THIS POST VIOLATES OUR POLICIES; IT'S VISIBLE ONLY TO YOU

So someone went around flagging my stuff yesterday... Not cool! I've been through the Policies & Principles like a million times and the same posts on another community are all fine. I wish Google+ would tell me what I was flagged for. I'm sure it was somebody who didn't like where the conversation was going and decided to go around and flag everything I posted in that community, since it was just one community I posted in. I understand flagging the guy who got really angry at your comment (and the comment about the comment I saw was really bad... It was promoting dangerous activities, very hateful, definitely harassment, and very violent), but don't punish me by flagging all my stuff!

Here are the list of Policies & Principles, and if you can find anything that I say that might even remotely point towards violating any of this, please let me know! I know all my topics are controversial, but that is the government for you!

Illegal Activities

Do not use our products to engage in illegal activities or promote dangerous and illegal acts.

Malicious Products

Do not transmit viruses, malware, or any other malicious or destructive code. Do not distribute content that harms or interferes with the operation of the networks, servers, or other infrastructure of Google or others.

Hate Speech

Do not distribute content that promotes hatred or violence towards groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity.

Personal and Confidential Information

Do not distribute other people’s personal and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, confidential national ID numbers, or account passwords, without their permission.

Account Hijacking

Do not access another user’s account without their permission. Do not use our products for phishing scams.

Child Safety

Do not distribute content that exploits children, such as child pornography (including cartoon child porn) or content that presents children in a sexual manner.

Spam

Do not spam, including sending unwanted promotional or commercial content, or unwanted or mass solicitation.

Do not aggressively add people to your circles.

Ranking Manipulation

Do not manipulate ranking or relevancy using techniques like repetitive or misleading keywords or metadata.

Sexually Explicit Material

Do not distribute content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Do not drive traffic to commercial pornography sites.

Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content. For example, do not use a photo that is a close-up of a person’s buttocks or cleavage.

Harassment and Bullying

Do not harass or bully others. Anyone using Google+ to harass or bully may have the offending content removed or be permanently banned from the site. Online harassment is also illegal in many places and can have serious offline consequences.

Violence

Do not distribute depictions of graphic or gratuitous violence.

Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior

Do not use our products to impersonate.

User Profile Name

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.

Regulated Goods and Services

While Google+ is a place to discuss many topics, our service is not ready to support the marketing of any regulated products at this time. Do not facilitate the promotion or sale of pharmaceuticals, alcohol, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices. We may also remove content that offers or promotes the sale of substances that mimic the effects of illegal or regulated drugs.

Discussion of gambling and gaming strategy is permitted, but do not distribute content that facilitates actual gambling, including online casinos, sports betting, or lotteries.

Further, we may not allow verification of local Google+ pages for certain products and services such as escort services or other regulated goods.

Contests and Promotions

Do not run contests, sweepstakes, daily deals, coupons or other such promotions directly on Google+. For additional details about this policy, visit the Contests and Promotions Policy page.

Very sad and depressed,

Emily

Pistol Grips, Shotguns, and ALICE

Troy Landry and sons with two 13ft+ alligators at the market

I was watching The Daily Show with my brother last night and Jon Stewart talked about the gun ban. At first I had a problem with it, since you know... I live in Alabama... where if you don't have some weapon on you, you don't value your life all too much. The news made it seem like Obama was banning everything! Then I found out it was only things like assault rifles. There is a full list here. I have no idea what most of those names mean, but I don't see a pistol or a shotgun on there and I would be super shocked if you needed an assault riffle to shoot a deer. And if Troy Landry can catch them 'gators with just a pistol, you can protect yourself with a shotgun.

Still from the conference with the guy and the pistol grip.

In the satirical news report he shows a clip of a man with a large picture of a shotgun and he is holding a pistol grip. He starts babbling on about how adding the pistol grip to the shotgun will make it illegal. Then it goes back to Jon and he makes a witty comment along the lines of "It would still be a picture of an illegal shotgun with a pistol grip." I was dumbfounded and I came up with the smartest solution in the history of time... Don't put a pistol grip on a shotgun. WOAH! Who knew it was that easy?

Then this lady tells this really detailed story of this woman who injured a burglar with a gun and saved her family from harm. She argued that it would do more harm than good to ban guns. The person being questioned by the woman just looked down at her and deadpanned, "From what I remember of the story, the gun she used would not be on the list of banned weapons." At this point my brother and I are laughing so hard along with Jon Stewart, then she proceeds to stumble over the words "I don't remember what weapon she used." We paused the television at this point to laugh at the stupidity of the statement. You can give such a detailed recount of the incident but you can't remember what weapon she used while discussing gun control.

Scary enough for a date, huh?

Logically, no one needs a freaking assault riffle. I mean, it would be chaos in Alabama if we didn't have shotguns to cock on the front porch while Daddy waits for the prom date of his daughter, but in reality We really don't need military grade weapons for that, shotguns look just as scary (especially in the hands of the father). So I really hate the idea of banning guns all together, but only a select few make sense. People are just so caught up in the fact that the government is banning guns that they forget that they really don't need that arsenal of AK-47s in their back room closet.

What got us in this mess? Oh, right, school shootings... Recently I found out that the media is seriously twisting the story of the Newtown shooting. It's CRAZY! Watch this video and you will no longer believe that Emilie Parker is a real child anymore. I am not denying that it happened, but the media gave a face to the shooting through a non-existent child and managed to misinform it's audience about the whole thing (notice how there are no simulations unlike every other school shooting)

This shooting has the schools frantic. They finally realized that you need to get the hell off campus if the shooter is nowhere near your building. My school has been doing lock-down drills like crazy. They gave us a new procedure called ALICE, and I have no idea what it stands for... Maybe Alert, Lock-down, Inform, Contact, Evacuate? They even showed us a simulation of Columbine and the Theatre students of Auburn University created a video demonstrating the new procedure and the poor kid in the video got shot over and over and over. It was AWFUL! I left the room and vomited after the Columbine video. They even showed the victims begging for their life... I just cannot wrap my head around it.

After the videos (in my AP Government class I might add) we started discussing tactics. Then we got a little silly and started saying "well what if there is a fire and an intruder? They could have set the buildings on fire to get us out." Then we realized... What if there was more than one intruder and we all left the buildings and they massacred us? We came up with a bunch of crazy scenarios and realized that there was no definite way to keep us safe from intruders, but if approached we were just going to have to go with our instinct and let the adrenaline take over and get us to a safe place.

I am sorry, I kind of went on a tangent... Oh well... Best thing to do in both situations is to think logically. You don't need a military weapon and no intruder is safe.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Emily, The Yellow Umbrella