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Originally Posted by spence
Any so why aren't they used in mass shootings? Is it because they don't have the killing power afforded all those "cosmetic" options or perhaps as Jim says just don't have the sex appeal a killer is looking for?
Nadal Hasan killed, in a few minutes, 13 and wounded more than 30 with a handgun. That's a lot of killing power. Don't know if getting a hard on creates more killing power. In close quarters such as schoolrooms a handgun has plenty of killing power.
The notion that the supposed sexiness of a weapon is the motivation for mass killing is weak and superficial thinking. A killer may think a particular weapon has deadlier "optics," may think that his slaughter will look more powerful with weapon A than with weapon B, but there is no evidence nor argument that the motivation for the slaughter is the appearance of the weapon that is used.
Easy access to assault weapons is but part of the problem but it is part of the problem.
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Eliminating something that is considered by some to be a contributing "part" of a larger complex problem because it is easy to access is not a solution if eliminating that something imposes on the rights of everyone else.
And if the problem exists due to specific causes that don't depend on all of the reputed "parts" of the problem, not only would it be unjust to eliminate all those peripheral parts, it would not solve the specific problem.
Since the 1960's our American society and culture has become less certain and more fragmented. There has been a huge loss of confidence in the values that predominated before the mid 20th century. That confidence had been degraded by smaller degrees before that, but the slow onslaught of academic relativism slipped into hyperdrive in the 1960's. It was modeled by Post Modern Cultural Marxism which denies any certainty and sees only power as the end and aim of existence, and which fuels the romance of class warfare and the disintegration of the founding American structure.
New heroes were made of younger identity splinter groups such as the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, etc.. Anti-war pacifists railed against American military might and exposed us as imperialists and rapists of the third world. America was painted as a racist, sexual and religious oppressive force in the world. College campuses became the high court of social justice and the battlefield against American oppression. And that has progressed since then into the right to censor any thought or speech that is counter to their intellectual rules of global order. Even to the point of justifying physical attacks on those who don't agree with them.
Notions of gender, freedom of speech or religion, rights to property, individualism in general, must all to be destroyed. Individual identity is subservient to group identity, or is irrelevant altogether. We are reduced to the struggle to gain power. That struggle is armed through force and violence. Notions of "reasonable discussions" are actually occasions to eliminate opposing ideas. Language has been inverted to Orwellian opposites. Justice is force. Government is power. Equality is mandated sameness. Freedom is granted and prescribed limitation. Reason is consensus or state edict. Life is meaningless and qualified only by social construct.
What once was considered a power and source of good, America, is now an antiquated notion of white supremacy and a retrograde imposition on the progress of world justice. It is the center of capitalist domination of the world's masses, a barrier to the equality of the world's people. And it must be made to feel guilty of its past and present transgressions. And so must Europe and all white societies. Justice cries for all the oppressed non-whites to have their equal share of "white privilege." And if the means to that end requires violence--so be it.
The present Progressive model of there being no power greater than the state, facilitated by state force and coercion, is a godless model that inspires renegades to take all power to themselves. If a renegade seeks notoriety, he must do so within the norms that will recognize his power as something to be admired. In a world that sees power as the ultimate end to existence, what greater admiration can there be than gaining power over the lives of others.