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pgtvatitans what would you suggest as the first steps to addressing the media/culture desensitization issue?
That's a great question. Of course I know the question was directed at pgtovatitans so I'm not, in any way, attempting to answer for him. I don't think Rap music is responsible for the conditions of the inner city. However, I do feel that it is absolutely not helping the situation. We can't censor it, so we have to change the culture by first changing socioeconomic conditions of the poor black/latin communities. It's definitely a chicken and egg thing. Do you change the culture by changing socioeconomic conditions first? Or does the socioeconomic changes only occur through changes in the culture first? Relying on idiots like lil wayne or jayzee to recognize the problem and change what's cool is not going to happen. They just want to crank out easy hits and flash their bling everywhere. They make money off of the idiot mentality, of the depressed youth in this country, that they have helped to foster. They are in no way concerned with helping these communities outside of PR charity stuff that changes little to nothing.
The people with the microphones are too self serving to change anything so desensitization has to be changed at the street level. If the reality of the streets were more positive, the music would be too I suppose. At this point, much of black and hispanic youth are lost. It's the parents raising the kids the way they were raised which is not sufficient.
Raise your children right. This is what must happen before any positive change can be sustained. The cycle of stupidity must stop. Rich or poor just raise your kids right. Never let them glorify being a stupid punk. Never let your kids believe that being an ignorant street thug is an actual choice. If a kid believes that he should be a criminal then the parents are to blame. Shame on those parents.
That's a great question. Of course I know the question was directed at pgtovatitans so I'm not, in any way, attempting to answer for him. I don't think Rap music is responsible for the conditions of the inner city. However, I do feel that it is absolutely not helping the situation. We can't censor it, so we have to change the culture by first changing socioeconomic conditions of the poor black/latin communities. It's definitely a chicken and egg thing. Do you change the culture by changing socioeconomic conditions first? Or does the socioeconomic changes only occur through changes in the culture first? Relying on idiots like lil wayne or jayzee to recognize the problem and change what's cool is not going to happen. They just want to crank out easy hits and flash their bling everywhere. They make money off of the idiot mentality, of the depressed youth in this country, that they have helped to foster. They are in no way concerned with helping these communities outside of PR charity stuff that changes little to nothing.
The people with the microphones are too self serving to change anything so desensitization has to be changed at the street level. If the reality of the streets were more positive, the music would be too I suppose. At this point, much of black and hispanic youth are lost. It's the parents raising the kids the way they were raised which is not sufficient.
Raise your children right. This is what must happen before any positive change can be sustained. The cycle of stupidity must stop. Rich or poor just raise your kids right. Never let them glorify being a stupid punk. Never let your kids believe that being an ignorant street thug is an actual choice. If a kid believes that he should be a criminal then the parents are to blame. Shame on those parents.
I just want to clarify, I am in no way suggesting that music makes people do anything, but it can influence culture. It starts at home. If parents don't teach their kids the right values then they will be influenced by things such as music.
Based on the information in the article, do you think addressing something that only have been found to be involved in 2-8% of crime is productive, or things that may be involved in 50%+ of crime?
I finally looked at this, out of morbid curiosity. It's a blog post. Did I miss something? Is there some other link hidden in your posts somewhere? I was shocked (shocked!) to find that you were refusing to summarize it because... it doesn't really support anything you ascribed to it. Which is why I asked you to summarize it. This article appears to talk about loopholes in the assault weapons ban. It supports none of your points, except that the assault weapons ban was a flawed law. Clearly, I have been talking about gun laws on the whole, and not simply re-instating the assault weapons ban. Nowhere in all my posts did I even mention assault weapons, except that the law was not re-instated. To be clear, I think that there need to be much stricter laws than the assault weapons ban. I think there should be a national registration system, a waiting period, liability for gun owners whose weapons are used in crime, tougher sentences for gun crimes, etc., etc. Also, as I alluded to, if a law isn't working, it should be changed, just like laws and regulations on everything else. I can't believe that was your "source." Good grief.
I finally looked at this, out of morbid curiosity. It's a blog post. Did I miss something? Is there some other link hidden in your posts somewhere? I was shocked (shocked!) to find that you were refusing to summarize it because... it doesn't really support anything you ascribed to it. Which is why I asked you to summarize it. This article appears to talk about loopholes in the assault weapons ban. It supports none of your points, except that the assault weapons ban was a flawed law. Clearly, I have been talking about gun laws on the whole, and not simply re-instating the assault weapons ban. Nowhere in all my posts did I even mention assault weapons, except that the law was not re-instated. To be clear, I think that there need to be much stricter laws than the assault weapons ban. I think there should be a national registration system, a waiting period, liability for gun owners whose weapons are used in crime, tougher sentences for gun crimes, etc., etc. Also, as I alluded to, if a law isn't working, it should be changed, just like laws and regulations on everything else. I can't believe that was your "source." Good grief.
Since you don't like my words, I'm just going to post links to articles and videos until you just go away.
Suck it up, man. I don't understand why you are beyond offended here. You posted all kinds of nonsense comments about me and I don't care, because the only thing you know about me is that I write internet posts. I could be an artificial intelligence created just to annoy you, for all you know (I think you should live with that assumption from now on). Let's say this once and for all: you can have your opinion, and that's fair, but you can't say my opinion is wrong without having some factual basis. You haven't provided a single fact, not even one, that suggests that sane gun control would not save lives, or that rap and violent video games have any culpability for violence. Half my high school class would have been serial killers if that were true. Videos and DR! Benjamin Carson and all that other nonsense do not prove your point. Seriously. You even went on and on and on about how a blog post proved your point... and it didn't. I'm not even sure that YOU read it. The only reason I'm still tilting at this windmill is that people who oppose gun control have been too dominant for too long, and there is too much urgency to this issue to let it go anymore.
Suck it up, man. I don't understand why you are beyond offended here. You posted all kinds of nonsense comments about me and I don't care, because the only thing you know about me is that I write internet posts. I could be an artificial intelligence created just to annoy you, for all you know (I think you should live with that assumption from now on). Let's say this once and for all: you can have your opinion, and that's fair, but you can't say my opinion is wrong without having some factual basis. You haven't provided a single fact, not even one, that suggests that sane gun control would not save lives, or that rap and violent video games have any culpability for violence. Half my high school class would have been serial killers if that were true. Videos and DR! Benjamin Carson and all that other nonsense do not prove your point. Seriously. You even went on and on and on about how a blog post proved your point... and it didn't. I'm not even sure that YOU read it. The only reason I'm still tilting at this windmill is that people who oppose gun control have been too dominant for too long, and there is too much urgency to this issue to let it go anymore.
I think that guns are a big issue and America is always cited as the country, a "free" society, with the most gun violence and the most prisoners. Yes, as we can all agree, a gun by itself cannot kill. But do we really think our society is psychologically stable or mature enough to use guns, which are essentially weapons, for sport? History says otherwise. Remove guns, and most assuredly you remove the opportunity to use them in a lot of situations. In urban areas, guns are used mainly by punks who are to scared to man-up and duke it out with fists or find guns as an easy way to get rid of a problem or as an outlet to anger. In addition, I'm sure there would be less robberies by those who use guns as threats to get what they want. I'd take my chances with a person with a stick, rock, or knife any day. It's called use your feet. Trust me, criminals are lazy in this country. They'd just rather point and shoot than to chase someone down for $5. There are many examples in current societies around the world where guns are scarce and the murder rates are incredibly low.
Have you ever read the Constitution? You do know what the Bill of Rights are, correct? I would rather defend myself as a free man than falsely believe the federal government or PGC police can do so. What if I only have seconds to spare when the police are minutes away?
For some untold reason our society has only become psychologically unstable or mature enough to handle firearms over the past 30 years. Is leftism really that powerful of a force in this country? I guess knives are next because "God's sakes, the blades are sharp!".
Kids killing each other has nothing to do with firearms, whether urban or rural. Rural kids are less likely to shoot another because most are taught about firearms at a young age and learn to respect them and life itself. They are most likely to use their fists in an altercation with each other. Call them rednecks but, they have more common sense and manners than their urban counterparts.
Urban kids, regardless of color, have behaved as wild animals on the streets since immigrants came here from Europe; it's nothing new. There is only so much turf in a town or city setting and they act as if they have to mark and protect theirs as lions on a savannah. Kill or be killed; for what reason?
Gangsters behaved much the same way in the early part of last century. The bad thing there is those early gangsters have been immortalized on the large and small screens for decades.
The modern media does the same for those around the country who live as thugs. They get lots of airtime, front covers of magazines, played on the radio and are looked up to by the very teens who kill each other. Perceived imagery is dangerous.
Current television and movies are not the best of role models as many depict adolescents as wisea**es who can say and behave however they want in any aspect of society and kids eat that up. Today's kids are faced with obstacles that never existed before, most of it perpetuated by the media. Adults are being told how to think, eat, dress, behave, what kind of car to drive to work and everything else that should have been passed along by their parents. Imagine being a kid in that atmosphere and your parents are in worse shape than you emotionally. What if your parents don't have the simple answers you may have about life?
Have you ever read the Constitution? You do know what the Bill of Rights are, correct?
Referring to the Constitution is a lame and weak argument. Have you ever heard of Amendments? Acts? Statutes? Regulations? The Constitution is a baseline. But in a country that is only 300 years old, new improvements and adjustments need to be made. The document wasn't written yesterday. The people who wrote it didn't foresee modern guns, computers, missiles, planes, let alone floating airstrips. God forbid everything was as it was when the document was written. We'd still have slavery, polygamy, discrimination, lack of regulation for banks, monopolies, etc. Societies that fail to evolve and to learn from the narrow-mindedness of its past are doomed to a slow death. The Bible is regarded as the only infallible documented work. While the Constitution is a great document, it is hardly infallible. Hence the many additions throughout the decades. So, you keep believing that what some group of men with finite knowledge wrote almost 300 years ago is relative for today's issues and problems. These people were politicians and statesmen like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, etc. If that group of men wrote a document to be followed to the letter 300 years from now, would you feel that it would never be in need of changes? People like to twist the words of the Constitution for their own benefit. It's a good thing they can't do that with the Bible. Put simply, "You shall not kill."
I agree that people have a right to protect themselves. The argument is not whether people should have guns at all, it's about the caliber and killing ability of the guns. I'm not going to go over that again. You can read my posts about the types of weapons people feel they need to protect themselves. The point is, this gun ownership and this belief that it's a God-given right to posses a gun that is not meant to kill or deter one individual, but many in one fell swoop is a bit extreme.
Hmm... Do you NEED to have the last post on this? Why respond at all?
I will simply take it as an admission- you have no facts. You like to sit around and pontificate with authority on this board, but you have no interest in dialogue, or even in writing things that make sense!
We need a coherent, national gun policy. Pages and pages of your posts have said nothing to refute this.
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This article appears to talk about loopholes in the assault weapons ban. It supports none of your points, except that the assault weapons ban was a flawed law. Clearly, I have been talking about gun laws on the whole, and not simply re-instating the assault weapons ban. Nowhere in all my posts did I even mention assault weapons, except that the law was not re-instated. To be clear, I think that there need to be much stricter laws than the assault weapons ban. I think there should be a national registration system, a waiting period, liability for gun owners whose weapons are used in crime, tougher sentences for gun crimes, etc., etc. Also, as I alluded to, if a law isn't working, it should be changed, just like laws and regulations on everything else. I can't believe that was your "source." Good grief.
