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Here's the basic problem. The person who commits the attack decides where the attack will occur, who the target(s) will be, what weapons will be used, and when (or if) the attack will occur. And if you keep him from getting the weapon(s) he wants this month, he can try again next month; he only needs to succeed once.

Suppose you mandate smart guns? The attacker will get non-smart guns. Mandate limited magazine capacity? The attacker will bring extra magazines, and/or extra guns. And just hope the attacker doesn't bring explosives, or simply burn down a building with lot of people inside it at the time. Heck, I can imagine some pretty grim carnage if ten motivated attackers all simply showed up with tire irons and baseball bats.

The police want to help, but they can't be everywhere. As the old line goes, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.

Some people will tell you that we just need to ban guns; that we need an iron-clad ban, in every state, that's enforced firmly. Those same people will tell you that people in Washington D.C. simply go to nearby Virginia or any other place with more-lax laws; ban guns everywhere and the bad guys presumably will have nowhere to go. Well, this won't work, and here's why:

Consider crack cocaine. That's subject to an iron-clad ban, in every state, that's enforced firmly. Crack is banned as hard as the wildest dreams of gun-banners, and always has been. Are the streets 100% crack-free? Crack addicts keep smoking their crack so they need to buy more on a regular basis; guns, on the other hand, are pretty durable. So if we can't get crack off our streets, there's no way we will get all the guns. It's a fantasy.

"Okay just ban the bullets!" Ammunition is easy to smuggle, and in fact easy to make. You'll never get 100% of it.

Jeff Cooper proposed that we imagine a 2x2 matrix: on one axis we have armed/not armed, and on the other we have criminals/law-abiding. The worst of all possible worlds is criminals armed/law-abiding not armed. You can discuss whether it's better to have criminals not armed/law-abiding armed, or whether you would prefer nobody be armed... but as Jeff Cooper pointed out, the bad guys always get their weapons, so the two boxes in the matrix where the bad guys are not armed are the fantasy boxes, never to be attained in the real world. That leaves you with the two possible boxes: bad guys armed/law-abiding not armed, or bad guys armed/law-abiding armed. I submit that the best that we can hope to do in the real world is to allow the law-abiding to be armed. There have been plenty of instances where a person with a gun stopped a shooting rampage before the police showed up, so this is something that has been demonstrated to work in the real world. Not with a 100% success rate (the bad guys managed to hurt or kill people before they were stopped) but that isn't a valid argument against letting people carry weapons ("it's not 100% successful so let's not allow it at all"). The key question is whether it does more good than harm.

Statistics show that citizens carrying firearms legally do not very often shoot the wrong person; in fact citizens have a better success rate than the police. This makes sense if you think about it: the citizen shot the bad guy because he/she was there, and saw the bad guy in action; whereas the police have to show up and figure out what is going on, and sometimes they make a mistake.

Statistics also show that letting citizens carry weapons does not lead to an increase in crime. The experiment has been tried, in numerous states of the USA. Crime overall has been falling despite the number of people with con

You are misinterpreting what I am saying.
I am talking about legal consequences, not civil.

Go back to 3rd grade.

I'm understanding what you are "saying". I'm not understanding what you meant to say. Civil consequences are legal consequences. Criminal consequences are not civil. That you don't understand the words you are using isn't my problem. Yet, it's my fault for correctly parsing what you said, and not ignoring everything you said to try to guess what you really meant. Next time, try saying what you mean correctly in the first place.

only Alice can be charged with a crime

Again, incorrect. The burden of proof is much higher, but 3rd parties can be charged with crimes. Exxon wasn't "sued" for the Valdez spill (well, they were, but those were separate to this). They were charged with crimes. Exxon wasn't driving. Negligence is a high standard to prove against a corporation, so they are rarely charge with it, but it does happen. It's a separate action, unrelated to the actions of Alice. Much like it's possible for a group that commits a crime, for one person to be found not guilty and the rest found guilty. There isn't a shield of criminal liability around the corporation because Alice has criminal responsibility. The shield is because they are a corporation. That's a separate issue. https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/pr... More recenty (and related to cars), GM was convicted of a crime. They allowed crashes to happen. They were found negligent (actually, pled to the equivalent). Not driving didn't protect them from criminal prosecution.

A rather clever approach used to poll the other side of the equation (Lesak & Miller 2002, McWhorter 2009, etc) is, rather than to use the word rape in the surveys, simply survey about their various sexual experiences, and include some experiences in the list that are rape, without using the word rape to describe them.

Depending on the group and the study,usually in the ballpark of 10% of young men confess to having committed rape at least once, and about a third of them to having done it multiple times...

Sorry, but this sort of crap doesn't help, I know you'll now start quibbling about which 'group' of young males we're talking about here, but it is heavily implied that we're all just as bad, and the '10%' and 'about a third of them' figures are designed to evoke a specific reaction, so, seeing as we're playing 'ballpark' figures here...

Census Data
FBI Data

US Census data 2010: Ages 10-69 years (arbitrarily chosen range): 119,561,848
10% being rapists, gives us: 11,956,184

Ok, so young men were mentioned, let's tune it down a bit

US Census data 2010: Ages 10-29: 43,533,295
10% being rapists, gives us: 4,353,329
and, assuming the surveys you talk about above mean that 33% of this 10% figure are repeat rapists, gives us 1,436,598.

... Which are numbers that correlate well with the victim reporting incidence.

Official FBI's statistics for 2010: 84,767 'forcible' rapes, and, bear in mind, they do not differentiate between rape types (e.g. male rape, homosexual rape..), but, for 'ballpark' purposes we're assuming rape as per discussion here so will take these figures as an absolute maximum.

Assuming each rape in the FBI's statistics was carried out by a different individual, and that these individuals were all from the same age range as published in the US census.

Running through the age ranges on the table gives you a figure of between 0.74% and 1.48% of the males in each range being rapists (up to 65-69 years old range), after that, obviously, the figures become a bit meaningless (rise to 925% for 100 years and over group...and, no, I'm not going to get drawn into the 'historical abuse' argument)

Taking wider ranges,
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 10-29, gives us a figure of 0.2%
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 10-69, gives us 0.07%..
Assuming we're talking about the aggregate age range 15-24, gives us 0.38%

So, not quite 10%.

Rape is not rare. Rapists are not rare. But convictions are. And victims know this latter fact, and few want to go through hell for something that is almost certain to be futile.

Rape and rapists may not be rare, however that doesn't mean they're as common as implied either. 'but, unreported and rapes...', yes, I know this happens and understand (from family experience) why people are reluctant to proceed with legal action in these cases, sorry, but as harsh and callous as this may sound they should proceed legally, horrible as the experience might be, as It is only rape if a court of law decides it to be so, until then, I'm afraid it is just allegations and innuendo.
Yes the legal system stinks, it might fail them, here's the thing though, it might not.

"Oh please!", and hyperbole, does not make you correct. Nor does the fact that the few who are, get the majority of media attention because otherwise it's not "newsworthy". There certainly are some, and studies that point it out, but "requirement for the job"?...Oh please!

https://www.theguardian.com/sc...
https://leb.fbi.gov/2012/novem...
http://www.businessinsider.com...

Gee, I wonder which jurisdictions have lower rates of home invasions?

Hard to say, home invasion is not necessarily a term in use everywhere.

There is data but you may consider it suspect.

When convicted criminals (burglars) are interviewed there's one thing they all agree on: getting shot by a homeowner is their number one fear. Getting caught is their number two fear.

Really? Can you post some?

It's just like the whole gun "debate". I say "debate" because it's only a debate when clear conclusions cannot be drawn from the facts.

Facts, as they say, are slippery things, especially when some sides make them up.

It's more like an article of religious faith at the altar of political ideology and a general "guns are icky" feeling when clear conclusions can be made and a "debate" persists. States which make it easy to conceal-carry have lower rates of violent crime. Mass shootings overwhelmingly happen in "gun free zones". Chicago, a city where it's nearly impossible to legally own a gun, has tons of shootings.

Actually, a lot of the pro-gun movement has its own ideology, and it's own "Guns are cool" feeling, because you know what? Crime has dropped across the country, mass shootings are rare incidents that don't really determine the events that concern us, and Chicago has lots of problems, including many revealed in a recent investigation of its police department.

I could go on and on but the point is clear: criminals who are willing to commit murder aren't afraid of being charged with weapons violations. Law-abiding folks who view criminal charges and jail as something that will ruin their life because they have a lot to lose, those people obey weapons restrictions. Those people tend not to be armed unless it is legal. Criminals don't want a gunfight in which they can easily die, criminals want an easy target. Conceal-carry means anyone is potentially armed so choosing a would-be victim becomes a lot more dangerous. This discourages crimes of opportunity which most robberies and the like are.

Despite popular belief, very few homicides are actually by criminals engaged in criminal enterprise. You're more likely to be murdered by somebody who has a relationship to you than a random criminal. FBI statistics.

Also the hypocrisy is amusing. The politicians who are all anti-gun always have armed guards. Isn't that something? Most people who are anti-gun are okay with police being armed.

You mean people draw a distinction between professionals and civilians? So??

This is strange because a police officer who shoots someone is almost never charged or held personally accountable. A private citizen who shoots someone can be guaranteed to be investigated and prosecuted if it was unjustified. Yet they're okay to have the parties with the least accountability holding the power of lethal force? This is a strange belief system and you can tell that it's strange because it has difficulty providing simple, clear reasons to justify itself.

Oh, you want to talk police accountability? Or even private citizen accountability? Sorry, but it's not the pro-gun movement that is doing that, instead they're the ones who are telling us POLICE are the victims of a massive conspiracy, at greater risk, and also pushing for laws to make citizens even less accountable.

But don't let any facts get in your way.

After all, you have your own religious faith to follow, right?

Of note: According to the FBI crime statistics, violent crime has been dropping steadily from 1993 through 2012. Crime, it seems, is not up at all - the media is just covering every single event with breathless desperation to make us think that there's some sort of massive, unheard-of epidemic going on. It's agenda driven, you can be sure.

I think the USA should be lauded for this kind of progress. There's more work to be done, of course - one shooting is always one too many - but we're definitely on the right trajectory.

The definition is terrorism is about bringing a desired political outcome with the populace largely affected in so much as the populace will revolt against their own government through the machinations of the terrorists.

I disagree. While trying to put into words what I feel it is, I ran into the FBI's definition, and it's actually quite good:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...

... means activities with the following ... characteristics:

• * Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• * Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;

I would also include threats of violet acts, and utilization of intimidation and fear to adversely affect another group. Whether or not that causes revolt or any real political change doesn't really matter.

Sure, just send a detailed list of the topics you would like to learn to one of the email addresses found here, and we will get right back to you:

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us

Actually armed robbery is pretty rare and can lead to someone dieing.

According to the FBI there were 325,802 robberies in the US in 2014. A firearm was used in 40.3% of those. So 131,298 armed robberies that used a firearm. That works out to 359 per day on average. Which works out to just about one every four minutes. Sorry, my pulled out my ass number was off by a factor of 2. So there are only half as many as I was guessing. If you go back 20 years, one every two minutes is pretty close. Not all, or even the majority of these ended in murder.

According to Wikipedia there were 32,703 fatalities in vehicles in 2013. That's almost 90 deaths per day. Should the police be able to monitor everyone's car real time too?

Here's a list of terrorist killings on US soil that list all deaths going back to 1865 If you are so inclined, I'd be interested in the number of deaths due to terrorism, though not enough to actually tally it myself. But at first glance, it looks like there are probably half the number of deaths on this list than a single year of auto accidents.

You know what's really rare, except for a few outliers? Death by terrorists. That's what the Stingray is supposed to be used for. It's one thing to trample on peoples rights when you have reasonable suspicion of an attack that could kill dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people. But to do so for crimes like this is inexcusable.

Certain groups of Kurds are terrorists in Turkey, because they (drumroll) committed acts of terror in Turkey.

There is a very specific definition of terrorist, if it doesn't fit the definition, it is not terror.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...

According to their website

The National Security Branch carries out the FBI’s responsibilities as the lead intelligence and law enforcement agency in the nation to detect, deter, and disrupt national security threats to the United States and its interests. Our goal is to collect, analyze, and share intelligence to develop a comprehensive understanding of—and to defeat—national security threats directed against the United States while preserving civil liberties.

We continue to refine our intelligence capabilities to position ourselves to stay ahead of the evolving threats our nation faces. Intelligence directs how we understand threats, how we prioritize and investigate these threats, and how we target our resources to address them.

To ensure success, we continue to integrate our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities in every operational program. The traditional distinction between national security and criminal matters is increasingly blurred as terrorists commit crimes to finance their activities and computer hackers create vulnerabilities that can be exploited. The integration of intelligence and investigations makes the FBI uniquely situated to address these threats and vulnerabilities across programs. The FBI draws on both intelligence and law enforcement tools to determine strategically where and when to disrupt threats.

Is it just me or does a reasonable reading of this statement imply that a big part of the FBI's mission is to help eliminate vulnerabilities in software used by American citizens and companies? Is there an interpretation in which they are credibly following their own mission statement?

Not for things like homicides. The police work to catch anyone who does it, and don't just "let it slide" because someone is white.

When adjusted (for population size), the black crime offender rates are much, much higher. It's well documented that (for example), most murder of white people is done by white people, and murder of black people is done by black people.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

If they were just not prosecuting white murderers, you wouldn't see 83.5% of murder convictions for white victims be against white offenders. 90% of the convictions for black victims are against black people.

Even if we assume that the 6.5% difference between the two is solely a result of racism (so blacks and white pick their victims race at the same preferential rate), it still doesn't come close to explaining why 49.4% of solved murders are committed by a population that's roughly 14% of the population.

If we accept that 1/3 of murders go unsolved, and assume the police are racists (and act in favour of whites, and against blacks), that is going to mean that murders of white people get priority and murders of black people do not. Given the huge bias in victim selection by whites and blacks, that only makes the numbers worse, as that means that black murderers are more likely to go free and white murderers are more likely to get caught.

Put simply, the low number of black convictions for white murders means that it's impossible that they are simply being caught at higher numbers for those cases. They are 14% of the offenders for white murders, in line with their population representation. It can't be that the police are ignoring white murders and only solving black murders, as the clear rate on cases is too high.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the numbers is that blacks are significantly more likely to offend, not just more likely to be convicted.

Since the stats show the opposite of what you are saying, that in fact whites commit most violent crimes, I now realize that you are a fucking racist.

In absolute numbers, sure. That's because whites are 77.35% of the population, and blacks are 14.3%.

In terms of rate, blacks commit a disproportionately high number of violent crimes.

With murder, the police don't just "let it slide" for white people. When 14.3% of the population is committing more than 43% of the murder in the country, there's a problem.

You might want to try the same statistics removing the poorest 10-20% of the population.

It helps a bit, but isn't quite as effective as removing the black population is at bringing the number down.

If you look at the murder statistics, you can see that of the white offenders with known ethnicity, 532/1477 of the offenders were hispanic. Given that hispanics are around 17% of the population, their rate is significantly higher than for non-hispanic whites (but still lower than for blacks). They are also disproportionately poor (like blacks).

Murder statistics are less biased than (for example) drug convictions, as the police are less likely to selectively enforce murder laws, and wealth is less likely to be able to get someone out of a conviction. Enough wealth will, but that applies to rich blacks as well as rich whites.

This is consistent with the observation that crime rates for the hispanic population tend to be higher than for non-hispanic whites, but lower (in general) than blacks.

A quick scan of local on-line arrest records shows a majority of blacks committing violent crimes even though the black population is a minority. So the next logical step will be a white only version of Uber. Just for safety purposes, of course.

I'm sure you meant to write "a majority of violent crimes were committed by blacks" but you may still be wrong. I don't know your locality but in the US more for almost every crime more whites are arrested.

You left out some vital stuff.

Their avowed core values:

Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States;
Respect for the dignity of all those we protect;
Compassion;
Fairness;
Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity;
Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences of our actions and decisions;
Leadership, both personal and professional; and
Diversity.

Only the last of those is gag-worthy.

Their solemnly sworn oath:

I [name] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

You left out some vital stuff.

Their avowed core values:

Rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States;
Respect for the dignity of all those we protect;
Compassion;
Fairness;
Uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity;
Accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and the consequences of our actions and decisions;
Leadership, both personal and professional; and
Diversity.

Only the last of those is gag-worthy.

Their solemnly sworn oath:

I [name] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

The parts of his job he is conveniently ignoring is upholding the Constitution and the civil liberties of US citizens.

Dunno, what you are talking about. FBI's mission does not contain those things you listed:

Our Mission

As an intelligence-driven and a threat-focused national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities, the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.

1) Define terrorist. That gets pretty broad, especially when you ask the government, because they consider everyone a potential terrorist.

Except that the government has a published well defined definition of terrorism.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...

18 U.S.C. 2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism”:

"International terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*
"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.
18 U.S.C. 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:

Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).
* FISA defines "international terrorism" in a nearly identical way, replacing "primarily" outside the U.S. with "totally" outside the U.S. 50 U.S.C. 1801(c).

The more important point that you both missed is that mass shootings are most often stopped by the shooter taking their own life. After that they are more likely stopped by a law enforcement office. After that, by an unarmed civilian. Far less often are they stopped by an armed civilian.

There are thousands of people who die every day in the United States to gun violence due to gang killing, some of that is collateral damage where innocents get killed, so it isn't just "thugs".

FBI Statistics 2013
There were 14,196 murders in the US in 2013. If all murders were committed by guns (not true but you have to analyze Table 20, then the average daily murder rate is ~39 per day. Your point stands but don't exaggerate by 2 orders of magnitude.

The Federal Bureau of Incompetence is still driven by publicity, not results. (Hopefully that link will game search engine indexes to associate that name more fully with the FBI. Welcome to "bad publicity", G-bitches.)

AFIS is just an automated system. Manual fingerprinting also follows identifying features and matching them up. So do you agree that we've ascertained that manual inspection is indeed a matching of points of identification or characteristics, as per the FBI's own fingerprint recognition document?

Here's the methodology.

Your link doesn't support your argument.

I know that, but I figured that most readers wouldn't know what the Mulford Act was. Does this help?

The data clearly shows that Jews are disproportionately the target of hate and crime.

Woah there, I did not claim otherwise. This isn't the Oppression Olympics here, and there's more than one target of bigotry in your fine country.

Using the FBI statistics from 2012, here's a rough guide to how likely you are to be the target of a hate crime if you are a member of various groups of people:

• Anti-Jewish hate crimes: 140 per million (using the "core Jewish population" of 6 million; if you use the "total" figure of 10 million, it's 80 per million population)
• Anti-Islamic hate crimes: 60 per million
• Anti-indigenous (American Indian/Alaskan Native) hate crimes: 30 per million
• Anti-Hispanic hate crimes: 9 per million
• Anti-Atheist/Agnostic hate crimes: 6 per million
• Anti-Catholic hate crimes: 1.2 per million
• Anti-Protestant hate crimes: 0.2 per million

To say that Muslims are disproportionately the target of hate crime is not to say that Jews are not.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

In 2013, there were 5723 murders recorded in the FBI stats.

https://www.nationalgangcenter...

In 2012, there were 2,363 gang-related homicides (2103 data not provided yet it seems), but it seems fair that around 2,000 gang-related homicides occur every year. In other words, about 40% of all murders in the US are gang-related homicides. With an estimated 770,000 gang members accounting for 40% (about 2300) of all murders, the rest of the population (314.8M) produced about 3360 murders, or about 1.06 murders per 100,000 non-gang people. This is clearly on par with other countries who do not have similar gang problems.

From the FBI numbers above, it also seems that black-on-black murders are quite disproportionately represented. At about 17% of the population, black-on-black murders were also about 40% of the total (2245). White-on-white murders were higher the same as an absolute number (2,509) but there are 195.6M whites compared to 53.6M blacks. The numbers say that blacks murder blacks at 4.1 per 100,000; whites murder whites at about 0.77 per 100,000. Blacks also murdered 409 whites; whites murdered 189 blacks.

On the other hand, men committed about 5000 murders in 2013, and women committed about 500.

The FBI operates outside the USA.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...
or, if you prefer a different source
http://dictionary.reference.co...

terrorism
[ter-uh-riz-uh m]
noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

So, what terrorism has the FBI engaged in, please cite sources. Since I am such a naive little child, you should be able to find many cases of the FBI engaging in terrorism.

Asset forfeiture is very federal.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...

Licensed drivers kill far more people than do murderers who use guns (whether obtained and possessed legally OR illegally). The irony here is that you think you're making some sort of constructive point, when you're actually undermining what appears to be your agenda.

This has to be the stupidest thing I've read in a very long time, even on /.

Overall death rates involving motor vehicles and firearms are roughly equal, somewhat in excess of 30,000 per year in the U.S. (The motor vehicle death rate is comparable to other developed nations, while the firearm death rate is far higher.) If you want to talk only about "muderers who use guns", then the relevant comparison is firearm homicides (more than 8,000 in 2011according to the FBI), to vehicular homicides, which are so rare that it is difficult to even find statistics on them. A few hundred a year at most.

âoeIn the FBIâ(TM)s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.â (FBI â" CUS â" Violent Crime)

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cj...


* And ehre is UK : https://www.gov.uk/government/...

Violent crime contains a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Around a half of violent incidents identified by both BCS and police statistics involve no injury to the victim

So you get pushed and shoved, and hurt your ankle ? In UK a Violent crime. That would not even count as aggravated assault in US : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...


Basically when you look into it, the myth that there is more violent crime in UK than US is jsut a myth, usually misused to pretend gun are needed for self defense. They are not. They are escalation tools, they lead mugger and petty crime to escalate the force they use in their crime.

But generally when an armed group takes over a building that is owned by the government it is generally called terrorism, yes.

No, it's not. You're a fucking moron for thinking so.

Terrorism involves killing people. Specifically, it involves killing *random* people. Occupying a building is not terrorism, it is civil disobedience. Unless they were planning on renaming the place the Alamo and fighting until the very last man, there is no conceivable way you can believe this to actually be terrorism, and advocating for it to be called that is a disgusting injustice where you are literally calling for the state to murder your fellow citizens. Considering they were arrested peaceably, this doesn't seem to have been the case.

It's even more astonishing that you would quote the UN (???????) with a definition which plainly does not fit what they were doing and definitions for a law regarding the

Requirement of annual country reports on terrorism

. How is that even relevant? You don't know the law, you don't know what words mean, and you don't seem to have a sensible grasp on what justice is or should be. What exactly do you know?

Here is a more relevant definition of terrorism (which also plainly does not fit): https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/i...

"Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics:

Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

18 U.S.C. 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:

Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including 930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and 1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).

Anyone who thinks these people are TERRORISTS needs to have their brain adjusted. Mexican cartels murdering judges or leaving decapitated bodies laying around is a good example of violent coercion and intimidation and could only arguably be considered terrorist organizations. These people certainly have not been. The kind of fucking retard logic displayed here could categorize black sit-ins in the 1960s as being terrorist actions. It's insanity.

1. Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
2. Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
3. Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

18 U.S.C. Â 2332b defines the term "federal crime of terrorism" as an offense that:

1. Is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct; and
2. Is a violation of one of several listed statutes, including  930(c) (relating to killing or attempted killing during an attack on a federal facility with a dangerous weapon); and  1114 (relating to killing or attempted killing of officers and employees of the U.S.).

Link for reference

The things that the FBI have done over the years just boggle the mind.

Have you read the letters they sent to suspected mafia leaders posing a activists...and vice versa?
FBI has the docs here
https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-...

Funny how all the good bits are buried and really bad copy....very hard to read. Not like the crisp version of the same you can find elsewhere (didn't find a text copy): http://www.thesmokinggun.com/f...

"Dear Hoodlum Leader:
Ever since I read in our paper the Worker..."

Words just fail me. Its so far beyond the pale.

You might also want to examine the stats on deaths by murder or accident, and where a rifle fits in that list. Handguns are much higher, but still not at the top.

You are mistaken. Guns are way at the top of the list of weapons used in murders. Guns are used more than five times more often to commit murder than any other weapon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

And here is the raw data, if you happen to believe the Washington Post is just lying to help the gun grabbers.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

By all means, provide your source that supports your ridiculous claims.

If I had made any ridiculous claims, I would be glad to supply sources. But since everything I brought to your attention is in the public record, maybe you should shun those moronic sites you have been reading and try reality for a while.

FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance

Pete Seeger

Woody Guthrie

John Lennon

Even more black people were lynched in the U.S. than previously thought, study finds

The Murder of Emmett Till

There's the short list detailing everything you've worked so hard to ignore. So, how about if you do a little reading and see if you can find out how many people went to jail for those thousands of lynchings history has recorded. And while you're at it, how about if you show me where in the FBI's charter authorizes surveillance on lawful folk singers, non-violent rock stars as well as religious men who preached peaceful assembly to redress what they believed to be illegal grievances.

Ignorance can be unlearned while willful ignorance is an inexcusable state of mind.

I never said that they can only be robbed physically, even though it still is the most popular method.

It is not:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business...
https://www.fbi.gov/stats-serv...
http://www.informationweek.com...? (note that the stats are from 2006)

. Also, you said this:

Yes, real banks get robbed, but that takes some real time and effort and most of the time the robbers get caught. In contrast, the risk-to-reward ratio for virtual currency is so unbalanced that it's a natural target with minimal risks. No bullets flying around, no get-away cars, no bank guards, no logistics about hauling the cash away, no dye-packets to worry about. It's like a crime made in heaven.

Note how you the contrast you present completely focuses on the physical nature. Had you have said that banks have better digital security than some crappy Bitcoin-exchange there would have been no issue. To say that you didn't imply that the 'real time and effort' had to do with 'bullets flying around, get-away cars, bank guards, hauling the cash away, dye-packets' is simply disingenuous.

The difference is that regardless of how the bank is robbed, I'll still get my money back.

This is still irrelevant to this thread, as I pointed out before.

Virtual currencies do have some serious, unavoidable problems inherent

Nobody in this thread has said otherwise (although the 'unavoidable' part of it is debatable). You don't seem to be very good at discussing. You shouldn't just randomly insert new subtopics and pretend they are a reply to what the other party said.

want to look?
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

Propaganda and patsies....

At least 7 of the 19 so-called 9/11 suicide pilots have been confirmed to be alive and well. They had their passports stolen. There has been zero evidence that Muslims carried out 9/11. That was a lie that was propagated by war criminal and terrorist supporter George "Dubya" Bush (and company).

Falsely accused hijacker Abdul Rahman Said al-Omari was even given a formal apology:

RIYADH, Sept 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. officials in Riyadh offered Abdul Rahman Said al-Omari an official apology in the presence of Saudi interior ministry officials for including his name among the list of suspects in the U.S. terrorist attacks, news agencies reported Monday. Original story here (Arabic)

In fact, Osama Bin Laden was never listed on the FBI's most wanted list for 9/11 because the FBI had no hard evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11.

It is because of 9/11 that this whole bogus "war on (of?) terrorism" and Muslim hatred began. Who benefits from it? USA and Israel. Partners in crime.

Most of these other terrorist attacks are also false flag operations perpetrated by the same people and blamed on Muslims.

The 7/7 bombings in London, incredibly, were planned as crisis management exercises the night before they occured. They just happened to pick the same subway stations and the same times as the terrorists! What a freakin' coincidence! Simply, WOW!

The war on terror is a global sham designed to shift the blame from the real terrorists to the Muslim people and usher in a fascist New World Order, as announced by "Poppy" Bush on 9/11, 1990.

Please turn off FOX news and take your xenophobic, racist b.s. and stick it where the sun don't shine.

So, the only way to handle the issue without having godlike powers is to take all of them.

Can't be done. Impossible. You are dreaming.

As long as we are going to wish for the impossible, I wish that all the people who are willing to hurt others would simply be kind people who don't want to hurt others.

If you want me to believe that you can keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals, first show me a place where junkies are unable to buy crack cocaine. Crack cocaine is not legal for anyone, anywhere... we have Draconian laws about it and those laws are enforced.

And yet the junkies are able to get their fix, week after week. (Most violent criminals who have a gun don't get a new one very often... certainly not every week.)

Thus, our choices as a society: either only criminals will have firearms, or everyone will have firearms. And Gary Kleck's research shows that legal firearms in the hands of ordinary citizens deters a substantial amount of violent crime each year.

I read an essay that I found very moving. It was written by a guy who worked for civil rights for black people in the deep South in the 1950's. He said that he will forever be opposed to any attempt to make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to have guns, or to give the police department authority to decide who may have guns and who may not. Black folks being legally armed prevented an uncountable but nonzero number of lynchings, and he said in some cases the local recruiting station for the KKK was the local police department.

TL;DR If you take away the legal defensive uses of firearms you will increase the amount of violent crime (by preventing some violent crimes from being deterred) and you will not prevent violent crime because criminals will still be armed.

Sure, the link between handguns and violence is obvious.

Handguns can be used to commit violent crimes, but they do not cause crimes. Violent criminals regard a firearm as a necessary tool of their trade, and they will have one.

If you somehow got the magical ability to get rid of all the firearms, people would still kill each other with knives, blunt instruments, and hands and feet. More people are killed by hands and feet each year in the USA than are killed by any weapon in the UK each year.

In the past two decades, the number of firearms in the USA has dramatically increased while at the same time the number of violent crimes has decreased. If guns caused crime, this would not be the case.

So, in the end, you and I want the same thing: as few violent crimes as possible, ideally none. We disagree on how best to achieve that.

You are probably in more danger of being shot by a black. Stats prove that.

No, they don't

Total arrests for murder and manslaughter in 2012: 8,506
Of those, 4,101 were white, and 4,203 were black. Consider that blacks make up around 13% of the US population according to the 2010 census.

Read your own link, dumbshit!

As others have already noted, what you believed about guns and Australia is not true.

So, then why is the Australian Government LYING on its own web site about homicide statistics? The link that I gave began with "aic.gov.au." What reason do you have to believe that Australia is trying to slant their own numbers?

USA 1995 - Homicide per 100,000 - 8.2
USA 2012 - Homicide per 100,000 - 4.7

USA 1995 - Violent crime per 100,000 - 684.5
USA 2012 - Violent crime per 100,000 - 386.9

Australia 1995 - Homicide per 100,000 - 1.96
Australia 2012 - Homicide per 100,000 - 1.30

Australia 1995 - Violent crime per 100,000 - 240
Australia 2012 - Violent crime per 100,000 - 201

Here is the summary:
USA Violent crime - decrease by 43%
Australia Violent crime - decrease by 16%

USA Homicide - decrease by 42%
Australia Homicide crime - decrease by 33%

So, the data DOES indeed show that, overall, Australia is a safer county, However, since banning most guns, Australia has not shows NEARLY the decrease in crime that has been seen in the US.

The US also has MUCH more cultural diversity, both racially and culturally, a different overall culture, a different economy, different poverty levels, and a different mental health care system. So Australian and USA are not an "apples to apples" comparison. However, the purpose of this is to see what effect the Australian laws have had on their crime rate vs. the USA.

Also, this is an interesting graph. Note how the sudden jump in robbery a few years AFTER the new gun laws went into effect? Curious. Also note how the "sexual assault" line has remained fairly constant. http://www.aic.gov.au/statisti...

Yes, I would take your gun. I hope to do so someday.

I am an honest man. Why in the world would you want to disarm an honest man? This is the thing that I absolutely cannot understand. Tell you what. If you want to live in a country without guns, there are several other countries just waiting for you. Instead of infringing on the rights of millions of Americans, just move somewhere with less freedom. That way, everybody is happier. I, for one, happen to enjoy living my own life the way that I want. I leave other people alone, and I expect the same from them. Why is that too much to ask? Do you enjoy forcing your opinions on others? Do you get a thrill from controlling people? If you don't like guns, don't buy one. It really is that simple. Tell you what. If you renounce your US citizenship, I will chip in $50 for a one-way ticket to the country of your choice, just to help you get started.

-- Source Data --

Data for US: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

Data for Australia: http://www.aic.gov.au/dataTool...
Used estimates of Australian population of 18.07 million for 1995 and 22.72 million for 2012

No, they don't

Meeting random people you are correct as you would meet more white murderers than black murderers however that same data adjusted for population:

Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter
White Pop 223,600,000 - 8,506 - 0.004% - 1 in 26,287 of murdering someone in a year
Black Pop 42,000,000 - 4,101 - 0.010% - 1 in 10,241 of murdering someone in a year

(population from 2010 census)

From A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013 by the FBI, we find that unarmed citizens are more than 4x more likely to restrain the shooter than armed citizens. Statistically, armed victims aren't stopping shootings...fact.

In 3.1% of cases, the shooting ended after armed individuals who were not law enforcement personnel exchanged gunfire with the shooters.
In 13.1% of cases, the situation ended after unarmed citizens safely and successfully restrained the shooter.

Source

Good guys with guns such as trained law enforcement might be helping, but armed citizens statistically are not very significant when it comes to active shootings. So yeah, parent is clearly right and the facts back him up just fine. Your anecdote while interesting is obviously not statistically significant. I am not sure why you linked data about preventing all crime if you are talking about mass murders and victims stopping shootings.

You are probably in more danger of being shot by a black. Stats prove that.

No, they don't

On the other hand, perhaps you are, if you're also black.

You are probably in more danger of being shot by a black. Stats prove that.

No, they don't

Why not temporarily ban white loners in their 20's from owning guns because most of the time it's one of them that are shooting up churches, schools, and theaters?

Actually, according to the FBI, there is no clear demographic profile of shooters except that they're usually male. Age and race were not significant contributors.

Banning all Muslims is not a common sense solution because your chances of getting killed by a Muslim in the US is virtually nil. It's not like people aren't getting killed on a daily basis, but the causes are much more mundane than terrorism.

The idea of banning all Muslims is a reaction to an irrational fear.

I completely agree; religious-based discrimination should have no place in government policy.

Unregistered bad guy with drone can be stopped by registered good guy with drone.

According to the FBI, that doesn't even work with guns. As described in A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013, reported at New FBI Report Casts Doubt on NRA's 'Good Guy Stops Bad Guy' Nonsense and other places including The Daily Show, Jordan Klepper: Good Guy with a Gun Pt. 2 ...

Of active shooting incidents just released by the FBI which analyzed 160 "active shootings" resulting in injuries to 1,043 victims, including 486 deaths, between 2000 and 2013. Here's how these incidents ended.

More than half (56 percent) were terminated by the shooter who either took his or her own life, simply stopped shooting or fled the scene.

Another 26 percent ended in the traditional Hollywood-like fashion with the shooter and law enforcement personnel exchanging gunfire and in nearly all of those situations the shooter ended up either wounded or dead.

In 13 percent of the shooting situations, the shooter was successfully disarmed and restrained by unarmed civilians, and

In 3 percent of the incidents the shooter was confronted by armed civilians, of whom four were on-duty security guards and one person was just your average "good guy" who happened to be carrying a gun.

We'll need to add a whole LOT of "good guys with guns" to bump that 3% / 1 person statistic to anything mildly practically useful.

According to the FBI: yes.

If the mass shooting numbers are really that low, why are we even talking about this? 60 per year is down in the realm of people killed by lightning strikes.

Well, The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents annually. During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually. - if the number of people killed by lightning strikes were consistently on the rise, people would care.

It's not mine, it's the FBI's long standing standard.

For mass shootings or for mass murder? According to tthe Wikipedia page "The Congressional Research Service acknowledges that there is not a broadly accepted definition,[2] and uses a definition of a "public mass shooting"[3] if 4 or more people are actually killed, not including the perpetrator, echoing the FBI definition[4][5] of the term "mass murder"

To make it clear, your "FBI's long standing standard" is their definition of mass murder, not of mass shootings. For shootings they use the "Active Shooter" definition: An active shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area - IOW, nobody has to die, not even be hurt for that definition.