Charlie Kirks wife forgives the killer

@wineosaurusrexwould love to see explore this, honestly, but what I’ve seen and watched does not tell me this (and I’ve seen quite a bit). Can you provide specific examples and quotes with context?

They're not one person. She can claim to forgive the killer, and he can still have been hateful, dangerous, hypocritical and inciting of violence and discrimination.

Actually, it doesn’t. It’s just cope because you don’t want to deal with the actual problem.

Poor Hispanics deal with many of the same ‘socioeconomic’ factors that black people face. And yet, they do not commit crime at nearly the same rates. We should have this conversation and not just dismiss it with ‘socioeconomic factors’ which is hand wavey bullshit.

You don’t need to. Gun licensing works, stop and frisk works. Maximalists on both sides are unpopular, and there’s a lot we can do without getting demoralized over it.

@MeTooOverHereCan you provide examples/ quotes?

Excuse me, but I don't think people were saying that at all. Almost everyone seems to agree that Kirk was a courteous, supposedly open person. And people who are religious would probably agree that he spoke often of love. But there were certainly very marked aspects of his beliefs that were anti-black, anti-women, etc.

I’m an atheist but I have read quite a lot on comparative religions, just because it’s really interesting.
Thats my assessment of the teachings of Christ, too.
This man seemed to be in opposition to many of them.

He actively spoke in contradiction of Christ's teaching.

I haven't read the whole thread. 20+ pages this morning when I got up. I meant the thread has moved on to guns. Sorry!

I'm on guns. You don't have to be on guns, of course.

But, you make a fair point and, in that context, the poster was absolutely right.

Though again, in that context, guns are fundamental to pretty much everyone's history. Except most of us consigned them to exactly that.

We're on guns now?

Guns are fundamental to the US history because (as they still say) if it hadn't been for guns they would not have been able to cross the country in their covered wagon trains to settle to the west coast. It was their manifest destiny (ie God given right) to settle that vast fertile land that God had created just for them and those hostile native people and wild animals would have made it impossible to do so. This is still said on Reddit, Quora etc.

I know this because I've been part of many convos on those other sites.

It is one of the reasons they look down on us Australians. We "allowed the govt to take our guns off us" along with being descended from all convict stock (not free settlers as they were) and not having fought the British for freedom but having negotiated it instead. Most of them clearly don't know history or geography except how it pertains to them.

Guns aren't fundamental to US history at all. They're intertwined with their culture, but that's about it. But, yes, god knows how you wind it back now.

@BerylSnowi was just thinking the same!

No I haven't. I'll watch it. I just can't see an argument FOR guns, so am interested.

Thanks for being respectful throughout this debate, though!

@BerylSnowperhaps, but they’re so far gone… how do you 1) remove the guns and 2) remove the sense of guns as freedom that’s core to so many and fundamental to the country’s history?

@Wishing14 I think you go with the balance of probabilities. Well sensible countries do (fewer guns deaths, no rogue governments) but the States is far from sensible at the moment.

@BerylSnowhave you seen the it’s always sunny in Philadelphia episode on guns? It’s really good for showing both ‘sides’

@BerylSnow you maybe are right if we continue live under governments we can control and live the lives we have gotten used to. But it’s not guaranteed. I’m not saying I agree, I can see both sides of it. They both make sense to me.

@Wishing14

I've watched the quote before. The context sctually makes it worse.

How do you stop school shootings? Put armed guards in schools, of course!

As I say, Americans have lost all perspective. It's crazy.

And there follows the insults like night follows day. Never go changin', right wingers!

Double post.

@BerylSnow
This is long, I’m sorry but maybe worth posting if you’ve not read it. I don’t think it’s as simple that and I think his words explain it better than I would -

“Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. So, I'm a big Second Amendment fan but I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a Second Amendment. This is why I would not be a good politician, or maybe I would, I don't know, because I actually speak my mind.
The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. And if that talk scares you — "wow, that's radical, Charlie, I don't know about that" — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers. Number two, you've not read any 20th-century history. You're just living in Narnia. By the way, if you're actually living in Narnia, you would be wiser than wherever you're living, because C.S. Lewis was really smart. So I don't know what alternative universe you're living in. You just don't want to face reality that governments tend to get tyrannical and that if people need an ability to protect themselves and their communities and their families.
Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000 people die on the road every year. That's a price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services — is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear that you're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.
You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?”

You lack reading comprehension, never mind.

No. I'm holding him accountable for what he said. He's very obviously not responsible for every - or any - gun death. But he said some deaths were acceptable if it meant being able to have guns. That's not an anti violence stance. That's saying 'some violence is acceptable if we can have guns'.

Conservative Americans (and probably a fair chunk of the left) have lost every inch of perspective when it comes to gun violence. It's insanity looking at it from afar.