GOP Primaries/Caucuses Discussions, Jokes and Predictions

[Scot Dutchy]

US election: Arrested Briton 'wanted to shoot Donald Trump'

A Briton who tried to grab a police officer's gun at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas said he wanted to shoot the US candidate, court papers say.

Michael Steven Sandford, 20, did not enter a plea when he appeared before a judge in Nevada and was remanded in custody until a hearing on 5 July.

He is charged with an act of violence in a restricted area.

He had reportedly tried to seize the gun after saying he wanted Mr Trump's autograph at Saturday's rally.

He said he had been planning to try to shoot Mr Trump for about a year but had decided to act now because he finally felt confident enough to do so, court papers say.

A federal judge found Mr Sandford, who reportedly appeared in court in shackles, to be a danger and risk of non-appearance, and he was ordered detained pending his preliminary hearing.

When asked about the arrest of Michael Sandford, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are providing assistance following an arrest of a British national in Las Vegas."
More...

[Animavore]

We've all thought about it.

[Scot Dutchy]

He could have done society a great service.

[Svartalf]

that's not the way to do it

[Tyrannical]

Reported!

To the FBI

[JimC]

Fucking Butch Idiots?

[Animavore]

It's more entertaining watching Trump hang himself repeatedly.

[Forty Two]

What I find really depressing would be to be living in a country where personal safety is ridiculously low. I only experienced that once in my travels and that was in Mexico City visiting my sister. She has her own driver and security guard. Walking on the streets there was a very nervous experience as only certain areas were guarded by the military. In Europe I have never experienced it and here at home if I had to think about security every time I went onto the street I would wonder am I living in the right place.

This acceptance of this situation is really alien to me. Although these days my all night escapades are almost nil in my younger days (not so long ago thank you) I never thought about personal security and the idea of carrying a firearm? No way.

Same here. Even as a young person venturing into poorer or "worse" areas around and in New York City and Chicago, I never felt the need to carry a firearm, nor did I ever carry one. I still don't own one. And, even bad areas are not "bad" when compared to what they have in Mexico City.

[Scot Dutchy]

that's not the way to do it

I know but some oxygen stealers ...

[Forty Two]

The logic of guns for safety escapes me, especially coming from an advocate who lives in a nation where there is a privately owned firearm for almost every inhabitant and four homicides for each one in a nation with very few privately owned firearms. But then, logic, reasoning and acknowledgement of facts have always been among Seth's more obvious weak points.

And anticipating him trundling out the drop in homicide rates in the US, let me mention that while it has indeed dropped from 5.5/100,000 in 2000 to 5 in 2009, the drop in the UK was much larger in percentage terms. During the same period it dropped from 1.71 to 1.17. Japan's homicide rate has dropped by over a third in the same period, despite the fact that privately owned guns are just about non-existent there. At 0.4 in 2009 there were 12.5 homicides in the US for every Japanese one.

Are you referring to "homicide" rate or "gun homicide" rate there?

[JimC]

Forty Two wrote:

...I still don't own one...

[seth mode] Sheeple![/sethmode]

[Animavore]

The Drumpf Campaign Raised Less Money in May Than the Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter

Allow that to sink in.

[Seth]

What I find really depressing would be to be living in a country where personal safety is ridiculously low. I only experienced that once in my travels and that was in Mexico City visiting my sister. She has her own driver and security guard. Walking on the streets there was a very nervous experience as only certain areas were guarded by the military. In Europe I have never experienced it and here at home if I had to think about security every time I went onto the street I would wonder am I living in the right place.

This acceptance of this situation is really alien to me. Although these days my all night escapades are almost nil in my younger days (not so long ago thank you) I never thought about personal security and the idea of carrying a firearm? No way.

And yet you would be equally at risk in both places because in both you would be entirely unable to defend yourself should you be the victim of an attack. The odds of your being attacked may differ, but then again the odds that when you are attacked you will be attacked and need to defend yourself are one hundred percent. Since no one, including you, can predict when or where they might be attacked, however high or low the statistical likelihood of it happening is, it is imprudent not to be armed, or in your sister's case to hire armed guards, so that if it happens you can defend yourself.

By choosing not to be armed you are merely saying that you believe that your chances of being victimized are small enough to be an acceptable risk versus the difficulties inherent in going about armed (or protected by armed persons), which is a choice that you are absolutely allowed to make...for yourself and nobody but yourself!

The classic anti-gun argument is, however, that (using your example) your sister must be denied the right to provide for her armed safety because you, or more accurately your government, has decided that her being victimized is less important than your supposed right to "feel safe" by denying her ability to protect herself, despite the simple fact that the risks to you of her being armed, or hiring armed guards, are so remote as to be unquantifiable.

This is the root of the whole gun control agenda. It's other people determining for your sister what the value of her life and safety is, regardless of not only the chances that she might be victimized but also if she is in fact victimized by violent crime. Your argument says, in essence, "Hey Sis, fuck you and your life and safety because my desire to feel safe using the asinine logic that disarming law-abiding citizens will somehow inexplicably prevent criminals who arm themselves in spite of the laws against doing so and will use those weapons to harm you is superior to your right to arm yourself so you can protect yourself even though I acknowledge and understand that the chances that you will use that weapon to harm me or anyone else is vanishingly small."

That's the essence of the arrogance of supporting government disarmament of the individual law-abiding citizen who merely wishes to be prepared against the possibility of an attack, as your sister does in Mexico. But if she's attacked it matters not whether she's in Mexico or not, her need to defend itself is identical in both places, but her ability to do so is absent in one.

How do you justify such selfish arrogance on your part?

[Scot Dutchy]

Never change do you Seth. Still more bollocks. Where I live is not Mexico City and the fact my sister chooses to live is her affair. She needs that security I dont and neither does anyone living here except criminals who are more likely to get shot by other criminals than anyone else.

You dont and have never been able to understand how a civilised society operates.

Still dont have health insurance?

[Seth]

Never change do you Seth.

Why would I change? I'm right and you're wrong, and I've always been right and you've always been wrong.

Still more bollocks.

From you, yes. But the truth is the truth and doesn't change, no matter how much you wish it to.

Where I live is not Mexico City and the fact my sister chooses to live is her affair.

Indeed, as is her decision to hired armed security...or go about armed herself...as is the choice to do so by every human being on the face of the earth.

Let me ask you, has anyone ever been attacked, injured, robbed or killed where you live? Ever?

She needs that security I dont

No, you just think you don't, which is fine with me. But the fact that you think you don't need such security cannot rationally be expanded to cover, much less regulate the rights of everyone else on the planet to decide that they DO need to be armed for self defense. This is the arrogance of the anti-gunners, they think that their particular situation, in which they feel "safe" and therefore without the need to carry a gun, is a fact of nature for everyone else as well and so they argue that their feeling of safety must be given precedence by denying others the right to be armed.

and neither does anyone living here except criminals who are more likely to get shot by other criminals than anyone else.

Ipse dixit quod erat demonstrandum.

This is another conceit of anti-gunners; they mendaciously argue that the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens for self defense is always and only a "guns against guns" proposition. They refuse to acknowledge that there are an innumerable number of objects that a criminal can use to injure or kill an innocent victim, from rocks to guns, and that because this is true it is the right of every innocent human being to possess at all times the best available and most superior defensive weapons that exist in order that they will hopefully have superior weaponry and will at least have weapons parity with their criminal attacker.

The underlying unspoken argument you posit that is often explicitly stated is that firearms are "unnecessary" if one is being attacked with some weapon other than a firearm and therefore it is rational (it's not) to deny all law abiding persons the right to carry the single most effective tool of self defense ever invented: the handgun.

All of your arguments are specious, ignorant and dismissive of the rights of innocent victims to prepare to defend themselves against criminal violence and the only justification you can come up with, and it's an asinine one, is that you don't think that anybody "needs" to carry weaponry for self defense merely and only because YOU happen to falsely believe that you don't need to do so because you're "safe" in your community.

But the fact is that you are not safe, you, like everyone else, is at risk for criminal violence pretty much all the time. You're just lucky that you haven't been targeted yet. And it matters not even one little bit in which country you live, criminal violence and murder happen in every nation on earth, and while it may never happen to you, it will happen to someone, and all of those potential someones have an absolute, natural, unalienable human right to arm themselves to prevent or stop such an attack when and if it should happen to them.

The right of the individual to absolute safety and security must never be infringed nor should their ability to provide for their own defense, particularly not based on the childish, selfish, dismissive and flatly evil proposition that it's necessary and appropriate to do so merely because banning such defensive arms gives others a false sense of security. All that does is to demean the individual and reduce them, their rights and their lives to the status of chattels of the state and a number on a spreadsheet, and that is a disgusting, cruel and intolerable affront to their human rights.

You dont and have never been able to understand how a civilised society operates.

I understand it, but I think your version is neither civilized nor operates properly with rational and due respect for the rights of the individual over the tyrannical majority and I'm not afraid to demonstrate why your arguments are completely full of shit in that respect.

It's anything but civilized for you to say, "I don't give a fuck if you get raped and murdered because you were denied the right to carry a gun for self defense, I feel more safe because society denies you that right and my desire to feel more safe trumps your right to life."

And that's exactly what you are saying.