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Oh horseshit. First of all, he has not been sentenced to anything yet. 10 years is the maximum he could get, whereas the maximum for murder is life imprisonment, or in some cases death. Secondly, the AVERAGE murder sentence is 40.6 years, where did you get that idiotic 7 years? The average property crime sentence is about 4 years. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...

No, not per capita. Per violent criminal, possibly, depending on which stats you use. We don't have good statistics on police shootings OR violent crime rates though. Using numbers from the NCVS for 2012-2015 and The Guardian's list of police shootings in 2015-2016
. 4,847,887 total violent crimes with a perp group of pers with a single known race.
1,324,270 violent crimes committed by blacks.
2,557,910 violent crimes committed by whites.
307 + 266 = 573 Blacks shot by cops, rate is .00043
584 + 574 = 1158 whites, rate is .00045

Those rates are close enough that I'd say the police are fairly even handed in their brutality, and mostly aren't gun happy. Not even 1 in a thousand violent criminals get shot. Unfortunately, numbers over 3 years shouldn't be directly combined with numbers for 2 years of which only one overlaps, but that's what I've got. 2015 alone has roughtly the same, while 2016 is wildly different. I used to use an older measure of violent crime, because prior to 2017 the last time violent crimes by race were included in the NCVS was 2006 IIRC.

I could go to the UCR, but then I have to limit it to homicides to get race of offender, and relative homicide rates did NOT track relative violent crime rates the last time I checked. The latter is measured by victim surveys, the former is for crimes where the victim obviously can't answer. That doesn't even get into simpson's paradox issues, where certain areas have different crime rates and shooting rates, and it's possible for the overall trend to be magnified OR reversed in every jurisdiction. And of course the fact that counting crimes does not count criminals, since one person can victimize multiple people. And not all violent crimes are the same.

Sure. But that does not eliminate the fact that blacks and hispanics commit overwhelmingly more crime than their share of the population, and is driven by gang activity (at least for violent crimes).

I point the difference in crime labels because once you count the drug offenders in prison for "drug trafficking" vs. "Possession", you're looking at over 50% of the incarcerated population.

Otherwise known as 15%, but hey, what's a 200+% error band amongst friends? Small wonder you posted anon.

Nobody had their free speech rights suppressed. Nobody is entitled to a platform.

Point of fact, as colleges are funded at least in part from federal funds, the invited speakers were entitled to their platforms. This has been upheld in the courts, btw.

My guess is that you are claiming that the teaching of the uglier parts of the past of the US and Europe has lead directly to open hostility to anyone who is a white male.

Your guess would be wrong. Look; I'm all for teaching the dirty parts of history. The more kids who mistrust the government, the happier I am. Note: that doesn't require skin color or gender to convey the point, nor should it. Both of these are irrelevant metrics. Just as you'd (rightly) call me racist for insinuating that all blacks must be violent because blacks committed 52% of all murders in the united states( https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu... ), it's wrong to imply that white males are somehow guilty for all the ills of society's past ( while, at the very same time, ignoring all the advancements made during the same time period mind you ).

The humanities advance this victimhood narrative, which necessitates a villain. This kind of thinking is sloppy and meaningless, undermining any credibility they may have in arguing for "critical thinking". They are simply incapable of it.

Of course it could have nothing to do with the fact that statistically, white people loot just as often as black people. Math and numbers are just liberal propaganda!

So you say without any references. I guess those are part of the white patriarchy. Also, there no corresponding suggestion for "black people looting" or "blacks looting".

But here's a statistical reference for you: In the United States, blacks commit murder at a rate eight times greater than whites ("Homocide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008", page 3).

Here is a link to stats:
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...

Seems like black-on-white crime is almost 6x more likely than white-on-black crime. And what do you know, there are 6x more white people than black people in the US. So intraracial violence seems proportionally the same for these two.

It's seems MOST violence is from the same race. BUT White people seem to attack other races more than black people. Hispanics DO appear worse, but it makes sense that a minority attacks other races more... considering the targets have low numbers of their race. Care to explain the White race's apparent unbalanced violence against others?

Additionally, even thou there are 6x more white people than black people, they only face 4x more violence! Even the Hispanics face less violence than blacks.

Numbers wise, white people are pretty darn safe. Their biggest threat is other white people.

Then you got to reassess these numbers by the feedback and biases within the justice system. Things like how blacks face harsher punishments than white people or aren't forgiven as quickly. Or how the jail time doesn't help them get ahead in society and further pulls their family into poverty, gangs, and crime. Then the numbers look even worse for white people.

FYI, this isn't actually true. Gun ownership in the U.S. is correlated with an increase in mortality. That means if you own a gun, you're more likely to die.

Dying in an airplane crash is also correlated with having a pilots license... as is dying in a car crash correlated with owning a car... however neither change the fact that on a mile per mile basis, flying is safer than driving. Lazy people simply throw out stats they don't understand to justify their view, intelligent people drill into the data to understand it's meaning.

Given that ~2/3rds gun deaths are suicide, that correlation simply means that if one opts to kill themselves and they own a gun... they are going to be more successful, as most don't use their car to do the job.

It's odd, isn't it... we have hundreds of millions of firearms and trillions of rounds of ammunition, and when you remove places like Chicago and Baltimore from the stats, the nations overall rate of gun violence (suicide not being included) plummets dramatically.

But the idea that they're great for self defense is a myth.

The CDC disagrees, and did so under Obama even: http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/...

Look up stats on the number of guns stolen in home invasions annually, and compare that to defensive gun usage.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu... says an estimated 1.4 million guns stolen during a 6 year period or ~233k per year, while https://www.nap.edu/read/18319... mentions:

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million

It's been a few years since I had a math class, however I believe 500k is more than 233k.

Focusing on the private prison industry (8% of total prisoners in the U.S.) is ignoring the bigger problem: prison guard unions support the same measures that increase prison population and they're much, much larger and politically more powerful. According to this article police and prison guard groups were responsible for about half of money raised to oppose legalizing recreational marijuana in California.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Good one!

More than 95% of people sent to the Gulag were railroaded into giving a coerced false confession ("plea bargain").

Source for the number is the official fedgov statistics site:
  https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?...

Innocent until proven guilty is dead. Trial by a jury of your peers is dead. Welcome to the New American Police State.

Claims with no citations? You're either an idiot or an outright troll/liar.

A small sampling of the citations linked in the post in question:
http://www.city-journal.org/20...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://www.umass.edu/legal/Ben...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publ...
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abst...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abst...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinf...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/abst...
http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/...
http://www.sentencingproject.o...
http://online.wsj.com/articles...
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live...
That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short.

You know... execution is not the only human activity with the risk of accidental death (in this case, accidental being killing the wrong person). I mean, there's driving, flying, construction, swimming - even eating (someone chokes on a steak and dies).

And when it comes to punishment, lots of prisoners are killed in prison every year (PDF - see page 4 for cause of death breakdown). So, there's the theoretical risk from wrongful execution, or the real risk that comes from incarceration.

You would have a point if not for the fact that China's level of authoritarianism is enough to make even the most security paranoid republican blush

Really, you want to go there? Ok, let's talk about that. If I lived in the United States, I would have about a ten percent chance of being incarcerated in state or federal prison in my lifetime. If I was black, it would be closer to 30%. Either it's a country full to the brim with criminals, or state and federal "justice" is a pretty lose term. Every time I drive down to visit my brother, I actually get nervous. Crossing the border is a stressful event. The airports, where the recorded announcements of "don't set something down or you will be seen as a terrorist" playing on a constant loop don't serve help the "Welcome to America!" ambiance any. This was all pre-Trump too. I won't bother to link anything on that, I will leave a search engine query of "USA racism since Trump" an an exercise for the reader. The result is pretty telling though, unfortunately, not surprising.

China's record isn't any better. But they aren't really that much worse either. They are industrializing, modernizing, and (slowly) liberalizing country. They are trying to govern more people in more varied circumstances than any other government in the world. The people there (including the people in government) aren't better, or worse, they are just different. In any case, human rights changes won't come from Apple keeping the crypto keys here. They won't happen by outside pressure. They never do. They will happen when the Chinese people demand it. Apartheid fell not from sanctions but from the demands of those within. Imposing change from the outside never works. Imposing democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq sure worked great, didn't it?

If I'm a Chinese citizen, am I more paranoid about the NSA reading my email, or the Chinese government reading my email?

This was from a different poster, but I don't wont to write two replies - Slashdot is sluggish and error prone right now.

This is fair enough. In fact, it was something I brought up in a post I made on the Slashdot story about the US government warning not to buy Huwei phones. In that post I pointed out as a normal user, a Huwei phone might actually seem great to me. If it's tapped by the Chinese, what do I care? At least they won't be sharing my data with the NSA. However, from China's perspective, moving the keys over there makes sense since it is not just the normal joe citizen that might use Apple's technology. These are people who may be high enough in business dealings or even low level government officials that having those keys on their own nation's property could be quite highly in their best interests. However, that certainly is a fair point you made.

I've been listening to NPR quite a bit over the years and while there are plenty of things they run that are interesting and correct, there is also a major and obvious problem that they have with bias when it comes to shows that discuss anything that can have a feminist/social justice agenda overlaid on it. Diane Rehm and the replacement show 1A in particular are notorious for letting feminist dogma on the show unchallenged and the only opposing views or even facts that might be presented are token, easily dismissed items selected by the call screeners that only give the sound of "both sides" but the actual expressions and concerns of opposing sides are not allowed. NPR shows claim to thoroughly vet the people coming onto those shows and what they want to present but they clearly do not, especially with feminists.

Prime case I distinctly remember from last year: Lauren Duca was on 1A complaining about Martin Shkreli "harassing" her and "his fans" then coming after her and abusing and harassing her and threatening her with things up to and including death. Of course, Lauren Duca was covertly photographing Shkreli in a bar without permission and posting the photo to Twitter and bitching about his existence a year before that show, and she is basically an aggressive troll herself (she is basically a professional white man hater that can't keep her mouth shut about her hatred for white men):

PRO TIP:Most men who insult your "journalistic integrity" are bored as hell at their shitty desk jobs. Or just mad in their mom's basements.

Lol wow, so many mangy white men are going to go to jail for the riots after Hillary wins. #debatenight

Happy #WomensEqualityDay!! Straight, white men, unless I have spoken to you separately about this issue, please refrain from all engagement.

Friendly reminder that there's an uneven playing field, and straight, white men are generally trash!

GOP Uses Craig's List To Find Suitable Candidate, White Men Seeking White Man, Must Hate Women/The Poor

Gosh, you look super overprivileged and milky white carrying that starving African baby in your prof pic! Thanks for saving the world!

I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL THE NEXT RANDOM MAN THAT TALKS TO ME

She's basically a vile racist sexist cunt and no one on 1A challenged her. NPR couldn't do the two minutes of research I did to find her deleted hate tweets? Give me a break.

Don't even get me started on that Diane Rehm show about "the sexual assault epidemic and what it says about our culture." That was a truckload of bullshit from the start. A bunch of high-profile sexual misconduct claims doesn't make the entirety of America full of sexual harassers and rapists. Between 1995 and 2010, the rate of completed rape or sexual assault declined from 3.6 per 1,000 females to 1.1 per 1,000. What THAT says about our culture is that we were well on the way to not sexually assaulting people before the SJW movement blew up in 2012, but no one on Diane Rehm's show challenged anything the feminists there said. Oh, and note that on issues with feminist ties, they ONLY invite feminists to be part of the show.

The questions I've heard tossed out on the BBC world service on NPR are also often feminist and heavily left-leaning. There is very strong and obvious bias in the questions asked by BBC interviewers. They often ask the exact same questions rephrased and repackaged to insist that their left-leaning view is corre

Just passing one by is quickly becoming a coin-toss as to whether or not we end up beaten and arrested on trumped-up charges especially if we're black.

OK, I'll touch the third rail -- I have plenty of karma.

Coin-toss, eh? Like, 50-50 odds. Guess you're pretty much hosed if you pass 5-6 every day like I do. How am I still alive?

Oh, because the real numbers are somewhere around 1.5% of encounters where force is used or threatened . (Pro tip: that means the percentage of encounters where force was actually used is less than 1.5% -- about half that, according to the report.)

This sort of fanciful swill is what passes for "insightful" on Slashdot these days. The nerds are rapidly becoming outnumbered by the brain-dead activists.

since the black community is underrepresented in the countries police forces.

Going to have to call bullshit on that, and yes, I did bring a citation.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices

Click on the PDF link, and go to Page 5, Figure 5. Black officers are right around the 12% mark. Nationwide, blacks are about 13% of the US population. You couldn't ask for a more representative sample.

since the black community is underrepresented in the countries police forces.

Going to have to call bullshit on that, and yes, I did bring a citation.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices

Click on the PDF link, and go to Page 5, Figure 5. Black officers are right around the 12% mark. Nationwide, blacks are about 13% of the US population. You couldn't ask for a more representative sample.

If it's not ok to fund white bigots then it's not ok to fund non-white bigots. It's pretty obvious the KKK et al, BLM/antifa, and BAMN all have self-serving agendas aligned along various lines, all under the guise of making the world a better place, of course.

Anyway, it's a little more complicated than you suggest.
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...

Of reported persons who died during the process of arrest, 95 percent were male. About 42 percent were white, 32 percent were black/African American and 20 percent were Hispanic or Latino. More than half (55 percent) were between ages 25 and 44, and juveniles (persons under age 18) were about three percent of all arrest-related deaths.

Among persons who committed suicide during the process of arrest, 60 percent were white, 20 percent were Hispanic or Latino and 15 percent were black/African American. About 12 percent of persons who committed suicide during the process of arrest allegedly committed homicide during or prior to the arrest.

Of reported arrest-related deaths by intoxication, black/African Americans were 41 percent of persons who died, whites were 34 percent and Hispanic or Latinos were 21 percent. During an arrest, females were more likely than males to die of intoxication (16 percent compared to 11 percent) and natural causes (12 percent compared to five percent).

This one does contradict but only when the suspect is drunk.

Over the seven year period when the arrest-related deaths were reported to BJS, the FBI estimated that state and local law enforcement officers made nearly 98 million arrests.

5000 arrest related deaths over 98 million.. Not nearly as bad as the media makes it out to be, but I'm sure we can agree that we'd like it closer to 0.

No, they are not "scientifically proven."

The claim that men are pushed into less satisfying jobs, and the claim that men choose less satisfying jobs, are contradictory. You can't have it both ways.

And the claim that they choose to work in toxic work environments, with death marches, unpaid overtime, and abusive management for "status", if true, shows just how f*cked up men can be. It also shows how self-destructive men can be (and sadly, how they take pride in such self-destructive behaviour, as if it's a badge of honour to have "survived", rather than an admission that they really are powerless to effect change in their own lives).

You also failed to address one of the consequences - that men of the latest generation are, more and more, "failing to launch" in the rest of their lives, with limited social contact outside of work, to the point where you've got men in their 30s and 40s whose "social life" is online video games, often in mom's basement.

Even the author's arguments back this up.

10 years ago I had warned a former co-worker to get help or he'd end up a 40-year-old virgin. He didn't, and he is. The ability to isolate yourself from the real world in a tech job gives a "safe space" for people who haven't developed social skills, but it's a trap - it's self-reinforcing behaviour that ends up with people who simply cannot function well in other environments, so they continue to justify their behaviour to themselves by "being proud" of being willing to put up with the crappy work conditions, when the fact is that they don't have other options, and their employers know that they can kick the workers around because it fulfills their psychological need to find pride in something, even if it's only being able to tolerate a terrible work environment.

Now if you want to look at some facts in the real world, the vast majority of divorces are initiated by the woman. So much so that the document templates assume it's the woman asking, and on the rare occasion when it's the man, they have to be edited to reflect it. Women are demonstrably less willing to put up with a situation that they don't like. Given that women are 5-1.2 times to be the victim in domestic violence, it's logical that one of the consequences will be that women initiate most divorces and relationship split-ups. The fact that the most dangerous time for a woman is when she's exiting a relationship shows just how dysfunctional wounded male "pride" is.

So again, why would anyone, male or female, accept to work in a job that is less satisfying if they have other options? In the case of the people pushing the biological meme, it looks like in reality they are trying to avoid the fact that they don't have other options due to personality defects that limit their options, not because of any external "push" to take less satisfying jobs.

After all, who says that having a satisfactory job means you can't have pride in your work, or that you have to have less power (which is what males seem to equate with success even if it's at the cost of personal satisfaction in their lives).

Then you should laugh at gun control people who play the bait and switch, talking about crime and mass murder and then say that the US has 30,000+ gun deaths per year. Ooops 2/3 of that are suicides.

Now, if the US had a higher suicide rate than Japan, or Taiwan, or France or England or Germany then, and only then, it may make sense to include those numbers. But the US doesn't have a higher suicide rate therefore this is an example of gun control advocates LYING.

Second point - 2% of the US counties are responsible for over 1/2 of the gun violence in the US
https://crimeresearch.org/2017...

And, if you break this down further, you'll find that it's only parts of those counties accounts for the violence Third point - there is no correlation between more guns in a state and more gun violence.
- US counties with high guns per capita have violence rates equal to bucolic countryside European towns.
- As guns became easier to get in Florida (and other states) gun violence went down (contrary to the predictions of gun control people).

- As guns became more numerous in the US gun violence has gone down (contrary to the predictions of gun control people).

Fourth point - Gun control people are not focusing on people who use guns while committing a crime. They are focusing on gun ownership. Rifles are always their target and yet they used in 5% of the gun crimes.

More deaths are done with knives than rifles. (See below - from US Statistical Abstract)
More deaths are caused by hammers and other blunt objects than by rifles.(See below)
More deaths are caused by fists and feet than by rifles. (See below)

Characteristic 2000 2005 2008 2009
Total firearms. . . . . . 8,661 10,158 9,484 9,203
Handguns. . . . . . . 6,778 7,565 6,755 6,503
Rifles. . . . . . . . . . .411 445 375 352
Shotguns. . . . . . ..485 522 444 424
Other not specified or type unknown. . . . . . 53 138 79 96 Firearms,
type not stated. . . 934 1,488 1,831 1,828
Knives or cutting instruments. . . . . ..1,782 1,920 1,897 1,836
Blunt objects 1. . . . . . 617 608 614 623
Personal weapons 2. . 927 905 861 815
Poison. . . . . . . . . . . . 8 9 10 7
Explosives. . . . . . .9 2 10 2
Fire. . . . . . . . . . . .134 125 86 98

These are not "alt-facts"
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...
https://www.census.gov/prod/20...

'It's not exactly "spiteful" to want to keep people who have murdered or raped others away from the rest of society'

What about the other half of the prison population?
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prisoners in 2014" https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu...
Table 11: Estimated percent of sentenced prisoners under state jurisdiction, by offense, sex, race, and Hispanic origin, December 31, 2013
Violent crimes, all inmate: 53.2%
Murder, all inmates: 12.5%
Rape, all inmates: 12.5%

Do you hate poor people, or just black people? Poor people are victimized a much higher rates then wealthy. They should love cops, I wonder why they don't?

Thanks for the article. However, Daily Mail is not that good with statistics. In this case the “216,000” or 4,5% who where “sexually victimized” [0], but the 90,479 were rape cases. To be precise, sexual victimization includes rape, but also groping[1].

Methodology is also different. The prison stats were obtained by surveys, but general population stats are registered cases with police. Since rape is notoriously under-reported this number does not represent count of actual rapes.

The whole "rape culture" propaganda points a finger at men in general, ignoring that many men are also victims. For some reason it's politically correct to say that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, but at the same time "men" in general are guilty for the alleged rape culture, even though the rapists are a tiny proportion of the male population.

Even though men are also victims, the perpetrators are still mostly men. Can women rape men or other women? Yes, but men do it more. Perhaps I am reading different media, but the feminist propaganda I get is about cultural norms that make rape acceptable (when a guy rapes a girl, she must have behaved slutty and deserved it; if a girl rapes a guy, it just funny). If you listen carefully, feminists usually blame “patriarchy”, which, believe it or not, does not mean “all men”. There are women who prop up this culture and there men who fight it. We can discuss it in detail, if you want to.

On a personal note, I believe tackling rape in prisons is as important as tackling rape in general population. However, methods might be different, since the environments are so very different. Anyway, what are we arguing about?

[0]I used a bit newer material form BJS
[1]Sexual victimization -- all types of sexual activity, e.g., oral, anal, or vaginal penetration; hand jobs; touching of the inmate’s buttocks, thighs, penis, breasts, or vagina in a sexual way; abusive sexual contacts; and both willing and unwilling sexual activity with staff.

Then anti-theft chipped keys came along and we got car jackings and home invasions.

Except that car jackings and home invasions have gone down.

Okay, I see you are able to be reasonable about this. So I have a few questions/observations.

The Native Americans and the Jews have also been victims of the most horrible forms of colonialism, institutional and interpersonal racism, or both. Why are they not topping the charts for violent crime like the blacks?

Native Americans https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?...

Jews http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/04...

The 2nd is much more illustrative of the mechanisms, and finishes with a simple enough point: sub-sets of society who are marginalized long enough (living in reservations, jewish ghettos, US inner-city ghettos) will end up with increased crime rates (including violent crime). Also note that while what you said is logically correct (your "or both" above helps), the Jews haven't in recent memory been "colonized", as until recently they did not claim any land. Crime records for Jews in (e.g.) biblical Egypt would indeed be interesting to see...

Household Poverty And Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008–2012

Second link from the google search for "correlation race poverty crime".

Or, from wikipedia entry Race and crime in the United States.

I've tried variations on "correlation race poverty crime" with "eight" "8 times" etc. to see if I could find where you were sourcing your claim, but am drawing a blank. Rather than continue to make an ass of myself, perhaps you'd be so kind as to provide a link or citation?

Murder rate in Germany is 0.86 murders per 10,000, while in America it is 5 per 10,000; so whatever Germany is doing in the way of gun control

This statement would've made sense, if all or most of the violent crimes involved an actual firearm. But that's not true — even in the "gun crazy" America, less than 10% of criminal violence involves guns... Fail...

Here's the source of the DoJ stat:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Unfortunately, there aren't really any consistent and nation-wide statistics on the race of people killed by police (no national database with consistent reporting), but here are some stats:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... (Table 5, pg 22)
2003-2009, 2011: whites make up a bigger percentage (47.8%) of deaths than blacks (28.4%)

https://www.washingtonpost.com...
2015: 990 people shot by police. 494 (49.9%) white, 258 (26.1%) black, 172 (17.4%) hispanic, 38 other, 28 unknown

https://www.washingtonpost.com...
2016 so far: 509 total. 238 (46.8%) white, 123 (24.2%) black
we are 190 days into this year, which is a leap year (190/366 ... 52% through the year)
If you forward-project based on the current average, there will be 978 police shootings in 2016, 458 white and 237 black

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
The Guardian has different numbers: 569 total. 279 whites. 137 black
If you use per-million numbers: 3.25 blacks/million, 1.41 whites/million

Here's the source of the DoJ stat:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Unfortunately, there aren't really any consistent and nation-wide statistics on the race of people killed by police (no national database with consistent reporting), but here are some stats:

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... (Table 5, pg 22)
2003-2009, 2011: whites make up a bigger percentage (47.8%) of deaths than blacks (28.4%)

https://www.washingtonpost.com...
2015: 990 people shot by police. 494 (49.9%) white, 258 (26.1%) black, 172 (17.4%) hispanic, 38 other, 28 unknown

https://www.washingtonpost.com...
2016 so far: 509 total. 238 (46.8%) white, 123 (24.2%) black
we are 190 days into this year, which is a leap year (190/366 ... 52% through the year)
If you forward-project based on the current average, there will be 978 police shootings in 2016, 458 white and 237 black

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
The Guardian has different numbers: 569 total. 279 whites. 137 black
If you use per-million numbers: 3.25 blacks/million, 1.41 whites/million

If you are going to make a point with stats, please post your source. People with a gun-control agenda seem to love throwing around misinformation to convince people guns are evil. I suspect you are one of those people.

You claim 40,000 per year are killed or wounded by gun violence. The most recent FBI stats I could find showed homicides by firearm to be at 8454 for 2013 (source). The most recent stats I could find from the Justice Department for non-fatal firearm violence shows 46,000 total for 2007 though 2011 which comes out to approximately 9200 per year (source pg 10). That comes to approximately 17,600 which is less than 45% of the number you provided. That also assumes stats dating back to 2007 despite the fact that gun violence has decreased since then (you can check out the same sources above to see that trend).

As for the "approximately zero saved by good guys" - that is also 100% incorrect. While the mainstream media do not report it, there are tons of these incidents. Lucky for us, I have a source for this data as well. While those 600+ pages of articles is compiled by the "evil" NRA, they all have independent source articles linked.

Sorry, took the word "felons" at face value.

So, let's get really all inclusive and call it what it is, Correctional population, which, at a mere 6.85 mil, is at its "lowest rate since 1996", putting only 2.8% of the adult population through the system... But it doesn't show the breakdown.

The FBI attorney is (purposefully?) confusing possible and probable as well as level of risk. Is it possible that terrorists will see WhatsApp's encryption, flock there, and plot a huge attack resulting in many deaths unseen by law enforcement? Certainly. It is also possible that the terrorists will wake up tomorrow morning realizing that this whole "kill everyone different than us" thing is idiotic, will drop their weapons, and take up a less destructive hobby. Both are possible, but are also not very probable. The recent attacks have been planned using SMS and other unencrypted communication methods. If law enforcement can't catch them when they're not encrypting, why go through the bother of deploying encryption?

As far as of level risk goes, there were 32,727 deaths due to terrorism worldwide in 2014 (Source). Even adding all terrorism deaths together since 2006 gives 161,834. Remember, this is worldwide. If we wanted to limit this to US deaths from terrorism, we'd get 303 American deaths from 2004-2014 (Source). In contrast, 2014 had 17.6 million identity theft victims in the US alone. (Source)

This all means that you have almost a 639,000 times greater risk of being an identity theft victim than a terrorism victim. Granted, I doubt many people are going to use WhatsApp to share information that could be used in identity theft, but this isn't the FBI vs. WhatsApp any more than it was just the FBI vs. Apple. It's the FBI vs Encryption. They want to see encryption either go away or be backdoored so they can get in at any time. Unfortunately, if this were to happen, a lot more people would find themselves vulnerable to various scams and the number of terrorists captured would be at or near zero.

This isn't even "trading liberty for security" as much as it is "trading security for some nebulous promise of possible security later on."

U.S. Department of Justice says guns are used over 200 times a day for self-defense.

I've used a gun for self-defense. I was sitting in a BBQ joint minding my own business when someone decided to start beating the hell out of the woman who was with him. He didn't take kindly to me telling someone to call 911 and turned his attention to me. I never had to fire a shot but I did need to be prepared to do so.

I wasn't in a bad part of the country, or state or city. I was with a number of other people in a nice little BBQ restaurant minding my own business. While I didn't expect violence, I was prepared for it. Are you?

The fantasy world is the one in which you reside where one can control their environment to the point that they have nothing to worry about. Chances are that you'll never have to defend yourself or anyone you're with or a complete stranger. But if you do what will you use?

And before you say that you'll wait for the police, the entire incident was over before the police ever answered the phone.

The average gun owner is more likely to defend themselves with a gun than to use it to hurt anyone.

It's not always necessary to fire a shot in order to use a gun for self-defense. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, guns are used for self-defense over 225 times per day. This study is on the more conservative side of most such studies: Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.

The statistic "more likely to kill themselves or a family member" is a purposeful manipulation of the statistics. Nobody has to be killed in order to successfully use a gun for self-defense.

Funny how being reflexively liberal gains vast positive moderation---even when it is not backed up and unfounded. Ok kids, lets play. Let's dissect this awful, thoughtless post using 3 minutes of internet searching or less

Comment 1: Mexicans are rapists:

Actually, Mexicans in the US are 3 times as likely to be rapists compared to their white counter part. Easily found in this document from the Department of Justice. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

Comment 2: Muslims are going to blow me up....

Do I really need to go there? Fish in a barrel are envious about easy this one is. I mean, you brought this up. But, since you asked, in the last 3 days, 157 attacks in 22 countries killing 1747 people. Number of, I don't know, choosing a country at random, Germans bombing others in same period.....0. Just saying'
http://www.thereligionofpeace....

I honestly won't touch the last once, since I really don't want to see the bestiality. sites, but but between you and me, I would not take that bet if I were you.

So, in a nut shell. This gets a 5 mod for being incorrect and supporting nothing. Nice job slashdot. Nice job.

Oh no people might be given information like your more likely to be mugged in this neighborhood than that one. Still seems useful a clueless traveler for example.

Sounds like the maps that overlayed crime stats awhile back. Or the ones that show people on the sex offender list etc etc.

It's still actual facts being used to make a rational decision that they will try to call racial bias. Facts are facts more crime happens in many predominantly minority neighborhoods. You can try and claim it's due to differences in policing but at the end of the day if more violent crime happens in a given area it's not as safe as another. The cause of this may well be related to poverty drug use etc etc but that does not change the cold hard fact that one place is riskier than another. It's hard to dispute numbers like http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub... urban settings are simply more dangerous on average per person. On the good news urban crime had diminished a lot and crime overall has gone down in the last decade or so.

Jesse Jackson has a field day with anything he can try and take advantage off regardless of reality to further his own political agenda.

I call cherry pick on several different fronts. 1) "legally purchased" is counted even if the weapon is stolen (like Lanza from his mother), 2) "mass shooting" excludes the vast majority of gun crime

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

They have some good data there on stolen guns (which by definition, is illegal). So when an article says "legally purchased", they don't necessarily mean "legally purchased by the shooter" (although certainly, there are examples of that in mass shootings).

Also see:

https://d3uwh8jpzww49g.cloudfr...

"*Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. " (that's called "illegal")

Weapon Use and Violent Crime
Firearms w/serious injury 13%, w/minor injury 4%;
Blunt Object w/serious injury 20%, w/minor injury 14%;

A great number of breaking and entering complaints are idiot junkies looking for a fix, and the skilled cat burglar is a tiny minority of the throngs of dummies who spend half their lives free & high...and the other half with all bills paid, incarcerated & sober.

I think you've confused "data" with the plural of anecdote.

According to the very conservative numbers from the NCVS (national crime victimization survey) nearly 300,000 rapes and/or sexual assaults occur each year.

Interesting. Does the NCVS gather any stats on the crime of false accusation of rape? No? Can you point me to any reputable organization that does?

Single or even double-digit number of false rape reports in the newspapers is statistical noise.

Reported rapes are themselves a dark figure; false rape accusations are an even darker figure. In practical terms, it may be impossible to get to the actual number of false accusations.

Nonetheless, the FBI's numbers say 1 in 12 reported rapes are unfounded. The FBI also notes that for the more general class of "false accusations of adult crime", women perpetrate the majority of them.

... The post literally cited a fake rape claim... and we're seeing those in the media constantly now... published by every newspaper in the western world.

I think you've confused "data" with the plural of anecdote.

According to the very conservative numbers from the NCVS (national crime victimization survey) nearly 300,000 rapes and/or sexual assaults occur each year. Single or even double-digit number of false rape reports in the newspapers is statistical noise.

One item the media seems to dismiss is that there are almost 40 million police interactions every year. About 1.4% claim there was force used, and the majority state it was excessive. The number that has made the recent news is a dozen or so.

I will be the first to say that 1.4% is far too much, but you can also note that 98.6% follow procedure, and all beat cops have a non-zero probability of being shot when they go to work that morning. Their job is hard (and quoting stats comparing cops to fisherman is pointless, fish don't have shotguns in the back seat).

I have a friend whose husband was killed in the line of duty, he was stopping a warehouse robbery. It didn't make national news, and her kids grew up without their father. Yes, there are issues with the thin blue line and the recent monitoring with cell phones is a benefit, but before anyone goes around blasting cops without considering the whole picture, just imagine what it would be like if they did not protect us and serve us from the anarchy that would be there without them.

Nail, meet head.

"It doesn't work in reducing crime"
There's been studies done that show that harsher sentences actually make crime worse. After all, if someone has done something that is very likely to result in a death sentence or life in prison, what possible incentive would they have to stop committing any further crime or atrocity? The rate that we rack up the years to keep someone in prison just means that alleged criminals take less time to reach the point where they see it as an impossibility for their situation to get any worse, and they might as well go for the largest payoff they can.

The Scandinavian countries, Norway in particular, have much more reasonable sentences and have geared their prisons towards preparing the inmates to rejoin society, as opposed to the US' system of vindictive punishment and destruction of the criminal as a human being. As a result, Norway has the lowest recidivism rate in the world (20%), and a similarly low crime rate. Comparatively, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a recidivism rate that hovers around 67% from year to year.(75% - source: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?t... )

The numbers would seem to indicate that "harsh on crime" policies ought to be considered "harsh on everyone", since they mean that we spend more money per prisoner and that we have more prisoners than the next dozen countries combined. One in five prisoners in the world are in US prisons. Our imprisonment addiction is almost as bad and destructive as our military spending addiction (since we spend more on defense than the next 14 largest defense-spending countries combined). In it's entire history there have been only 21 years where the US hasn't participated in a war. (source: http://www.informationclearing... )

And make no mistake, being a white male in this society is like playing the game of life on the easiest setting:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

This misconception gets thrown around a lot. "Life is easier when you're a man" ... depends on what you mean by "easier". Life is certainly more privileged if you're a woman... like, for example:

Women live longer than men (82.2 vs 79.8) ,
work fewer hours than men (7.7 vs 8.4),
are safer in society than men are (23% of homicide victims, vs 77% for men),
have around 1/10th the incarceration rates as men do (126 vs 1352),
do less dangerous jobs (7% occupational fatalities vs 93% for men),
Receive more from a broken relationship than men (Number so low for men that it is not even significant),
are more qualified than men,
and are healthier.

So, other than living shorter, unhealthier lives, facing more violence, possessing less education while working more hours at 13 times the risk of death, *and* financially hurting more than women after a divorce, men are more privileged than women? Western women are objectively the most well-off demographic in human history. Subjectively, well, that's another story - opinions in the stead of facts don't mean anything anyway and it's pointless to debate subjective statements.

Oh, and the rape-rate for college age women? Roughly 7 per 1000, not 1 in 5 or 1 in 4. So much for "rape-culture"...

PS - I feel like I should post this in response to all the "male-privilege" comments, although I'm sure you'll (sooner or later) once again post about how male-privilege blah blah blah.... so I'm pretty sure I'll get another opportunity to post this.

And make no mistake, being a white male in this society is like playing the game of life on the easiest setting:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

This misconception gets thrown around a lot. "Life is easier when you're a man" ... depends on what you mean by "easier". Life is certainly more privileged if you're a woman... like, for example:

Women live longer than men (82.2 vs 79.8) ,
work fewer hours than men (7.7 vs 8.4),
are safer in society than men are (23% of homicide victims, vs 77% for men),
have around 1/10th the incarceration rates as men do (126 vs 1352),
do less dangerous jobs (7% occupational fatalities vs 93% for men),
Receive more from a broken relationship than men (Number so low for men that it is not even significant),
are more qualified than men,
and are healthier.

So, other than living shorter, unhealthier lives, facing more violence, possessing less education while working more hours at 13 times the risk of death, *and* financially hurting more than women after a divorce, men are more privileged than women? Western women are objectively the most well-off demographic in human history. Subjectively, well, that's another story - opinions in the stead of facts don't mean anything anyway and it's pointless to debate subjective statements.

Oh, and the rape-rate for college age women? Roughly 7 per 1000, not 1 in 5 or 1 in 4. So much for "rape-culture"...

PS - I feel like I should post this in response to all the "male-privilege" comments, although I'm sure you'll (sooner or later) once again post about how male-privilege blah blah blah.... so I'm pretty sure I'll get another opportunity to post this.

I looked up some information about your statement. Having never used it myself, I speak only from talking to others and from research. Found some interesting facts to support your text:

Why is marijuana illegal

From reading a couple articles (including the linked one above, it appears that there was a perfect storm of 'enemies' to the use of the plant including:

• -Incidents of poisoning from individuals that laced the drug with other substances
• -North / South rivalry (Prohibition hurt the south and forced other alternatives)
• -Competition and propoganda by Alcohol industry
• -Prejudice against certain groups who were more frequent users (Mexican and African Americans)
• -Overall "prohibition" attitude that believed society could be whitewashed by laws to fix various societal issues.

Not only did opinion turn against the plant in the early 20th century, but it actually turned opposite of the historical stance. There was a point in certain colonies that people were punished if they did not grow the plant.

Most people would agree that this is not a "poison" as some see it. They would also acknowledge that classifying meth as less dangerous than pot can't be attributed to science in any way. Clearly, the schedule system imposed by the FDA and DEA is flawed and influenced by politics. Even for someone who feels it should be banned, they could at least be intellectually honest enough to say their ranking of pot as more dangerous than meth is flawed.

But on the other hand, the drug war is big business right now. According to the Bureau of Justice, drug offenses account for about a quarter of all reasons for incarceration. Not only that, but 1 in 8 state employees in the country are employees of a corrections agency.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people with a vested interest in not reexamining the issue and in keeping the status quo. Obviously, people have important concerns about health and what you put in your body. I just wish we could focus on more facts and less politics so people could make the decisions based on more than just waves of political opinion.

You claimed that the cop would be a scapegoat if the Grand Jury returned a verdict that he could be charged.

No, I was responding to your hypothetical - not creating my own. If the Grand Jury had gone differently, I would have accepted their decision.

Yet you are defending the current decision as if you already knew all of this information, so the appeal to authority appears to be only a matter of convenience.

Of course it is a matter of convenience. When I don't have the time or interest in a subject, I defer to people who make it their livelihood. The other path is one to conspiracy theories and misinformation.

I gave the information, you will need to do the homework.

You gave no information. You said "Google it". Challenge accepted. I went out looking for evidence that police brutality is increasing. I found this:

an estimated 1.4% had force used or threatened against them during their most recent contact, which was not statistically different from the percentages in 2002 (1.5%) and 2005 (1.6%).

It's a short period (2002-2008), but there was no increase. I was unable to find longer-term studies. They either do not exist or my Google-fu is weak. I would love to know where you saw numbers indicating that there has been an increase.

Lethal data is much harder to come by. There seems to be a single guy trying to remedy this, but I'm going to lump this into "government does not want these to exist" like proper gun violence reporting.

Holding a person accountable for their actions is the absolute opposite of anarchy.

I was referring to the rioting and the "trial by mob" of the officer.

Or aren't a women, who, coincidentally, happen to be a bit physically smaller and weaker on average than men and therefore are more vulnerable to physical assaults.

Stop. The only times that physical strength is the difference in who wins are in arm wrestling and weight lifting, neither of which are frequently used in attacks or to settle interpersonal conflicts.

Incidentally, men are the victims of violent crime significantly more often than women, so being female makes one less likely to be a target of violence. (Page 6, Table 5. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...)

Or the rest of the history of gendered violence against women.

You mean, the gendered violence against women that causes them to be 23.2% of murder victims: less than a third of the victim rate for men? (Pdf source, stats for the U.S. in 1980-2008; see table 1.)

Note that, even when violence against women is so much less common, we still make a bigger deal about it than violence against men.

The early release and refusal to place new inmates in California is huge. According to federal statistics, California dropped 50k internments per year and are releasing early 13k per month. Just their decline alone accounts for 72% of total US reductions. Depending on the length of sentences, they may well have sent home the entire 200k 'drop' in prisoners. And other major state prison systems admit their lowering of prison sentences for drug crimes is the reason for their drops.

And the california plan seems to be raising some crimes there

"By contrast, we find robust evidence that realignment is related to increased property crime. In terms of overall property crime, we estimate an additional one to two property crimes per year on average for each offender who is not incarcerated as a result of realignment. In particular, we see substantial increases in the number of motor vehicle thefts, which went up by 14.8 percent between 2011 and 2012. (Magnus Lofstrom and Steven Raphael, Public Safety Realignment and Crime Rates in California, Public Policy Institute of California, Dec., 2013 at p. 2.)"

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...

http://www.latimes.com/local/c...

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...