, say, alcohol) and imprisoning nonviolent offenders by the millions provides criminals the means and motive to introduce a ton of violence into our society, because there are literally billions of dollars flowing through an underground economy that can flow to criminals at all levels. At the same time imprisonment and ostracization of nonviolent offenders destroys lives and leaves people with no natural violent tendencies in terrible situations where they have few options in normal society.

This is such a touchy conversation that finding empirical data can be tough, but even in the case of Australia, for instance, it seems like there's still a lack of focus on putting violent people in cages away from normal, peaceful society - pick your statistics source, but it's a country where violent crime (not just gun related violent crime) is increasing at a decent clip, which is actually the opposite of the US - again, take a look at overall violent crime rates. I am all in favor of locking up violent people for as close to 'forever' as we can get away with.

This may open an enormous can of worms in attributing causes, because again, it's so colored by emotion and politics that this is the point where a lot of people (in my experience) give up and pick an easy position on one extreme or another, which has a tendency to go precisely nowhere.

That's probably a lousy answer, but it's what I have.
48
@37: A few other that apply :

"Long-winded."

"Balding."

"Bloated (after 4 straight days of stuffing face with delicious, delicious food and booze)."

"Shitty (at using the mechanics of the Slog forum, and lots of other stuff)."

49
Too bad we can't use that petition as a sign-up sheet for "voluntary self-deportation".

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