Nothing is going to change. Americans love their guns more than they love people and after Sandy Hook we decided that killing over 20 children was acceptable and not outrageous enough to make reasonable restrictions on guns. This is America, a country that has been around for 200 years, a superpower, a 1st world nation, and one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and we refuse to protect our own people. We respect guns more than we respect the lives of people.
What specific gun control measures would you propose and how would they directly and effectively make society safer?
Absolutely get rid of all AR-15′s and the like.
Intense background and criminal background checks and anything violent automatically disqualifies you.
Make getting a gun/gun permit more like getting a driver’s license:
permit to learn
includes an exam with 18 or more questions on the policies, laws, and etc of guns and gun ownership
if you get more than 8 questions incorrect you must retake it.
30 hours of practical experience at a gun range with a licensed teacher
Must take a 5 hour class on the dangers of guns and how to use them safely which will then yield you a certificate that grants you to take the practical exam and lasts for one year. If you don’t gain the license within the allotted year you must retake the class.
A practical exam with a licensed instructor who will grade you on various skills. If you pass you may be granted a permit on the weapon of your choice, the exams may differ on the type of firearm you want.
Follow the Japanese model where you must have two gun safes in different areas of the house, one to store the gun and one to store the bullets and you must provide the police with information on where those safes are.
No concealed carry and only handguns may be allowed to be out in public.
If transporting a weapon, it must be in the trunk of the vehicle, in a bag or some other case, safety on and unloaded and may not leave the vehicle until you are at the destination.
If you’re a hunter or some other gun hobbyist that requires a functional weapon other than a handgun then the gun must stay on the premises, whether that is a gun range or the Fish and Wildlife facility.
If you live in a rural area where police (and people, for that matter) are few and far between, something akin to a deer hunting rifle should provide plenty of protection from predators and poachers, you still have to follow the aforementioned steps.
This doesn’t cover everything but I think it’s a good place to start.
Can you show me evidence that this would directly and effectively create a safer society?
I have never laughed so hard at a gun law post. Like seriously, the evidence is in fucking reality. The proposed restrictions are just fucking logic.
I honestly can’t decide if I identify with Crowley or Aziraphale more because. On one hand I too am a neurotic mess that raises houseplants and worries too much about being cool and constantly fucks up but wants people to love me. And on the other hand, I too am testy and wish humans would leave me alone so I could read and love food so much I would be willing to try and stop the apocalypse so I could continue eating.
Okay here’s the thing – having never read Good Omens I honestly cannot tell which of these is the demon and which of these is the angel
that’s honestly so incredible like that’s kind of the point of good omens tbh
#I am never. never ever. over how open and soft han solo’s face gets when leia shows him even the slightest bit of honest affection #it flips this switch inside him it unstoppers this font of—something #something young and unguarded and wondering #and she’s not even flirting but she’s looking at him all open and affectionate and for all his pushing and cajoling #han solo has no idea what to do with that except return it #a hundredfold #(i love these assholes so fuckin much I’m sorrY) (via notbecauseofvictories)
I think the problem with writers & showrunners is that they think everyone’s interest lies fully in the story itself when that is almost never the case. in reality it’s carried by the characters. & when they treat their characters like they’re expendable & then turn around & ask why everyone is mad at them it’s like well what did you expect? no one connects through experiences alone. we connect through the people who’ve shared them.
I hate to hijack a post, but I think this trend of Story Before Character disconnect is 100% generational. It’s not that writers and showrunners feel this way in general – it’s that the writers and showrunners of the last ten years misunderstand how television’s narrative directive works.
Right now we’re in this supposed ‘Golden Age of Television’ and we have been for the last fifteen or so years. Basically since the turn of the century. It’s a relatively new thing that television is considered to be on equal footing with film in terms of artistic caliber, and, in fact, a lot of stories nowadays are considered ‘too big for film’, meaning that only television can do them justice. Not twenty years ago, the opposite had been the industry standard since the beginning of the talkies.
Up until the beginning of this ‘Golden Age’, television was essentially the same as pulp fiction – Entertaining, but lacking true narrative substance. There was no real narrative thru-line to Leave It To Beaver or The Golden Girls or even really Friends until later seasons. What kept people coming back week to week was the characters. The story didn’t matter to viewers as long as they got to watch their favs go through it. I mean, sitcoms – the medium that pretty much dominated television up until the ‘Golden Age’ – by definition are a series of comedic situations that we watch are favs go through. Linear narrative had no place there. And sure, there were other things on television, like ‘serial’ westerns and crime dramas and soaps, but all of those where HUGELY character centric. (Like….soaps only make sense if you’ve been following the characters for awhile. Otherwise they are incomprehensible.)
However, in the mid to late nineties, people who primarily worked in film and novels started to look to television as a new way to tell bigger stories. That’s when we got ER and The West Wing and all of the early HBO series like the Sopranos and The Wire and whatever else. And that’s what led the industry to start thinking of television as viable medium for ‘important’ stories. Before that point, television was either a stepping stone to a film career or a hold over to a film career. That’s it.
So where does the generational gap come in? Well, in the last twenty or so years, films have pretty much stagnated and getting into writing features takes something close to Divine Intervention because it’s that inaccessible to the average writer. Everyone and their mother knows that television is where the jobs are, so that’s creating an influx of storytellers coming to television without a proper understanding of how television works i.e. that it’s character driven. We’ve got people who would otherwise be writing features deciding that they can make television work for them. Instead of going to television as a way to tell larger character driven stories, we’ve got people working in television because it’s the only place they could get their story told.
And it’s hard. Because we’ve still got HUGE names from film crossing over and dabbling in television, like JJ Abrams and the Nolan brothers, and for the most part it works for them? Because they are incredibly talented individuals who hire incredibly talented individuals to run their shows for them when they can’t, but it’s created this mentality that other showrunners/writers feel like they have to bring a cinematic aesthetic (AKA Huge-Ass, Twisty, Turny Plot) to their series when that is 100% not the case!
Basically, what this comes down to is a lack of respect of the medium, which is entirely generational. Television was the poor man’s entertainment forever, but now it’s not because it has been ‘legitimized’ by big names in film. So this current crop of showrunners (with few exceptions) are there, doing their thing, thinking that television is somehow different now; that it is above character work and continuity, and that all that matters is how they are going to stretch out their literally sensational plot over twenty weeks, getting mad when all the audience seems to care about is whether or not their favs are gonna talk about the trauma they experienced or smile this week or whatever.
And it’s not like audiences don’t care about story. We do. That’s why episodic sitcoms and procedurals have fallen out of fashion in favor of serialized stories – because isn’t it better to watch our favs react and change in a cumulative story, rather than in isolated episodes that are all but erased to make way for next week? Of course it is. But it’s only because of how we feel about our favs that it even matters in the first place.
So yes, we are in the Golden Age of Television in the sense that more compelling television is being made than ever before, but it seems like we’ve hit a bit of a lull simply because the people at the helm completely misunderstand how we even got here.
this made me feel really uneasy, the ocean is terrifying.
its like when cats bring home a dead bird and drop it at your feet except the ocean is like I HAVE BROUGHT YOU THIS ENORMOUS TREE FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL ENJOY
crying males: “disney is destroying star wars with female leads”
“rogue one also has a female lead? ugh”
“great another mary sue”
me:
I don’t mind if Star Wars has a female lead, as the Star Wars franchise has always been home to strong female characters, I do care if she is another giant Mary Sue like Rey was. Rey was so Mary Sue that it became distracting to the movie. A character with no force training takes down a trained Sith Knight, she flies a freighter designed for two pilots with no help despite the fact she had never left the planet before, and she can also repair said ship with no problem because she had spent years salvaging parts off of a broken star destroyer? The only thing she didn’t do was have all of the male characters try to romance her at once and I thank the force for that small concession.
The only good new character in episode 7 was Finn. The rest of the characterization fell flat or was just used to make Rey ascend to Mary Suedom.
anakin built the worlds fastest pod racer and c3po when he was nine
the first time luke flew a spaceship he destroyed the fucking death star.
Kylo Ren: Not a Sith. Not fully trained. Also? Injured by a bowcaster that we’d seen could take out several stormtroopers at a time.
Rey: Literally spent all of her downtime flying a flight simulator to the point that it could no longer throw anything at her she couldn’t handle. For all kinds of ships. Nor did she solely scavenge star destroyers. She spent her entire life scavenging every imaginable wreck on Jakku, and her survival depended on her learning what ships had what parts and what was valuable. This, while competing with other scavengers, most of them working in teams.
Which meant she had to learn how to fight, or else she wouldn’t have gotten out of childhood.
Basically, Rey had way more in-canon reasoning to be as good as she was than Luke Skywalker did–who basically went from never flying much out of atmo to piloting an X-wing under combat conditions and rocking it… apparently just because of genetics and the Force. Who then went on, only half-trained, into a fight that even YODA thought he was going to die in, and survived, against a man literally birthed by the Force, trained as both a Jedi AND a Sith, with about 25 years of combat experience under his belt, whereas Luke had had a lightsaber for about 3 years. What a Mary Sue he was, huh?
Rey had more reason to be what she was than Anakin Skywalker, who accidentally wound up in a fighter and accidentally destroyed a droid ship. Anakin who was such a Mary Sue he was LITERALLY A VIRGIN BIRTH. How Mary Sue is THAT?
The creators, in short, HAD TO GIVE REASONS for every single thing Rey knew how to do, because of assholes like this person, who would take any special skill she had as proof that she was a “Mary Sue” just because she was a female character. No one bothered to give those reasons to Luke or Anakin. Because they’re the hero. OF COURSE they can do the impossible. But Rey? Jesus, what a Mary Sue.
Reblogged for excellent commentary.
(I’d thought the Rey-hating twerp up there was like sixteen, in which case I’d cut them some slack, but nope turns out they’re in their 40s.)
A few months ago, you said I looked “objectively really hot,
actually, you’re definitely the hot one of us.” I laughed and thanked
you because we have the kind of relationship that allows for that kind
of banter. Your phrasing amused me. I took a little bow.
You asked me why girls get upset when guys comment on their bodies,
and wondered why my reaction to you was different than, say, a girl’s
reaction to a random guy on the street. Why I was mildly flattered,
instead of scared or angry. You honestly didn’t understand, and wanted
to know.
I tried explaining, but I think I left you more confused than I found you.
I have a better explanation now.
The first time I can remember a guy staring at my boobs, I was in
eighth grade. I didn’t even notice; I was still a kid and was largely
oblivious to such things. My dad, however,didnotice, and started glaring at the twentysomething stranger ogling his thirteen-year-old.
I couldmaybehave passed for fifteen back then. There was no
way anyone would have mistaken me for an adult. That wasn’t the issue,
though. To that guy, it wasn’t about who I was or how old I was. I was a
set of boobs to him, not a person, certainly not a child.
My experience is pretty common. Girls start getting unwanted
attention at a young age, and it happens for the rest of our lives. Men
yell things at us on the street and invade our personal space on the bus
or trolley when there are plenty of other seats. They try to look up
our skirts when we sit down. They don’t listen when we try to rebuff
them. We see reports of yet another girl raped on her way home last
weekend, another woman whose body was found in a ditch. We’re told not
to go out alone at night, to take someone with us even if we’re only
driving to the store or the library or the gas station. We’re told to
carry our keys like weapons, to park in the lot instead of the structure
because it’s better to get rained on than raped and murdered. We’re
told not to walk alone even during the day. We’re told close friends
might rape us if they’ve had a bit to drink because they’re men, that
it’s wrong, but it happens sometimes and we should be on our guard.
Imagine hearing that from the age of five. Imagine being told from
childhood that men are more likely to hurt you than women are. Imagine
knowing that, though you might be smart and well-trained, men will
almost always be bigger and stronger than you, and you wouldn’t be able
to beat most of them in a full-on fight. I can best my brother at
arm-wrestling, yeah, but that doesn’t have many practical applications.
Now imagine that one of the people you’ve been taught to regard as a
threat to your body says he wants your body. If he really does, you’ll
have a hard time stopping him, and people will treat you as an object
lesson for others, like you’d done something wrong for “letting” him
hurt you. They’ll ask why you didn’t do more to protect yourself, why
you wore that dress, or walked into the parking lot at that time, or
talked to that person. Why you went out after dark or flirted with
someone at a party.
I’m not saying all men are awful. I’m saying that decent men should
be the norm, but there are a lot of men who aren’t, and who make us feel
unsafe in our normal lives. We can’t tell the difference between decent
people and potential rapists by looking.
What you said to me was meant as a compliment, and I took it as such.
That’s because I’ve known you since we were kids, and I know you didn’t
mean any harm. We have the kind of relationship where words like yours
are appropriate, and you’ve never strayed outside the bounds of what’s
okay. I don’t have that kind of relationship with the car full of
drunken guys I walked past on the way home from D&D last weekend.
Girls get upset when guys comment on their bodies because we’re being
treated like sources of pleasure, not people. We get angry because we
can’t go about our business without having to worry about sexual
predation. We get scared because, when it comes down to it, if a guy
tried to act on his shouts of “Hey baby, nice tits, keep it up” we
probably wouldn’t be able to stop him, and some would blame us.
Girls get upset because we’d much rather be seen as people, not just bodies.
This isn’t realistic for adults. I’m sorry it’s just not.
Don’t fall into believing that, “if they’re a true friend they’ll drop everything and run to be by your side!” crap.
As a responsible adult there will be times that your friends are hurting and you won’t be able to go to them.
There are times that you will have to go to work, or take your sick kid to the doctor, or do many other things that will prevent you from being there for your friend.
When your friend calls you and they’re falling apart and it’s ten minutes until you have to leave for work, you’re not a bad friend for saying, “Look, I love you. I’m sorry this is happening, but I have to go. I’ll call you back tonight when the kids are asleep.” Or “I’m so sorry this is happening. I love you and I want to be here for you but I’ve got to get to work. I’ll call and check on you during my lunch.”
Adult life is hectic and busy with important things all the time and unfortunately it’s also full of shitty things happening to people we love.
Do your best to be there for the people you love and ask for support when you need it but be understanding when being a responsible adult comes before helping you.
The idea that people need to be there any time you need them is really damaging and unhealthy, too. You can’t place value on a person or a relationship based solely on whether or not they’re available, no questions asked, whenever you need them.
In addition to the above: sometimes, someone simply does not have the energy to help. Maybe they’re coming out of a rough patch themself, maybe they have been busy all day,maybe a chronic illness is flaring up. There are a myriad of reasons someone may not be able to be there.
Obviously, if someone is taking you for granted, and never seems to care how you’re doing, that’s an issue. But to write someone off because their life and your life didn’t line up quite right at a given point in time, or maybe even on more than one occasion, is not a healthy way to handle things.
eirenical17 