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The CDC is tasked with tracking gun deaths independently from the FBI’s annual crime reports. The CDC’s most recent report does confirm 31,000 gun deaths, however, the FBI’s annual crime report of the same year only showed 17,000 murders and non-negligent manslaughters. Upon deeper exam, of the 31,000 deaths, 60% were suicides and 15% were accidents or “clean” shootings. Only 25% of the deaths are non justified point to point killings. That 25% represents less than half of the murders in the nation.

Fun Fact: according to the FBI, the #1 weapon used in violent crimes is the baseball bat.

Searching around the DoJ:Statistics Webpage could bring up more: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=938

The information is out there, are people willing to listen?

Of course there is an increasing number of high school drop outs. The population is growing and those that were drop outs last year, are likely still drop outs this year. (If you return to school later in life and graduate, are you still considered a drop out?)

If, however, you look at the high school drop out rates you will see they have generally been in decline for the past 30 years.
http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/1HighSchoolDropout.cfm

-The American manufacturing base is declining.

Source? Everything I've seen shows record industrial output prior to the recent economic downturn. What indication do you have of a reversal in this long-term trend?

-High school graduations and the overall literacy is down the tubes.

Once again, the data that I could find contradicts your claim. Why do you think any recent spike in dropouts is anything other than a temporary aberration in the larger trend?

-The Baby Boomers are about to retire.

That was certainly the case a few months ago, but the stock market crash took care of that problem. The evaporation of so much wealth has pushed out retirement for a lot of boomers.

-The 50+ trillion National Debt (by 2020) needs to be paid, or at least serviced, which means much higher taxes (and much more job loss)

First of all, remember that even with low inflation $50 billion in 2020 is likely to be worth about $38 billion in today's dollars. Second, I find it hard to believe that people will continue to loan the US that much cheap money. If we run up that much debt, it will almost certainly cause high inflation. Cash would be a very bad position to be in with high inflation, as would bonds. If you have the stomach for commodities, they would probably weather inflation pretty well. So where would you suggest putting money in a high-inflation situation? Personally, I'm going for real estate pretty soon. But like I said, equities seem fairly well-priced right now, too.

And what do you think Obama can do?

Not much - the fed has pretty much blown its wad. The best I can hope for is that he spends all of this debt money on infrastructure, so that we at least get something lasting out of the political stunt called "stimulus".

Do you think his voodoo reaganomics will spend us out of trouble?

Reaganomics was usually applied to "trickle-down" theory, which isn't really what Obama is proposing. Nevertheless, any stimulus isn't going to change the broad direction of the economy, but it might take the edge off. The government is a lot bigger than it was during the depression, so don't try to compare government action then and now.

If I were you, I'd convert your stocks into gold and get the hell out of here.

Gold is way too erratic for me. If I had been a really smart guy and seen the stock crash coming in late september, I might have transferred to gold. Unfortunately, the price of gold crashed along with the stock market (after an initial spike). Now, it has since recovered - so if I held on to it I'd be fine, but no better off than if I'd stayed in cash. And who knows what it will do tomorrow? It's varied by roughly 15-20% in just the last month or so.

Starving dudes with loose nukes, that's what it's coming to.

Now you've lost me.

Racism and sexism have been damn near erased.

Really? What country do you live in?

I live in one where the black prison population per capita is six times higher than for whites, and the poverty rate for black children is more than twice that for white children. Racial profiling ("driving while black") remains a pervasive problem. Women still don't get equal pay for equal work, and efforts to criminalize abortion - and even birth control - continue apace.

Are things better than they were in this regard 100 years ago? Sure. But that's damning with faint praise.

According to this article there are presently 73.7 million children (under 18) in the United States.

If the OLPC achieves it's goal of one-laptop-per-child, then I am sure there will be no shortage of software houses prepared to develop software for this market, or even port their existing titles to the XO. There is a New Zealand company that makes educational software (windows) that sells in shops for $10 retail. At current markups, that means that the software developer is getting between 1-2 dollars per sale. Now imagine porting that same software to the XO, and selling it direct online for $2 per copy. If only 1% of the XO base buys a title, that's 1.4 million per title. At 10% it is 14M.

This is what Microsoft are looking at, a profitable platform that is running Linux, and that will be used by the next generation of computer purchasers. No wonder they are crapping their pants.

There's no doubt that dropout rates are a major U.S. problem, but the ABC article would make one think that dropout rates are on the rise. Nationally, this just isn't true. Between 1972 and 2004, dropout rates have fallen drastically. For all ethnicities, they are now almost half what the rates were 30 years ago (note: the full article that references this table can be found here)

This doesn't mean that isolated cities (such as Detroit and Baltimore) that have experienced serious economic problems and urban blight are better than 30 years ago, they are likely worse, but to characterize the problem as a national "epidemic" is completely ignoring the truth. Our school systems, teachers, and local governments have been working hard to raise graduation rates nationwide. And the data supports their assertion that they are seeing some success. Sure, there are MAJOR shortcomings to our public school system, but there has been major progress that shouldn't go unrecognized.

There's no doubt that dropout rates are a major U.S. problem, but the ABC article would make one think that dropout rates are on the rise. Nationally, this just isn't true. Between 1972 and 2004, dropout rates have fallen drastically. For all ethnicities, they are now almost half what the rates were 30 years ago (note: the full article that references this table can be found here)

This doesn't mean that isolated cities (such as Detroit and Baltimore) that have experienced serious economic problems and urban blight are better than 30 years ago, they are likely worse, but to characterize the problem as a national "epidemic" is completely ignoring the truth. Our school systems, teachers, and local governments have been working hard to raise graduation rates nationwide. And the data supports their assertion that they are seeing some success. Sure, there are MAJOR shortcomings to our public school system, but there has been major progress that shouldn't go unrecognized.

Whoops, wrong. The primary cause of death in the 20th century, some 200 million plus, was murder at the hands of one's own government.

Ahh, right. So the statistics from the WHO were wrong. I guess since that doesn't count as war.

you don't see romeo and juliet blamed for suicides though.. strange that.

Are you kidding? Or just a moron? Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 25 year olds. Each year, 500,000 from this same age group attempt suicide. Source: American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

For ages 15-19, homicide is the #2 cause of death, suicide is #3. #1 is "accidental death". Source: Child Trends Databank.

Romeo and Juliet are definitely "blamed" for some suicides. Some teens actually recreate the scene in high detail -- others are just "influenced" into believing that their 15-year-old "love" is so important, so desparately true, that they kill themselves when it doesn't work out.

Am I saying that we should ban showings of "Romeo and Juliet"? Naturally not. We should be teaching our kids, or in general, quit having kids if we don't want to take responsbility for teaching them. Although by age 15, I would argue that kids should have responsibility for themselves, but they don't know it because their parents, teachers, and a zillion other people are busy taking responsibility from/for them.

You get to drive at 16 (most states). At 18, you can vote, be called for jury duty, and in the case of boys, be drafted by the Army and forced to kill or be killed. At 21, you can buy a drink.

So when do kids become adults? I am very very sure that they have no idea. The same people which tell them to "act responsibly" and to "be an adult" also tell them exactly what choices to make: "don't have sex", "don't drink", "don't smoke".

Meanwhile the circle of blame keeps going around and around and around. The real change which needs to happen is not in the video game industry, or the gun industry, or the media. It is entirely in the upbringing of children to become responsible adults. Something is very fundamentally broken with respect to that right now.

Anyway, no matter who is "to blame" some innocent people were shot and killed, by a pair of human beings with the ability to load and fire a deadly weapon. If you as a parent are not willing to invest the time and resources into educating your child, they will grow up and develop anyway, developing physical and mental powers which exceed their ability to decide when and what to do with it.

So please, please, stop breeding if you are a moron. There's a good chance you will raise a mindless killer.