> "Prayer that doesn't lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer. [...] Prayer and action must always be profoundly united"
- Pope Francis. (grabbed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_and_prayers)
Otherwise, that to many people the phrase has become synonymous with willful inaction is just collateral damage.
It doesn't even call out the hypocrisy of christians that don't support gun control. They can believe in other ways forward, like arming all kids with guns and having them practice lots of active shooter drills, or whatever, but it is the "it is not that bad, let's not worry about it" attitude that makes people angry. The original comment I was replying to talked about a "having a national dialogue on gun control", which simply hasn't happened.
It's funny, we assume everyone uses the same definition of a phrase or slogan as we do and just by reading through the comments on this I see that's not the case.
I don't see how the two equate to hypocrisy. A friend of mine (a Christian) is strongly opposed to gun control. He has a concealed carry license and carries everywhere, because he wants to have the means to protect himself and his loved ones from an active shooter, if necessary. He cites "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," and feels personally affronted by gun control legislation.
That, and he prays regularly for others. I for one would not accuse him of hypocrisy on that basis.
> hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control
That's a gross oversimplification of what it takes to be a hypocrite. I've met people who fall into the hypocrite category on both ends, but I what I didn't understand is how this "thoughts and prayers" thing was being used.
To me it felt like an attack on Christianity, which I didn't fully understand. I feel like I get it a lot better now though.
Guns wear out, simply cutting production would do a lot to reduce the number of guns in the system (outlaw or not).
We'd save more lives by forcing car manufacturers to install ML based drunk detection systems in the driver seat.
Guns will wear out eventually, heck, they can also run out of ammunition. Industrialization is an incredible enabler for gun use (one the founding fathers obviously didn’t have to worry about), and taking that away causes the system of mass gun violence to fall over quickly.
Simply taking 11 million units of production offline will make guns much more expensive worldwide, let alone in the USA. That crazy person who has an idea to go shoot up a school will have to find some money to pay up if they don’t have one already. Let’s also not ignore what happened in other countries that banned or severely cut back on gun use: none of what the pro gun crowd would predict what would happen.
> We'd save more lives by forcing car manufacturers to install ML based drunk detection systems in the driver seat.
Why do that when Uber/Lyft have already mostly solved the problem and self driving cars will do so even more? If gun advocates actually believed in gun control at all, we could talk about technological solutions in that space. But their position is that any gun control at all is useless, and ironically enough implies that only a ban would be worth considering. (And yes, I’m all for taking away your manually driven car when self driving car technology is ready, it just makes so much sense from a safety and traffic perspective).
Also, accounts that use HN primarily for political or ideological battle eventually get banned here, and when people keep doing that, we eventually ban their main account as well. Why? Because HN is subject to all sorts of forces tearing it apart, and those forces win by default, so we have to protect it. If you'd review the site guidelines and take that spirit to heart and help protect it, we'd be grateful—and it's in your interests to do so, since that's the only way HN stays interesting in the long run.
To use a less charged example: developers might feel bad for novice users who get computer viruses on Windows or Mac OS. They might even help people out. And that’s entirely consistent with those sample people opposing locking down Windows and MacOS like iOS in the name of security.
Unless your a friend or immediate family member there is sweet fuck all you can do to console someone in a time of grief.
What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a target at a solution while thoughts and prayers are meant to console the individual.
Anyway, it's just something I found super annoying. I had someone who I know lost a loved one (not due to guns) and I struggled with what to say. It's a simple thing, but I realized I didn't know how to attempt to console someone anymore.