I have had the good fortune to be living abroad for the past three months, serving as a parish priest. As the date of my return to the U.S. approaches, I cannot help but wonder why I would want to return.
To risk being shot and killed while out dancing, grocery shopping, sitting in a movie theater, attending a concert, or doing any number of things or being in any number of places where one is entitled to the expectation of safety?
The U.S. is filled with guns, indeed more guns than the 333 million men, women and children in the nation. We have allowed this to happen! We’ve appointed judges to the courts and elected people to positions of power and authority in the state legislatures and Congress who have distorted the Bill of Rights and allowed the profits of the gun industry to supersede the rights of the people to live in safety and without fear.
They have practiced bait-and-switch tactics and we’ve bought them: It’s not guns that kill, it’s people; it’s the bad guys against the good guys; we have a mental health crisis, not a gun crisis. …
If there were any reason to take to the streets, to demand change, to hold politicians accountable, it is most certainly this. The kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., pointed the way; we marched, and then we apparently dropped the ball. Your presumed right to carry does not trump my right to safety — and no, I do not feel safe because you’re carrying a weapon.
— (Rev.) Douglas A. Greenaway in No More Excuses: ‘Get Rid of the Damn Guns’
The New York Times giving a voice to a priest; I don’t know who should be more ashamed of themselves; The Times for their craven cynicism or the priest for his shameful naïveté.
The biblical story that many people point to, when Jesus tells his disciples to sell their cloak and to by a sword. If they didn’t have a sword in the first place. This is an instruction about life in general that many people don’t understand.
As Jesus and his disciples traveled about the wilderness they were unarmed. Because Jesus protected them. But Jesus said soon he would be leaving them. And they would be on their own. Without his protection.
So now as they traveled from place to place, they would need to have a sword to defend themselves. Against people who would do them harm.
This is essentially the modern-day argument that the concealed carry and open carry people make in the 21st century. And saying it this way, I know drives some people just crazy.
Oh well.
Faith has a way of doing that with the faithless.
F this blog! When are you guys going to accept that I know what I am talking about, and you guys are a bunch of uneducated hillbillies!???
Stop voting guntards, so we can make legislative progress!
Fake dacian.
Saying what dacian would say if he had the balls.
Greenaway is a moron and he should stay wherever he went to, and not return back here.
You don’t have a right to safety. In fact, as a reverend, I think you would know, that all people die. They get old and die. They get a disease and die. Some of them, through no fault of their own, get some kind of medical condition and die. Life is inherently, NOT SAFE. In nature, everything is trying to kill you, AND! – We are all going to die. And it’s normally a lot quicker than you think. A quick visit to the CONSTITUTION, and we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Download the constitution in PDF and then search for the word “safe” and absorb instant education. So – the constitution is our social agreement here. It’s what is binding us all together. If you don’t like our constitution, you should GTFO! because we have a problem! Now the constitution says we have the right to keep and bear arms. Safety? Not so much. Because maintaining our own freedom. Keep that blissful freedom to ourselves – that is also inherently unsafe. The constitution, and and founders, and this nation, are about liberty and freedom above others, including safety.
Lastly, “gun violence,” a propaganda term created by left, is definitely a people problem. Because it is a “person” who makes the decision to hurt someone, or kill them, with a firearm. It’s a decision problem. And a decision problem, is a people problem. Greenaway here is trying to argue it’s a “too much freedom” problem. Like we have entirely way, way, too much freedom. And we need to reign that in. No. When a person decides to commit baseball bat violence, knife violence, fist violence, vehicular bumper violence, steel toe shoe violence, or gun violence, they made a decision to do so. And that decision was the problem.
Hillybillys love FREEDUMB. And dumb they are. They don’t appear to know what is good for them. I know what is good for them. I am highly educated. They are rural hillbillies and too stupid to know what is good for them. Now listen here hillbillies! Cast away that freedom you inbred tards, and listen to the wisdom that delicately, elegantly rolls off my sublime, righteous, divine tongue of superior intellect. Submit to more government control, and more democratic opinion, so that your retched lives may improve!
Fake Dacian real fascist thought process, well done.
Is this Nancy Pelosi behind the keyboard?
This preacher says, “Lets git rid of the damn guns”. I say let’s get rid of this damn preacher.
When a crime is committed with a gun, these idiots want to disarm all of the people who didn’t do it. Greenaway should go back to where he likes the laws and political philosophy better than here.
How bout we get rid of pedophiles
Winning comment!!
Or at least remove the diplomatic immunity that the Vatican gives their priests so they can be prosecuted. That immunity also gives them tax free status to live in the U.S.
Damnit! I hate freedom! And I hate responsibility! When are you gun nuts going to FOAD???The problem isn’t people and the actions they take. It’s our freedom! And we need more laws to curtail all this freedom! Farmer Bob should NOT be able to buy farmer Joe’s rifle, because Bob might be a criminal, or crazy. And I feel unsafe. And my safety is more important than all you gun freaks hobby.
Government is excellent, they are always here to help, just like with Tyre Nichols, and we need the government keeping track of everything, and who has what. When it comes to MY safety, your privacy shouldn’t matter!
We need safe storage laws! You shouldn’t be able to get to a gun fast. Period. Just look at Paul Pelosi, he didn’t have a gun, and things happened positively for him. We need safe storage laws to protect people from gun violence who may or may not be breaking into your house. And it better protects them, if you keep your gun in a locked box, in a locked safe, in a locked bed room, in a locked house. Just locking your home doesn’t count, we demand more locks! If you say you don’t need a safe, we will quote accidental child deaths. If you say you keep it in a locked box, in a locked safe, in a locked room, we will then say that you didn’t really need it anyways.
Everyone needs to have a mental test. And if we don’t do this mental test, then this is a gun problem. No mental test = gun problem! Now submit to mental testing now!
You shouldn’t be able to buy a gun, period!, if your neighbor doesn’t like you. We need to interview everyone in your vicinity, and look for any excuse we can find, to not allow you to have a firearm. Period! We need these checks!
Extra: This has nothing to do with guns, but we need single payer / nationalized health care. Nothing says excellent care like a panel of government officials deciding if health care should be administered based on your age, and your ability to contribute back to society. In a lot of cases, since we are rationing here, that medicare/medicaid needs to go to someone heathier, not your old boomer uncle! If you don’t agree with me – life is considered cheap and expendable.
The real dacian. Even if it ain’t.
when he was in the States, he was surrounded by gun carrying citizens and wasn’t aware of it. ignorance is bliss, but best to keep it to oneself.
A self loving terd and grifter feels safe embedded in Mafia territory, and wants to deprive me of property and security – and in the process weaken me in the face of said Mafia…
$eems coinkydental…
I carry, and like most of us, don’t advertise it.
“Observe your cat. It is difficult to surprise him. Why? Naturally his superior hearing is part of the answer, but not all of it. He moves well, using his senses fully. He is not preoccupied with irrelevancies. He’s not thinking about his job or his image or his income tax. He is putting first things first, principally his physical security. Do likewise.”
“Blessed are those who, in the face of death, think only about the front sight.”
Jeff Cooper
So do we.
Beat me to it.
Don’t return. Stay in Eurp. See if you can convert a bunch of those moooooslem wackadoodles. while keeping your silly empty head on your shoulders.
yeah,..Sicily is a nice, safe place…sort of like New Jersey….
lol
Indeed, the man would be better off staying in the Mafia Capital.
Taormina, Sicily:
11,000 people
93% Italian
~100% Catholic
vs.
Totality of the United States
Apples to apples comparison there. FWIW I probably wouldn’t leave either if it meant returning to some shithole city in the US.
Since you assume anyone with a gun is a danger to you, we have to assume that any priest is a danger to our children and ban the Roman Catholic Church and jail all of its priests.
A law will fix this. To the left laws fix everything.
We need a common sense penis buyback. Force everyone to turn over their penises in the catholic church in Italy, for a common sense dollar amount. Need to control this penis violence, and common sense penis control is the answer!
AMEN! Past time to do that!
To the Right Reverend Greenway,
Please feel free to remain where you are. I’ve read that Sicily is a fine place to live and you seem to prefer it to what you so broadly refer to as the USA. You will not be missed, we already have a surplus of fascist/statist/leftist fools here and certainly have no need for even one more.
“Your presumed right to carry does not trump my right to safety — and no, I do not feel safe because you’re carrying a weapon.”
Its not a ‘presumed right”, it is an actual inherent constitutional right.
Its more than 1,500 times more likely that you will be run down by a car and killed than it is that you will be shot by a law abiding gun carrier. Heck, its more than 2,100 times more likely that you will be injured or killed in a trip-n-fall accident into a glass top table than it is that you will be shot by a law abiding gun carrier.
You are literally more than 2,500 times safer around law abiding gun carriers than you are around thousands of ordinary every day items.
You are more likely to be shot accidentally by law enforcement, even as an innocent bystander, than to be shot accidentally by a law abiding gun carrier …
For handguns: There is less than a 0.0004% probability that a person will be shot accidentally by an ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carrier when the firearm is out of the holster.
For handguns: There is a little more than a 6% probability that a person will be shot accidentally by law enforcement when the firearm is out of the holster.
For handguns when the firearm is out of the holster: A person is literally in more danger (by about 15,000 times, by handgun) of being shot accidentally by law enforcement than they are of being shot accidentally by an ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carrier.
For rifles, when in shouldered firing position: There is a 0.0005% probability that a person will be shot accidentally by an ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carrier. There is a 4.7% probability that a person will be shot accidentally by law enforcement. A person is literally in more danger (by about 9,400 times, by rifle) of being shot accidentally by law enforcement than they are of being shot accidentally by an ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carrier.
“I do not feel safe because you’re carrying a weapon.”
No, you do not ‘feel safe’ (😂, the woke liberal ‘I feelz’ again) because you are ignorant on the subject and act on emotion like most ‘woke’ liberals and want to put the blame on guns because you want to aid the agenda of a tyrannical move to infringe a constitutional right to impose control and subjugation.
Not to forget that millions of people every day in the U.S. encounter an ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carrier and don’t even know it but they are just fine and no harm came to them from the ordinary citizen law abiding gun carrier. Even you when you were in the states encountered ordinary citizen (not law enforcement) law abiding gun carriers almost every day you were in public and didn’t even know it yet evidently you were safe from that which you now claim to be in fear of.
Your claim of “I do not feel safe because you’re carrying a weapon” is not based in reality.
Awesome post as usual .40calBooger.👍
.40,
Your rational, well-presented arguments would likely have no impact on Greenaway. Having myself completed a Catholic seminary education, I can tell you it isolates seminarians from the day-to-day struggles that most people face. It also focuses on a dogmatic approach to thought and daily living. The entirety of Catholic religious training begins with the assumption that the Church (notice the capital ‘C’) is God’s authority on earth. Again, the training is to accept absolutes based on theological beliefs.
Some of the people drawn to this type of education and lifestyle prefer to live in a world of absolutes, where right and wrong are clearly delineated and ambiguity is erased. Greenaway appears to be one of those folk. You will never convert him.
All that being said, I was fortunate to have some brilliant instructors in seminary. We had some fascinating conversations that tore at the foundations of theological pillars. I recall a multi- day dive into Rahner’s theory of symbol…it changed the way I looked at the Church, the Bible, and my mission as a priest.
Then again, here I am, decades later, with a wife, a daughter, a house, and a small arsenal….and reading TTAG daily.
The current marxist wokepope is not encumbered by any past theology
Cracks me up.
Grungeaway “feels safe” living in an area completely controlled by Sicilian Mafia, looks upon me getting murdered as my opportunity to get to Heaven, but says he doesn’t “feel safe” because I own a gun in GA.
Doesn’t he want to get to Heaven, too?
@.40,
Well written, but I feel compelled to make one correction:
“Its not a ‘presumed right’, it is an actual inherent constitutional right.”
The right to self defense is actually a Natural right, separate and above any Constitution or man-made construct. As has been mentioned many times here as nauseum, the Constitution’s Bill of Rights does not speak to the People to outline what we may do, but speaks directly to the Federal Government to outline what it may not do. The Second Amendment explicitly prohibits any infringement by Guv on the People’s right to keep and bear arms – in words any 4th grader can understand – yet here we are today, still mired in unconstitutional gun control laws across the land, and Guv (both Fed and State) continuing to break their own oaths of office by defying the Constitution’s prohibition of those infringements.
…ad nauseum…
Oof. I even corrected a misspelling in the ‘nauseum’, but missed the ‘ad’.
Aren’t you both saying the same thing, essentially?
Inherent right: An obvious guaranteed right just by the fact that one is a human being and not a right granted pursuant to another outside means or source.
Natural right: Refer to the rights given to all humans, simply for the sake of being human.
I know that .40 cal stated precisely “actual inherent constitutional right,” which I would interpret as “an inherent right written into the Constitution” but not granted by it.
Peanut butter or chocolate?
(I just can’t bring myself to call him “Booger” because a popular disc jockey once lost his job for saying that word on the air.)
Sicily?….wonder if he’s ever seen “True Romance”?…..and Dennis Hopper’s monologue?
then ktfo
“… where one is entitled to the expectation of safety?”
Who says?? There is no “right to safety” in the Constitution. Even the Supreme Court says cops have no obligation to protect you. “Safety” is an ephemeral condition. One second you are safe, the next second a car jumps the sidewalk and runs you over. Anyone thinking they are “entitled to an expectation of safety” is extremely naïve, and usually ends up injured or dead from an accident or a bad actor. Kind of like those people who walk around with their nose in their phone are are shocked when they walk into a lamp post or are hit by a car.
There is no such thing as “safe.”
I should have said, “one second you are safe, the next second a drunk driver jumps the sidewalk and runs you over.”
Objects are not capable of independent action. Only people are.
Life is dangerous. You’ll be safe when you are dead.
And then you’ll vote Demorat.
Isn’t that part of why we have the option to have faith in God/afterlife to begin with…….and the ability to try to survive dangerous situations with whatever we can manage with? The cleric seems confused.
The problem with many of these clerics, of ALL religions and sects, is that they BELIEVE- believe that they know better than the rest of us. Being raised in a family of clerics (not papist, obviously) I can tell you that from long experience. And to think that I was being “groomed” to be a divine myself once.
No…
Theres just a people problem.
8 Billion monkeys locked in a cage some are going to fight over somthing no matter what it is.
Maybe even a whole mob of them? They can call it call WAR. – – dumb monkeys.
Evolution
Something knocked me out the trees
Now I’m on my knees
Cover me, don’t you monkey with the monkey…….
“To risk being shot and killed while out dancing, grocery shopping, sitting in a movie theater, attending a concert, or doing any number of things or being in any number of places where one is entitled to the expectation of safety?”
Stay out of black, urban areas and your chances of that happening approach zero.
At which point your main risks are lunatics, leftists, and militant atheists ……..yes it is a small ven diagram but there are differences.
Thank you for saying that. I’m always unsure as to whether or not I should drop that truth bomb. It ain’t the Amish doing the most murders in this country.
Damn Amish Troublemakers! The whole bloody lot of them! Itz those Low-ryder wagons where they are NOT ALLOWDED by GOD to use cushions or anything considered comfort! causes hemoroids and a deep resentment toward velour ! 😁
Along with the Swede’s , my Norweigians ! and most of all the violent Swiss Mafia….must be all that chocolate, wrapping all those Yummy chocolate balls in tiny celophane wrappers , Itz enough to drive anyone Mad, mad, mad, I tell you! ARGH! Creates a horomonal imbalance and a desire to kill, maim and just basically reek (wreek? reak?) havoc on the rest of the world in general…must also be all that “chopping all those heads off of fish as a youngster” One day itz fish, then the next day humanoids (a natural progression, causes a bloodlust among-us!), next thing you know us berserka Norweigians are looking for a 24 hr. Walmart to shoot up! Um, oh,wait, wait, wait, that’s not us. I got really into all this, my apologies 😆😆😆😆😆😆😆..
Clop clop clop BANG! BANG! BANG! Clop clop clop
Amish drive-by.
Less cream, more coffee.
everybody knows it…just won’t say it….
The primary concern this person has would not be much of an issue at all if not for leftist Democrats NOT wanting to keep the animal in their cages. The problem has NOTHING to do with guns.
I know this is just a stock photo but the left protesting with signs that proclaim an “assault on common sense” holds NO credibility. These people don’t even understand what a ‘woman’ is.
“…entitled to the expectation of safety?”
Immediately admits entitlement and expects others to protect them. What a moron. Also admits to being a gentrificationist as a “parish priest”.
You have no “right to safety”. Idiot.
Many of those who hold to that notion also believe they have a right to your property and money as well, via taxes and EBT.
So not of an order practicing a vow of poverty?
And what about we the people’s safety when Government doesn’t obey the Constitution on a daily basis, censors people who do not agree with them, has a dual system of justice one for those who agree with them and another for those who do not, allows illegals to come into the country who are criminals and then spends taxpayer money to support them. I would say all of those reasons indicate why We The People need firearms for our protection and as enumerated by the Founding Fathers.
As an aside and not relevant to this particular article those of you who may own an AR15 or AK47 pistol with a brace, do not comply with the new ruling from ATF as it is unconstitutional and simply a means of getting you to register a firearm you bought legally with no requirements to do so.
“They have practiced bait-and-switch tactics and we’ve bought them: It’s not guns that kill, it’s people; it’s the bad guys against the good guys; we have a mental health crisis, not a gun crisis. …”
Any so-called priest/reverend/whatever who honestly believes there isn’t a ‘people problem’ has never cracked a Bible in his life. Even before Cain killed Abel, evil has been in this world and the whole ‘do whatever feels right’ movement over the last 50+ years has allowed it to flourish unchecked. THAT is most certainly a ‘people problem’, a ‘mental health problem’, and, as any respectable follower of Christ would understand, a spiritual problem. It is NOT, however, a gun problem.
Not in any way saying you are wrong I am just bringing popcorn for the responses 🙂
The word Reverend appears in only one place in the Bible: Psalms 111:9 and here is used in reference to God.
“do whatever feels right movement over the last 50+ years”
Here we are looking at the 60s again. Chart violent crime from 1960 on up. It took us until the mid 90s before we were able to begin reversing that trend. Even then, we were only treating a symptom. We never addressed the root cause. You reap what you sow.
all these guns are a symptom…not the cause…something the left refuses to acknowledge….
“It’s not our guns, it’s your sons!” – Chris Plante
Pontificating from a Catholic priest. That’s rich. I hope no little boys “confess” their sin’s to a dude in a skirt🙄 Stay in Sicily guido…
Catholic church is the world’s biggest closet….
former water walker, For your edification, there was a very small number of Catholic priests who preyed on “little boys”. And yet you try to make it like it was every priest. You might want to stay up on the mountains with the rest of your Neanderthals
frank speak, you also might want to learn about Catholicism rather than be a critic.
There is no such thing as ‘gun violence’. There is only violence. The weapon does not matter to the victim.
Stay out of my country. And send a ticket for dacian to join you.
“Your presumed right to carry does not trump my right to safety — and no, I do not feel safe because you’re carrying a weapon.”
I don’t carry for others to feel safe. I carry to have another option at my disposal should something happen in my presence.
To Collar Boy,
Stay there shithead. The last thing this country needs @ this time is your return. If you feel so strongly that you will feel UNSAFE in this country stay in Italy. You deserve each other. One less pedo-priest to deal with. But a suggestion if you don’t mind. Expand your horizons “father” visit the utopia’s of the great lands of China, Venezuala, Brazil and the like and try to convince your boss his holyness to join you on your journey, it may not do much for your life expectancy but it would help America ridding itself of (2) less woke individuals who are just a burden to society.
Have a nice day Chester, and don’t forget to take your required vax’s and boosters. We wouldn’t you guy’s to fall ill in Hunan.
I would add Argentina for the current papal home county where he can learn about how many priests (and higher) were disappeared if they did not fit the Peronist agenda and how a certain priest rose to influence in the last few decades.
Wow. Now do abortion Padre. Father Faker in Chicago would be proud.
quote————They have practiced bait-and-switch tactics and we’ve bought them: It’s not guns that kill, it’s people; it’s the bad guys against the good guys; we have a mental health crisis, not a gun crisis. ———-quote
Pure bullshit. When let criminals and crazy people buy second hand guns with no paperwork we have a GUN PROBLEM.
When we do not have a Safe Storage Act which would prevent 1,300 child deaths a year as well as smash and grab robberies of fireams WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM.
When we do not give people a mental test and vet their mental health background WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM
When we do not interview neighbors and co-workers before selling a person a deadly weapon WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM
When Republicans refuse to pass a National Health Care that would make mental health treatments affordable to everyone IT RESULTS IN A GUN PROBLEM.
Every civilized nation on earth has National Health Care except Capitalvania where life is considered cheap and expendable.
When the U.S. is so unsafe no one can go anywhere where there are large groups of people, even shopping, to the movies or watch a parade WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM.
When we do not have severe vetting via the NFA act to cover weapons of mass destruction like assault rifles WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM.
dacian, the DUNDERHEAD. For your edification, the HIPPA law prevents any listing of mentally ill persons from the NICS system UNLESS there is/was a court order committing the person to a mental institution.
Then you anti-gun radicals persiste to say that guns are violent. You keep saying that the guns are the problem. Can you tell us who a inanimate object can be a problem? Oh I know, the gun you own pulls its own trigger? What’s up with that? How can an inanimate object be “violent?” If the US is so “unsafe” why are you still here?
Tell me, you still not told us about the firing sequence of a cartridge. Care to expound on that?
to Walter the Beverly Hillbilly
Hippa does not apply when the person is arrested by law enforcement for erratic behavior this becomes part of his criminal history. Law Enforcement can then in some states give the person a mental test and evaluation and it too becomes part of his history like it or not.
And everyone needs a mental test! Preferably now! I don’t care about your privacy, or your claim to rights. No mental test = gun problem. Now submit to a mental test right now! We demand it!
dacian, the DUNDERHEAD. WRONG little fella. It seems that HIPPA applies and that no entry into the NICS system can be made concerning mental health commitment without that committment being by a court order. Apparently you are not as up on the law as you think you are.
Law Enforcement CANNOT, in any state, give any mental exams. They are not qualified. Nor are you. As to the mental test, you should be first on line to get your mental evaluation. I know there is no way you could not pass.
Mr.Beverly3: It worked for Ab on the “Rust” set…”It jus’ went off!”
Who exactly let’s criminals buy guns with no paperwork?
quote————Who exactly let’s criminals buy guns with no paperwork?——–quote
Hillbilly states that allow private face to face sales without paperwork because the seller has zero knowledge of who he is selling the gun to and his prior criminal record if he has one.
Aren’t there state laws against importing guns from other states?
Why yes, yes there are. Why don’t those laws prevent criminals from bringing guns from other states into those with strict gun laws?
So .001% of all firearm transactions and a negligible number of crime guns? Buddy I had to look back to the early 2002 region to find 1 case that maybe fit your criteria of private sale to a person who then illegally sold it to another person here in NY so a criminal transaction after the fact. Let’s be honest about what you are really bitching about, you just don’t like people ignoring the government, especially not legally with generally no negative let alone criminal outcomes. Meanwhile most of our crime guns here are stolen and/or baby momma purchased that may have been falsely reported stolen but good luck getting the ATF to check those addresses.
@dacian
“Hillbilly states that allow private face to face sales without paperwork because the seller has zero knowledge of who he is selling the gun to and his prior criminal record if he has one.”
This is exactly the type of false stereotype concept being put forth by delusional anti-gun for an emotional appeal to the public.
Lets test your claim: Name me five politicians or people you know of that have never made a mistake in their life? What?
Can’t do that honestly? You must live in a hillbilly state you hillbilly far-right wing white supremacist. Isn’t that want you say about gun owners?
I had to go back and research (oh yes, the information is available) to find cases of where personal sales of guns by a law abiding person resulted in a gun being sold to a criminal, or that gun being sold on further to a criminal after that initial personal sale or that gun being used in a crime. It turns out the high year for something like that happening in the last decade was in 2016 during the Obama administration. Those numbers represented 0.000001% of all guns (by official government count for those those held by ordinary law abiding citizens, military, law enforcement) in the United States and ~75% of those were law enforcement with access to systems to check background who sold off off their personally owned ‘duty’ firearms to others and the majority of those law enforcement ‘personal sales’ were either in California or New York, ya know, those hillbilly states.
Car dealerships (collectively) sell cars every day across the country to people with criminal backgrounds and to irresponsible people. No background check at all and zero assurance of a persons responsibility/reliability status. And DUI offenders buy cars and DUI drivers, by driving DUI, kill a person every 45 minutes in the United States (NHTSA) and criminals use cars in commission of crimes every 8 minutes (collectively from Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) ) and over 2,000,000 people are (collectively) seriously injured and killed annually in car accidents (CDC) and distracted driving by texting and driving kills upwards of ~4,000 annually (NHTSA). So now car dealerships should be required to do criminal background checks and responsibility/reliability checks, and cell phone companies should be required to do criminal background checks and responsibility/reliability checks, cause if they don’t they are in a hillbilly state and far-right wing white supremacists.
If you drive a car, and I hope you don’t because you are simply delusional and see ‘bad hillbilly far-right wing white supremacists every where and live in an imaginary place called Capitalvania’ – but if you do drive a car how do people you pass in traffic know that you are a reliable/responsible person (which you aren’t)?
Should we carry out your insane proposition and maybe have police checkpoints every few miles to stop drivers and run criminal background and responsibility/reliability checks because people are operating their personal property? After all, criminals buy cars, people drive DUI, people text and drive – and collectively kill and injure multiple millions annually. Ya think that police state would work?
Oh, but you are going to say “well, (such and such state) has that check on personal firearm sales and has a lower (whatever rate) so that proves it works.”
It doesn’t prove squat, and ya know why? Because there is no significant correlation for private sales of firearms to begin with that would make even the most tiny ripple in crime.
Hillybillys love FREEDUMB. And dumb they are. They don’t appear to know what is good for them. I know what is good for them. They are hillbillies, and too stupid to know what is good for them. Now listen here hillbillies! Cast away that freedom you inbred tards, and listen to the wisdom that delicately, elegantly rolls off my sublime, righteous, divine tongue of superior intellect. Submit to more government control, and more democratic opinion, so that your retched lives may improve!
“When let criminals and crazy people buy second hand guns with no paperwork …”
… then we have a criminal problem. No one is “letting” these people obtain weapons; they are criminals so no law will prevent them — criminals and the mentally ill are people.
“When we do not have a Safe Storage Act …”
… which wouldn’t prevent kids from finding and using weapons, then we have a parent problem — parents are people.
“When we do not give people a mental test and vet their mental health background …”
… then we have freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and people have a right against an overreaching government to be secure in their homes and personal business.
“When we do not interview neighbors and co-workers before selling a person a deadly weapon …”
… then we are following the Constitution as we have no right to demand personal health information before people buy a house, or a car, or a diet soda.
“When Republicans refuse to pass a National Health Care that would make mental health treatments affordable to everyone …”
… then we have a two-party system where both sides are charged by their constituents with considering and passing bipartisan legislation instead of one party (Donks) shoving a massive health-insurance requirement down the throats of an unwilling electorate — and the people benefit.
“When the U.S. is so unsafe no one can go anywhere where there are large groups of people, even shopping, to the movies or watch a parade …”
… then we have some people who are mistaken about the state of security in our country — because the people who make the country unsafe are criminals.
“When we do not have severe vetting via the NFA act to cover weapons of mass destruction like assault rifles …”
… then we disagree about what constitutes the right of the people to bear arms in common use that are not covered by that legislation.
It all comes back to people, not the weapon.
When 48,832 people die in rivers of blood and carnage in 2021 one of the highest EVER recorded YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT WE HAVE A GUN PROBLEM.
Only the sick paranoids that live in La La Land would not see it or understand it.
Damn those autonomous gunms!
Oh, wait — we don’t have those. What we have are people using weapons to injure other people.
That’s the definition of a “people problem,” you jerk.
Break down of suicide vs criminal homicide vs justified homicide of those numbers?
quote————Break down of suicide vs criminal homicide vs justified homicide of those numbers?————quote
You don’t need to know how they died, what decisions that led up to them, or really any other criteria whatsoever! Only that it’s GUN VIOLENCE, and guns are the problem. Now submit to mental heath checks now! Universal background checks for ALL private transfers, and mandatory buy backs of anything with a black plastic stock, and laws for keeping everyone in existence safe from your guns by keeping them locked up through several layers of security to prevent gun violence!
Of course you need to know how they died. Those intent on suicide are as likely to go through with or without a gun. As to murders, a victim does not care how they are killed or than hammers kill more people than gun shot wounds do.
Crime, all types of crime, is a PEOPLE problem.
We have a mental illness problem. dacian is living proof of that.
But we all knew that.
Hey dacian I got a complaint. You know that gunm your wife sold me at the yard sale? Well the cops found it on me and took it cause the serial numbers was ground off. From now on and you can tell your wife, I ain’t buying no more gunms at her yard sale unless they got the serial numbers on them. And that CompB she sold me turned out to be nothing more then peanut brittle without the peanuts. I think you guys might be a bunch of ripoffs.
Alas Possum, you are correct in complaining about the validity in purchasing his and his Wiff’s (I seriously doubt anyone would marry that basement dwellin skell!) “Second hand gunms”..I too am GUILTY of buying a second hand .357 in my yoot on the badlands of the streets of Bensonhurst Brooklyn, it literally came in the proverbial paper bag….I opened it up and took the piece out and axed the “salesmen” what gives w/ the smell? he replied “I cleans it wiff Pledge!” w/ a huge gold capped teeth smiles! this guy could sell ANYTHING, Crack, gunms, dacian’s mutha…
and dacian says something significant and truthful and not pure BS this time. In case y’all missed it I will quote it below…
” “
🤣
wonder how that “paperwork” requirement would work in a back alley sale out of someone’s car trunk….
Damnit! I hate freedom! And I hate responsibility! The problem isn’t people and the actions they take. It’s our freedom! And we need more laws to curtail all this freedom! Farmer Bob should NOT be able to buy farmer Joe’s rifle, because Bob might be a criminal, or crazy. And I feel unsafe. And my safety is more important than all you gun freaks hobby.
Government is excellent, they are always here to help, just like with Tyre Nichols, and we need the government keeping track of everything, and who has what. When it comes to MY safety, your privacy shouldn’t matter!
We need safe storage laws! You shouldn’t be able to get to a gun fast. Period. Just look at Paul Pelosi, he didn’t have a gun, and things happened positively for him. We need safe storage laws to protect people from gun violence who may or may not be breaking into your house. And it better protects them, if you keep your gun in a locked box, in a locked safe, in a locked bed room, in a locked house. Just locking your home doesn’t count, we demand more locks! If you say you don’t need a safe, we will quote accidental child deaths. If you say you keep it in a locked box, in a locked safe, in a locked room, we will then say that you didn’t really need it anyways.
Everyone needs to have a mental test. And if we don’t do this mental test, then this is a gun problem. No mental test = gun problem! Now submit to mental testing now!
You shouldn’t be able to buy a gun, period!, if your neighbor doesn’t like you. We need to interview everyone in your vicinity, and look for any excuse we can find, to not allow you to have a firearm. Period! We need these checks!
Extra: This has nothing to do with guns, but we need single payer / nationalized health care. Nothing says excellent care like a panel of government officials deciding if health care should be administered based on your age, and your ability to contribute back to society. In a lot of cases, since we are rationing here, that medicare/medicaid needs to go to someone heathier, not your old boomer uncle! If you don’t agree with me – life is considered cheap and expendable.
dacian, the DUNDERHEAD. Well you have really lost your mind. I am sure you don’t like personal responsibility. Your posts are replete with that. As to the mental exam? You should be first on line to get yours.
The only person on here I know that needs a Mental Test is YOU!
Maybe the priest should preach in prison to try to reform those who when they get out would commit more crimes so that the return to crime rate goes down so he will be safer.
Just gotta say I would be curious if he would have this view in many other nations of the world.
Even friar faker in Chicago has an armed entourage.
But it is a people problem. 40 years ago, hell 60 years ago, one could buy more kinds of firearms more easily than now in most of the country without background checks or paperwork of any kind, and mass/school shootings straight up didn’t happen.
We dropped the cultural standard of encouraging kids not to mature into malicious shitheads. We treat young boys like defective women because they’re taught by covens of socialist hens at school all day and raised by apathetic parents, then cast them off to the world without a solid foundational understanding of how not to act an ass in public.
Guns have never been harder to get in America, and never been more opportunities to go to jail while associating with them.
Ditto “controlled”substances.
The more they ban, the worse it gets.
Somebody should ask Greenaway how to stop the teenage punks in the NYC subway who set an old man’s hair on fire and beat up a TV weatherman when he objected.
Oh Kendahl, dey waz jus’ phunnin’!
How often we have seen the same gun show up at crime scenes over and over again.
If we could take these bad apples off the streets we would all be safer,
Just because he’s a priest, doesn’t make him smart….
He’s Episcopalian.
AKA “Catholic lite”
God bless Robin Williams!
Did Williams say that?
I was raised in the Episcopal church, and we called it that way back then. My college roomie took me to a Catholic service once, and I knew the entire ritual — it was nearly identical to the Episcopal one. Which makes sense, knowing the history.
You might be shocked how many ancient magic ceremonies you can learn/watch the details of by attending a Mass, almost like watching a Discovery Channel Special on ancient ritual from 2500-5000 years ago.
If you actually read up on that stuff you can see why many Protestants don’t regard Catholics as Christian. Lots of old Jewish mystic, Pagan, Akkadian, Babylonian and Gnostic magic rites are part of Catholic Mass. Like a wild amount.
It just gets weird for the Protestants when you point out how much of that they still unknowingly replicate too. Which has do with that whole sub-set of people who go to Church on Saturday to avoid replicating ancient pagan practice. People tend to get a bit touchy when you point that out.
But then, most of them were never told about it. It’s not like they go to Church because they fear Lilith or Satyrs will grab them in the middle of the 7th day of the week. That’s just the time they attend because that’s when the service is.
Strych9 I am aware of the rites of Mitra being a big thing but what else do we have going on besides the seasonal pagan holidays?
@SAFE
I’ll give you a full response when my internet comes back up. I have it typed up on a computer but can’t submit it from that machine at the moment and I’m sure as shit not typing it out on a phone or emailing it to myself and editing it on a phone.
You’ll get why when you see it.
SAFE:
[Disclaimer: If you’re not SAFE, for whom this reply is intended, and you also happen to be the “But I learned in Sunday School and that makes you evil for saying what you’re saying!” type, do us all a favor stop reading here. This one’s an adult post for people who don’t get emo as fuck. I don’t care if it offends you and I’m not interested in your personal religious views. Honestly, if you fly off the handle I’ll probably ignore you the way you deserve to be ignored. Or… I’ll troll you because you getting moist AF amuses me in the moment.]
Quite the question…
Lots of things that mostly go overlooked, I’ll just list a couple because there are many long books full of this stuff and I’m not trying to give you a 50 page summary of them. This will be silly long as it is. I might actually have to break this one up in to two or three to get it past the filter.
IOW, you might want a bracing shot of whisky or something. Or just skip down to below the long set of ====.
Also, IRL, these things don’t mean much in some regards IMHO. But these things have been held by tradition in odd ways, sometimes keeping the act but not the understanding. As such they’re the sort of thing that get many people heated because they’ve never heard of this before and see it as an attack on their faith.
Where these things do have meaning, again MHO, is that we’ve forgotten these things which says something rather interesting about modern people and creates issues where misunderstanding can be portrayed as a witting lie for profit, but more on that last bit at the end of this post.
===
So, for example, why is Church mostly at or near midday on Sunday historically? Because midday is when djinn, satyrs, spirits and demons grab people. Mostly. Mostly because most of these things operate mainly outdoors. But they can come indoors and they can operate any time of day.
Midday is the most dangerous part of the day for most Mediterranean cultures including the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, ancient Jews, Akkadians and all those people the Jews defeat in the Bible. This applies to old-school Christians too.
This is true especially in terms of certain demons like Lilith (who comes in a few forms, most notably one attacks newborns/expectant mothers and another that seduces men or breaks up marriages, she also has a connection with owls, night and some other things, more on her below but certainly not an exhaustive exploration of this one demon, that’s a literal book by itself). But there are a lot of other demons that get people at mid-day. This is part of why some Jewish traditions recommended that you not fall asleep alone during the middle of the day.
Why Sunday though? Well, what’s the day on which these various things have the most power to do harm? The 7th day (also, they’re pretty powerful on the 3rd day but not so much as on the 7th).
So, lots of people talk about how God rested, hence Church, but that’s not the whole story. It’s also to get people crowded together at the most dangerous time of the week because there is safety in numbers since demons, djinn, satyrs and whatnot like to attack the unwary who is alone or in a small group.
This is also related to the use of 7 signs, seals, bowls etc in Revelation as well as the seven fields in the Star of David. Seven is a number of power that can work both ways. If you catch demons in a trap, such as specially built bowls, you can trap them there with seven seals and seven signs and discard the trap, for example. You can also use seven seals to hold them so that seven signs can be employed to force them to leave provided you know their magical names. Now you don’t have to worry about accidentally breaking a bowl that contains an evil spirit.
But the safety of numbers is imperfect, so the “smells and bells” of Mass are meant to drive out demons that have made it in once the congregation is inside. Because demons lurk at the thresholds of doors and along pathways, including pathways in buildings like that nice little walk-way between the pews. They can also be driven along pathways and barred from doors.
So, the beasties that might have made it in are driven/herded out during the service and then must remain outside, the service then acts as a protection against such demons at the time they are most powerful. [Though, IIRC, there are some ways for them to get through windows which are related to the notion of how loose women lean out windows, but that’s neither here nor there since most old churches don’t have ground level windows you can open for this reason, again, IIRC.]
Incidentally, other facets of architecture of Churches often revolve around this too. They’re usually designed as a spiritual sanctuary, as hard as possible for dark forces to enter and as easy as possible to kick dark forces out of. This is often even true of newer churches. We consider this simple convention but the convention started for a reason most people don’t realize.
And these are actually common beliefs in the Abrahamic religions because these religions inherited them, they’re just not commonly known to modern adherents in most cases. Some have fallen by the wayside over time and others have remained while the understanding of them stuck only with a few.
If you want an example that is, uh, shall we say a bit more “inflammatory”, particularly to certain strains of Protestant, you can bring up Lilith again and ask her origin story and how she relates to witchcraft in the middle ages and into US history. You can then expand that query to the current situation.
That story is that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, yes, before Eve. She’s a part of the Fall of Adam too (she’s probably the snake in the garden but that’s a hot debate quibbling ancient Hebrew/Aramaic and has been for decades).
Basically, Lilith argued with Adam about who got top position during marital relations, refused to back down on the topic and then fled while invoking God’s name. God sent angels after her to try to bring her back and, when found, she refused to return. So, she was cursed to kill 100 of her children a day forever. This makes her a sort of demon that attacks pregnant women and she’s responsible for stillbirths (among other things) which is why she’s often called “the strangler”. This is one of her aspects, she has others.
[Remember, Lilith leaves before God kicks A&E out of the garden, in the old versions of that story humans are decidedly immortal until the Fall because there is no decay in the Garden, this is because sin’s not yet a thing. This becomes a bit more murky in later versions like the ones that expunge Lilith but it’s not a far-out argument in Christianity that A&E were immortal until sin became a thing and this thinking is backed up, for example, in Romans 5:12 where it’s said that sin enters the world through a single man (Adam) and that death enters the world via sin. Ergo, in the pre-sin world people were not affected by death. Anyway, therefore, since she made tracks before Eve is even created, Lilith is never stripped of her immortality and therefore doesn’t die but is cursed to basically be a demon well before the Fall, this makes her a bit touchy forever more.]
Lilith’s argument with Adam stems from the fact that God creates both Lilith and Adam from the earth and so she believes they must be equal, which is part of why God makes Eve from Adam, to avoid a repeat of such. Many have pointed out that this whole story has something to do with the difference in psychological makeup between men and women and how the ancients grappled with this but that’s another topic.
Why does this matter? Well, in other places this gets pretty far off into other things, like the fact that Lilith and others are tied to the Rapture/Revelation and the anti-Christ because Lilith is that being which disrupts the Tetragrammaton by separating and preventing the complete rejoining of the four aspects of YWHW, blocking the “H aspect” to be specific. But she can’t do this forever, hence why God will eventually win and Christ ultimately trumps the anti-Christ in Christianity. The reintegration of all of YWHW’s aspects is accomplished when the anti-Christ is defeated and it is this lack of integration that is the root of most problems in our world. Lilith seems to be doing it just out of spite because of that whole thing with Adam for which she blames God, and she has friends that assist her, including Satan. It is her role in the Fall of Adam that makes this possible.
If you look at the history of Lilith and the amulets (not usually jewelry btw) that protect against her or the ways to get rid of her (or many other demons) you have the Catholic idea of Exorcism basically to a tee. In fact, the words and actions for this haven’t changed much since old-school Judaism, 1000 (or more) years before Christ, though the languages have. You’ll also find that number seven again and again too.
Lilith is also the demon that Elijah encounters and defeats while returning from communing with Heaven (she’s also mentioned in some versions of the Bible by name in Isaiah 34:14, see the link below for a list/comparison of that verse, and in other places by reference that you’d get if you were a Jew at the time who was well educated in the Kabbalah).
Elijah manages to get her to give up her special names and this is related to part of the Wisdom of Solomon. Solomon knows the magic names by which to drive away demons and which angels the demons must obey. This is linked to the Judgement of Solomon (1 Kings 3:16-28) story. The harlot who won’t renounce the baby is Lilith, or at least possessed by the child-killing aspect of Lilith, and this is why Solomon, having detected Lilith, awards the kid to the other woman even though she’s also a harlot. Part of the reason for the genius recognized by the people of Israel in this story is because Solomon has effectively flushed out a demon, which incidentally, is probably why no punishment is mentioned for her. This is elaborated more, as is Solomon’s overall wisdom in this area of demonology in several non-canonical gospels.
But Protestants don’t believe in that, right?
Actually, they do even if they don’t realize it to be part of their religion. The Salem Witch trials are actually related to this line of thinking. Lilith is just one of several “demons” associated with birds and commonly known as “witches” who, as it happens, can create more witches out of people. These witches vary a bit but they’re all over Western thought. Striga, Stringes, Strygoi, Lamias Straggele, Thurst all share quite a bit with the bruja. They’re all entomologically related to the Strigidea (the owl family) and they’re all witches that carry off and eat children Hansel & Gretel style and they’re all openly associated with owls, hence the Latin name for owls. They’re also associated with night, flying and other witchy aspects. And they’re all forms of Lilith, originally coming, probably, from Lamashtu which is the child-killing aspect of Lilith.
All that is part of the middle-school idea of torturing the person you think is a witch. This is an attempt to get the demon to admit its presence and identify itself by its *normal* name so that you then know its other names and can start to exorcise it. Unfortunately most people don’t survive this sort of thing, which is why other methods also exist to torture/interrogate just the demon(s), in fact these methods are older.
Historically speaking, it’s the *forgetting* of how to interrogate just the demon that leads to torturing the person. This sort of thing comes to be considered *magic*, and therefore evil itself, in some interpretations during certain periods of time. Some might say that this is when the religion “grows” to “get past magic incantation” (which still exist all over the Christian world, especially in Eastern Europe and the Balkans) but IRL this is where you go from a spiritual war with the demon in question to a physical war with the person you think is possessed which might not be a step forward… at least not for the “possessed”.
Overall there’s a huge amount of Gnostic/mystic/Akkadian/Babylonian/Greek/Egyptian/other tradition in Christianity that most people don’t realize is there and a lot of stuff removed via the creation of the texts *as the canon* in the past. In that regard it’s somewhat like the old Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, which is still practiced in some areas like the Hasidic community but is mostly not studied and, when practiced, the practice is actually not known to the person doing it unless they’re doing it on purpose because they intend to explore the mystic side of Judaism.
This is, ultimately, why Protestants talk of “dark forces” and people who are “demonic” or that they believe demons/Satan are real in this world, Satan Worship etc. Satanists themselves sometimes get into some of the mystical stuff too but they’re mostly morons and I’m not going to discuss their litany of incongruent idiocy in any detail.
Anyway, such Protestants believe a version of this whether they know it or not. Some of them understand it better than others but nearly none of them have a full-ish understanding of it. The “theory and practice” are a shadow of the former and, often, Protestants will get pretty pissed if you start talking real history, dogma and teaching of the Church around the time of Christ or just after.
And this is before you even get into Egyptian influence on the base of Judaism and Christianity…. whoa does that get a bit rough to try to discuss. The resurrection of Osiris as the proto-Christ and Horus as the Son to form a Holy Trinity within a religion that is simultaneously Polytheistic and monotheistic in the same manner as Christianity is? Say it ain’t so! God help you if you mention how that Greek god Dionysus fits in here. That gets more spicy than even I really like.
There’s a whole field of study of this stuff, mostly parts of psychology, because a lot of this stuff isn’t just in Abrahamic religions but is world-wide in many regards. That’s pretty interesting. It’s why Jordan Peterson is so interested in archetypes. Because shockingly similar things appear all over the place in areas where they *shouldn’t* and among people who’d never had contact to share such a story. That suggests that there’s something pretty deep about the meaning of the symbols in play.
Even in the modern world people who’ve never heard of Lilith have dreams about her that are shockingly similar. Freud, Jung and others spent a lot of time investigating the root of this sort of archetype in the unconscious mind. Jung’s work on it is, well quite frankly, fuckin’ scary and it gets worse if you really think about how far the implications might go.
=============================
Which brings us to guns, politics and my personal interest here. I don’t read this sort of thing just because I find it fascinating. I do find it fascinating but that’s not the impetus for my study of this, at least not originally.
What I find this particularly interesting really doesn’t have much to do with religion or philosophy but rather it is the exploitation of the lack of this knowledge driven by the academic Left that interests me, both for psychological and for purely utilitarian/political reasons (which are related to the psychology). These people have done exactly what Nietzsche said they would, just by a different route than he probably expected. The attempt to make religion “scientific” (see something like “soul atomization”) after the Enlightenment gave totalitarians an “in” to discredit the most significant portions of the purely spiritual side of Christianity. To go after the traditions that deal with some of the really, truly, deep (and sometimes fucked up) parts of what fundamentally make us, well, us.
There are old, old parts of all the Abrahamic religions that don’t make sense from a purely rational perspective. Speaking of many of these things would get you screamed at by a modern Christian, Muslim or Jew too. But if one studies these things one realizes that they can’t make sense from a “scientific” point of view. They are ways of addressing aspects of human perception, interpersonal relations and consciousness that we simply don’t understand even today. Deep subconscious aspects of the human psyche stretching back into pre-history and beyond, if you will.
When these time-tested methods for dealing with such things are removed the religion loses something, a certain je ne sais quoi. If one is fundamentally dishonest, then that lack of something can be portrayed as a lack of Truth, and as Nietzsche pointed out, Christianity prizes Truth above all else. When inconsistencies are found within Christianity they must be rectified or the whole thing comes crashing down. Unfortunately, in most ways, Christianity lacks an “update” mechanism. And so, if you remove key parts to create the appearance of conflict you can threaten the entire structure.
And, in many ways Christianity’s je ne sais quoi has a lot to do with downstream social stability itself. So, if the thing that restrains society comes crashing down… well, shit’s gonna get pretty real pretty quick. State of nature style. Which, in an odd sort of way, is worst for the people who intentionally wrecked the system since they will very likely meet a most brutal end. Lenin was a genius about this sort of thing, your average Lefty, even your average Lefty intellectual today can’t hold a candle to Lenin. But even that level of genius could only create a new system that lasted ~74 years. What they’re going after has kept society functional and reasonably rational, though not perfect, for at least on the order of 7000 years.
And the real truth is that no one knows how to fix this if we break it. Not the Right, not the Left not the Church. No one can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Break this for real and we probably end up with something worse than the Dark Ages.
That’s a fucking dangerous game to be playing, and it’s been being played with increasing tempo and aggression for decades by people who play mostly unopposed.
The way to defeat it, unfortunately, lies with pre-education of the victims and that’s where the rest of my mumbo jumbo comes in. People who are victims of manipulation treat their prison as a castle and will attack you if you try to break them out. They can’t see the prison until they’re out of it and when inside they don’t want to come out.
And so it comes down to the weaponization of psychology and who will wield that better. Will those who manipulate for education, for the benefit of the recipient, win? Or will the self-centered assholes who manipulate others for personal gain win?
Probably the former, but I wouldn’t bet on that and then rest on my laurels. I’d work to make it happen. But that’s just MHO.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Isaiah%2034:14
Ecclesiastes 1:9 comes right to mind. The pagan culture of the nearby natives have life involving owls being the harbinger of death and the crone in Jung was one that stood out anytime I read various myths and fairy tales. I really need to make time for reading up on Egypt/Babylon/Persian traditions especially with how much occult shit keeps popping up in government here.
stych9, Pure unadulterated HORSE PUCKY! Each part of the Mass has a deep religious meaning. You, being and Atheist, would not understand such. For your edification, the reason that Sunday is considered the Sabbath by Catholics and Protestants alike is because of 1) IN the Bible, “on the Seventh Day God rested”; 2) It is the day that Christ Jesus rose from the dead.
So much for your religious instruction for the day.
I attended a wedding in an Episcopal church. They incorporated communion into the ceremony. I didn’t realize they shared a cup. I stayed in my seat. I’m the guy that didn’t try to run out and buy hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies in 2020 because I was already stocked.
Sunday worship became a Christian tradition to commemorate the resurrection. Constantine would later make Sunday a day of rest, the law of the land.
@SAFE:
“I really need to make time for reading up on Egypt/Babylon/Persian traditions especially with how much occult shit keeps popping up in government here.”
That gets real interesting, real fast. I’d probably start with Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection by E.A. Budge since that’s going to be the base for the lines thought that overtake a lot of the stuff that ends up on the fringes.
The Abrahamic religions tend to make demons out of the demons and oddball gods of the religions they overtake, incorporating bits and pieces as required (as the Jews did with Lilith) to explain things in a manner which creates a workable society but doesn’t create massive division in the population.
Which is interesting since it removes a lot of problems created by trying to placate older gods/demons and simply puts them under the dominion, ultimately, of God. That sorta consolidates things in the positive direction rather than decentralizing in the negative direction.
The people you’re discussing embrace the idea of worshipping the negative aspects of what you might call the “dark pantheon” (depending on which parts you’re looking at), almost wholly. It’s an interesting hodgepodge in some regards. Which, again, sort of interesting when one wonders about free will and how that plays in Christian thought. It would seem to me that the Christian perspective is far, far healthier.
But if you look back at Jung’s or Hurwitz’s (a disciple of Jung) work on “sons of Lilith” and the connection with melancholy you can sorta see why such dark aspects would appeal to some, particularly those who are easily “worn down” or prone to “black pilling”. The behavior shares common traits with certain genius artists who had dark periods that fueled bursts of enormous creativity and energy. Generally, those people didn’t live very long though or had extremely tough lives overall. Embracing this seems to be a way of doing things that prioritizes immediate gain in exchange for huge long term cost and hardness in the immediate for embrittlement over time. I would hazard the guess that this applies at the personal and social levels, which is why the Abrahamic religions are more enduring than the ones they overtook as well as the reason they overtook those other religions. That’s a facet they almost certainly got from Egyptian theological practices which held up for on the order of 6000 years.
I’d also look at Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious before going very far down the other roads. I suspect that he’s probably right that a lot of these things have to do with trying to explain various aspects of the unconscious, like the age-old question of why evil thoughts sometimes just pop up in your head for no discernable reason.
@Dude:
Sunday worship became a Christian tradition to commemorate the resurrection. Constantine would later make Sunday a day of rest, the law of the land.
This starts thousands of years before Christians exist. The idea of what I’ll shorten to *bad spirits* being most powerful around the middle of the 7th day is something we have in writing going back several thousand years before Christ and 7 is a “number of power” in Egypt at least as early as the start Dynasty VI (2345BC) and is, obviously older than that, we just have the first written account of it at that point and by then it’s already a pretty developed idea. Also, numerous groups in the Fertile Crescent practiced this tradition and imported it to the area around Judea long before Moses leads the Jews out of Egypt.
The Jews started collecting some of this stuff and putting it in writing a bit before 1000BC, but there are older Sumerian texts (actually tablets) that contain it too.
I would like to find a convincing reason for why 3 and 7 were considered numbers of power in proto-Western thought but 5 was seemingly excluded. The most common explanation for 3 makes some sense but 7 doesn’t unless 5 is included and it’s not. (There’s that theory is that they make a pyramid with no leftovers. But 5 does that too… odd.)
And why is 7 SO common? Chakras? 4+3? Maybe, but 7 Pillars of Islam, 7 Sacraments, 7 Signs, 7 Seals, 7 Trumpets, 7 Bowls, 7 Halls of the Underworld, 7 Paths to Heaven, 7 days of disease… heck, Jesus drove 7 demons from Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9)… Heck, even 7 years bad luck if you break a mirror. Also 7 known ancient planets, 7 colors in a rainbow… But 10 plagues of Egypt and 3 riders of the apocalypse. Oh, and don’t forget both numbers in tarot and alchemy. Just strange IMHO.
I mean, it’s not 12 like the Greek and Roman pantheons (or the Tribes of Israel or the number of Disciples). That’s got pretty good explanations in the stars and the Zodiac. But that 7 comes up again, 7+5 where five is the sign for a good life.
@Walter:
One in every crowd. Next time save your blood pressure and pay attention to the disclaimer. Also, “It’s in my Bible” isn’t an argument when we’re discussing pre-Bible topics. It’s like saying “My in my 1742 car!”
Further, the Bible references the Sabbath which and since the Bible was written based on Hebrew tradition, that’s Friday night through Saturday. None of the Disciples ever even hint at changing the Sabbath either. Clearly, it comes from somewhere else. As Dude points out that’s related to Constantine, nearly 300 years after the birth of Christ.
And a Roman Emperor has considerations outside of pure theological doctrine to worry about when he makes such a decree, like not making the non-Christian majority in his Empire revolution levels of angry.
Oh, also:
“You, being and Atheist, would not understand such.”
Things I’ve never said for $2000, Alex. Fascinating how you think you can read my mind.
….. he’s probably trying to get out in front of some pending Altar Boy Allegations and figures this’ll innoculate him from an indictment when the investigation concludes…..
A credentialed member of organized religion using that membership as a form of credentialism and an Appeal to [the Ultimate] Authority as a form of political argument as part of a virtue signaling campaign?
AND he was the CEO of the National WIC Association for over 30 years?
AND he loves government control over people?
Unpossible. Clearly, unpossible. He’s a man of faith, right?
/sarc
Seems like if you want to go the Home School route the first place to do it is on Sundays.
“Because shockingly similar things appear all over the place in areas where they *shouldn’t* and among people who’d never had contact to share such a story.”
Most likely, this is factually incorrect. 19.5kyrs ago, the ocean was down 100 or more meters, and continental interiors were highly stressed by ice and drought. Prime habitat of continental aquifers, moderate temps and abundant prey was compressed into a narrow strip of continental shelf that encircled ocean basins and is currently covered by sea water. H. sapiens (aka Cro Magnan Man) was there, and ideas and culture would have naturally flowed along the beaches of the world, true geographical separation being almost non-existent. As climate moderated and oceans rose, these people emigrated into vast interiors carrying common ideas that were indeed then subjected to geographical separation…
In other words, the true Cradle of Civilization circles the Med (and Black Sea) basins, was effectively a small town, and is now inundated.
Archaeologists have not conclusively proven this (afaik, yet) but the geological record is clear and well-defined, and the conclusion that early cultures (writing, math, money and organized religion) did not evolve in isolation is inescapable.
Again, the fixation on the hardware. A few pounds of steel, wood or plastic. Without acknowledging the fact every single act of violence involving a firearm is committed by a human being. A Human mind, directing a Human hand, using said firearm.
I’m a blacksmith. I can take that same chunk of steel and make the parts to a firearm, or a box of nails. Those nails could be used to make a cradle or a coffin. They could be used to hold together a house, or a body on a cross.
The firearm could be used to put dinner on the table, stop a potential tyrant, stop a murderer or commit murder. The firearm, just as the nails I mentioned, has no mind of it’s own. Unless and until the Human factor is dealt with, not 1 ban, restriction, law, background check, or license scheme will do anything to prevent an act of violence from being committed.
Deal with the human and the hardware will take care of itself.
old – well stated, short, succinct and directly to the point. After all, it was Cain that used the rock to kill Abel……………….
“… where one is entitled to the expectation of safety?”
lets look at safety in general excluding guns, for a few things …
An average of 168,000 children are treated in the emergency department each year for toy-related injuries (SafeKids.org).
Each year, an average of 29.5 million injuries can be attributed to defective products ( Consumer Product Safety Commission ).
Defective products kill more than 22,000 people every year in the United States ( Consumer Product Safety Commission ).
And for other non-firearm products not defective, for example,
Over 2,000,000 (collectively) seriously injured or killed annually in car accidents and over 90,000 of them are kids under the age of 12. (CDC)
Stairs, Ramps, Landings, Floors result (collectively) in serious injury or death to over 2,700,000 million annually. (NSC)
Beds, Pillows, Mattresses result in (collectively) serious injury or death to over 824,000 annually. (NSC)
Chairs, Sofas, Sofa Beds result in (collectively) serious injury or death to over 558,000 annually. (NSC)
Just injury alone, normal household non-firearm consumer product injuries totaled ~12,000,000 in 2021.
faulty glass table tops result in millions of injuries annually – about 2.5 million. Mostly kids under age 7 and young adults in their early 20’s. Injuries range from minor abrasions and damage to major organs and vessels, to death. 50% of the injured suffer injuries to their deep organs, upper torso, abdomen or joint cavities and required surgery; 8% of the injured die within a month of injury (about 100,000, deaths from complications of injury). Yes, more people, not just kids, die annually due to faulty glass table tops than firearms.
More than 250,000 people in the U.S. die annually due to medical errors (AKA malpractice). ~27% of hospital deaths attributed to gun shot are actually a result of medical errors (AKA malpractice).
There are literally thousands of common everyday things that are not safe, even in Italy.
Now lets look at “We’ve Been Fooled Into Thinking ‘Gun Violence’ is a People Problem”
Well, nope. It is a people problem, more specifically its a people with mental health illness problem. For example:
The number one preventable and/or treatable cause of suicide and mass murder and crime is adverse mental health issues according to the overall mental health community.
~25,000 known violent people are released from state/city/hospital mental health treatment facilities every 24 hours across the nation. Over 75% of these will commit a violent crime within 72 hours of their release.
A person is targeted as a potential victim of a violent crime at least three times for every 8 hours they spend in public view. (and yes, even in Italy, and in every country, its just the number of hours that varies a little)
On average (in a city type environment with a population of 10,000 or more), a person in public view for at least 1 hour encounters passively by proximity, without knowing, at least 36 violent people who have committed a seriously injurious violent act against another in the last 48 hours. This can people you pass on the street, in a store shopping, driving in traffic, a school staff member etc… just about any place. (and yes, even in Italy, and in every country, its just the number of hours that varies a little)
Nationwide; 1 out of 4 educational institution staff members (public or private schools k-12 and universities) have a history of sexual molestation or grooming of students and conducting sexual violence either against students or other school staff members.
overall, in terms of mass shooters which you seem to focus on:
In the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, (Lankford, A., & Cowan, R. G. (2020)) ( https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ftam0000151 )
… Cowan writes of their research they “…closely analyzed public mass shooters who attacked in the United States from 1966 to 2019 and found that correlates of mental illness were approximately equally common among perpetrators, whether they had been coded as mentally ill or not.”
Forensic psychiatrists James L. Knoll IV, MD, and George D. Annas, MD, MPH, of SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse New York, both leading authorities on the mental health aspects of mass shooters, summed it up for the issue for the mental health community various studies on various aspects in terms of mass shooters…. Although mass shooters may not meet DSM-5 criteria for a recognized disorder, “they do have an ill-defined trouble of the mind for which the mental health field has no immediate, quick-acting ‘treatment,’” – in other words, mass shooters do have mental illness driving them but not something clearly defined and for which the mental health community basically has no treatment.
Are these also trying to fool you “Into Thinking ‘Gun Violence’ is a People Problem” ?
“As the date of my return to the U.S. approaches, I cannot help but wonder why I would want to return.”
Don’t return or return, it doesn’t matter. But, what ever you do you need to get this straight – no matter where you go or what you do there is no such thing as an ‘entitlement’ or ‘right’ to an expectation of safety and you are delusional if you believe there is.
baldwin’s gun acted without his action/approval?
“any number of places where one is entitled to the expectation of safety”, utter moron…and naive AF…
Greenway is in Italy due to the fact he was on the ‘Reassignment’ protocol trip instituted by Pope Francis to conceal wrongdoing by known child molesters / pedophiles. Now he is all ‘better’ and wants to return to his happy hunting grounds. He feels threatened knowing a caring concerned parent or loved one might terminate his activities with extreme prejudice.
Rev. Greenway, stay where you are. You don’t want to be here, we don’t want you here.
Isn’t “weapons of war” the whole point of the second amendment ?
“The US is filled with guns…we have allowed this to happen!”…yeah, it’s called the Constitution.
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