Terracotta: Our Lost Kingdom General Board

[Zephyr Shenkiken]

I'm not so special lol. I just have normal everyday learning abilities and stuff like that. Nothing interesting to overcome other than my own apathy. Kinesthetic for the win, though.

[Matt]

Kinesthetic? Like... Movement?

And tbh my sister and I were talking - there's pretty much a diagnosis for everything. Like, you don't spell right, you've got dyslexia. But it's like autism - there's a spectrum - only (and I'm not saying any of us here do it) some people wave the label around like a flag and it discredits a lot of people who really do have problems.

Like, dyslexia runs in my family but it's a lot stronger in my sister who literally looks at a page and can't see words, they just dribble around the book unless she gets a ruler and coloured pen to separate each line etc. However, she's really smart and studies psychology at university - she just gets things like extra time and special computer equipment and such to help her. Then there was a girl at school who faked dyspraxia because she wanted those extra things and then claimed to 'have overcome her disabilities' within the course of a year.

I admit, I find it all really interesting - how people learn. It's so intrinsically connected to our social psychology and cognitive capacities and it's quite fascinating to have that diversity in our species.

[Quaddy]

And then there's Georgia Representative Broun who thinks evolution and science are lies "straight from the pit of hell"...

[Matt]

Yes well we reserve a 'special' seat for them on the Reality bus.

[Quaddy]

He's thinking of running for Senate.

SENATE!

*falls over*

Also...he's on the House Science Committee. SCIENCE!!

[Matt]

How does that even work? "I don't believe in science!" "Oh dude, you can go... into that door on the left. House Science Committee." "Gee that's awesome. Now I can tell everyone what a moron I am!"

[Quaddy]

The Republican party has gone a little crazy of late. They're moving farther and farther to the right, becoming more reactionary and less willing to compromise. Essentially, they feel as though their lifestyle is becoming obsolete and some, instead of rolling with it, react by becoming intransigent. Like "legitimate rape" guy, Todd Akin. Most Republicans are at least pretending to move to the center...

[Zephyr Shenkiken]

I still don't support the gun laws they're trying to pass.

[Matt]

Is he the guy who said that women would naturally miscarry/abort their own foetus if they were truly raped and didn't somehow want it?

[Quaddy]

I do. The Federal Government has the right to limit the number of weapons and the types of weapons people have access to. So long as guns are not outright banned, the Supreme Court will side with these laws. Your right to own a weapon does not supersede my right to life. Thomas Jefferson wrote Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; he wrote them in THAT order for a reason. Life outranks Liberty. So fuck your military-style weapons and your masturbatory fantasies of being John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Take your goddamn hand gun, register it, and keep it out of the hands of criminals. Give the ATF the right to establish a gun transaction database and to actually persecute gun offenders to the fullest extent of the laws (which they currently cannot thanks to the NRA), establish background checks for EVERY transaction, and make it AS DIFFICULT to buy a gun as it is to buy a goddamn HOUSE!

[Quaddy]

And yes, Matt. That would be Todd Akin.

[Matt]

Or just adopt our gun laws. Because we're British and therefore right.

[Quaddy]

Americans glorify guns. We see them as power and freedom all wrapped up in one. The American psyche is so fucked with regard to the "rugged individualist", "Go West, young man" John Wayne-types that we see guns as safety. We see guns as a symbol of American liberty against tyranny. Guns are a mental illness in and of themselves. The solution to the gun problem is not more guns. It is fewer, more controlled guns. Reagan thought so, Nixon thought so...hell every Republican in the last sixty years has thought so. But when Obama tries to do it, it's tyranny. Our Founders made a mistake with the 2nd Amendment because they assumed the American people were intelligent enough to do it right. And we are not.

[Quaddy]

Also, Zeph, that wasn't aimed at you. I've just been bottling up my feelings on guns for several weeks now...

[Zephyr Shenkiken]

I have the same problem with 'gun control' as I always did. Laws about guns only affect law abiding citizens. Not to mention they're going about it all wrong. The limitation are on things that don't even matter so it does even less good than the little it would do in the first place.

[Matt]

Eh. All I know is that half of the kids I met at UNC carried guns in their handbags or had them concealed in their glove pocket of the car. They ALL had concealed weapons licences.

[Quaddy]

We don't know what matters. What you believe matters might not matter as much. And, no, laws about guns do NOT only affect law abiding citizens. A gun transaction database might not stop a single criminal, but once the ATF finds out a gun has been used that wasn't transacted properly, they go back to the last owner/dealer and can prosecute them. A few such dealers off the street means tons of criminal guns off the street. What these laws do is make it possible to track gun sales and find out who the criminals are. How would such a law stop law abiding citizens from getting their guns? If they are law abiding, then a background check won't be a problem. If they are law abiding, registering their gun is what they're going to do anyway. They will also report if their gun is stolen AND will take the proper steps to keep it from being stolen.

Do you know that 67% of all guns involved in crimes can be tracked to 1-4% of all gun dealers? And the ATF cannot do a damn thing about that because they can't establish a federal arms database. We have one for sex offenders, we have one for fucking CARS, but we don't have one for guns. We don't even have one for gun offenders! Why? Because the NRA wrote legislation, had it passed through a pro-NRA Congress, and effectively crippled the federal organization in charge of keeping track of these crimes!

Do you also know that the only reason the shooter in Arizona was stopped was because he had to stop and change his magazine? If he had had access to a 10-round magazine instead of a 30, an 8-year-old (or was it six?) would have survived. Yes, those first 10 people would have been shot, but we know we can't stop all such crimes, we can only mitigate the damage. The same goes for the shooter in Aurora. If his gun hadn't malfunctioned, that man had 100-round clips and would have sprayed all 100 bullets into a theater! Imagine if he had only had 10 rounds at a time! How many lives could have been saved there? The argument that it takes only a second to reload a magazine is, again, specious. The average gun offender is not trained with guns and, thus, would not be experienced enough to count on that ease of reloading. And even if this isn't true for ALL gun offenders, it is true for enough of them that passing the law does good. If a law has to be 100% effective to be passed, well...let's just repeal all those Drunk Driving laws we have, all those Drug laws we have, and all those LAWS we have, period.

And yes, we do need to focus on mental health issues. We need to re-institute state run mental facilities. We also need to STOP stigmatizing mental health issues/treatment. The reason we idolize guns is the same reason we dismiss receiving mental healthcare. Such healthcare is covered under Obamacare, but that's obviously Satan. And opening state institution means higher taxes. Which is also Satan. So the same people saying "mental health" is the problem are the ones preventing us from doing something about it. Further, blaming the mentally handicapped is even worse than blaming the guns. The handicapped are far more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than on the giving end. The problem then isn't that these people are overwhelmingly mentally unstable, but rather that their first instinct is to go for guns and be violent about it. Why do guns have such an allure? Money needs to go into studying these questions and these issues, but the Republicans are so against spending that they're shooting themselves in the foot (pun very much intended).

Certain types of bullets also need to be banned. No citizen needs "cop killer" (armor piercing) rounds...ever. Those belong in a military setting. The argument that the citizens need them to protect themselves against a tyrannical government...is ridiculous. The government is made up of citizens. If you're worried that they'll use the military against us...that's the good thing about having an all volunteer military. None of them will turn their weapons against the people...because they ARE the people. So that argument is just conspiracy theory nutjobbery.

The only thing I can see having an issue with is the banning of the guns themselves. But this is actually the part of the law with the fewest legal questions. The Supreme Court has long argued that the government can ban certain types of weapons and still uphold the 2nd Amendment, so long as guns are not outright banned. Every President since Eisenhower has supported a ban on certain weaponry (mostly military grade weapons in general and not just guns) and has, in fact, strengthened these bans throughout the years. The issue with these bans is NOT the criminals, but rather gun manufacturers, who change the guns to get around the ban. So further controls on gun manufacturers are needed here to make such a law effective.

And the NRA needs to have their own weapons turned against them. Wayne LaPierre is a hypocritical asshat. He is the one who ranted at the government for NOT having Universal Background Checks and now, when the government wants to do them, he suddenly argues that they're just government tyranny. So when the biggest lobby firm for guns has revealed themselves to be a group of righteous asshats who just want to be opposed to the government in every way shape and form, I cease taking their arguments seriously. And when criminologists, statisticians, psychologists, and legal gun owners are almost in universal agreement about the things the government is doing, I sit up and take a listen.

Did you know that the majority of Americans--INCLUDING the majority of gun owners--support the laws now being proposed by Congress? If that isn't a mandate to pass them, I don't know what is.

[Quaddy]

And now the politics can end.

TEEEAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

[Zephyr Shenkiken]

Lol Quaddy unfortunately I still do not agree but I respect your opinion. I didn't say I don't support ANY gun laws. I don't support the ones currently in transaction.

[Quaddy]

Those *are* the ones currently in transaction...

[Zephyr Shenkiken]

Hmm...I must be misunderstanding then. It's fine. I get enough polical convo in class lol.

[Quaddy]

Oh, darling, believe me...I get enough of it everywhere. Everyone knows I'm a history/poli sci major and I read/watch the news a lot, so I get questions all the time. Of course, people then get angry with me when I don't give them the answers they want...

I am also a bit of a numbers junkie. People like Ezra Klein and Nate Silver are my kind of people.

[Matt]

I'm going to pretend I understand all the valid sounding points above and stick to my own, and pretty much my country's point of view on this one I think.

We don't understand your gun laws. It seems like a pretty bygone era yous are harking back to. After the shootings we had here - most notably the Dunblane Children's Massacre in '96, we massively tightened our gun laws and the next one was over a decade later in 2010 and that was one guy with four shotguns targeting specific people in a spree killing rather than a massacre. I hesitate to say it but we don't have the gun crime because it's so difficult to get your hands on a gun. And we certainly don't have them with the regularity it seems yous do.

Of course, people then say you're a bigger country but... honestly, I think a lot of Britain gasps at the horror of what happens over there and then sighs in exasperation when nothing changes.

As for Mental Health - it's really odd because it's like extreme cases are hidden and marginalised but most of our generation are pill poppers of one kind or another. Mental health is definitely in need of some TLC GLOBALLY though. It's ridiculous how so many people don't understand what is even meant by mental health. Equally, it's naive to think that every person who commits a heinous crime has a mental health issue - sometimes people are just bad and it's not biology's fault.

[Matt]

I also really hope none of that is offensive or anything - I know that I'm the outsider looking in and I know that it's a really touchy subject for a lot of people... it's just strange from this perspective and I sort of tried to say that. Hopefully without being a wanker. If I failed then truly sorry.

[Quaddy]

You're fine. It beats the people over here saying anyone who favors gun legislation is un-American, a socialist, a tyrant, an idiot, whatever...