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It's Monday, let's get back to talking about how devastating the Nunes memo was.

I'm glad that we're not talking past each other for once, but we still haven't gotten anywhere. If the conservative half of the country thinks that there's something we can do about spree/school shooters, something that solves some sort of "real problem," and yet preserves all existing rights under the 2nd amendment, I just explained that I think such a solution would be difficult, unprecedented, and massive in scope. In other words, if there's no simple fix, there must be a complicated one. What's the complicated fix proposed by the Republican party, the ones in charge of everything? All I've seen so far are puissant suggestions like raising the age to 21 and banning bump stocks. Where are all of the big ideas that will get me on board the conservative brain train? eta: Or will all conservatives just stand up and admit, like Tim just did, that the tree of liberty sometimes needs to be watered with the blood of schoolchildren, because in the absence of big ideas, that's what's going to happen.

Let me expand on that a bit. I think we can all agree that the 2nd Amendment and America's culture towards personal firearm ownership is unique. People wanting to do bad things, for whatever reason you want to call it (evil, mental illness, notoriety, etc) is not unique to America. Different countries have gone about addressing those people and the bad things they want to do in different ways, but since America has a unique situation here with the 2nd Amendment, we're going to require a unique solution. You can, as Tim just did, accept that some number of dead kids is just the price we're going to have to pay for our unique freedom in regards to firearms ownership. If you believe, as many of you seem to, that we need to address the "real" issues without touching anyone's 2nd amendment rights, then I think you need to admit that your proposed solution is going to be difficult, unprecedented among the global community, and massive in scope. It's going to take big ideas, and uniquely American big ideas, because nobody else has gone about protecting kids this way.

I mean that people say "We don't have a gun problem, we have a mental health problem," as though every other country on Earth either doesn't have mental illness or they're infinitely better at treating it. I don't buy that. Every country has mentally ill people who fall through the cracks, what makes America unique (IMO) is that when they fall through the cracks here, they can get an AR-15 very easily. Is that a fair statement? Or do you think we're uniquely bad at addressing mental health?

Maybe unfettered access to them. Weren't you saying that Nikolas Cruz shouldn't have been able to get an AR-15 or something? You may be too young to remember, but when right-wing extremists blew up a federal building in Oklahoma city and murdered a bunch of children with fertilizer, politicians pushed for and succeeded in limiting access to large quantities of said fertilizer. Nobody went around saying, "Hur hur, politicians are blaming fertilizer for this bombing, don't they know that inanimate piles of plant food never hurt anybody by themselves? They should focus on the real problem, people." This semantic bullshit about guns is tiring.

This is a joke, right? Whatever this real problem is, why don't any other countries seem to have it? I think your post answers the question -- America isn't unique in any way except the 2nd amendment and an abundance of guns.

I think anyone proposing any of those things as the reason for school shootings needs to explain, with data, how America is different from all of the countries where this doesn't happen regularly.

How do you define "fixing it?" When do we know that the problem is fixed? Can we stop with this former military nonsense? I cannot tell you how many tacticool bad-tattoo Air Force dipshits I've met in my career who have no fucking business doing security. The people who'd want to do this shouldn't, and the people who I'd actually trust to do this wouldn't want to. Maybe the other branches are different but I doubt it. Using the label of "former military" as a judge of tactical awareness, skill, or personal character is a terrible idea.

Very fine people.

Was Obama blamed for the attacks on police during the height of BLM? I ain't justifying blaming Trump here but don't act all Hugh and mighty on this one. Dude was a white nationalist, people are going to make the connection.

Brandon wants me to think that all of the first world countries where civilian ownership of firearms is rare are totalitarian police states instead of the generally decent places to live that they are. Maybe he's forgotten that I have eyeballs and don't believe everything I read on infowars.

Large scale voluntary disarmament. In terms of government solutions, there aren't any.

Inches, miles, whatever you're arguing for you'd be opposed to it if Democrats suggested it because "it'll never be enough for them," or something like that.

What a stupid position to take when you yourself are arguing for inches. I'm learning a lot in this thread, all of you fuckers are actually arguing for more gun control, and your rabid opposition to it in the past has apparently just been because Democrats proposed it.

Of course heroin restrictions don't work. So why should I believe that your additional gun restrictions would do anything?

What about you? Do gun restrictions work or will criminals just ignore the law and get whatever they want anyway?

Get out of here with your libertarian ideas about abortion, Brandon's not interested.

Gun restrictions don't work because criminals don't care about following the law and will always be able to get guns. Also, we should create new gun restrictions so mentally ill people and people with troubled backgrounds can't buy guns. Is that the conservative position now?

What were the warning signs for your impending arrival? Should probably start there.

Sounds pretty big brother/big government to me, but hey, you do you there chief.

I dunno Brandon and Tim, seems like you're going to get some push back from your "government bans guns from people on a secret watch list" plan. That sure sounds like an inch or two to me!

You pissed at Trump today then?

That's the spirit. Fuck Trump and his gun grabbing ways!

No, I prefer democracy to armed resistance. You have fun with that. People choosing to get rid of their guns is a form of "gun control?" OK then, I wasn't aware of that definition. In any case, how is it inconsistent to want people to voluntarily disarm but not want the government to force them to without due process?

Secret government watch lists that citizens can get put on without due process? Go run that by your libertarian buddies, see how long it takes them to kick you out of the club. Do tell, what is my stance on gun control?