No, the premise of abortion rights is that women are people first, incubators second. They have the right to control their bodies. They have the right to a safe legal medical procedure. They shouldn't be forced to have the child of someone who raped them. They shouldn't have to carry a pregnancy that can kill them. This may shock you, but pregnancy can kill you. A lot of stuff can go wrong. There are many women who don't have access to the medical care needed to ensure a healthy and safe pregnancy. A situation that is only going to get worse as religious conservatives continue going to great lengths to defund planned parenthood. It's especially appalling when you consider that the US has one of the Highest rates of maternal mortality in the developed world. Also, don't feed me crap about the rape exception, at the current rate, that is going to disappear.

Abstinence only sex ed has been working really well. It worked so well. Kids stopped having sex, getting pregnant, and spreading STD's.

Then please fucking tell me when, where, and how Christians have faced systemic oppression in the United States. What terrible things need to be corrected?

Uh, Class 3 weapons are legal in most of the states when you have a Class 3 License issued by the ATF. You also seem to be missing the width and breadth of what a class 3 license is good for. You can have a belt fed machine gun if that is what gets you going, and you have a ton of money to buy one of the ever shrinking number of them made and registered before 1986. I think the base price for a class 3 weapon is at least 15k now.

Oh what does it really matter. At least you didn't use the made up term "assault weapon".

Reproductive Health? Sex Ed? Marriage Equality?

I've yet to hear of a major opponent of these things who wasn't yelling something about god. I mean on what grounds do people justify denying women bodily autonomy except on religious grounds?

I generally will hear someone out when they claim to have been discriminated against. The problem is, when I hear an American Christian (who is usually white) claim to be oppressed, their story always ends up being "I didn't get my way! Someone disagreed with me! The government isn't shoving my views down someone else throat!."

  I've spent time working with international missions. I've met people who were part of secret churches in china, who know people who have disappeared because they were Christians. I've met people who have been hurt, maimed, and killed because they were Christians in the wrong place.

I've never met someone who is American, who has actually suffered for their belief in god within the borders of the United States. Actual oppression, actual discrimination, and actual suffering happen all over the world and in the United States, but it isn't happening to the Christians here.

Waaaaahh, the godless liberal commie perverts aren't kowtowing to me. I can't have prayer in schools or the ten commandments plastered everywhere. This is worse than the holocaust! Oh how I have suffered.

Pardon me is I have no sympathy for my bitchy thin skinned christian "brethren".

When can't get served in a restaurant, attacked with dogs and fire hoses, or forced to suffer any of the everyday indignities that many minorities experienced in the past and still today, then they can proclaim oppression

I'm sorry, but comparing the civil rights movement to the present day white protestant who is just so oppressed by a federal government where "The bible says so" is a valid position when debating legislation is so idiotic that it doesn't warrant a more detailed rebuttal.

Oh for fucks sake. Quit feeling persecuted. To be an American president you at least have to pay lip service to Jesus.

It's infuriating to be always be associated with whiny self righteous Christians constantly bitching about how much everyone discriminates against them and how hard it is to be a christian.

Get some damn perspective.

Yes, and by the time they hit the ground, most of them don't go nearly as far.

Dear Smartass,

Many states have laws against using non expanding ammo when hunting game and unless you are loading custom rounds or buying from specialty ammo manufactures, I doubt you are going to find expanding .50 BMG.

Most rifles capable of delivering .50 BMG weigh in excess of 20lbs.

Unless you are shooting from ranges where the .50 BMG is needed you are likely endangering others due to the risk of missing your target and hitting something behind it.

Also, most people can't shoot at extreme range with the accuracy needed to guarantee a clean kill as opposed to maiming the animal which then has to suffer till you manage to find it and end the suffering which your incompetence caused.

Finally, the vast majority of hunting rifles are chambered in .30-30, .30-06, .308, 7mm, or other rounds which generally drop very quickly after leaving their preferred range.

.50 BMG is a High powered, Long Range Target round.

Yeah, well after a while I've gotten tired of tiptoeing around the delicate sensibilities of an oppressed majority.

I really just wasn't in the mood to deal with a comment thread requiring multiple well articulated back and forth posts where any even slight failure to articulate any part of my point completely would be used to justify dismissing my entire argument.

Then even if I managed to run the gauntlet safely, there is still a good chance that my argument would be dismissed with "Gosh, why do you guys always have to complain about everything."

And god forbid the rabid, gender essentialist or "everyone is already EQUAL!" crowd shows up.

A fragmentation grenade that doesn't give off fragments isn't a fragmentation grenade......

Just curious, why do you bring up something like .50 BMG when its far more likely a cop is going to be shot at with something like 7mm mag or some other high power hunting round?

Body armor doesn't stop always stop rifle rounds.

When did I say I wanted games to reflect reality? When did anyone claim the vast majority of WW2 games reflect reality? Most don't most distort reality for the sake of gameplay, story, and..... sales! In reality, the majority of WW2 games would be about Russian conscripts, sitting, doing nothing, in the freezing cold trying to keep war. Not to mention that the vast majority of games don't take place in WW2, which makes this entire tangent nearly unrelated to my entire point. Good job on missing it.

You know, I don't think I've met a single female gamer who felt "victimized and put off" because she was playing a male character in a game.

However, I know plenty of women who would like to play a game where the main character was a woman, maybe even a woman who wasn't hypersexualized and wearing armored floss.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but people generally like it when people like them show up in popular culture. Especially when those people are well developed leads and not typecast secondary characters that exist solely to support the main character.

While it might not matter if your minecraft avatar is male or female, it does matter on some level when a game is story driven. It does matter when a game makes attempts at strong characterization. It does matter when people wonder why more women don't play certain types of games.

I'm going to assume you are a guy. I'm also going to assume that if I go any deeper into this subject, you will dismiss anything I say as "soft-sociology-pseudo-science-bullshit", and maybe even try to make a "get back in the kitchen joke".

Congratulations on being the default, and always being catered too, not because most people do it intentionally but because that's how things were and unless someone does bitch about it, the people it doesn't effect don't really even notice. I realize change is scary and confusing especially when, but I believe that you can change and adapt. I also want you to know, that no one is mad at you, and it's not a personal attack on your masculinity.

But hey maybe you are right, I mean come on when aren't those uppity broads bitching about something amirite boys? /Sarcasm

Which doesn't take away from my point at all. The game industry has either very little interest or very little ability to tell stories that have strong female leads. Oh by the way, I think about 200,000 women served in various combat and front line positions in the Soviet military during ww2.