US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9964

On February 23 2018 23:18 On_Slaught wrote:


Having said that, I'm shocked people are defending this guy so much. This guy spent decades basking in the power of being a cop. If he didn't understand that the price of getting all that power is that you are to run torwards the bullets, then he is a fool, or worse. There is nothing wrong with being unsure how one would react in that situation. But we aren't cops. If you don't think you could step up during a time like that, you have no business being a cop, imo.

On February 23 2018 23:35 Longshank wrote:


Perhaps it's different in the US, but here in Sweden we would never expect a single officer to take on an unknown number of men with AR-15s with a single hand gun. The idea is that they are human beings, not hollywood characters.

On February 23 2018 23:35 Longshank wrote:


Perhaps it's different in the US, but here in Sweden we would never expect a single officer to take on an unknown number of men with AR-15s with a single hand gun. The idea is that they are human beings, not hollywood characters.

On February 23 2018 21:26 iamthedave wrote:


Just responding to this one because there's a lot of posts that remind of this.

The problem I see with the US 'good guy with a gun' mentality is it's based on idealised fictional characters who weren't idealised in their original context.

Something that seems to have been slowly planed off the American conception of the lone gunman, the Eastwood hero, is that these people are almost always depicted as deeply damaged, lonely, barely functional human beings, permanently scarred by the lives they've lead to the point they're not able to be anything else. That's why most stories end with them riding on a horse away from civilisation into the wild west; they don't belong among people, and they know it. But it's that disconnection that allows them to be the hero so easily. They have nothing to live for, so it's easy for them to risk dying for something.

This sort of person is not a 'good guy' he's a sad, traumatised individual who has no future and little hope, and in our world would be referred to mental health services.

Even Hollywood action movie heroes don't usually present the good guy with the gun as these cool perfect dudes. Most are shown as struggling with keeping their lives together and/or to deal with things they've done in the past, before x plot reason forces them to fight again. And lets not forget that 90% of said heroes are trying to get away from lives of violence and don't actually want to fight at all.

Overall point being; the good guy with the gun mentality only works if you don't put ACTUALLY GOOD GUYS in that role. Because a lot of Actually Good Guys don't want to fire a gun at another person, and have better things to do today than risk death. Ex military people seem to be the 'right' person for these roles, ones who've actually seen combat and are both used to the idea they might get killed at any moment, and are (probably) aware of how to properly approach a known shooting location. But of course a lot of US military veterans have had quite enough of that thank you and would rather live a very normal life now.

One of the counterpoints we always hear is that 'guns don't kill people, people do'; there's truth to that. So you have to consider the people that are meant to be killing the people who absolutely are prepared to die, absolutely don't care, and aren't going to flinch when the shit goes down.

Intent. That matters a lot.

On February 23 2018 23:56 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:


Are you a cop? A veteran? Did you ever handle a firefight alone, nevermind outgunned? Seriously, people like you make everyone around the world look down upon the US and I bet you're even proud of it with that kind of hillbilly attitude. Who says this guy even is a genuine cop? Since when does actual police force secure schools? It's far more likely the guy is just one of the thousands of lookalike-cops you post around stores in the US rofl. "Step up during a time like that", my god.

On February 23 2018 23:56 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:


Are you a cop? A veteran? Did you ever handle a firefight alone, nevermind outgunned? Seriously, people like you make everyone around the world look down upon the US and I bet you're even proud of it with that kind of hillbilly attitude. Who says this guy even is a genuine cop? Since when does actual police force secure schools? It's far more likely the guy is just one of the thousands of lookalike-cops you post around stores in the US rofl. "Step up during a time like that", my god.

What the NCAA did in response to the lawsuit is as vile as anything going on in sports right now. I had to see it for myself before I believed it. At the root of its legal argument, the NCAA is relying on one particular case for why NCAA athletes should not be paid. That case is Vanskike v. Peters.

Only there’s an important detail: Daniel Vanskike was a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, and Howard Peters was the Director of the state Department of Corrections. In 1992, Vanskike and his attorneys argued that as a prisoner he should be paid a federal minimum wage for his work. The court, in its decision, cited the 13th Amendment and rejected the claim.

The 13th Amendment is commonly hailed as the law that finally ended slavery in America. But the amendment has an important carve-out: it kept involuntary service legal for those who have been convicted of a crime. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” the amendment says. It’s that phrase — “except as a punishment for crime” — which allows American prisons to force their inmates to do whatever work they want or need them to do.

The use of the case stems from several other law cases alleging unpaid labor; two of them are previous lawsuits against the NCAA in which the case was cited as precedent, and the NCAA won.

The NCAA is showing an incorrigible nerve to use this case, Vanskike v. Peters, as one of its justifications for not paying student-athletes. The Vanskike case has been cited in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 14 times before, but in each of those 14 cases there were prisoners arguing that they should be paid a fair wage for their work.

Yet the NCAA wants to rely on this case and to call on the 13th Amendment. The body that runs college sports wants to use a justification for the slave labor of convicted criminals to justify its outrageous greed.

This is not just bad optics. It gets to the heart of what the multibillion-dollar enterprise that is the NCAA thinks not just of its athletes, but of its core business model. It is, in essence, admitting that student-athletes are working as slave laborers and as such do not deserve fair compensation.

Bigotry has a way of revealing itself. And that is exactly what the NCAA — by leaning on the case of a prisoner demanding he be paid as its justification for denying their athletes a wage of any kind — has done here. It has revealed itself to us.

On February 24 2018 00:17 On_Slaught wrote:


It was a real cop, not some untrained security guard. Also, police guarding schools is nothing new either, and is quite common.

If somebody thinks he shouldn't have gone in, then I assume you'd also agree schools all over the country might as well save money and fire their security officers since all it takes to make them useless is to start shooting.