Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Bans Subreddit Dedicated To Finding Navy Yard Shooters
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reddit became a gathering place for amateur sleuthing in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year, fueling what some reports called 'online witch hunts' that resulted in some people being falsely identified as the bomber. Now Andrea Peterson reports at the Washington Post that a section on the popular online community for finding the Navy Yard shooters has been banned. 'We banned it because it violated site rules by encouraging the posting of personal information,' says Erik Martin from reddit. The shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning left at least 12, including a gunman dead. But police say there may be another suspect at large, and they 'have reason to believe' this individual was involved in shootings."
Since 4chan will just get it wrong for them.
Just tell me who to beat senseless with mob justice and I'm there
...went really well for Reddit. They probably banned it just for the potential deluge of bad publicity.
And right after they'd managed to finger Lee Harvey Oswald.
Coincidence? Follow the money, sheeple!
As I recall and TFS states these Sherlocks managed to wrongly identify at least one person in the Boston bombings and correctly identify none, so good riddance to any further efforts in that direction.
by incorrectly naming suspect. http://www.dailydot.com/news/aaron-alexis-navy-yard-linkedin-reddit/
work in progress
And are safer in general with less crime in general?
You might want to look at those crime stats again. The USA has a fuckload of homicides compared to Western Europe, especially by gun, but violent crime overall is not bad. And that's a minor miracle considering our public policy regarding the urban poor. So yes, in the US if you are involved with gang warfare, you stand a larger chance of being murdered than in Europe. On the other hand, if you are just walking down the street, you are a lot more likely to get mugged in Europe. So there you go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
As long as it on your property or public property. If you start talking crap about the occupation of palestine at Starbucks, they tell you to get out.
What's wrong with a massacre? You make it sound like nipples were shown during the killings.
Civilized countries like Switzerland, where almost everyone has an assault rifle at home at one time or another and has an option to take a fire arm home for free from the government after their mandatory military service? That country is pretty goddamn civilized.
Sure they can. Reddit can allow/disallow whatever they want - the First Amendment covers rights of free speech against the government only.
For values of "you" which equal the Federal government, a State government, a municipality, or some other government actor.
First amendment: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech..."
Fourteenth amendment: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;"
Held to bring the States within the umbrella of the first amendment in Gitlow v. New York.
However, Reddit is not a government actor. More to the point, Reddit has absolute editorial discretion under the Communications Decency Act -- so that even case law concerning speech in company towns and shopping centers cannot be used by analogy to create any obligation for the site to permit it.
Reddit could ban it, your local paper could ban it, and your ad-supported or paid email service could ban it. They simply don't have the power to throw you in jail or confiscate your money if you violate the ban.
http://vigilantcitizen.com/hidden-knowledge/origins-and-techniques-of-monarch-mind-control/
Monarch Programming is a method of mind control used by numerous organizations for covert purposes. It is a continuation of project MK-ULTRA, a mind-control program developed by the CIA, and tested on the military and civilians. The methods are astonishingly sadistic (its entire purpose is to traumatize the victim) and the expected results are horrifying: [...]
In America, you have freedom of speech... but it's the 18th-century definition of "speech", which is more accurately described by today's use of the word "expression", because you have the freedom to claim any idea you want, rather than being required to pretend you like whatever the government likes. Speaking of government, that's the only entity offering you that freedom. The government promises you free expression, but others are equally free to express displeasure at your expression, to the extent of their other rights. Businesses can refuse to serve you, newspapers can reject your letters to the editor, and other people can even burn you in effigy... because those are all protected speech/expression as well.
Of course, in the past 237 years, people have abused that freedom of expression to curtail others' rights. The Supreme Court has determined that the right to free expression is not as important as someone else's right to life, and it doesn't override rule of law, either. Speech that incites "imminent lawless action" is not protected, even from the government.
Americans have the freedom of expression. You can post your ideas on a billboard and display them (in a lawful manner), and you are completely safe from government prosecution and persecution for holding those views. You are not safe, however, from the consequences of pissing people off.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If your aim was really to prevent partisan bickering, I would like to think you'd have left "anti-gun nuts" out of it entirely and presented a neutral stance instead. As it stands, you're just making a pre-emptive strike.
Actually, if you drop "anti-gun" and change "agenda" to "agendas", this sounds like a downright reasonable post. Perhaps keep that in mind next time?
"Police are now looking for shooters car in and around Navy Yard. Its described as Black Nissan with Texas tag BJH-7396.
Paul Wagner
Fox5Wagner
via Twitter about 1h ago"
Unequivocally the realest of the realz...
This is getting tedious. America has had more guns than people since Euros first stepped foot on it 500 years ago. If guns haven't turned the US into a lawless Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland by now, chances are it isn't going to anytime soon.
And WTF does it even mean to "run and hide" under gun rights? This is histrionic babble.
well said
it is unfortunate so many people out there think freedom means "i can do whatever the hell i want without consequence" like an immature child
and don't understand what freedom really is: something that goes hand in hand with responsibility, as any true adult understands
please note:
where there is no responsibility, there is no freedom
if you don't understand or agree with that statement, you don't even know what freedom really is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Social media is great for a lot of things such as getting different points of view on a news topic. Social media is not good for witch hunts. Anyone who's used reddit knows how easily the hivemind is swayed to hate or love someone. All it takes is a cleverly worded article romanticizing about how great or how awful someone is. People who know the formula can almost flip a switch to the entire community.
Witch hunts are bad enough when it is just a corporation behaving badly. Thread people talk about passing out pitch forks and so forth and so on. There definitely is a witch hunt mentality sometimes on reddit. And normally it is mostly harmless. Dumb, but harmless. Social media is good for a lot of things, but crime solving is not one of these things.
Real media is threatened by social media. So anything that is bad in social media, real media will highlight hard. They'll try everything they can to discourage people from using social media and outright close it down if they can. So it is better that social media witch hunts get shut down prematurely, before someone determines themselves to be a vigilante or otherwise act dumb out in public.
To conclude social media should be used for it strengths such as bringing attention to intelligent conversations, humor, and different points of view. This is refreshing compared to main stream media which every channel is corrupted by political agendas so there is no such thing as different points of view that are correct. Social media has weaknesses, and maybe we should really act to make sure these weaknesses don't go out of control.
God spoke to me
Just what DO you think freedom means? Do you think freedom means "I can do whatever the hell I want, right up until the point the state decides what I'm doing is irresponsible and sends goons to beat the shit out of me, throw me in a cage, and/or kill me?" Because that's an awfully funny definition of "freedom"; it's rather similar to "despotism".
The usual way that statement works is "the large print giveth, the small print taketh away". For example, "citizens have the right to free speech / citizens have the responsibility not to speak in a way Authority doesn't like".
They have no power to insert things into the constitution that weren't there before...
...but the SCOTUS does have the power (and the duty) to interpret the law according to the circumstances at hand, reconciling the traditional written law with the current societal views. Ideally, the judicial branch is what determines whether something that is law is also right.
That "fire in a crowded theater" case? Used to arrest war [protesters].
Or, from the perspective of American citizens in 1919, the accused (Schenck) was weakening the American war effort, indirectly threatening the lives of every American. That infringes on their inherent and inalienable right to life, which as noted earlier, generally takes precedence over freedom of expression. The key detail in the ruling, of which "falsely shouting fire in a theatre" was an illustration, was that speech intended to create a "clear and present danger" should not be protected.
However, the SCOTUS was eventually swayed by later societal focus on the right of free expression. In 1969, another case reached the court (involving a man indirectly threatening the President), but the opinion had changed. The SCOTUS opined that even though the speech was advocating violence and literally even promoting treason, it was not directly inciting "imminent lawless action", so it should indeed be protected. That test remains the standard to this day, overriding the earlier "clear and present danger" concept.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Reddit has terms of service and rules that you adhere to when posting or otherwise participating in the community. They don't have an obligation to accommodate those rules to your liking.
That doesn't destroy your freedom of speech. You're free to email or use some other service which allows you to communicate that information. You can try Slashdot, if you want.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
more like "your freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose"
i can't play my music at 3 am, i impinge on my neighbor's right to sleep
i can't speed 120 mph on the highway, i impinge on other driver's right to live
i can't smoke in the office, i impinge on my fellow worker's right to breathe
and when the boss/ police/ landlord comes by and complains, there will be some, like yourself, who in their immaturity, will see it as the state taking away their rights, when the only person infringing on other people's rights is you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except the purpose of this banned subreddit wasn't actually to find the shooter. It was satirical. All the posters were making fun of how bad they fucked things up during the Boston bombings.
And you know that:
1. Some posters will miss the /sarcasm tag, take it seriously and post personal information of real life people. /sarcasm tag and flog stories about how Reddit is screwing the lives of innocent people. Again.
2. Some posters will take the opportunity to post personal information of their ex's, their enemies, their bosses...
3. Some media company will miss the
Reddit did the right thing by shutting it down.
Guns owned by Americans still outnumber Americans, as they have since WWII. Americans are still more likely to be killed by an agent of the government, or themselves, than another armed citizen. Ownership of guns is not the problem. Lack of mental health care is the problem.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All that happens on such a subreddit is wild speculation. Last time they did it, innocent people wrongly identified got harrassed IRL. They're not detectives. Just send any real tips direct to the FBI.
Actually, they are not supposed to reconcile anything "with the current societal views." That is what causes all the problems. When current societal views say that "freedom of the press" only means printing or speaking viewpoints approved by the government and the government says that believing in the FOSS ideals is no longer allowed are we still okay with SCOTUS reconciling "with current societal views" or would we prefer that SCOTUS focus solely on the original intent of the framers (or authors of more recent amendments)?
Your example actually shows where SCOTUS fell for the current societal views trap and a later court had to correct the course back to be more in alignment with the original intent. That is, we are free to express ideas that are not popular; even ideas that are against the government. So far, nobody has been able to show that the framers were advocates of lawlessness or outright lying so the current interpretation is that free speech was never intended to allow such speech.
Another good example to see why adherents to all sides of the political spectrum should want the original interpretation model is the privacy of email and other cloud-storage. Why should personal communications via email or text message be viewed differently than snail mail. The court views Fedex and UPS the same as USPS, so why not email and text messages? I've seen it argued that because cloud-stored documents are in the hands of a third-party that the 4th amendment no longer applies to them. Really? The 4th amendment applies to my safe deposit box at the bank and to my storage unit I might rent and my property in them is being held by a third party. Are the things I type and store in the cloud any less my personal effects than the things I type on paper and store in that safe deposit box? No. But because "original intent" was getting in the way of the liberal agenda for so many years, society through it out as a concept and treats the phrase about the same way that the word Voldemort is treated in the Harry Potter universe.
While you may not be physically safe you are legally and philosophically safe. That is why the US allows many modes of self-defense. People may be upset by your words but that does not give them the "right" to harm you over it.
I like the definition I heard a Black man on TV use once a few years ago.
"Freedom does not mean doing what you can get away with, doing what you please. It means, instead, having the opportunity to do what you ought to do--for family and for community and for humanity as a whole."
Well, the part about "you" meaning the government was created by liberals trying to prove that "the people" really means state governments or everyone collectively as a group but not any individual person.
I really wish they would stop doing that and admit that "the people" means every single one of us individually.
You can't print ammunition
This has been reddit's policy for a while. It's fairly open and free, but there are explicit limits. Reddit doesn't claim to be a totally free and pen forum.
The difference compared to the US is that in Switzerland, all those guns are kept at home by people who have been trained and serve(d) in the military. As in, they have been through a selection process to weed out the unstable idiots who should not have guns, because you do not want unstable idiots to have firearms period, whether in the military or not.
In the US, any Billy Joe Bob Gun-nut can go out and buy an assault rifle with little more than a basic background check. There is no training requirement and there is no psychological check in place to prevent guns from ending up in the wrong person's hands.
To further refine that, it's a lack of mental healthcare PLUS the easy availability of guns that is the problem. One without the other would not really be a problem.
That's not what the article actually says. What it says is that the murder rate in the USA is much higher in general (it makes no mention of gang warfare), but that the mugging rate is lower than in Europe. Perhaps because people get shot instead of mugged instead?
Also, although it's a minor issue, I take umbrage with your phrasing of the first statement. It can be read to imply that violent crime in the USA is somehow doing better than normal. In fact violent crime rates have fallen everywhere in lockstep with phasing out of leaded petrol. The US has merely followed that trend, as would be expected from a phenomenon rooted in heavy metal poisoning.
So essentially what we have is that violent crime fell everywhere, including the USA, but in America muggings are generally replaced with shootings.
The NSA most likely has more than enough information to secretly try and convict this person
NSA has enough information to secretly try and convict EVERY American.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
...and where the police don't walk around all day expecting to be shot dead.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Not only can you print ammunition, but making bullets in a mold is beyond trivial.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
maybe instead of fellatio over the imagined protection of a gun you get your fuckign society in order and create an enviroment where poeple dont feel the need to shoot or be criminals int he first place?
Sadly, we can't create that country by outlawing guns.
Fuck you and your guns and your short sighted bullshit.
You're an anonymous coward. Emphasis on coward. You'd have to stand on a stool to even fail at penetration. But go ahead, try and fuck some gun owners, let us know how that works out for you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The difference compared to the US is that in Switzerland, all those guns are kept at home by people who have been trained and serve(d) in the military
The guy (dead now) who shot up the Navy Yard had previously been in the military. And all he needed was a simple shotgun. The sort of thing that VP Biden says is exactly what people should own for hunting and self defense. He used that simple shotgun to shoot a military guard and gain access to that guard's handgun. He came across the rifle inside the Yard, said the Washington Post.
And no, just about nobody can buy an assault rifle. Do you mean a semi-auto rifle no different than every rancher uses to kill varmints in his cow pasture, only also equipped with black plastic parts that make no difference in lethality, but which make it look scarier to uninformed soccer moms?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So essentially what we have is that violent crime fell everywhere, including the USA, but in America muggings are generally replaced with shootings.
People, broadly, do not get shot for robbery. I may have been exaggerating for effect, but roughly 1/3 of homicides are motivated by an argument of some kind. 1/5 come while committing a felony. The point is, you are unlikely to get shot in the US just walking down the street.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Ah, yes. The freedom to do what Authority decides you ought to do. Bottom line is that in free societies, people will on occasion do things that aren't good for themselves or for society. Freedom means the freedom to do wrong things - thought not freedom to do them without consequence.
Lack of mental health care is the problem.
If that was the case, then people with even severe mental illnesses wouldn't be at much greater statistical risk (based on actual cases) of being assaulted and/or killed by everyday "sane" individuals than vice-versa, and the vast majority of violent gang members, rapists, etc. wouldn't similarly be lacking an identifiable mental illness.
While the majority of people in our prisons do have either a psychiatric illness or serious learning disability, they primarily comprise the ranks of people committing non-violent or non-lethal acts of crime out of desperation, caused by poverty (which is often both a cause and result of 'brain' conditions of all kinds) and/or the results of addictions caused by attempting to control their symptoms through drug use.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
I think gun advocates are barking up the wrong tree with the whole "overthrow the government" angle. I agree that is a silly case to make when you have rifles and they have tanks.
That said, you don't have dictatorships in Europe??? What??? I'll give you a pass on Belarus, but Spain wasn't a democracy until pretty recently. Still, it doesn't fit the narrative of a gunless population overrun by a dictator.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
One without the other would not really be a problem.
Yep, because crazies can't kill people without a gun.
LOL, dude I think you are argumentatively agreeing with me...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
where there is no responsibility, there is no freedom
if you don't understand or agree with that statement, you don't even know what freedom really is
All right, I'm intrigued. To me, freedom in the legal sense is about immunity from consequences, i.e. that you can do something without being punished. Freedom is different from legal rights in that it's the default -- if nobody threatens you with violence, you are free. If the government grants you (or recognises your right to) freedom of speech , you can say anything without being persecuted by the government. The fact that others can ostrichise you or condemn you for the speech is orthogonal to the question of freedom. Even the government can disagree, but they can't use their special powers. Then the famous example of yelling "fire" in a theatre, to cause danger and panic. This is illegal, but that is a restriction of the freedom of speech. Less freedom. The lawmakers maintain that some limitations of the freedom of speech are necessary for a functioning society. There is no mandate of personal responsibility, it's all "you do X and I track you down and lock you up". (I'm not saying this is wrong, I don't have a coherent opinion on it)
So, how does responsibility factor in? Is your statement a practical one, that society cannot function unless people take responsibility? If so , that seems like a question of ethics, whether this is truly responsibility or instead compassion, "goodness" or maximisation of utility. The concept of freedom is also only indirectly involved.
So I think I finally got it (I should probably edit the post now, but I won't, sorry if I bored you to death [i.e. I abused my freedom of speech to infringe on your right to live]). Having ultimate freedom means having the ability to infringe on others' freedoms, so such a system is not only impractical, it is fundamentally inconsistent. I still don't think that responsibility is the solution, though it would be nice if we could not restrict people's freedom to punch wherever they damn well pleased, and rely on their human decency to not have them beat each other up. In practice, I think responsibility enters, but the granting of freedoms seems carefully measured so that an irresponsible person can't do too much harm (with multiple exceptions, of course, but only at the level of ppb).
I always laugh at this, "right to defend yourself" Defend yourself from what? I thought good ol' US OF A is the BEST PLACE ON THE PLANET if it is so great why do you need to defend yourself? Chances are if you need to defend yourself with guns, you are probably going to be killed anyways.
.22 or shotgun? Canada even seems high at 30, but I bet at least 20 of those are hunters or farmers if not more. If you are just defending yourself, you don't need a concealable weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
Why do you need automatic weapons to defend yourself, or hand guns. Whats wrong with just a
This case is really the more relevant one to the 2nd amendment (which was drafted when the possibility of Britain deciding to reconquer the US was a very real concern.)
The problem is that the concept was abandoned before the 1700s ran out. They returned to the concept of a standing army after the militia idea proved ineffective.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes, SCOTUS exists to reconcile laws with the current views. Laws are slow to change, whereas technology and morality can change overnight.
When current societal views say [bad things] are we still okay with SCOTUS...
Just stop right there. "We" are society. If current views are in favor of censoring speech, that means that Americans generally consider such censorship to be right. Since this is a democracy, ruled by the people, it is ultimately the people's opinions that matter most, even more than the original wording of the law.
There are many good reasons to reject the morality of 1776 to suit modern tastes. Eliminating the three-fifths compromise is a glaring example, along with expanding voting rights, abolishing slavery, implementing term limits, and federating infrastructure. When the Constitution was written, society generally assumed that such changes would be unnecessary. After all, it was really only white male landowners who did anything politically anyway, so naturally they were the only ones who needed to be able to vote.
Privacy, as you so blindly pointed out, is another reason to diverge from the Constitution's original intent. In the decades leading up to the Constitution's writing, the British military had used searches as a means to deny service to colonists. If someone had annoyed the local commander, they could expect their shop to be shut down for the next week while soldiers searched/destroyed it for no particular reason, with no oversight. The Fourth Amendment was included not to ensure secrecy, but to protect only against harassment. Note that it's placed in context with the right to not quarter troops, and the right to not incriminate yourself. That's why the Fourth Amendment's applicability to third-party storage is in question, because a search that doesn't interrupt your daily business is much less likely to be harassment.
More recently, though, the expectation for a "reasonable" search has grown to include respect for secrecy as well. Society's idea of "reasonable" has now shifted enough that a SCOTUS ruling in accordance with the original intent would be outrageously wrong. Remember that in 1776, walls weren't insulated, glass windows were expensive, and gossip was the primary local news source. The only expectation of privacy happened outside the town - and somebody probably would see you leaving.
By the same principle, consider that the morality of today may not apply in the future. One opinion currently changing is how free speech applies to corporate entities. Currently, corporations are allowed to choose how they conduct business as a matter of expression. This is how companies can choose not to do business with a group they find offensive or otherwise don't like. It's also how a company can make political donations to further their own goals. There's growing controversy surrounding both of these issues, so I expect that within the next few decades, we'll see a SCOTUS ruling clarifying how much free speech corporations (along with store managers, employees, and other representatives) can actually have while operating.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The guy (dead now) who shot up the Navy Yard had previously been in the military. And all he needed was a simple shotgun. The sort of thing that VP Biden says is exactly what people should own for hunting and self defense. He used that simple shotgun to shoot a military guard and gain access to that guard's handgun. He came across the rifle inside the Yard, said the Washington Post.
The US's problem (if you accept it as a problem, which I do, but which you probably don't, but which I don't really want to argue about) is that it is flooded with guns of all sorts, compared to your average EU country.
Today's killer started out with a shotgun, shot a security guard, and took his semi-automatic handgun. Let's compare with the UK- shotguns are fairly readily available here, but not much else is. You can shoot as many policemen or security guards as you like with your shotgun, but you aren't going to be able to take their semi-automatic handgun- because security guards and beat policemen do not carry guns. If you shoot someone with your one-shot-at-a-time shotgun in the UK, the very next gun that you'll see on the scene will be one of the ones in the hands of the heavily armed police assault team who turn up to deal with you. In the meantime, your capacity for damage is limited by your manual shotgun loaded with birdshot.
Britain presumably has exactly the same number of deranged maniac who want to go on killing sprees as America does. The difference is, our deranged maniacs simply cannot get access to heavy weaponry.
Organised crime is obviously a slightly different proposition; but none of the big massacres to hit American headlines in the last few years fall into that category.
If you think that the perpetrator of the massacre in Washington could have killed 12 people with a box knife and a claw hammer, you are crazy.
The fact he killed 12 people is directly attributable to him managing to gain access to guns- one shotgun under his own steam, and two more weapons available at the scene. Him being crazy on its own would not have caused that massacre.
Same can be said of any school shooting or similar that you'd care to mention.
Same can be said of any school shooting or similar that you'd care to mention.
Okay... Let's see.
"Boston bombing."
security guards and beat policemen do not carry guns
Are you saying that the military guards who protect the entrances to the UK's military headquarters buildings are unarmed? Really?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's exactly when you need a concealable weapon, otherwise you're the first target.
when the consequence hurts me as well, i have a right to have a say in that behavior
because i love freedom crushing authority?
no, because i love MY freedom
and i don't want my freedom oppressed by that from which a lot of freedom oppression in this world actually comes from: not the stereotypical government goon, but from my fellow citizen who is an irresponsible moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's a very interesting example
it sounds like a premise for a book or movie or tv show
i bet it would be quite successful
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in a society where people always do whatever the hell they want with no regard for responsibility, you get absolute authoritarianism, because somebody has to make the assholes pay
in a society where people always acts responsibly, you have the utopian libertarian ideal society of 100% freedom
of course, neither extreme actually happens, but the point is, the more people behave responsibly, the more true freedom everyone has, and the less people beahve responsibly, the more people have to depend upon the state to make society function
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
oh my, now it turned out perp didn't even use an AR-15, instead he used a shotgun just like Joe Biden said every American should use for home defense.
passed federal background check for his contractor job too, maybe those wouldn't make a dent in gun crime?
maybe first you cook meth
If meth cooking were legal, none of the rest would follow.
when the consequence hurts me as well
In a society with free speech, you get a say even when that behavior is none of your business.
with today's news the situation gets even funnier for the Obama / Feinstein talking points of going to anti-"assualt rifle" and federal background checks... perp used a shotgun (just like Joe Biden reccommended!) and moreover had fed background check for his contractor job (passed even with all his previous bad behaviour).
Someone play Barack and the bitch (who built her millions on exporting assualt weapons while serving on committeee that authorized the same) the sad trombone
You can't print gunpowder.
The point still stands
As does my point. Society of the US is unable to accept the freedom of allowing people to use harmful recreational drugs on themselves. This loss of freedom leads to other harms as your morality play demonstrates.
I do believe that one guy with a box knife did kill several thousand people on 9/11/2001. It's all about leverage. He took control of a plane with his box knife, crashed the plane into a building causing it to collapse, and thousands of people died. The bad guys don't need cannon, RPGs, fully automatic weapons to hash us up. They can continue to work on our psyche until we are as deranged as them. When we are as free of civil liberty as they want society to be the transition will be simpler for people to adjust to.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm guessing you haven't dealt much with folks suffering from severe mental illness. I have. Yeah, they ought not have guns. But frankly whether they have guns or not is irrelevant to the fact that if you let your guard down they are going to kill you because you are an imagined threat/their ghost told them to/they don't know why/they enjoy killing and are fine with it. They could kill you with their bare hands, or a spoon. Frankly you should need a special OSHA permit to deal with crazy people. Given my experience with the clinically insane, they lack the discipline to learn how to properly aim a pistol generally, though there are exceptions.
This has nothing to do with the general population though. We don't organize the rights and benefits of our society around the needs of the clinically insane.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
People had the freedom to choose. Losing their freedom was a consequence of their choice.
But it didn't have to be a consequence.
Going back to my first point, people continue to make more wrong choices instead of actually facing the consequences or doing something to reverse the wrong doing.
Or make wrong doing not wrong doing. There's a considerable parsimony of power to making something not illegal.
Well, you've posted a bunch and I just don't get the point. I apologize, but maybe I'll figure it out some other time.