Isla Vista killing....the NRA's fault?

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by uscvball, May 29, 2014.

  1. LaSalleAve

    LaSalleAve when in doubt, mumble

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2008
    Messages:
    44,037
    Likes Received:
    18,027
    The government could do all these things if not for republicans and democrats.
     
  2. LaSalleAve

    LaSalleAve when in doubt, mumble

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2008
    Messages:
    44,037
    Likes Received:
    18,027
    Why isn't this guy considered a terrorist?
     
  3. uscvball

    uscvball Founding Member

    Joined:
    Dec 16, 2006
    Messages:
    10,673
    Likes Received:
    7,156
    I don't know. Like I said the signs were there FOR YEARS. "Rodger had been seeing therapists since he was a 9 year old child and had been prescribed psychotropic drugs." Police had been notified about disturbing videos PRIOR to their welfare check just over a month ago but did not view the videos and did not pursue a search or involuntary hold. The killer stated that if the police had checked his apartment out, he would have been caught. So over a decade of therapy, psychotropic drugs, disturbing videos, anti-social, divorced parents who clearly had a sense of guilt....
    [​IMG]

    And so why is anyone surprised and why do folks race to blame the NRA? Last I checked the NRA isn't involved in any of these issues save the laws which allowed this douchebag to purchase 3 weapons.
     
    Winston1 likes this.
  4. uscvball

    uscvball Founding Member

    Joined:
    Dec 16, 2006
    Messages:
    10,673
    Likes Received:
    7,156
    I will say that I have learned about an entire sub-culture that seems to have spawned from the male/female sexual power struggles over the last 10-20 years maybe? I thought Pick Up Artist was just a bad movie but apparently it's a firmly identified culture on internet blogs and twittersphere. The blame for the killings in Santa Barbara should be placed on PUAhate groups....so this blogger says.

    "Six lives would have been saved if there was a societal mechanism to steer sexually frustrated males like Rodger into learning self-improvement, game, and masculinity, the very values that are taught here and on many other manosphere sites that inexplicably have been attacked, disparaged, and even sought for eradication by the American media and blogosphere, men’s rights activists, “PUA haters”, and progressive organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur. It is them who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again."

    http://www.returnofkings.com/36135/...if-pua-hate-killer-elliot-rodger-learned-game
     
  5. LaSalleAve

    LaSalleAve when in doubt, mumble

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2008
    Messages:
    44,037
    Likes Received:
    18,027
    People blame the NRA because they used to be for common sense gun laws. Now they want to put guns in the hands of all Americans everywhere. Sandy Hook happened and gun laws got more relaxed, and it's because of the NRA and their money. I can see why the parents of these kids would be pissed though, I'd be pissed at everyone everywhere if my kid was dead from a gunshot.
     
  6. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 21, 2002
    Messages:
    45,195
    Likes Received:
    8,733
    Political expediency is the only purpose. Black Ops are too important to sub out to civilians. The CIA and military SPEC OPS still do the covert dirty work. Mercenaries like Blackwater are for overt security work that politicians prefer not to go through DoD oversight. Blackwater failed so spectacularly that they have changed their name twice. Now they call themselves Academi.

    The military and intelligence services are entirely capable of doing the evil and necessary things that they always have done. They don't like Blackwater and other mercenaries one bit. Those guys get huge pay compared to soldiers for doing similar work and doing it poorly.

    Using mercenaries is not a military decision, it has always been a political decision. The government-hating Republicans thinks that privatizing armies is good for business. The Image-sensitive Democrats think they are usefully low-profile rather than clearly military for certain work. The State Department thinks that having civilian security rather than Marines embassy guards is more PC in some countries. Ex-politicans and ex-military brass have learned how to turn a $10 million military job into a $100 million contract job, with huge profits for the owners and robust salaries for the employees. All at taxpayer expense.
     
    LaSalleAve likes this.
  7. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 21, 2002
    Messages:
    45,195
    Likes Received:
    8,733
    What nonsense! Again a blogger with a political agenda is trying to place responsibility on political adversaries rather than the culprit, the generally poor handling of the dangerously mentally ill, and the ease with which they can acquire weapons.
     
  8. uscvball

    uscvball Founding Member

    Joined:
    Dec 16, 2006
    Messages:
    10,673
    Likes Received:
    7,156
    They aren't your average civilian, lol. The CIA hires PMC's to do plenty of covert work.


    Blackwater is one of hundreds of PMC's worldwide. PMC contracts continue to grow and I suspect that trend isn't going to stop anytime soon. It's one of the ways to fight terrorism.

    No, they aren't capable. Whether they like Blackwater-type companies or not isn't part of the equation. Tell me though, exactly what type of "work" do you think PMC's do? Be specific. There is a reason they get paid what they do. And frankly, there is no way you would know if they did it poorly or not. They don't make those statistics available to the public or the media.
     
  9. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

    Joined:
    Oct 21, 2002
    Messages:
    45,195
    Likes Received:
    8,733
    You miss the point. They are decidedly civilians and thus not subject to military authority . . . or legal ramifications. The international treaties that establish the Laws and customs of war explicitly forbid the usage of mercenaries in warfare. Legally they are neither lawful combatants, nor non-combatants, and thus aren't eligible for protection and respectful treatment under, for example, the Geneva conventions. When captured, they are treated as a criminal gang at best, and at worst as complete outlaws. The term "Private Military Contrators" is a transparent attempt to make mercs look like they aren't mercs for legal reasons.

    Blackwater no longer exists. And the CIA does hire civilians for covert work, its what they have always done, but only a few of the most capable military contractors and not because our military is incapable. It's usually because there is a political reason to avoid military oversight, international legal issues, or congressional auditors.

    Where have they successfully defeated terrorists? Of these "hundreds" of mercenary contractors out there, only a few are militarily capable, with high-enough security clearances, and with low-enough profiles that are useful to us. Most are far less capable, trustworthy, and dependable.

    It is to me. Are you seriously trying to say that our intelligence agents and military special operators aren't as capable as a "PMC"?

    Sure. Mostly they do security work. Specifically, like the two of them that OD'd on the Maersk Alabama. Officially, they may be employed only in duties not involving actively engaging the enemy (though they can do this if forced), such as escorting convoys and guarding civilian structures. It must be noted that not all PMCs are thinly disguised mercenaries, most of them don't do military work at all. A private military contractor is any non-government organization contracted by the military, which may include office work like air-photo interpretation and computer repair or mundane things like a contract to make and serve food for an army in peacetime.

    I'll give another "specific". A good friend of mine is an Army National Guard E-8 specializing in food service. He fed the people in the Superdome during Katrina. He's qualified to run a battalion-sized field kitchen. In peacetime he runs a military kitchen at Camp Beauregard, the Louisiana National Guard main base. During the Iraq War, some Army Reservists from New York were stationed there as active duty personnel for training and awaiting duty overseas. These guys were not fed at the National Guard Mess Hall. They were fed by Bechtel, a PMC with a contract to feed the Army Reservists.

    One day after chow call, my friend spotted a half-dozen of these guys hanging around outside the mess hall and invited them in to eat because there was plenty of hot food left. He said these guys attacked the food like it was their last meal and thanked him profusely. One said that he had lost 20 pounds in the six weeks that they were at Camp Beauregard. Bechtel had been feeding them "hot meals" that were actually prepared off-base in a nearby city hours earlier and were delivered to the base in styrofoam lunch boxes. Cold by the time they arrived, the food was also in small quantities and had been obviously canned or frozen, not the fresh meals served in stateside military kitchens.

    The PMC was charging God-know-whats to the taxpayer to feed substandard meals to these soldiers, who should have been fed in army mess halls on the same friggin' base. And the profits flowed to the Corporate giant. And you and I paid for it.

    What do you imagine that reason is? Does it include the term "corporate profits"?

    Frankly, I know quite a bit about private military contractors, because I was one . . . doing research contracts for the Navy Department. But mostly I read the news and study some things that are not classified but harder to root out. Blackwater was not a black operation. Their story is public knowledge, as were their propensity for killing civilians non-combatants. That is NOT what they were hired to do. Most PMC's are not involved in black operations and their work is public record.
     
  10. Tiger in NC

    Tiger in NC There's a sucker born everyday...

    Joined:
    Sep 2, 2011
    Messages:
    6,522
    Likes Received:
    1,806
    I am not advocating for letting federal government handle mental health; that has historically fallen to the states but most of the funding that has been cut was funding that came from Washington. What I am advocating is for the states to take mental health back from the private providers; we should never have people figuring out how to make a profit off another person's mental health; it's ethically corrupt.

    Medication is helpful in the vast majority of cases; the issue is getting the people to actually TAKE the medication. Problem is, if they aren't being monitored then they have a tendency to stop taking the meds as soon as they start feeling better. It's an awful cycle. There are, obviously, different levels of mental illness and I wouldn't advocate for careful monitoring for every person who is having problems but for those who have a history of hurting themselves or others should be monitored. If nothing else the funding should come out of the national defense budget since this has literally cost us more lives than our wars.

    I'm still not a fan of charter schools. We have a perfectly good public education system that the R's have worked tirelessly to defund and break apart for their own agenda driven reasons, IMO. Regarding companies like Blackwater if it gets any more evil and sinister than what the CIA and NSA are already doing, I don't know that I want our name behind it.
     

Share This Page