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Garmin Engineer Shot And Killed By Man Yelling 'Get Out Of My Country!' (theverge.com)
lxw56 writes:
Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.
Oh wait, no... he actually shot and killed someone. KellyAnne, get out there and do what you do...
Police found him there after putting out an APB (Applebees Point Bulletin), which is the tool they use to find all racists in the Midwest and South.
Something about making psycopathy great again, something like that?
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Do you read the news at all? This has been well covered.
Yes, it's been confirmed by other sources. Kansas City's newspaper had a good article about it.
You should start by looking in the mirror and see how the election of Obama moved the overton window enough to make trump possible. Alas such honest reflection from the left is why the democrats are as decimated as they are.
Cool. Then let's blame Obama for Orlando, San Bernardino, etc.
See how fucking stupid you are?
I blame booze.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
2nd point mostly comes from troll under the bridge
but that classification is still used in forensic anthropology and is not meaningless but does describe a migration of humans and their descendants. Also, Europeans and Indian's language comes from common branch of human languages, "proto indo-european"
Even if every detail in the summary is true it's STILL likely to not be an accurate depiction of the entire profile of the gunman.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
Drunk guy at a bar gets thrown out for yelling at people. Comes back and shoots up the place. Including shooting a white guy named "Ian"
The Verge is an extreme leftist publication. They're going to paint it as anti-trump as possible because it fits their narrative. Doesn't say anything about the white guy getting shot twice does it? It just says he got injured... Here is more of a full story from another leftist source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/asia/kansas-attack-possible-hate-crime-srinivas-kuchibhotla.html
That being said, this is an obligated "Why is this on Slashdot?" An engineer got shot? Low level engineers die every day... I don't see them on here very often.
That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked.
Trump may be aggravating it, but this isn't new. Some idiot attacked Sikhs a few years ago because he thought their turbans meant they were Muslims.
Racism doesn't always attract the brightest bulbs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yeah, this one isn't a hoax. We have all been conditioned to suspect bias incidents are hoaxes because so many of them are, but this one is real and the descriptions of it seem to be consistent across multiple sources.
Accuracy != Elitism
"That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked."
Ok. much more serious response to your post this time. The guy was a nut or a broken nut. Blaming Trump is like Blaming Obama for the Texas nut who flew his plane in to a building more than a few years ago. And I recall on this very board everyone speculating he was a right wing nut because "Texas". Turns out after his manifesto came out that he was a left wing nut.
Maybe we need to drop the modifiers and just call them what they are. Nuts.
Why not call this guy a terrorist ?
If he had been a Muslim shooting an American it would be classed as terrorism.
Or does it not suit the US narrative ?
"Get out of my country, immigrant"
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
the comments section, i mean. honest question.
why do you guys bother keeping this comment section running, when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet? okay, sure, there are communities specifically geared towards right-wing fascism and racism that are probably worse, but this site is supposed to be about, you know, tech news and stuff. but you guys have let it erode into something gross that almost nobody other than despicable morons want to participate in. i remember years ago when articles would have hundreds of interesting and insightful comments, with actual experts weighing in with well thought out reactions. those people are all gone, and with very good reason. are you glad they're gone? do you miss them? do you miss relevancy?
i doubt you are proud of providing a forum dominated by some of the worst elements of humanity. so that's why i'm asking why you continue to do so.
i could live a little longer in this prison
As long as you also blame Obama for the murder of the Dallas police officers by BLM.
Guess which one happens more often?
Yeah, we all know blacks never suffered violence by whites. Fuck off.
We don't hire any Trump supporters
So you discriminate by political party in the hiring process. Interesting. Do you do it by color and religion, too?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think you need to take some geography classes. The big mountain range near India is the Himalayas, not the Caucasus mountains. Different mountain range entirely.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist. These days race is a social or cultural construct, in which case this is quite clearly racism.
It would be xenophobic if there were an equal number of attacks of foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes who speak English. Since there aren't, racist is a more accurate description.
I agree with you. People say a lot of stupid things when they are drunk. But let's not let any opportunity to blame Trump go to waste, right?
And Leftists wonder why they are getting tuned out.
500 white people are killed by blacks every year and 200 blacks are killed by whites every year. One group is 70% of the country, the other is 13% of the country. I notice the same people whining about this event aren't paying attention to those statistics. A couple people assuredly died in interracial murders since that story broke.
But this one drunken fight in Kansas - we have no idea what was actually said and what provoked this - is somehow more significant.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Indians are Caucasian, research Indo-European migrations before spewing in ignorance please.
The difference is, Obama didn't spend years going on TV and convincing Muslims that Americans are bad hombres who are out to get them around every streetcorner. Trump has spent the last year and a half on TV espousing exactly that kind of FUD about people with brown skin. Trump's fearmongering rhetoric comes with a price, and innocent people are paying it.
Per your a:, Indians and Europeans came from the same stock, part of the Indo-European migrations.
X brand of nuts are so much better than Y brand.
Let the nut wars commence.
Congrats on using a tragic shooting to make cheap political arguments. Please consider showing more humanity in the future.
oh, and Obama opened the door for rioting and looting during his term?
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
Well, there are furries...
Keep going. There's more:
a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
: any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits
2: a group of individuals who share a common culture or history
3: a major group of living things
These are all from the very same page you linked. If you're going to use a dictionary to slap someone down, make sure you understand every way the dictionary says the word can be used. Not just the one that suits you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Nah, they just do it by immigration status- H-1b's at 90% of standard salary are much cheaper.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We need a Trump Casualty Counter for when....
Most of his followers would just consider that a "progress counter".
That's why educated people who talk about "race" use the term "ethnicity" instead. It's more specific although it's no magic bullet because it also includes culture, not just gene pool.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
you mean religion?
Which is why they come here to steal your job
No, that is not why they come here. They are brought here, to suppress your wages, by wealthy Americans of every race, gender, religion and orientation that has the means to do so. They are given a temporary license to stay, provided they remain cheap, then they get cast back to where they came from (or get labelled enemy of the state, evidently).
This is what is being lost beneath the racism, the Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. are not your enemies, they're just people trying to make a buck. Your enemies are Americans.
Under Federal law, employers generally cannot discriminate against employees on the basis of:
Race
Sex
Pregnancy
Religious Affiliation
National Origin
Disability
Age
Military Affiliation
Bankruptcy
Genetic Information
Citizenship Status
Funny, political party isn't up there. What a wonderful false equivalence you've devised.
And don't forget bona fide occupational qualifications! If the job skill required is logical thought and the prospective seeker voted for Trump, that'd be legal discrimination even if they *were* a protected group. Which, again, you're... I mean, *they're* not.
Likewise, Obama's expansion of H-1b visas during a freakin' depression eventually pushed this guy over the edge.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Some Indians are even Aryans (or so I heard)!
"Well covered" doesn't mean confirmed. Especially in today's fake news era where all news agencies are quoting themselves as sources and it finally turns out the actual source was someone's blog somewhere.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Those additional definitions I left out support a wider classification of race (which would have further supported my argument), while at the same time I included one definition that didn't support my argument, which means I did the exact opposite of including only the definition that suited me.
What's that got to do with anything?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Agreed. Alcohol tends to make some very violent when sober they are very constrained. However, they also say it removes constraint and put forth a persons true nature.
Cat people.
Dog people.
Goat people.
Hatfields.
McCoys.
la Cosa Nostra.
Tomato lovers.
Racists.
Trump.
Per my b: it includes more general classifications as well.
Michael Jackson aside, which do you think it is?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ya cause in the 1900's they were treated fairly
So...yer saying Trump isn't attracting the brightest bulbs? Who knew?
Tip: talking about "fake news" really does not help your argument, or image.
That is very common in white* racists, guess they automatically assume something unusual == must be Muslim? However most black-and-white (view of the world - not skin color) people don't do too much thinking...
(* and perhaps among other racist groupings, I don't know)
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
So now along with 5000 Genders, we got a million races based on beer preference.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not a fan of statistics, I see. It isn't that ALL trump supporters are racists, it is that racists support Trump.
I've been on a lot of right-wing boards. Those fuckers are triggered by everything. I really can't get that stressed over loopy college girls being scared of shit, but supposed bad-ass conservatives being terrified of Muslims/poor people/leftists/the gays/blacks/millennials/a cool black president/taxes etc. Just makes me want to slap every last one of them preferably with a chainsaw. What's the deal guys? Are you all on medication or just I'll in the head?
ðY
I am not doing your homework for you. If you really think the reporting in this case is in doubt, then God and Trump bless you.
If your numbers are accurate, it means that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.
Wow, 2 incidents over the course of 10 years in a population of 300 million people. What conclusion should we draw about the general population from these incidents?
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist. These days race is a social or cultural construct, in which case this is quite clearly racism.
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
It means that members of a club are a race. Members of a political party are a race. Rednecks are a race Fraternity members are a race. Liberals are a race. Conservatives are a race.
I use ethnicity for the most part just because of the silly destruction of the term race. But I harbor no illusions that the wordsmits won't screw that up as well.
And I identify my gender as a Lamborghini Countach. Which makes my race as Gearhead.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This being Slashdot, are you sure it wasn't full of CD's?
You can do your own research.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Murder an innocent man because you think he's middle-eastern? Clearly the fault of the VA,
It is because he couldn't get the treatment he needed. Without that he became unhinged.
I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe that if peel cannot get the help they need society is partly to blame. You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way. How long before you punch a Trump supporter because you think they are racist? How long before you yourself are gunning down those you are against?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
About US military bases in their country.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I agree with you. People say a lot of stupid things when they are drunk. But let's not let any opportunity to blame Trump go to waste, right?
And Leftists wonder why they are getting tuned out.
Fortunately those on the right don't do any of that crap.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Are you part of the 18% or so that do? Really...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.
About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah but killed trying to do what?
I work for Garmin at a different location and information I got from a co-worker, who used to be based in Olathe, was that the shooter drove to another bar where he told the staff he was in hiding from police. The staff there then called police who arrested him.
I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.
I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post. I am genuinely saddened to hear of the death of a co-worker and such a needless death is so hard to understand. I have no idea how to fix the gun problem in the USA, if it was easy it would have been done already. Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.
My thoughts go our to Srinivas' family, I am sorry for your loss.
Unless you are a native american, you should be packing too.
#DeleteFacebook
200 blacks are killed by whites every year.
In Chicago?
Well, that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that black people do a lot more murder on a per capita basis. As it turns out, the chances of getting killed by a white guy are less for a black person than the reverse. Which is indicative of the overall murder rate in the black community being several times (something like 5+ times) what it is amongst whites.
Some source data
Anyway paying undue attention to a single person amongst the 6k or so that are going to die this year is politically motivated, as usual.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Society breeds behavior.
Dialectician. Archology.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
Figure I'd get this in before people start asking you for sources and/or screaming racist.
They migrated here too. There are no humans native to North/South America.
Furries? You can blame Disney for that. I mean, have you ever seen Lola Bunny?
#DeleteFacebook
could you post the name of your company? I don't vote for Trump but I want to be sure I never end up working for your organization by mistake.
Also I was wondering: do you have a diversity program in place? And if so, how can you possibly justify the hypocrisy of selective diversity based on political views?
Of course you won't post the name because you're a liar and/or a coward. But thanks for playing.
lucm, indeed.
We don't hire any Trump supporters
So you discriminate by political party in the hiring process. Interesting.
Political affiliation is not a protected class. Not saying discrimination based on that is cool, but it's not illegal.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Actually, he was shooting his mouth off (no surprise) and the bartender call the cops. (He was arrested in my home town.)
we got a million races based on beer preference.
Go home, beer drinker
lucm, indeed.
"Everyone does it" doesn't justify inhumanity or misbehavior.
Ah yes, the old conservative party of self-responsibility.
Self-responsibility is a concept that applies to responsible adults, not to young children or the mentally ill. I'm not buying that this guy was crazy -- I think he was just drunk and angry -- but if he were crazy then, yeah, blame sticks to those with a duty to provide him care, that didn't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sure, it's well coved by the old-school news. But are there any credible sources? Doesn't matter how many fiction authors are writing about it, after all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So rather than generalize from 2 incidents, you want to generalize from "I heard somewhere there were more than two incidents"? That's some steel-trap thinking.
My ancestors were British and I'm still kinda cheesed off that you all don't recognize my claim to the crown.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
And what makes you believe that you're not the one people can't have a rational discussion with? If you're so quick to put all pro-gun people in the same bucket as the lunatic who shot that guy, then you're not much better than the people who put you in the same bucket as ISIS terrorists.
There's no "correct" side in differences of opinions. You may think that your own opinion is better but that doesn't make other ones irrational. I'm not going to bring up all the arguments of pro-gun people (there's plenty of websites for that) but there's a lot more to it than "being a god given right".
lucm, indeed.
Obama stirred racial tensions by being black and successful. He did very little on the civil rights front besides look good in a suit. To read all these white boys whining about Obama "stirring racial tension" makes me think you all watch too much Access Hollywood where the blond chicks are hanging all over the rappers. The black athletes and entertainers aren't the reason you don't get hot white chicks. Neither are the feminists. You don't get laid because of natural selection.
I'm no Trump fan, he's an idiot as anyone in the NY building trades knows, but the shooter is a garden variety racist idiot with a gun and they've been aiming at turbans since 9/11. So I'd blame Osama, who was a scumbag but smart enough to game out the rise of Trump while smoking hash and watching porn, though I'd guess Osama would have predicted a higher IQ.
I would guess that the same people concerned about this event are also largely the same people advocating for stricter gun controls. So it would seem that they are indeed concerned about those other shootings.
What is more interesting is that Trump is pushing his travel ban while far more people are killed by fellow Americans using guns than are killed by terrorists. Over 150,000 gun related homicides since 2001 vs 3,046 killed by terrorists. While 3,046 is indeed a large number, 2,996 of those happened on 9/11. None of those perpetrators were from the seven countries on Trump's list. The bulk of them were from Saudi Arabia, where Trump has significant business interests.
All that being said, I don't think gun control is THE answer to gun related homicides. There are deeper problems that need to be addressed. A travel ban is an order of magnitude worse solution to a much smaller problem. It serves to aggravate anti-US sentiment and makes recruiting people of any nationality an even easier task for terrorists. It makes enemies out of people who might otherwise be allies and promotes an environment where hatred and fear of "outsiders" is encouraged.
I'd mod you down if I had points, but instead I'll just say the right to bear arms is a good thing.
Well-played, sir.
OP said:
when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet
So he's clearly new here. We get far fewer GNAA posts here today than the early days. The political stories that don't belong here are, in fact, clickbait to broaden the appeal of /. beyond "news for nerds", since "news for nerds" is what's makes it the least interesting community for more people out there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I work for Garmin in New Zealand and have been to Olathe a few times. Garmin has great inclusive culture to it and I am genuinely saddened to hear of Srinivas' death.
I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.
It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.
My mind can not comprehend how the shooter could feel justified in taking a life even if he really thought immigrant were taking local jobs. These kind of people need to stop blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and take a good hard look at themselves.
Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.
About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.
White guy in Kansas shoots foreigners because he's a racist and/or ethnocentric. ....
Black guys beat and torture white guy in Chicago because they're racist and/or ethnocentric.
White cops beat black guy in California because they're racist and/or ethnocentric.
Black guy kills a bunch of white cops because he's racist and/or ethnocentric.
Middle Eastern guys rape a bunch of white women in Sweden because
There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
I'd blame Trump's ilk for that too. If you vilify a group (gays in the Orlando case) long enough some unhinged asshat will decide he's taking action for the greater good.
As far as I'm concerned the epitome of a chickenshit is somebody standing on the sidelines cheering on some action and then disclaiming it once it occurs.
Specifically, the wealthy ruling class. Of course, some of them have also managed to trick a lot of Americans into believing that immigrants are the enemy by pushing an exaggerated sense of nationalism. I'm still trying to figure out how they win by damaging the income of other members of the ruling class, but I'm sure there's a financial explanation somewhere if you dig in deep enough.
Either way, the whole system is rigged, and the people at the top always win. It's just a question of which group of people at the bottom get screwed when they do.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Innocent gun owners didn't shoot these guys. Scapegoating and sending the police after innocent people isn't the answer.
If you wish to redefine the meaning of "race" (or "sex" for that matter), you need to change the law that bans discrimination based on it.
Because, unless the law has explicitly changed in between — as in, passed by Legislature and signed by the Executive — what was legal at one point shall remain legal at another.
Funny, this argument — But I identify as Black! — didn't help certain Ms. Dolezal keep her job at, of all places, NAACP... Evidently, some races — whatever the term means — are more equal than others. Had she been fired for being Black while masquerading as White, she and her team of lawyers would've all been millionaires by now.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just about every other developed country in the world disagrees. The few that have a similar (well, within a 2-3x factor, the US is just that much of an outlier) level of gun ownership (like Switzerland) do it in a way so incredibly different it may as well be another concept entirely.
It just so happens that the rest of world is also doing fine without all those guns.
Why? When compared against similar countries with much stricter gun laws we have statistics which show more crime, more accidental shooting and more suicides. Lets face it, in reality, too many Americans have nothing more than fetish for firearms, making them our most dangerous sex toy.
In the 1900s (and earlier) people came here to work hard and succeed.
The murdered man was an engineer working for Garmin. It seems pretty obvious he came to the U.S. "to work hard and succeed".
#DeleteChrome
In other words my coworker is dead because millions of innocent gun owners haven't been arrested, how is that a good thing?.
How many thousands of people would die trying to enforce gun control on a population unwilling to surrender their guns? We tried alcohol prohibition because so many people died In relation to the consumption of alcohol. It turned out to be a mistake.
Having screamed for anti-immigrant violence and sexual assault becoming common place because of Trump, Illiberals could never offer any actual evidence. Maybe, this guy is what they need. Finally...
Meanwhile the number of victims of the "Black Lives Matter" assholes — the very foundation of their movement based on a lie — uncounted scores.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive - and, quite often, they happily go hand in hand.
#DeleteChrome
They migrated here too. There are no humans native to North/South America.
By that definition the only place humans are 'native' to is some part of Africa where Homo sapiens sapiens evolved. But that's a stupid definition of 'native' that no one uses, not for groups of people, or for species.
It's not a good thing, but you're also making a big assumption. That he wouldn't have killed otherwise if this guy didn't have access to firearms. There are many, many ways to kill someone. The guy could have waited for your coworker to leave the restaurant and simply run him over with his car or attacked him with a machete. You're only limited by your imagination. This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense. The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY wanted to kill middle easterners (or whatever), he would find a way. Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
Nuts don't grow in a vacuum. I have no idea how much (if any) impact Trump had on this guy. I would guess though that he had plenty of contact with like minded people who at least talked about wanting to do this kind of thing. Trump's policies and penchant for "alternative" facts helps fuel the misguided hatred that feeds this stuff.
Entire societies have been complicit in unspeakable crimes including genocide. Where they nuts? No. They were surrounded by people and institutions that legitimized that kind of thinking. I don't believe Trump even knows how dangerous he his. It was never so important before to know the facts. It was never so important to be careful about what one says. He's not qualified either in experience or temperament for this job.
"500 white people are killed by blacks every year and 200 blacks are killed by whites every year. One group is 70% of the country, the other is 13% of the country."
What's your point? Are you suggesting that blacks are targeting whites? Or are you suggesting we owe darker skin folks some deaths to make up for the disparity? Your stat makes no relevant sense to this conversation.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
No he isn't.
Your co-worker is dead because some fucking asshole shot him.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.
"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.
Beware of the Leopard.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment. The Founding Fathers used their own experiences to craft a document which (was supposed to) enshrined rights to people while limiting that of the government. However, as James Madison pointed out, there has been more abridgement of freedoms of the people by the silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations (paraphrased).
The second reason for the amendment, and one the NRA absolutely refuses to recognize, is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia. Unlike today, the Founding Fathers envisioned a small standing army, if at all, with the militia doing the brunt of the work to slow or repel foreign invaders or put down rebellion, as George Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
The original amendment, as proposed by James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, was:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not.
This is why gun control is such a contentious issue. The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, says citizens are allowed to own firearms. Where the argument comes in is where to draw the line on a) who can own a gun (as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot) and b) what restrictions on gun ownership (type of weapon, amount of bullets, etc). As you have seen, some believe there should be no restrictions and others say there should be plenty of restrictions or even no ownership at all.
We already have plenty of gun control - any talk of additional gun control is only talk of further chipping away at this basic American right.
I think the statistics are pretty good. The last I read, nearly half the households have firearms. There are usually about 33,000 firearms related deaths a year. More than half of those are suicides, so only about 15,000 are left. There was just an article that over 1,000 of those are people killed by police. A lot of the remaining 14,000 involve garbage killing garbage. What is left - people murdered - isn't bad when you consider how big and diverse this country is. In fact it is pretty amazing when you think about it.
And yes, that is the price you pay for that significant bit of extra freedom. It isn't just about self defense. In this day and age where there is so much going on between climate change, political unrest, and outright attacks taking place within the borders of the US armed citizens are just as necessary as they have ever been. It is the difference between being a citizen and a subject.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.
People with hate in their heart will just as easily use a machete, a baseball bat, a crowbar, or even a vase or broken beer bottle. Gun control is irrelevant for this discussion.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I'd mod you down if I had points,
Don't mod down someone if you disagree with what they wrote. That is abuse of the moderation system. Write a reply instead.
but instead I'll just say the right to bear arms is a good thing.
You might want to provide some arguments for that.
I am not really here right now.
I think that you forgot about the Bowling Green massacre. .
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Dude... people who like warm beer aren't just another race... they're another species. Aliens trying (and failing) to fit in.
I like Tequila too. I might be trans-beerqueer.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You push hate, bigotry, violence, and xenophobia, so of course this kind of stuff escalates. :(
Stay tuned, more acts of horrific inhumanity to come
we got a million races based on beer preference.
Go home, beer drinker
I have the right to drink beer! Now those Pabst Blue Ribbon drinkers - they're the sickos. Would you want your children taught by someone that drinks PBR?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Fun fact: even the "Native" American's were immigrants.
Ownership is determined by the winners of history. There is no need to apologize or make amends for that fact, it simply is what it is.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
We all come from the same stock, sport.
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
That's just what I was wondering. So everybody who uses PC-BSD - am I now the same race as them, regardless of their ethnicity?
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Freedom is messy but then again so is life. Shall we get rid of automobiles? People genuinely believe their right to own a car is a good thing and the deaths from accidents and environmental destruction, while tragic, are the price of convenience.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Unfortunately, 'terrorism' is now a code word for Jihad, and the term has elbowed out all other terror acts committed by non-Muslims. If everybody would use the j word to describe terrorism done by the allahu-akbar screaming crowd, and the t word for its doing by anyone else, that would clear things up a lot
Not surprised at the huge negative response. Most of the responses back my statement "They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing". My point is if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... you will see you are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than places like New Zealand. Some of you claim it is need to defend your democracy but there is nothing wrong with democracy here. We rise up and protest as needed and if the worst came I am sure people could overthrow an unjust government without mass arming of ourselves.
One poster pointed our that to disarm your country would result on mass deaths. I think that poster was right and wouldn't suggest trying that. They easy no easy fix for your problem, and I am not proposing any. I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
Social/cultural constructs are real, and we don't have to listen to your silly definitions. We know that by the scientific definition of race the human species has no races, but we also know the historical context of what groups the word "race" in the human context has defined and what physical characteristics went into that, and we can use it.
This space intentionally left blank
The right to bear arms is a good thing AND a bad thing. The problem with America is in everyone picking the most extreme view either being the number one cheerleading fan or the number one most vitriolic hater. There is no subtlety in America.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
I'm very liberal, own guns, and you can have a rational discussion about guns with me. We're not all raving gun nuts, frothing at the mouth and screaming about how "the gubbmint is gonna put us all into FEMA camps." (Although now that Trump is president, I start to wonder if some of those cranks might be on to something.)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin.
That's a big headquarters.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Never mind that this unskilled redneck would never get a job at Garmin anyway if all the immigrants left, not even to clean the toilets.
Right, so Trump has to put his blessing on it now before it's not fake news?
Make Olduvai Gorge great again.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd rather have "Knee-jerk reaction" and take away guns from society that has a "Knee-jerk reaction" to kill someone. It is common theme: can't solve it, can't talk, can't discuss it, I have more power b/c I have a gun and I will just shoot to prove my point - is approach that kills people!!! In less civilized countries you will get a hit in the face, get a couple punches, moronic opponent will get arrested, and be done with "dispute" - but at least you will be alive.
Indeed it doesn't solve the root cause, but it often gives people a damn good fighting chance, and I say that as someone who was the victim of an attempted stabbing. If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
While more people find Trump credible than the old-school media, it still less than half the people who find him credible. The destruction of credibility of the old-school media was self-inflicted - Trump merely comments on the obvious fact. Have you never been directly involved in something that was reported by a journalist?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The man that was murdered migrated here legally too.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
If you feel that the intent of this means that only recognized members of an organized militia should have guns, consider this:
"The right of the people to keep and use soap shall not be infringed. Proper sanitation, being necessary to the preparation of healthy food, the right of the people to wash their hands, shall not be infringed."
Would you interpret that statement to say that only people who prepare food are allowed to wash their hands?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
500 white people are killed by blacks every year and 200 blacks are killed by whites every year. One group is 70% of the country, the other is 13% of the country.
If your numbers are accurate, it means that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.
No, but your statement means that you don't understand conditional probabilities, otherwise you'd have realized that his numbers are not enough to draw that conclusion. You're missing the white-by-white and black-by-black statistics. Otherwise, if these conditionals did not matter, a random person, irrespective of skin color, would be about 5 times more likely to be murdered by a white person than by a black one from population size alone.
Not Caucasians per she... Nlbut the topmost caste - Brahmans - are Aryan, which is probably what you were thinking of.
In several states, political affiliation is a protected classification you cannot discriminate based on; California, for example, is one of them (see http://www.nolo.com/legal-ency...)
That is not what I said. Read it in its complete context. As I said, one of the reasons the Founding Fathers wanted citizens to have weapons was because they intended them to be part of the militia. Nowhere did I say only those who were part of the militia should be the only ones to have weapons.
Madison's original wording makes this very clear. Citizens are allowed to bear arms with the understanding they should be drilled in the use of those weapons as part of the militia.
Thanks, that is the first reasoned response I recall. Actually we have reasonably high gun ownership in New Zealand but they are normally rifles for sport or farming and hand guns are rare. We have debates here about arming our police but I think we have it right where none are armed but many have access when needed in a lock box in their vehicle. Here I do not live in fear. I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do. I have thought about working there for a year or two as the place does have some merits but I would not immigrate, life is too much better here.
I was not trying to start a flame ware, I was talking about the loss of a coworker, the first time in my near 40 years of working. Was not surprised at the response I got but I was disappointed, I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them. I think for real improvements to happen there there has to be a change of thinking more that a change of law and I would hope people there would look at the other sane countries and maybe wonder why things are different and try and envision a better future for themselves.
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm just not obsessed with racial guilt because it's bullshit.
All groups take advantage of their hegemony. Feeling guilty about it is just being stupid. I 100% guarantee you the next hegemons won't give two shits about whatever guilt they should feel about oppressing you. Or me.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You can't have a reasonable discussion with people because you neither reason with people nor discuss with them. Pronouncements aren't reason. Monologuing isn't discussion.
but it does make me question the easy availability of guns. The trouble with guns is they make it easy and oh so quick to make a snap judgement that changes everything. It's a big problem for the suicidal and hell, this guy just basically committed suicide. His life is more or less over. He might not die in prison, but he'll be pushing 60 when he gets out.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There's no amount of massaging of the statistics that will change the fact the US gets waaaaay more gun deaths per capita than any other Western country. You're up there with Uruguay and Panama. That, alone, is proof enough that the bandwagon fallacy doesn't apply.
Silly excuses for killing other humans. For the record, contrary to what you may have heard from Fox News, Obama did not touch the H1B visas. Under section 214(g)(1)(A)(vii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1989, only 65,000 H1B visas may be allocated each fiscal year, and that has remained so. The only thing Obama did and his powers were very limited as the President, is that he allowed spouses of H1Bs called H4 visa holders to work legally, and he allowed H1Bs who were already waiting for green cards to change jobs without losing their position in the green card queue, which makes H1Bs less like bonded labor and makes the employment market fair for all.
I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I feel pretty much the same here in the US, to be frank. I only lock my car door when I drive because if I'm in an accident it prevents the door from flying open and ejecting me from the car (seatbelt or not, that's often what happens). Shootings in bars aren't common here, but the papers play it up and make it sound like it happens all the time, everywhere. In 50+ years I've never seen a shot fired in a bar, and I've been in plenty. :)
The same for break-ins, most criminals will wait until you're gone, but there's always the crazy ones whose goal is to hurt someone and they'll carry a weapon. Guns, knives, machetes, whatever- they're intent is to harm, not rob. You'll find them in every city in the world but I don't think there are more of them in the US per capita than elsewhere. (I may be wrong about that, I haven't looked at any stats.)
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I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do.
Is this due to the presence of firearms, or the general level of violent behavior you perceive in the US?
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... I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them.
Slashdot used to be more of a "reasoned discussion" kind of place, but it's really gone to hell in the last 5 to 10 years. Sadly I think much of the internet has descended into hair-trigger flamewar territory, not just Slashdot. :(
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
No he isn't.
Your co-worker is dead because some fucking asshole shot him.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.
"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.
A right wing terrorists shot somebody to death, there are two underlying issues. The fact that right wing extremism is being enabled at the highest ranks of the US Government, and that the US is so infested with guns that it's really easy for unstable individuals to get guns. You can try to fix both.
I stole this Sig
You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way.
And yet, from your previous post, you "apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Obama." I quote:
What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA [wibw.com]. After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.
Look -- I feel like I have to say this on the internet every other day now, but events can have multiple causes. They certainly always have various factors that have to be in place for them to come to pass.
I frankly don't know this man. I haven't researched his story in detail. And I certainly don't feel that *I* have any business pontificating on the internet about what "triggered" this event.
In legal terms, this is generally known as the "proximate cause," something more immediate in the chain of causality. For all I know, this guy could have been ultimately set off because somebody gave him the green Jell-O instead of the red Jell-O in the lunchline that day.
Anyhow, YES, if this guy was denied proper care from the VA because of some shortfalls under Obama, SOME of the causality may be blamed on Obama (or, probably more likely, on various underlings who made poor decisions too).
On the other hand, Donald Trump has spent nearly the past 2 years creating a climate of xenophobia and hatred against immigrants in his rhetoric. GP wants to blame this entirely on Trump, but I'm sure that's not the case. On the other hand, you seem to want to shift the blame entirely AWAY from Trump and focus on a potentially more remote cause. (And note -- even if this guy was denied VA care, do you have specific proof that it was an Obama policy that denied him that care? Did Barack Obama personally reject a request from him for care? Or was this part of a chain of causality that actually makes more sense to blame someone who made poor decisions at a lower level?)
I really don't know. But I do know that Trump tries to get attention every day. He seems to thrive on "speaking" (tweeting) directly to the "people." If some of his anti-immigration rhetoric was heard by this guy, could it have had some significant impact?Maybe, as the news story you cite says, "this wasn't who he normally was," but a combination of mental problems AND pervasive news stories on immigrants as enemies in the conservative media... maybe that was something?
Again, I certainly don't have all the facts. But can we all just take a step back here and CALM THE [BLEEP] DOWN!?! Stop trying to find the one person to blame for anything. As I mentioned above, Obama was not the single person in charge of every decision at the VA. And Trump is certainly has been created by plenty of other supporters egging him on and encouraging him to continue his rhetoric.
There's lots of blame to go around. But can we all just acknowledge that -- regardless of the proximate causality chain here -- the current climate of xenophobia is likely to result in increased violence against immigrants overall??
How can you be so fucking stupid? Guns make killing easier. That's why they exist.
The VA was a mess LONG before Obama, and he tried to fix it. My father, a Vietnam vet who turns 70 this year, has been going to the VA in Topeka KS for the last several years and has never had any issues. In fact, having gone with him a few times to get his iron infusions, I can say, without a doubt, that the people I've interacted with in the VA have been the most upstanding people I've ever interacted with in the Healthcare System.
And to say that "Pretty much all Trump supporters aren't racist" is patently false, considering the Alt-Right is largely what got Trump elected.
My nervousness is about the presence of firearms. I see the police wearing them, I see guns for sale at Walmart and I see signs about gun policies on the entrances to building. Combine that with the news reports and statistics and it is concerning. I use the rational side of brain to remind me that the media do hype things up and while it is much more dangerous than back home the risk is still small as long as I don't do anything stupid I should be fine. As a result I normally enjoy my visits and I like 99% of the people I meet.
Pardon me, but I wasn't born yesterday. When an entire motive is determined by the statement of one unnamed witness, and it just so happens to be a rare validation of a major unsubstantiated trend narrative, I am suspicious. I'll be waiting a few weeks to let this story play out before I believe it.
"Hands up, don't shoot" anyone?
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
I stole this Sig
Guns kill easiest. Guns kill efficiently. A car and machete are tools that have many uses. A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills. It kills well.
It's not that simple.
If right wing extremism is being enabled at the highest ranks of US government, then presumably this sort of thing is acceptable at the root of the US government as well, meaning it is deeply rooted with the fabric of American sub-culture. You don't just elect a new government to get rid of this problem.
Gun infestation isn't the problem. It is a problem, sure, but it isn't *the* problem. The real problem lives above -- at the root: in any number of American sub-cultures where it is becoming more acceptable to hate. Taking away guns doesn't fix that. It might make it worse. If it's not a gun, then its a Ryder truck with a bomb in it. Its poison gas.
Your proposed solution to elect a new government and take away guns through policy-making is insufficient. I am not saying I have the solution, but so far, policy-making and official electing have done nothing but manifest more problems on top of problems -- in my opinion.
Beware of the Leopard.
That's discrimination based on time.
Please try to keep in mind that you, or your culture, don't get the privilege of defining what is "rational" for the whole world, or specifically in someone else's culture. "Rational" is defined by the culture it is being considered within.
I strongly agree with that, as does a large percentage of the american people. It was an early amendment to the constitution and is still there because it's a strong belief within our culture.
The basic principle at work here is "You have a default right to do whatever you want to do. But there are laws that place restrictions on cases where your right to this freedom infringes unfairly on someone else's right of freedom." We try not to make things illegal "just because we don't like them". When we do, those laws are often struck down later. (prohibition, women's suffrage, slavery, etc) We still have some dumb laws on the books (suicide, marijuana, etc) but they too will go away eventually, because they aren't protecting the freedoms of the right people in the right way. I see the second amendment as a statement that reminds lawmakers that this specific freedom is appropriate here. My freedom to own a firearm creates a certain risk to the public. Criminals with firearms create a risk to the public too, which includes ME. (and there are other factors) When the risks are calculated and compared, allowing me to continue owning a firearm for personal defense against armed criminals results in the greatest preservation of the public's freedom . It's just simple math.
In your culture, the variables are different. Different percentage of criminals, criminals with firearms, odds of random citizens causing harm, etc. It may not work for you where you live, in your culture. England seems to be doing better with gun control, but now look, a lot of police are armed, and that didn't used to be the case. Its clearly slowly sliding downhill as their culture changes. Now look over here at Chicago, one of the most gun-restrictive places in the country. LOOK at all the gun crimes. A total disaster of policy over there, and a perfect example of why "gun control" doesn't work in our culture. So don't come over here and tell us "You're doing it wrong!", because you really have no idea what you're talking about, not here.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Cool. Then let's blame Obama for Orlando, San Bernardino, etc.
See how fucking stupid you are?
No, because Obama was always condemned the extremism that led to those attacks, and condemned the acts themselves after they happened.
Trump, on the other hand, was completely silent the last time a right wing terrorist killed people, and has done basically nothing to speak up against the extremists in his base. Even getting him to disavow the KKK or condemn anti-Semitism is like getting a toddler to eat vegetables.
There is absolutely no double standard in holding Trump accountable for this.
I stole this Sig
"Hands up, don't shoot" was well covered. Took months and an actual trial to learn it never happened.
the dangerous ones in the US to worry about are a certain kind of gun owner.
they wear blue uniforms when they go to work each day.
you know what I'm talking about.
those gun owners are scary and can end your life. try to avoid them, even talking to them.
then, chances are, you'll generally be safe in the US.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
We are conditioned to suspect hoaxes? That is exactly wrong. We are biased to believe stories that confirm what we already think is true. This story fits that bill. Suspicious is warranted.
As for "look at all these stories", they all report the same quote from 1 witness so they all have the same single point of failure. This was the problem with the "hands up, don't shoot" narrative in Ferguson. Easy to forget how everyone assumed it was fact, including every single article (and there were gazillions of them). It took, you know, actual due process to figure out it was 100% fabricated.
Social/cultural constructs are real, and we don't have to listen to your silly definitions.
Exactly. We don't have to listen to yours either. And can you quote back to me exactly where I said they were not real in the first place?
I find as long as a person isn't engaging in sex with a minor, I'm fine with wherever they want to dip their wick. I'm fine if they want to enter the state of marriage, and enjoy the rights and responsibilities of that state. Awesome. Finding love is better than finding hatred.
Facebook's 51 genders?http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/15/the-complete-glossary-of-facebook-s-51-gender-options.html Oops maybe its 58....
Agender Androgyne Androgynous Bigender Cis Cisgender Cis Female Cis Male Cis Man Cis Woman Cisgender Female Cisgender Male Cisgender Man Cisgender Woman Female to Male FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming Gender Questioning Gender Variant Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female MTF Neither Neutrois Non-binary Other Pangender Trans Trans* Trans Female Trans* Female Trans Male Trans* Male Trans Man Trans* Man Trans Person Trans* Person Trans Woman Trans* Woman Transfeminine Transgender Transgender Female Transgender Male Transgender Man Transgender Person Transgender Woman Transmasculine Transsexual Transsexual Female Transsexual Male Transsexual Man Transsexual Person Transsexual Woman Two-Spirit
Which is exactly why I say it is pointless. Explain if you will, the difference between a Transsexual male and a transsexual man. And is it worth getting offended if you identify as a trans male and someone assumes your gender is transgender male? Must be if there is an official separate designation.
The list shows that whatever you feel like calling yourself is an acceptable gender, therefore, it follows that the term gender has no meaning. The likewise silly term some people use as identifying as a " Blackhawk Helicopter". Well how would you deny that?
You have male, female, and indeterminate, if you feel the need. And the hijacking of gender into sexual or non-sexual preference needs shelved under "none of your damn business."
Now on to Social/Cultural. My background is Hungarian/Ukrainian/Italian/Scotch-Irish. My Mother was Italian, and My Father was Hungarian in the latest generation, with the Ukrainian one generation back.
So am I blessed to have so many cultures to pick and choose from, or do I have to pick one and stay within it so I am not guilty of cultural appropriation? I can tell you that you would have been mortally offended, because we enjoyed aspects of every culture that was part of our past. Except Scotch Irish - I'm not certain how that was neglected.
All of these things exist - I'll thank you for not putting words into what I write - that's rather offensive, you know.
We know that by the scientific definition of race the human species has no races, but we also know the historical context of what groups the word "race" in the human context has defined and what physical characteristics went into that, and we can use it.
And you could line up people by skin pigmentation/race from lightest to darkest, and no one, not even the most discriminating racist could tell the dividing line. I seldom use the "race descriptive anyhow, because you and your ilk spend a lot of time changing the word and getting offended if someone uses the wrong term, It doesn't turn you into a racist to use the term African-American. Yet everyone knows what you are talking about.
Even then, it can be an issue. On NPR I was listening to a newswoman interviewing a woman from Germany that also happened to be from an African nation, and also happened to have skin pigmentation typical of a person from that nation. So th
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
You mean that as we discover that not everything is black and white, nature tends to be infinite shades of grey, we should just give up and stick with black and white?
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
I use ethnicity for the most part just because of the silly destruction of the term race
The classical definition of race was only three groups, Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. It is not pointless to introduce more granular classifications, if anything it helps us understand all the variations that exist among humanity. This is how science and progress works.
And I identify my gender as a Lamborghini Countach. Which makes my race as Gearhead.
That explains a lot.
Pretty much all Trump supporters are not racists
Everybody is racist. At least to some degree, if you think you're colour-blind or your biases are grounded in dispassionate statistics then you're delusional.
Now, do Trump supporters show more racial biases than other people? Yes. Whether you call them "racist" is just a question of where you draw the line on using that particular label.
that is yet more Fake News
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
In the face of a shooting why are you trying to make people hate others more, not less?
We're trying to wake people up to the danger posed by the rhetoric that Trump is pumping out, and he's not just creating threats on the right, if I were an Al-Queda or ISIS recruiter right now I'd be over the moon.
What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA.
Are you always so understanding when seeking the root cause when a Muslim does something terroristy?
After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension
Yeah! What was Obama thinking Presidenting while black??
and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.
I don't think Trump drinks.
Mathews apologized to the family's in her statement, calling Purinton's actions "senseless." She said he had a drinking problem that became worse since his father passed away in October 2015, and he'd been trying to get assistance from the VA.
The families of home-grown Muslim terrorists tend to be very apologetic and horrified by the actions of their relatives, do you also bold their family's response when trying to humanize the perpetrator?
I stole this Sig
My ancestors were Neanderthals you insensitive prick
Fine. Let's assume for the sake of argument that guns are a fundamentally bad thing and need to be banned. There are over 300 million guns in the United States alone. Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens.
You can't, and that's the crux of the problem. Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Law-abiding people, by definition, do obey the law. Pass a law banning handguns and you guarantee 100% disarmament of law-abiding citizens whilst simultaneously stopping very few if any criminals from getting them. Congratulations! You just made violent gun crime easier for every thug, bank robber, rapist, murderer, and so on. We absolutely need more of that, right?
Every time there's a shooting, people like you come out of the woodwork screaming about how bad guns are and how they must be eliminated. As noted above, there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States. Today about 99.99997% of them were not used in a violent criminal way, yet you insist they are a dire threat to anything and everything. Your argument is both irrational and illogical.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If everyone had a gun I probably wouldn't be posting this right now.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware. That's because the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of them are kept for defense instead of assault. There are over 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. If the owners of these decided to be a problem, trust me, you'd be dead by now. That you're not is prima facie evidence of the stupidity of your argument.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist, alchohol fucks everyone up, just in different ways, none good and many lethal. Now if only dude had been stoned, sure he could likely have shot himself whilst stoned trying to clean his second favourite toy but at least he would not have shot someone else. Guns and alchohol do not mix https://psychcentral.com/news/.... That is all that this story is about, once drunk, all logic and reason is gone to be replaced by alcohol fuelled depression and stupidity. Shooting people whilst drunk is either racist or xenophobic, it is simply alchohol fuelled stupidity. Would it have happened sober, no. Would it have happened stoned, no.
The reality is alcohol cost far more in losses to society than the profit it provides. Out suffering and wallets, are alchohol industry profits. For every dollar you spend buying alchohol, that alchohol will be spending another dollar in wasted taxes paying for the damage alchohol causes.
People are self medicating with all sorts of crap as a result of the stresses of psychopathic capitalism, it is time to ensure the mendicants do not cause more harm than good (people have a right to feel good, even if via intoxicants and fuck any sick fuck who demands people must fucking suffer, they must be fucking miserable, that they must slave and die on the inside every day, those people who demand it are disgusting).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
No one is in denial that homicide is a problem. Where we differ is the severity of the problem in relation to the severity of the proposed solutions. For example, the most recent statistics show there were over 30,000 automobile deaths last year, far more than deaths due to violent use of a gun. Do you propose banning automobiles? There are nearly 4,000 deaths annually due to drowning in pools, more than violent homicides by firearm, yet I don't hear you calling for a ban on pools.
There is no such thing as a perfectly free yet perfectly safe society and a great deal of harm can be done trying to achieve such a thing. For example, while shootings such as these make gun usage seem uniformly bad, there are no newscasts highlighting positive use of firearms for self defense. Nobody gets any air time when a five-foot, 100lb woman doesn't get raped by a six-foot, 220lb thug because she successfully defended herself with a firearm. There are innumerable permutations on the latter, none of which get any attention. Ban firearms by law-abiding citizens and you guarantee a target-rich environment for criminals, none of which will give a damn about any gun ban laws because criminals do not obey the law.
If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and magically delete every gun in existence then I might agree with your stance. That is impossible and any rational, reasonable person should know that. So long as criminals can get their hands on a weapon do to harm upon me and my family, I absolutely demand the right to legally obtain and wield one of my own for defense.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pretty sure that's Warner Brothers. Anyway I prefer Jessica Rabbit.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
Hmm....kind of like Selective Service?
And, equally, The Second Amendment was also intended to protect The People from a tyrannical domestic government who would probably not call up a "well regulated militia" to protect The People from itself and would also love a federal database of gun owners to keep any uprisings in check.
So while your argument may be reasonable it was clearly never the intention of The Founding Fathers to only grant the federal government the ability to overthrow a repressive domestic regime when the need arises.
You mean Indio, CA? You can't get a CCW permit in California unless you have a good reason, and "safety" is too vague. So either there's more to the story or the guy wasn't actually carrying a weapon, or he was carrying an illegal weapon, in which case gun laws don't really help. Did you even see it?
And besides, with the exception of your interpretation of his "attacking body language", there's nothing in this anecdote that has any relevance in the discussion. You took a progressively more anti-gun position knowing full well that the other guy was pro-gun, and the discussion ended with him saying that he didn't have to listen to you. What does that prove? Did he point his gun at you? You clearly stated that he put his hand inside his jacket (allegedly to reach this alleged gun) before the discussion got heated.
If you don't want awkward conversations to end awkwardly, don't engage strangers on topics on which you know they will disagree.
lucm, indeed.
I'd blame Trump's ilk for that too. If you vilify a group (gays in the Orlando case) long enough some unhinged asshat will decide he's taking action for the greater good.
Somehow I don't think it was Trump vilifying gays (which he has not done, BTW) that pushed a Muslim shouting "Allah Akbar!" to gun down gays in Orlando. Perhaps you're unaware of the standard treatment Muslims visit upon gays in places where Islam is the dominant religion? And I don't think it was Trump that pushed a pair of Muslims to gun down their co-workers at a holiday party in San Bernadino. And so on and so forth.
But hey, go ahead and blame Trump for stubbing your toe in the dark last night, or for the flat tire you got last year, or for the bird shitting on your windshield right after you washed your car. He's obviously the root of all evil and must be blamed for anything and everything you don't like. You look like a goddamned uninformed fool for doing so, but please, by all means, exercise your right to broadcast that fact to the world. It does wonders for your argument.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
Ignoring all the off topic and closet bigot posts above...
I hope this poor excuse of an American rots in jail and gets charged with hate crime. In addition I hope the two survivors sue him for every penny he is worth.
And kudos to Mr Grillot for standing up to this ass. We need more people like him!
He drove 80 miles away... I think he was sober enough to make a non-lethal shot.
There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
Well yes, but using extremes can often lead to a sort of moral relativism where everybody is equally bad even though one is a fringe movement and the other a mainstream sentiment. I'm sure there were a few black supremacists, but nothing like the KKK. I'm sure some Jews hated the Nazis, but nothing like the Holocaust. I don't know if it's been listed as a fallacy but the appeal to indifference certainly should be, like they were probably just as bad as us. No, they probably weren't.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The interesting thing that I find in the gun control debate is that Progressives show great concern and compassion for gun victims and demand we "do something" because of all the deaths from guns.....
From the site http://www.gunviolencearchive....
Total number of gun deaths in 2014: 12,556
That is a horrifying number and is alarming. However, those same Progressives literally shrug off this statistic:
from the site https://www.guttmacher.org/fac...
Total number of abortions in the US in 2014: 926,200
Thats nearly TWO orders of magnitude more deaths.
I know I know, "clump of cells" and all. But Progressive are incredibly blasé about life in one sense and incredibly dramatic about it in another.
Another statistic:
From the site: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topic...
Car crash deaths: 35,092
So I'll finish with this. I get that strengthening abortion restrictions is something that Progressives won't do because well "those aren't people". And the Right won't move on gun restrictions because of the right to bear arms.
But you know what would be the best thing and save a lot of lives would be? How about we keep government from restricting our access to self driving cars because they can't figure out who will be liable. Because the longer we wait to get access to self driving capabilities the more people will be impacted by that last number. And thats one we can actually affect, although ironically by having the government not overly regulate.
Why does anyone have to die? Change (or reinterpret) the law to be something less permissive than "guns for everyone!" Then reeducate the public to change peoples' opinions and provide a safe way to surrender weapons for disposal.
It won't be fast or easy of course -- we're talking on the scale of a couple of generations since the "reeducate" part tends to mostly be picked up by the younger generations (us adults get pretty set in our ways no matter how stupid they are.)
There will always be holdouts of course, and there will obviously always be a need for a certain segment of the population to retain firearms (military and law enforcement) but you can go a long way by just not teaching kids stupid things.
We're already doing it for racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Of course nobody with a brain would claim those problems are "solved" by any stretch of the imagination, but if you compare today to say 1950 its pretty obvious that we're at least on the right track.
Or at least we were until January. Hopefully this recent derailment is temporary and we can get back to sanity again after 2020..
Although the math doesn't require an absolute population value, it's a bit easier to reason about it if one is used, so I'll round the population of the country to 300 million.
If whites are 70% of this population and 500 whites per year are murdered by blacks, then the white population is 210 million, and the rate of whites murdered by blacks is 500 per 210 million -- about 2.4 whites per million are murdered each year by blacks.
If blacks are 13% of this population, and 200 blacks per year are murdered by whites, then the black population is 39 million, and the rate of blacks murdered by whites is 200 per 39 million -- about 5.1 blacks per million are murdered each year by whites.
Ergo, as I said, these numbers, if believed, show that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.
Well, only approximately, since 5.1 is not exactly twice 2.4, but that wasn't your quibble now, was it?
As other commenters have pointed out, that statement is fairly meaningless without further context, but I'm not the one who posted the context-free numbers. All I did is point out one conclusion from them. Another conclusion, of course, is the one probably intended by the original poster, e.g. that on average, black people commit more interracial murders than white people, but that conclusion likewise requires additional context before you could consider it to be actionable data.
Here's one piece of context for you -- "on average" has its own problems. As Dylan Roof illustrates, a single white guy easily supplied 4.5% of the carnage in that white-on-black number.
Should that make blacks feel safer or less secure?
Cars kill easily, poisons kill easily, bombs kill easily. Guns can be used as a sport that doesn't include killing anything.
Finally, I'd rather be killed "well" than badly. But I assume you meant efficiently. Again, my three examples above are efficient.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I would debate the "inexpensive" part of it as there are numerous ways to kill that require FAR less money. For example, knives are a device designed to cut or kill things. This notion that a whackjob like the guy in the story would not be daunted by not being able to get a gun. Personally, I'd rather be killed by a gunshot than stabbed to death, but that's just me.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I can't even recognize snark anymore.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
What's that got to do with anything?
It's important because the linguistic analysis that identified migrations and population groups disproves certain 19th century racial theories.
The Germans, for example, defined themselves as a "pure race," and claimed there was some benefit to maintaining that pure race against mixing with, for example, Jews or Negroes.
The study of migrations showed a history of constant mixing over thousands of years. This was confirmed by DNA analysis.
So the 3,500 year old Egdved girl http://en.natmus.dk/historical... who was celebrated as Denmark's national ancestor, turned out to have come from the Black Forest in Germany. And she traveled back and forth.
People often think of Grimm's fairy tales as German. But actually the same stories are translated from one European language to the next, in French, for example, or English. And there are older languages from medieval times that fill in the gaps between major European languages.
Put it all together and you get a picture of people traveling throughout Europe, and mating with each other, over thousands of years, after they left Africa. The aristocrats traveled quickly and the peasants traveled slowly (over generations). The Neanderthals mated with modern humans. This genetic mixture was probably good in terms of health, since inbreeding populations are more likely to have genetic diseases.
I haven 't studied the history of India, but my understanding is that the British colonials found a less hierarchic society and turned it into a more hierarchic society, on the model of certain British and European aristocratic ideas, which saw a great chain of being with protozoa on the bottom, animals in the middle, and British aristocrats (like themselves) near the top, right under the angels and God.
Conditional probabilities? If a white is murdered by a black, what are the chances that he is also murdered by a white? Is it large enough to really matter?
You're the one extrapolating to a perfectly smooth, round, random person, not me. My statement said nothing about such a critter, and follows from the data given. Assuming people are murdered but a single time by a single perpetrator (which is by far the usual case), then you can indeed make such statements, just as you can make statements about the black death rate from diabetes and the white death rate from heart attacks without knowing about the black death rate from heart attacks or the white death rate from diabetes.
It does seem to have riled up a few people who assumed that somehow the numbers were themselves more meaningful, doesn't it?
Change (or reinterpret) the law to be something less permissive than "guns for everyone!"
It's the Constitution. You can't change it without overwhelming majority support. And gun rights have majority support in the US.
You can't "reinterpret it" either -- it means what it says, and you won't be able to enforce a "reinterpreted" meaning on an unwilling population.
Then reeducate the public to change peoples' opinions and provide a safe way to surrender weapons for disposal.
We have government "by the people". Government "by the people" doesn't "reeducate" the people.
Good point. Americans don't drink beer just some watery brown stuff so he's better off going home.
Yes, I know it was a joke. So is my reply. I've had some very good beer in Houston but it was from people who brew their own.
I had trouble getting figures for here, based on 0.09 per 100,000 over 4 million that looks to be about 4 fatal shooting a year currently. I think that figure jumps up if you include hunting accidents. Our car deaths run at about 300 a year so compared to your 3:1 car to gun death ration I guess we are really bad drivers? It is hard to get figures here as the leading causes of death are mostly health related due to poor diet. Shooting probably would not make the top 100 of our list of causes of death.
And to answer your first statement road safety is debated here a lot more often than gun control. There is little demand to do something about gun control here but plenty of demand to do something about road deaths. No body talks about taking cars off people but changes here have brought the car death rate down from a peak of 600.
Absolutely. And they kill much more inside their race than outside it, by a factor of 5:1. Proximity appears to be a major factor in the statistics.
No, that's not what your numbers show. It's a subtle distinction, but while your numbers do, in fact show that on a per capita basis, blacks commit more murders of whites than whites do of blacks, they also show that per capita, more blacks are killed by whites than whites are killed by blacks.
There are fewer whites murdering blacks than blacks murdering whites. But there are so many fewer blacks than whites that each black has a higher chance of being killed by one of the few murderous whites than a white has of being killed by one of the few murderous blacks.
This bolsters my point. But you're too busy playing knee jerk reactionary games to the mention of "one side's" (in your mind) false story to notice.
No the coworker is dead because Garmin is abusing the system for an H1B visa. There is NO reason a H1B visa should have EVER been granted. Example Garmin tried recruiting me but their offer was 20k less than all the other offers in the same state.
Garmin is basically committing H1B fraud.
The focus on the least important bit of the post above is telling and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I've been told that it is quite difficult in comparison to kill people with knives even after extensive training. A gun is a handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things. I was killing things with a rifle at the age of nine, and that's at range. A pistol at very short range is even easier.
What visa? If you are a H1B , you shouldn't even have a job a Garmin.Example Garmin failed to recruit me because their offer was 20k less than all other companies in the same area.
Correct, and Jesus was not white.
Sorry, poor undereducated batshit crazy white American Evangelical Christians.
And he wasn't born in December.
And you can save 15% or more on car insurance.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
There is no reason Garmin should have H1B visas. I know for personal experience in that Garmin offered me 20k less than all other companies in the area. There are tech people in the area and state, just Garmin is a cheapass.
This from Wikipedia:
Miller Lite won the World Beer Cup's gold medal in 1996, 1998, 2012, 2013, and 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
lucm, indeed.
Where bigotry, ignorance and xenophobia are endorsed by the government.
If enough of them decided to do their duty as citizens and get off their asses to vote you may have a point, but for some time US government seems to have bounced from one quite unrepresentative group to another. Currently we have a bunch where "is he rich" seems to be the main selection criteria even for military advisors.
So I disagree. Oliver North and the others running the NRA may have that view and the cash from their members to influence politics but is it really deeply rooted with the fabric of American sub-culture? The squeaky wheel is getting attention but does it really reflect the entire situation?
Also, to stave off knee-jerk reactions, there are many choices between the utterly stupid extremes of a total ban and zero restrictions. As it is your neighbor can't legally use a mortar to bombard prairie dogs so there is some gun control already.
I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post
So you use your mod points to mod down AC troll?
Elok
Why is that relevant?
Indians are Asian.
India is in Asia.
Meanwhile in New Orleans:
Police Chief Michael Harrison says one person in custody and that he is being investigated for driving while intoxicated.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Indians are Asian.
https://www.reference.com/geog...
This is surreal. I don't know how to help you get your brain out of the imaginary war you think you're engaged in with me. You're not on the opposite side of me, and I'm not on the side you apparently think I am, despite me saying nothing to suggest I am.
I'll try once more, against my better judgment. I had two points. First, broad media reporting of a single witness's statement makes it more likely the witness made the statement (so long as the articles are independently reporting or verifying, and aren't all sourcing one story), but it does not increase the veracity of the witness's statement. Second, the media and public will hold as truth things that are untrue for significant periods of time and are far less capable than the justice system of discovering the truth.
What company do you work for? I want to make sure you don't get any of my business.
The fact that you can't refute my arguments is telling. I have no reason to be ashamed, whatsoever. You write like a politician with an agenda rather than a regular Joe with a real argument. You probably think I'm some alt-right, gun-nut, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I even favor gun control. I voted for Hillary. However, I have problems with people using ridiculously poor logic to support their positions. Your imagination is very limited. Maybe you should take some art classes.
Oh, congrats on killing things. I have guns and have never killed anything.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
That's just what I was wondering. So everybody who uses PC-BSD - am I now the same race as them, regardless of their ethnicity?
I'm pretty sure you need more than 1 person to qualify as a "race".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Try browsing with all comments enabled, as you are meant to if moderating. A guy died and yet all some people can post is hateful, racist and often off topic rants. The worst posts are by anonymous cowards. After you have read some of those, usually already mod to -1, tell me you wouldn't mod them down too? Slashdot does not allow you to both mod and comment in the same post, which is a fair restriction. I chose to post as I take the death of a coworker personally and think it is something to be talked about constructively and like adults.
BTW when I mod I almost always mod up, not down, and I try to mod based in the value of the content, not my view. If I disagree with a view I will not mod it down for that reason.
I would note that most post that attack me lack any real arguments, they are just rhetoric. Some are well reason, even if I disagree, I will at least try and understand their view point and respond appropriately.
Geographically, yes. However Russians are also "Asian" (and depending on the textbook occasionally Europe and Asia aren't even referred to as separate continents anymore - just "Eurasia" since it's all really the same landmass).
While Indians may be from Asia, they are not Mongoloid which is what most people think of when they say "Asian".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You don't need a visa to work short term in the USA if your are employed elsewhere. I am a New Zealand citizen and work for Garmin in New Zealand but will sometimes to travel to Olathe and our USA based customers to sort out problems. It is classed as business travel and is only a short term thing, typically only a few days.
Your coworker, and my former colleague (I was in Garmin Consumer SW Engineering for several years) was killed by hate. I grew up in Chicago, I lived through a shooting. No amount of laws stopped a determined psychopath when she came into my school and shot a kid in the head and then fled into a neighborhood home and shot the the homeowner. My home is in Olathe, and I know the people. My small block is incredibly heavily armed; I know at least three neighbors with semiauto rifles and handguns. My neighbors are wonderful people, and there's no way any of them would use such a weapon in a hateful manner, and neither would I. Kansas enacted constitutional carry precisely because there was no increase in gun violence after concealed carry was passed.
I don't care if you don't like guns. That's your belief, and you're entitled to it. But you're naÃve if you honestly don't understand what power hate can have over people.
So what's your point?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Try browsing with all comments enabled, as you are meant to if moderating. A guy died and yet all some people can post is hateful, racist and often off topic rants. The worst posts are by anonymous cowards. After you have read some of those, usually already mod to -1, tell me you wouldn't mod them down too? Slashdot does not allow you to both mod and comment in the same post, which is a fair restriction. I chose to post as I take the death of a coworker personally and think it is something to be talked about constructively and like adults.
BTW when I mod I almost always mod up, not down, and I try to mod based in the value of the content, not my view. If I disagree with a view I will not mod it down for that reason.
I would note that most post that attack me lack any real arguments, they are just rhetoric. Some are well reason, even if I disagree, I will at least try and understand their view point and respond appropriately.
Thumbs Up for the section in bold.
Listen, I understand your noble cause and everything, but you'll achieve nothing trying to fight hate troll and lurk even here on Slashdot. Save yourself some sanity in topic that are personal like this one and filter everything under 1.
Oh yeah, and obligatory xkcd : https://xkcd.com/386/
Elok
Sorry kid - I refuted everything apart from your inexpensive knife distraction so you've got that utterly wrong. It may work at your high school debating club but it's a big world out there and your obvious bullshit relies on a tiny bubble full of the naive.
So? Is that supposed to be another distraction?
So something demonstrating thought instead of directionless whining after a six-pack or two? What's with the "dumb is good" fetish?
How about acting like a human being instead of an Eliza bot with a random insult file.
How about actually reading the original of the book you've taken your name from? It may help you grow up. Is that enough for you to get an idea of how much your "take some art classes" made me laugh? You may note my post earlier was critical of your disgusting action and not you personally, but if you are going to write shit like "you should take some art classes" the gloves are off.
You disgust me writing such shit as you did in response to a murder. How fucking immature.
It is called the Selective Service. You must sign up on your 18th birthday. How in the hell do you thing the draft is legal? Every male 18 to 45 IS the militia. If the feminist were honest. It should be. Every person 18 to 45 is the militia.
Quantum leap much?
"Americans have the right to bear arms, but not the right to use them" ~ © 2017 CaptainDork
The right to bear arms is revoked for felons, the insane, and the tenants of some state-sponsored housing.
Additionally, the legality of a firearm discharge is determined by due process.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Well, this has become quite boring. I will hold off judgement about this story, just as I do with many that conveniently fit a narrative. In the meantime, best wishes to you.
They didnt refute your argument because you're argument is foolish and was thus dismissed. You jumped on the smallest of points (are guns cheap or not) within the above text rather than address what is actually being said. Then you make the claim that guns aren't cheap because there are cheaper ways to kill people? So something cant be cheap because something else is cheaper? Sounds like ridiculously poor logic to me. Maybe you should take a college class on logical thinking.
Oh and scary knives!? So many people get killed by knives in all of those country's without guns it's just crazy!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
For that to be possible it has to be as rigged as the Eurovision Song Contest.
Oh wait a minute, the link says the category of "Best American-Style Light Lager" but you cut that out of the middle of your quote.
WTF is it with the goldpost shifting and the misrepresentation by omission - OVER A JOKE. Your misquote makes it appear that it won the medal for the best beer in the world many times but here is what Wikipedia really has if your link is followed:
Do you pull this dishonest little stunt often? Why? WTF is wrong with you? This issue is so incredibly trivial but you lowered yourself that far.
They migrated here too. There are no humans native to North/South America.
Go back across the Bering Strait.
And take Sarah Palin with you.
So he bought his gun illegally?
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There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
Well yes, but using extremes can often lead to a sort of moral relativism where everybody is equally bad even though one is a fringe movement and the other a mainstream sentiment. I'm sure there were a few black supremacists, but nothing like the KKK. I'm sure some Jews hated the Nazis, but nothing like the Holocaust. I don't know if it's been listed as a fallacy but the appeal to indifference certainly should be, like they were probably just as bad as us. No, they probably weren't.
This sounds like something a white apologist would say. I was talking about individuals being dicks - which happens in all religions, ethnicities, and colors. You bring out the holocaust and the KKK as examples...
The Hutu killed a million Tutsi in 3 months - and while that doesn't compare to the Germans killing 11 million Jews, they also didn't have the power, reach, or time period to kill more before international involvement curtailed it. Slavery? Invented by Sumerian and Egyptians (middle-eastern) and perfected by Berbers (black) who specialized in enslaving Christians. There have been more non-black slaves than black slaves. KKK are retards - but like I said...EVERY group, ethnicity, religion etc has its share of dicks.
I already read Moby Dick, but thanks for the suggestion shitbrick. And you never refuted anything. All you did was make a separate argument or to act as if my argument was some kind of distraction just because it doesn't fit your narrow world view.
Your problem is that you think you know me and what makes me tick and you don't. I don't give a fuck about distractions. I don't need them, especially with people of your intellect.
Your fake outrage about me telling you to "take art classes", you can shove up your ass as well since you implied I was somehow trying to pull the wool over your eyes and said that was "telling". That's fucking insulting. Sorry but actual arguments are not distractions. I'm also sorry they're inconvenient for you but, tough shit. Grow up. You can't win them all. While you're at it, request a refund from whatever institution educated you (if any), because you got short changed hard.
Finally, fuck off and die. We're done here.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
My point is blatantly straightforward. I would suggest reading the thread.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
>"You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not."
No, the amendment is what it says, not what one of the authors wanted it to say. There is a huge difference. The reason the wording was changed was exactly to convey a different meaning. Had they wanted it to be just for a militia, it would not have been reworded before being approved.
>"as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot"
Wrong. The general rule is anyone convicted of a FELONY criminal offense.
>"Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things."
Since we want to be honest: They are also a way of equalizing the populous to provide defense. Without them, everyone is prey to those who are physically stronger. And just like every other prohibition, almost every gun control will negatively affect mostly the "good" people and not the "bad", who will continue to obtain and use them illegally. The "bad" people generally do not obey the law.
You made a mistake in your math there. For the most part, criminals in the US only have guns because they are so widely available legally. Thus, your (and everyone else's) gun ownership clearly creates a very substantial public risk that is self reinforcing. More guns mean more criminals with guns which means we need more guns to keep ourselves safe which means criminals will have even more guns which means we need more guns and on and on...
The statistics are plain as day that all of our guns arent making us safer when you run us versus any other Western nation with substantial gun control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And pointing to regional gun control in the US will of course shows that gun control "doesnt work" because illegal guns, made plentiful by wide open gun laws outside the region, still come into the region freely.
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1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans
It also sounds odd to the current U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed in D.C. vs Heller the right to bear arms for self-defense. A later court finding (People v. Aguilar) summarized the majority opinion:
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court undertook its first-ever "in-depth examination" of the second amendment's meaning Id. at 635. After a lengthy historical discussion, the Court ultimately concluded that the second amendment "guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation" (id. at 592); that "central to" this right is "the inherent right of self-defense" (id. at 628); that "the home" is "where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute" (id. at 628); and that, "above all other interests," the second amendment elevates "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home" (id. at 635). Based on this understanding, the Court held that a District of Columbia law banning handgun possession in the home violated the second amendment. Id. at 635.
So at this point they've basically decided it's a self-defense thing. The idea that the Second Amendment is to facilitate armed insurrection to overthrow a tyrannical government (a.k.a. the so-called "Second Amendment solution") has no current legal basis. The dissenting opinion went with the "well-regulated militia" idea:
The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
Here are the first six drafts of the Second Amendment and the final version:
Between the US and Europe, only the latter have spawned oppressive, murderous government after government since the writing of the US constitution.
Ownership is determined by the winners of history. There is no need to apologize or make amends for that fact, it simply is what it is.
Absolutely correct. But when government makes a deal, it had better live up to their side of the deal. The problem that some native Americans have is that government is not adhering to their end of the deal. Imagine the Feds coming by and taking your house without giving you any compensation - one could not blame you for being upset.
The problem is that the original deal was crap. Not fair, ambiguous, and at times, possibly illegal. We are talking about ancient documents that were put together hastily in a time when people simply did not care. So it has to be cleaned up but doing so is easier said then done.
still pretty good. And still better than if the person has a gun.
As for it 'not being wrong' well, that doesn't make it bullshit. You're side stepping my point, which is that guns make it _too_ easy to kill people. You can do it on a whim. Just point, pull trigger, done. Bullets travel in a span of time you can't even measure without special equipment or techniques.
You're right about the wishful thinking part though. Wishful thinking never gets you _anything_. Including a reduction in gun deaths. It takes action. Australia took action. The banned just about everything and, well, what do you know. Gun deaths plummeted and they haven't had a mass shooting since the ban.
Bans work, but America has a gun culture that means a ban is political suicide. So I'd settle for more root cause work. Social programs to eliminate poverty and address mental illness. But I can't even get those. So we're back to wishful thinking. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
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The people I fault are the executives who abuse the H1-B program. Theoretically, guys working on H1-B visas are only supposed to work jobs they couldn't get Americans for. In theory...
Which would be alright with me if it were true. But the truth is that the tech execs just want cheaper labor and couldn't care less about the American worker. The only thing they care about Americans is if we buy their products and services.
Don't blame the Indian guy. Blame the guy who gave that job to him.
Then shoot the elite tech execs. There's always more foreign workers to take this guy's place.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
You're entitled to your opinion, but it's our country and this is how we have chosen to live. You don't have to come here or live here if you don't want to. What we Americans resent and oppose utterly are foreigners telling us how to live or trying to take away our rights, including our individual right to bear arms.
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. An opinion would be "you should have more gun control", when I originally wrote the comment I included that opinion, but then I decided to simply stick with the fact "guns do not protect you against tyranny". Now, you can argue that fact is wrong, but don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
Governments behave differently when the people are armed. They are more restrained, less authoritarian and more cautious in the exercise of their powers. As for enabling authoritarianism, the first thing that authoritarians everywhere do is disarm the populace because they know perfectly well that an armed people will not stand for tyranny. For example, one of the first things that both the Soviets and the Nazis did when they gained power was to restrict gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
That authoritarian governments try to disarm their enemies, and that gun ownership enables authoritarian governments, are not mutually exclusive.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety (since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing). That creates a demand for a stronger more authoritative government to keep the violence at bay.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
I stole this Sig
The buyback scheme was 2003, and 1996, there is certainly a drop there. You conveniently mention 1996, where there were still a lot of gun, but not 2003 the second buyback. I wonder why. Maybe because that woulds not support your contention I guess. Murder rate 2001- 2003 :310 , 318, 302. 2004 and following years : 263,259, 280, 255 ,263. What other stuff happened in 2003 beside the buyback ? Nothing.
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Migrating is OK. It's the ethnic cleansing of an existing native population that is considered bad by today's standards. Bonus points if doing so while bragging about freedom, equality and rule of law.
fuck you
Your post is like a graffiti minus the artistic skills. It's too bad though that you didn't add an unexpected element of punctuation, such as a question mark; it would have made for a much deeper statement. Something to keep in mind for the next time you are overwhelmed by your emotions.
lucm, indeed.
No, that was your cheap knife line.
So when you make a personal attack the people you attempt to bully are supposed to remain silent? Also it was so incredibly fucking ridiculous - take art classes to learn about the world or something? Of course you are going to get ridiculed by that Mr Kiddies version ten page Moby Dick. Unfortunately it is very easy to know far too much about you and far too much about "what makes you tick" from what you have written. You are a naive blank slate that the NRA and other manipulative pricks have written whatever they wanted on.
So you've given up on the smug vegan thing of telling me I should never have killed things? Are all the losers that have been conned by Oliver North's NRA as utterly pathetic and thin skinned as you are?
A gun is a tool for killing. It is not a flag. It is not a penis substitute. Why the fuck do you losers treat it as if it is both?
Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.
Which can be fixed with more guns, not less. Repeal all the gun disarming acts of the last century and let people take care of the problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
See, how arbitrary even "400 years" is? Cape Cod no, New York (in its incarnation as Nieuw Amsterdam) yes.
You are born with your colour. Your religion and affiliations you choose. The law might not see a difference there but I do. I'm not promoting discrimination but judging someone based on the choices they make seems like fair game to me.
It was. You could get new land without having to pay for it. Instead of welfare money. the U.S. handed out welfare property.
Sure it is, you're discriminating against people of races which are not those of whom you shot. You should be more inclusive by shooting people of all races.
Far more people have guns than you are probably aware.
I don't care who has a gun. I care how many hot heads carry them everywhere they go.
Trump is at least trying to slow the flood of people who would tend to kill us.
What people are these? Immigrants have lower crime rates than native born and terrorism is an extraordinarily rare way to die.
And yes, I know some were "American". They tend to be children of immigrants. Some are actual immigrants. Some are from long-established American families... but turned to jihad by immigrants
When native born Muslims turn to terrorism it's not because they were "turned by immigrants". It's typically because they're caught between cultures and are trying to find an identity, they feel rejected by the US because of all the people who call them "American" so they look for an identity by trying to reacquire their own culture as an outsider. This can lead an extremely tiny fraction to turn to terrorism.
often having been converted to Islam while in prison.
I'm not even sure what alt-right meme you're tapping into this time but I assume it's some kind of African-American Nation of Islam reference? Can you point to any Muslim terrorist who was converted to Islam in prison?
I stole this Sig
From a language point of view, Caucasian and Aryan is synonymous. The proto-indoeuropean or proto-aryan languages developed between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which are connected by the Caucasus Mountain Range. There is a western branch of the languages (celts, romans, germans, slaws, baltians, albanians, greeks, armenians etc.pp.), and an eastern branch (sanskrit, hindi, urdu, bengali, persian, pashto, kurdish...). Two other branches of the languages have died out, the Anatolian and the Tocharian languages.
It's ok. Many people make the error to correct others without being correct themselves.
The Caucasus mountains are Asian too, at least their southern part is. Does that makes all Caucasians half asian?
"Everybody is racist" That isn't true. Psychological research has shown that all people start out not being racist. Kids don't care about colour.
People only get racist over time if and only if they acquire racist ideas from broader society and people can also completely lose their racism.
So if someone isn't racist, he isn't racist, period. Saying to him that he's racist because you say so isn't going to do any good.
The Founding Fathers...
That's an argument analogous to "The Bible says...". And that's why the so-called "debate" about gun control is impervious to facts: gun ownership has a quasi-religious status in American culture. No amount of rational argument is going to shake the faith of a fundamentalist gun toter. And as this seems to be a religion practised only in the USA, that also accounts for why it not only sounds "odd to Europeans" but to many others who are not initiated into the brotherhood.
And it's why it's futile (and sometimes dangerous) for the rest of us to challenge.
And this excuses a murder exactly how?
Found another xenophobe, I'd say.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control.
And this is where the discussion quickly disintegrates, because any discussion with someone who believes in the right to bear arms is quickly labeled "irrational" when the person who believes in less gun control doesn't immediately agree with the person who believes in more gun control.
It is still a rational discussion even if your counter-party does not abandon their position and cede to your argument.
Nearly all the people I've known who have been gun rights advocates, even those who have been senior members of lobby organizations, have been in favor of gun control measures, usually enforcement of existing gun control laws like prohibitions on convicted felons from possessing them (as one example). In fact, a major theme is that the government itself does not prosecute many gun control measures already on the books.
I doubt more than a small percentage of the people charged with gun crimes in Chicago who are eligible for Federal charges were referred to Federal prosecutors and further, that Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute a number of cases that were referred to them. If you can charge a violent felon with a gun crime, why wouldn't you?
Because gun control advocates label any discussion which doesn't start out with "How much more gun control should we have?" as *irrational*, it's led to the belief that gun control advocates really are gun ownership ban advocates -- there isn't a threshold for them where there is "enough" gun control, they favor outright gun ownership bans and often won't say it directly.
Sure you can. If you interpret it that way (I don't), the Constitution guarantees everyone a right to own a weapon ("bear arms"). Nowhere does it guarantee a right to own bullets.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The fact that you can't refute my arguments is telling. I have no reason to be ashamed, whatsoever. You write like a politician with an agenda rather than a regular Joe with a real argument. You probably think I'm some alt-right, gun-nut, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I even favor gun control. I voted for Hillary. However, I have problems with people using ridiculously poor logic to support their positions. Your imagination is very limited. Maybe you should take some art classes.
Oh, congrats on killing things. I have guns and have never killed anything.
The parent did indeed fail to defend himself, but I think his point was that a knife can be used for many purposes besides killing someone. What have you ever done with your gun, if you've never used it to hunt?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Please tell me how you plan to get rid of them in such a way that disarms criminals equally as well as it disarms law-abiding citizens
You might like to look at the UK, where owning a pistol went from something anyone might do for self defence, to something that you'd only do if you were a member of a shooting club, to something that you basically can't do, over a period of a few decades. One of the ways that this happened was by significantly increasing the penalties around the '60s for crimes where the perpetrator was armed, as well as for illegal trafficking in firearms. If carrying a gun to a crime means that, if you get caught, you'll spent 20 years in prison instead of two, then a lot of criminals will take a knife instead. If a firearm-related murder with an illegal gun leads to the seller going to prison for almost as long as the perpetrator then black marketeers find something lower risk to sell.
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More like they didn't want you, considering that you are so butthurt about it.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
" those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia."
As it is today.
The only difference is that it is, in fact, automatic. If you are a citizen (or declared to want to be), not part of the National Guard or Naval Militia, and you are male from 17 to 44, you are part of the UNORGANIZED MILITIA.
10 U.S. Code  311 - Militia: composition and classes
Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ"
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14; Pub. L. 85â"861, Ââ1(7), Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103â"160, div. A, title V, Ââ524(a), Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656.)
-Styopa
In which case native means you were born in the land you are native to.
So I guess OP can put off packing.
That said, OP may want to consider not being a douche.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
ok, doesn't change the fact on who is sitting in the oval office does it.
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. ... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
So you're presenting an ... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...
I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.
...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing
Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.
We actually found one of them; as i recall, it was a ~30,000 year old skeleton in the Pacific Northwest with caucasoid features... the tribe whose lands it was found on appatently wouldn't consent to additional study or outside research (go figure).
They must be the bad cousin, cause they never get invited to Aryan Nations meetings.
The fallacy here is that "criminals only obtain guns legally". They're criminals, and surprise! they don't mind breaking the law to get something that makes their "job" more successful and lowers their odds of being caught.
Restricting access to guns affects law-abiding citizens a lot more than criminals. You end up with an imbalance like in Chicago, where many criminals have guns and very few citizens do. That's the worst-case scenario for the citizen, for more than one reason. A survey of inmates jailed for B&E ("breaking and entering") reported their number one concern was "homeowner with gun". It's a credible, powerful, proven deterrent. In the endgame, a criminal would MUCH rather stare down the barrel of a gun held by a law enforcement officer than their victim, because the victim is much more likely to actually pull the trigger. Officers have restraint and training, try to justify their actions, and know what they can legally do or not do. Joe public is rattled and twitchy in that situation and often shoots even unarmed burglars because they're focused exclusively on their own personal safety. We can debate the legality of the citizen with the gun later, the point is it's a serious deterrent for the criminals.
Criminals in Chicago have a much lower risk of encountering a homeowner with a gun, and if you're the only one with a gun in a gunfight, you generally come out way ahead. Chicago is THE place to rob people right now, because they're unlikely to be able to defend themselves if you have a gun - your risk as a criminal is very low. And if your argument is that gun control limits the guns in circulation, no it does not. Every time the government tries to dial up control, there's a run at the gun stores. Lately they've been trying the other angle of limiting the availability of ammunition. That's resulted in popular ammunition FLYING off the shelves every time a store gets their allotment in. It's too late to restrict availability, there's too much already in circulation and trying to tighten the belt just leads to more panic hoarding.
TL;DR: "Make guns illegal, and only ones left with guns will be the criminals." (both by definition, and in practice)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
First would dispute some of your logic. The second amendment of you constitution says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". So to me the clear intent was to make sure that the early US government had a body of armed and trained civilians to call on to defend it should Britian, or any other European power, decide to invade. This goal did indeed make a lot of sense 200+ years ago but not so much today. However importantly the clear aim was the defence of your country i.e. not to fight against your government but to fight for it against foreign invaders. If you want to have a look at a "well regulated militia" today try Switzerland. They arm, but also train their citizens. The result is a well regulated and trained militia but very few deaths due to gun violence.
Secondly though there seems little point for the law in today's world. The US has a huge military force and it is just about inconceivable that it would ever need to rely on armed citizens to defend itself. That same force means that even you interpretation, that citizens need guns to hold the government to account, is also irrelevant today. There is no way that they could possibly defeat the US armed forces if they continued to follow the government's orders. The best defence of democracy today is the same as it has always been: the will of the people. Governments are made up of people and if enough people refuse to serve it, and many resist it, it will fall.
So I agree that there was a very good reason for the law initially. However now the actual aim of that law is being completely ignored and, in today's world, the aim is irrelevant anyway. If you cannot change your laws to deal with changing circumstances you will end up in a lot of trouble.
Just because something is mainstream vs fringe doesn't make it any more moral. Feminism and Christianity is relatively mainstream as is BLM but that doesn't make them any less dangerous, hate-groupy or morally superior to the KKK or Black Panthers which both are having a resurgence due to the former. Nazis were pretty mainstream, it was just those crazy SS and Hitlerjugend that were fringe by that definition.
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They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?
Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.
I know I know, "clump of cells" and all. But Progressive are incredibly blasé about life in one sense and incredibly dramatic about it in another.
There are strict legal limits on abortion, which basically boil down to 'you can't kill it if it has a brain stem'. Do you eat meat? If so, the animals that you kill are closer to an intelligent being than anything that it's legal to abort. The millions sperm that die every time that you ejaculate are also denied the ability to grow into an adult human, but you don't seem too concerned about those, yet that have precisely the same level of intelligence as an aborted zygote and each one has half of the ability to grow into an adult human. Attempting to claim some kind of moral equivalence between a collection of insentient cells and a living sentient human is insulting to anyone reading your post.
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White far-right dude kills a bunch of white children in Norway because they were going to a summer camp organized by the Labour Party.
White dude shoots journalists because he had been fired by the network
.
So yeah, there are dicks everywhere, and handing them guns is not the safest thing to do...
Sorry about the gender thing. Transgender people are really biologically distinct. I think we're going to get to a point where we're past this idea that everybody has to be one thing or another. I mean, I'm never going to argue with any person who wants to consider themselves the opposite gender, but I'm not sure why you would want to embrace that as opposed to developing an identity as a transgender person. Yes, we get treated pretty crappy, but otherwise it's not like it's inherently bad. To be honest, it's actually pretty cool as long as you're not saddled with crippling mental issues from dealing with the gender binary.
The alternative to recognizing that mental gender is a separate biological process which occurs after the sex organs are developed is to tell people that their gender does not exist. This is resulting in mass suicides. If your position is that transgender persons deserve to die, well, I suppose that would be logically consistent. I'd very much hope that not to be the case, however.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I see you found a newspeak dictionary. I don't care how old it is. Just add all-inclusive definitions so that you can use 'racist' for any argument. Unfortunately dictionaries are complicit in creating and maintaining this meme. Race is in the genes. All other characteristics are mutable. So far, a person cannot change his/her genes/chromosomes. So true racism is against (or for) something about a person that cannot be altered. It is not wrong to oppose dilution or changing a country or society based upon cultural/ethnic grounds. This is especially true when there is culture clash. Historically cultures take over other cultures' territories by war. Infiltration is a kind of silent war that will eventually erupt.
I too am really nit just disappointed, but ashamed of threads like this
unfinished: (adj.)
That is part of the Aryan/Dravidian theory invented by the Brits to justify their rule as one in a long series of invasions. It has been conclusively disproved by genetics- as in science..
I was told that if you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. I'm guessing you couldn't tell the two apart if you were flipping a coin trying to be correct 50% of the time.
All morons will have to suffer the rule of the "elite learn-ed" so why do they not deserve a say in what will impact their lives? Who cares if they picked something other than what you think they should, it means nothing more than you were not smart enough to convince a moron by your own definition that your way is best. IS this what all this animosity is about? Do you hate the world because you realized you are not as good as you thought you were due to the fact that you couldn't convince what you thought was morons to do something you think they should have?
So MR learned person, here is a question about the
US constitution and the bill of rights ( the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means shit in this respect) for you, where does it say it protects the right to abortions? If you can actually answer that- which I doubt you can, you will see how it is a largely misleading and an outdated association which can be easily or eventually undone due to Obamacare and the insistence of government provided medical care (single payer which this all seems to be leading to).
I'm waiting to marvel at your knowledge.
Ahh, the old "you're too stupid to understand," coming from someone who apparently doesn't realize that when you slot in any reasonable approximation of the current US population, the resulting numbers (2.4e-6 and 5.1e-6 for black-on-white and white-on-black, similar order of magnitude for the ones you claim are necessary for proper reasoning) are so small that any effect from the conditional probabilities will be well down in the noise.
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist,
No, but getting drunk and shooting a brown person while yelling "get out of my country" is racist, drunk or not. Being drunk doesn't make it magically not racist, much like punching someone while drunk droesn't magically become "not assault" just because you're drunk.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Sean Spicer, 2/24/2017
Q Can I first ask about the shooting in Kansas of the two Indian Americans and what the President’s response to it was, but also if there’s any concern that some of the rhetoric that the President or -- that generally has been out here recently could have contributed in any way to that or stepped up violence?
MR. SPICER: I mean, obviously, any loss of life is tragic, but I’m not going to get into, like, that kind of -- to suggest that there’s any correlation I think is a bit absurd. So I’m not going to go any further than that.
If rhetoric killed by itself I doubt there would be anyone left alive to post on Slashdot by now.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Consistently
This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense.
what.
The purpose of guns is to be more effective at killing things than not having guns. Your argument against that is literally arguing against the second amendment, not for. The second starts:
so if guns are actually totally useless and no worse than pointy sticks, then that nullifies the first part of the second amendment, which means the conclusion is not implied by the conditions. Your amended second amendment would be:
The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY
Yeah, but guns reduce it from REALLY wanting to kill people to a vague, passing notion of killing people. It lowers the barrier to entry a lot.
Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
Yes, one of the most effective ways which is WHY ownership is enshrined in law in the second amendment.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Assuming 400 years sticks, most of my ancestors arrived in North America just shy of 300 ago, from France, England, and Ireland. I'm sure I'm not the only one of "mixed" descent. Which branch represents the "native" homeland that we're supposed to go back to?
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Framing the discussion: If he was born at all and if you take the bible to be more than fiction, he was not born in winter.
Shepherds did not guard their flocks in the hills in Israel in winter (read the old testament for insight on what they actually did with their sheep, hint: it was prohibited).
Also the sabbath is _not_ Sunday.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are no humans native to anywhere outside Africa and even then only certain ports of Africa..... But your have to go back over a million years. To imagine that is meaningful today is just........ Very, very strange.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Still stuck in denial. Get on with it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This line of argument isn't helpful either as the Native Americans who occupied a given piece of land in 1650 may well be the descendents of others who "stole it" from previous occupants. Much better to simply respect each other's humanity regardless of origin. At least far enough to not get drunk and shoot them.
Only boring people are ever bored.
yawn
A gun is a tool, which fires small pellets at a high velocity. Pellets can be fired at a variety of targets for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are both self-defense and aggressive violence against other human beings. They are neither the easiest not most efficient way to murder human beings, efficient mass murderers use fire while poison is easier for killing one at a time. Your local Home Depot is more dangerous than your local gun store. Firearms are, however, the best means of self- and community-defense yet developed. As the cliche says, God made man, but Samuel Colt made man equal.
The U.S.'s murder rate is linked much more to its prevalence of economic injustice and history of racism than to the legal status of firearms. (There is no correlation between a state's murder rate and it's gun laws, but there is one between it GINI score and its murder rate.) Criminologists are pretty clear that gun control laws have little effect on violent crime, and may increase it by decreasing the ability to citizens to defend themselves.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, either you've just proven that you don't have a clue what feminism is about (hint: if you got your understanding of it from theredpill, then you're quite astonishingly far off the mark), a very odd breed of moral relativist, or you are a real grade A bigot.
In the first case, a visit to a dictionary will enlighten you. In the second case, while extreme moral relativitism is a logically coherent position from some starting points, it ultimately leads to no useful conclusions, so there's little to debate. In the third case, well, if you reply in the affirmative, I can set the idiot flag and not have to see as many of your posts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
it amuses me that we rarely talk about the employers of immigrants and illegal immigrants in the conversations about jobs and wages
You forgot the other 300,000 fatal incidents in the same time span that had one aspect in common: guns.
Unless you are a native american, you should be packing too.
Why? "Native Americans" were conquered. So where those that conquered them until we have the US. There should be none of this nation within a nation crap either. It's all United States.
Now if someone wants to come here, we allow that. They need to do it legally and they need to assimilate. Muhammadists aren't doing that. They set up enclaves and no go zones in Europe as well as the US. They have absolutely no interest in US law, just sharia law and they'll even tell you that. They think we have to bend to what they want. Screw them, they need to go back to where they can practice their sharia law and honor a man that was really nothing more than a thug and a pedophile. We are experiencing an invasion just as they said they would do.
Well, count me in.... I was BORN here. That makes ME a NATIVE American.
Here's a recent article that seems relevant. It's talking about suicide rather than homicide, but the point is the same. People who try to kill themselves with drugs or knives only have a 5% chance of dying. People who use guns have a 90% chance. Guns really are different. They're amazingly effective tools for killing. That's what they're designed for. Now add the fact that you can carry one with you everywhere you go, and it only takes a moment to pull it out and start shooting. The time from when you think, "I want to kill this guy," to when he's lying on the floor with a fatal injury might only be seconds. There's nothing else like them.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
It's been rebranded to TrueOS, I was using the former term since many may not know it by its new name
Alright, for starters you must have skipped the part of my post where i explained why regional US gun control will always fail so I'll just ignore all of that in your post and you can get back to me. And no, short term stock piling does not mean gun control is doomed to fail. Stock piles are found and confescated or run out.
After that, that just leaves your criminals will always get guns cause they're criminals and again you seem to have ignored what I said above. Since this point is the crux of our discussion I'll repeat myself though.
America has drastically higher gun violence and homocide rates ( but yet similiar rates of crime in general so maybe guns arent the "proven" deterrent you claim) then any other comparible Western nation precisely because we have so many guns. ALL guns start out as legal. There is no such thing as illegal gun factories in this country and we are an exporter of guns, not an importer, both legally and illegaly speaking. Once again, our criminals are FAR more likely to have guns then in any other western country because we have so many legal guns.
Our homocide rate would not be 3 to 4 times higher than western Europe if guns made us safer!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I did. You pointed to a bunch of tools that have different primary uses then killing people and that are used at rates drastically lower than guns to intentionally kill people and then you point to a minor side use to guns as if all that stuff is the same. I thought maybe you didnt articulate your point properly but it seems like you just made a poor point now.
As stated in the post you replied to, guns are far more efficient at killing people then anything you listed because that is a guns primary purpose and what they have been designed for.
Any rational person would rather have someone try to kill them with a knife then a gun because knives can be run away from. It's why waaaayyyy more people are intentionally killed in this country with guns than knives or any of the other nonsense you mention (bombs kill too!? Good thing they're totally legal!).
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Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America.
Foreigners understand quite well.
We have 2017 now, not 1760 ... or 1780 ... the one who is not understanding is america. (not only regarding guns. But also drugs, parenthood, alcohol etc. )
But thanx for the informative post, probably some did not know about the distinction between "people" and "militia".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
These days race is a social or cultural construct,
No it's not. This is just ideological rhetoric.
20% of the US population voted for Trump, or 27.2% among voting age Americans[1]. 1] http://cookpolitical.com/story...
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
Yet you're so willing to twist things to justify that same authoritarian government policy. There's a reason one of the first things authoritarian regimes do is confiscate weapons. It saddens me that Euros always seem so willing to throw up their hands. Talk about stockholm syndrome.
So we are not blaming Reagan for making it ok to push all the mentally ill out on the street.
I would be happy to blame him but enough time has passed it does not apply in this case. I think it was wrong to put so many mentally ill people out of asylums.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You obviously have no clue about religion. People born into some religions have absolutely no choice in the matter and not only do they face whatever consequences they were brainwashed to believe if they disobey it, they can also face physical harm and even death by changing their religion.
Just because you happened to grow up in a time and place where you are not honor killed for disobeying some skywizzard or the teachings of an illiterate pedophile trying to spread the word of Christianity and fucking it up into a third branch of of the jewish faith that hates other jews for not being bullshit enough doesn't mean that real people in other circumstances don't have mortal fears involved with it.
And yes, you are promoting discrimination. You are no different than the klan member who will not give a business loan or scholarship or job to anyone with an address in the hood (because they chose to live in a poor part of town with a lot of minorities). You are no different than the redneck who wants you to drink from a different fountain or enter the restaurant through the side door so his appetite isn't spoiled by knowing you are near when they chose to get uppity and expect to be treated equally. It is discrimination by definition, just because you don't care about that kind of discrimination doesn't make it any different. Separate but equal was the law of the land at one time. Thankfully, a lot of people stopped thinking like you.
I think most I know don't like people coming into their country breaking laws, particularly Immigration Laws.
Some people are upset. Some people are more upset than others.
Importing large amounts of people using the law to enable legal immigration, to malign, or aggravate a local culture in a country is probably a bad idea.
I can't think of something more politically charged than importing large numbers of people for the gain of a few, to undercut the hard work of a local culture to educate themselves only to find that they are priced out of the market. You can see this happening in the USA right now and it is creating structural problems economically that, are going to be quite explosive in the coming decade.
This idea that anything goes for profit or labor cost to obtain unfair trade deals by leveraging Third world people in a 1st world context will bring war if it isn't stopped. It incites people to listen to these globalist complain they can't find qualified people to do a given job, for example, when they are being blatently untruthful and only care about the cost of labor.
A very very nasty big war is coming.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
and your guns are useless against a modern military. Don't kid yourself. You and your ar-15 don't stand a chance even if you set it to full auto. Hell, we didn't even win the revolutionary war. France stepped in with the supplies and also tried up England. You need to focus on keeping things from getting to that point. If it ever gets there it'll be too late.
That said, while I'm not opposed to more gun control I understand there are millions of Americans with a strong emotional attachment to guns. Guns are a community for them as well as a symbol of strength. That's not going to change. As a lefty I'll happily drop the gun issue if I could get folks on the right to help fix the systemic problems (poverty, lack of health services, no social safety net) that result in all these mass shootings. Yeah, I still have some issue with the widespread availability of guns (I've know people with temporary depression who've blown their heads off; it's too easy to kill yourself with a gun) but ultimately I'm a progressive and will take the best route to progress.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?
Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.
Once an armed conflict starts weapons are easy to come by. ISIS is actually a great example of what I'm talking about.
Their origin in Iraq is unusual as they were part of a long-term insurgency partially made up of a former standing army, once you have a violent conflict it's always easy to get more guns into the country (and they got a lot of US military hardware Iraqi troops left behind as they fled).
But in Syria Assad did two things when the Arab spring started, first he started torturing and committing outrages to turn the protests violent, and second, he released all the extremists from his jails. He was faced with peaceful protests and he worked hard to create a violent Islamic insurgency, the reasoning being that while lots of people wanted the peaceful protester to take power no one wanted the Islamists in charge.
It's exactly what I'm talking about, authoritarians want an internal threat so they can be the lesser of two evils, so Assad created that threat.
In the US, if you hate Muslims and want to take away their rights the first thing you want to do is get as many guns as you can into their hands. Inevitably a few of them will use them and you'll have the public outrage to do whatever you want.
I stole this Sig
I sympathize with your sentiment and feel for the loss of your coworker. I only wanted to respond to one part of your comment.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
All rights do have a cost in blood. Habeas corpus, speech, assembly, and bear arms. All of those rights had a cost beyond treasure. The US fought 2 wars to get those rights for everyone and they were the bloodiest wars in American history. People say "be eternally vigilant" to protect the rights we have but that doesn't tell what you have to be vigilant about; people have to be vigilant about the cost of rights. The more that people forget what it costs to get and keep those rights the more that that price will be paid.
It was a genuine good thing that the Battle of Athens saved the ballots from a tyrannical government that decided to shoot a black man in the back while voting to count the ballots in secret. It is a genuine good thing that citizens can protect themselves from a tyrannical government. An armed citizenry is one of the checks on the government to protect the citizens from tyranny because people are corruptible. The whole point is that you cannot trust people in any position of power.
The right of arms is a right of self defense. Guns are a tool to that enables the citizenry to protect themselves from rogue agitators to state aggression. It is a tool that equalizes the odds of any violent encounter regardless of the physical and fighting prowess you or the agitator may have.
Getting rid of a right to citizens does nothing to address the real issue of people doing bad things. Getting rid of speech will not end racist bigotry anymore than ridding guns will end violence.
You're just sitting there working hard - the next second you get blown away... Poor guy probably didn't even have time to look up.
Trump doesn't control what gets shown on TV.
Thank you for the well reasoned and thought out argument. Most of the responses have seen here have been, from the outside looking in, irrational so I think the core issue is my culture sees things fundamentally different from yours.
When I consider your statement "Guns are a tool to that enables the citizenry to protect themselves from rogue agitators to state aggression" I guess I can't speculate on that in the USA context but I don't think it is true for New Zealand and similar countries. I do wonder if modern communications has changed the balance of things too. For example many people ask why cars are not banned since they kill people too. So lets say my government fixes this problem by banning all private transport and mandates people must use government supplied buses that run twice a day. People would protest in parliament in huge numbers and would probably enter the parliament buildings and stage a sit in until the law was reversed and new elections called. The police are not armed but have access to fire arms. They would never wear fire arms in such a situations, they would use batons. The protesters would not be armed. We have a lot of significant size protests and I have never in my 54 years hear of a protester caring a fire arm and the police have never carried then against protesters. The police would form a chain armed with riot shields and batons, the sheer number of protesters would push them over. There would be injuries, the most serious of which would broken bones. If a corrupt government ordered the police to use lethal force against unarmed protesters our police would refuse. Likewise our military would refuse to get involved. Both the police and military here know it would be both illegal and immoral and in the face of overwhelming public protest would respect the power of the people. For example for any small protest people are likely to be arrested for blocking roads and distributing order but left alone if well behaved. Large protests are allowed to break the law and block roads as the police take the pragmatic view it is what the public want. I have faith that here at least the public can over throw an unjust government without the need to arm the masses.
On the other hand I do lament the gradual erosion of freedoms by governments world wide, including here, but can't see how the right bear arms would help fix that here.
And the modern example of a well-armed populace being crushed by a government crackdown using heavy weapons is ...?
call me old fashion but i got my numbers from cnn and other major news networks that night at the same time using pip. even cnn was in shock that trump won. moving along now.
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back.
When was the last time American citizens had to use firearms to defend themselves from the government?
The USA have the highest per capita gun related crime rate of the world
This appears to be both false and irrelevant. I couldn't find a source for all 'gun-related crime' across countries but even with more guns than people, the US's firearm-related homicide rate doesn't even make the top 10. And even if it was, it's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
(and the highest kill rate by toddlers (ab)using a gun).
So a country that has more than three times as many X per capita as nearly every other country has more accidents related to X? Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents? Let's find out!
But since none of this has anything to do with your claims about authoritarianism and tyranny (or your ... 'creative' definition of a 'fact'), I guess you concede those points?
I do wonder if modern communications has changed the balance of things too... ... They would never wear fire arms in such a situations, they would use batons. The protesters would not be armed.
Modern communications do not change human nature. We can communicate faster and with more people but what drives a man to violence does not change from 100 years ago nor what drives a politician to be corrupt/tyrannical. The structure of US government is predicated on the fact that power corrupts and governments tend toward tyranny.
Tyranny does not have to come from the government. A recent is example is the UC Berkly riots where the rioters were beating people up while the police stood idly by. Another thing to consider is when the government does not enforce law and order. An example being the black panthers in CA storming the legislature armed to protest gun control measures and to protest the governments inaction in their communities that was plagued by violence. Guns make any protest to be taken serious and forces the government to acknowledge or respond.
If a corrupt government ordered the police to use lethal force against unarmed protesters our police would refuse. Likewise our military would refuse to get involved. Both the police and military here know it would be both illegal and immoral and in the face of overwhelming public protest would respect the power of the people.
This is generally how it is in the US but just as you alluded to the gradual erosion of freedoms by the governments so to do people gradually justify tyranny. A recent is example is "punch a nazi". It went so far as to "punch someone that defends a nazi". Nazi turned into "someone I disagree with or who has opinions I don't like". How long does it take for the entire political right to be characterized as nazi justifying violence to an entire segment of society? From the rhetoric we have heard, it doesn't take much. Even the social justice "all white men are racist, all hetero are homophobic, etc" rhetoric had the same dehumanizing justification for violence. The right of arms means that even if that rhetoric gets out of hand, those "protesters" have to understand fully that if they advocate violence ("this is a war" Berkly riots), that they will have to be willing to put their lives on the line instead of hiding behind group think, propaganda (narrative crafting from news/government), and a complicit government allowing such riots to occur by not breaking them up when they turned violent.
If you are the receiving end of those protests or rhetoric and the government is complicit with those aggression, the right of arms gives citizens the ability to defend themselves from mob justice and police inaction. Every group has to think twice about making another group the scapegoat of their violence because everyone can defend themselves regardless what the government does.
Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Not according to the Supreme Court of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is a country that does in a pretty similar way, complete with shall-issue concealed carry of handguns. It's Czech Republic.
Now look at its crime stats and compare to US.
Nope, I actually came out against it when Obama was scapegoating innocent gun owners and Trump was scapegoating innocent Muslims after the San Bernadino attack. I'll be glad to accept an apology.
Depends on your definition of feminism indeed. I'm taking the current "modern" feminists (third wave feminism) which you can see in action on Twitter (eg. the GamerGate instigators). Relying on the dictionary definition of a feminist depends largely on your dictionary and your area, some still say it's about equality between the sexes, more modern definitions leave the equality out of it.
A traditional feminist movement in modern eras would be primarily focused on countries around the world where women don't have the rights yet to run for president, dress how they want or drive a car (or go to school for that matter), but that appears to be lost on modern feminists.
Obviously if you disagree with the definition that these are hate groups, you could just be a part of it and not see the issue of what your group represents (eg. if your definition of feminism comes from AmiMojo or PopeRatzo on these forums) which is the same perspective as being a member of the KKK, they don't see the issue either.
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Tense situations can escalate quickly, unless the murder was pre-meditated whether the attacker was carrying a gun or not could be the difference between the victim living or dying.
And as we increasingly expand simple concepts like race or gender, it merely dilutes them to the point of pointlessness.
You mean that as we discover that not everything is black and white, nature tends to be infinite shades of grey, we should just give up and stick with black and white?
I mean nothing of the sort. Can't imagine why you would think that. It's well known that in the hypothetical situation of lining up everyone in the world by skin pigmentation, it wouldn't be possible to make a determine what race a person belonged to. But let's say we wanted to get involved in some genetic diferences between people that miht result in their propensity for certain diseases. Tay-Sachs ideas, which appears in the genetic population of Ashkenazi Jews, and Cajuns in Southern Louisiana. Interestingly enough, this genetic mutation, which is fatal if two carriers have an offspring, can protect against Tuberculosis, which is why the allele persists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–Sachs_disease
Sickle Cell disease, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which is probably the one you are most concerned about, is one carried by people from Sub-Saharan Africa. Some people in the Middle East also carry this genetic allele.
People from Sub-Saharan Africa have Vitamin D Issues when living in northern Latitudes, and people in Northern Lattitudes are prone to melanoma when outside of their area of origin or latitude.
All based on the grouping of where the person originated.
Now where you are coming from is best summed up by a paragraph from Wikipedia's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Since the second half of the 20th century, the association of race with the ideologies and theories that grew out of the work of 19th-century anthropologists and physiologists has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and emotionally charged synonyms: populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context.
Ideology. The same application of human ingenuity that allows conservatives to deny simple concepts like the Greenhouse effect, 20th century Soviet Communists to deny genetics for their more ideologically acceptable Lamarkian theory, where a organism can change into another by something akin to will. Where Liberals can declare Genetically modified foods as poison, while disreagrding that humans have genetically modified food for thousands of years. And for both liberals and soncervative subgroups to insist that the thimerosol in vaccines causes autism, then shift to "it must be something else, but its still the vaccine!" when thimerosol is removed and no change is observed - and to hold that belief when it is concusively proven that the researcher was invilved in a scam with a lawyer to strike it rich. Ideology can raise us to new heights, or kill us.
And don't even go to your next move, which would be to accuse me of liking crackpot theories like the Bell curve, which presumes racial superiority by virtue of averaging IQ tests, that most unsatisfactory method of measuring intelligence. It's bullshit, and tells you nothing about any individual person you meet. Also used mainly by White's are superior people as some sort of excuse for keeping those sub-saharan's out of power. Oddly, they don't say much about East Asians being presumably more intelligent then they are. It's bullshit with a not quite sane agenda group being it's proponents.
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
Well, aren't we just the assuming one. I call prejudice, assumption, and bigotry on you. You dear sir, are indeed a bigot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
Guns don't kill people; large holes punched into their bodies, the loss of bodily fluids from such a hole, and/or the gross tissue damage caused by the impact of leaden slugs propelled from a certain distance by the controlled ignition of a charge of gunpowder kill people!!!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It's not a good thing, but you're also making a big assumption. That he wouldn't have killed otherwise if this guy didn't have access to firearms. There are many, many ways to kill someone. The guy could have waited for your coworker to leave the restaurant and simply run him over with his car or attacked him with a machete. You're only limited by your imagination. This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense. The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY wanted to kill middle easterners (or whatever), he would find a way. Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
You've never seen the ads in a firearm aficionado magazine, have you? Or read the strangely wistful fantasies, always featuring firearms, of what they would do to home invaders which are posted by Second Amendment Defenders in forums such as this? Or been instructed by the NRA about how defenseless we would all be without a gun at hand? Or tried to explain to a military group that they will in future be armed with edged weapons exclusively?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
It's kind of amusing how the same folks who argue that without a gun people would still be able to kill other people without too much trouble are the same people who interpret the Second Amendment's Right to Bear Arms as meaning...... Guns!
Next guy who tells me, "Firearms in the hands of the citizenry are the way to assure that governments do not assume tyrannical power, therefore the Second Amendment" or similar gets a dose of "Guns are not the only way to kill a person, if somebody wants to kill government tyrants they will find a way, even if guns are not available" etc.
And I'm not even a real gun-hater.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"There is no silver bullet."
Way ironic.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
Thankfully, our new Trumpist overlords (whom I, for one, welcome) have removed the illogical ruling which prevents those found cognitively incapable of managing their own disability checks without another person's supervision from indulging their Second Amendment rights without assessment by authorities. After all, just because you are one of the 0.025% of the population found by a court to lack the rational ability to manage a disability check doesn't mean that you should lose your constitutional right to take up arms against a government you feel to be oppressive. Or, maybe a brown guy in a bar.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You left out some:
I left out a lot. I left out most. You can cherry pick murderers out of one race if you like, but it's not going to stop people from pointing out when other people have an agenda.
I would guess people using drugs or knives to slit their wrists to die are really just making a cry for help. It's extremely easy to OD on drugs if that's your goal. And if you don't know how to slit your wrists correctly, it will take hours for you to die. If you use a gun, you're not playing around...you really want to die. In any event, I agree they are very effective tools for killing; however, people wanting to kill in the first place have serious mental problems. The US has an abysmal mental health system. It's probably the worst in first world countries. Our crazy people usually just end up in jails or prisons and then are released when their time is served. There used to be asylums but they went out of favor because the became synonymous with patient abuse but there needs to be something like that in place, as well as free mental health care for anyone who needs it.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Or are more people killed with guns just because it's easier? If guns disappeared from the planet, would people switch to knives or some other tool? My concern with people putting so much focus on guns is simply that it side-steps the big issue: mental health. The mental health system in the US is terrible. There have been lots of news stories about over the years, but nothing ever changes. Gun deaths are a side-effect of something else.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I'm well aware there are gun nuts. The problem is that politicians and the NRA do everything in their power to scare everyone into thinking that it's just a matter of time before the government comes and takes your guns. And then it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to totalitarianism. Politicians lie their asses off to incite fear and there are zero repercussions for it and there are too many stupid people to see it for what it is. In short, guns are just a political football.
Personally, I have no problem with gun control and there definitely needs to be more of it. It's FAR too easy to get a firearm in this country. Hell, you have to take a written test and a driving test to get a driver's license but you don't have to know anything about guns (and how to safely use them). The second amendment needs to be rewritten.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Yupp now it will be horrible to to job in US
Now consider this - that ammendment also says this has to be 'well regulated'.
Yet that part is apparently always ignored.
It's supposed to be well regulated. That means - with good regulations around it. Sane gun control laws = well regulated.
Do you know what ELSE could meet that requirement ? Nothing.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates
Well it's interesting how conveniently Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal" to "only illegal guns are used for crime"... how can there BE illegal guns if all gun ownership is legal ? Even then - 100% of all illegal guns no matter WHAT law system makes them illegal were once legal. Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
The only possible exception are home-made fire-arms, which are a tiny minority of them - and only 'illegal' in the sense that their manufacture did not pass through the usual regulatory channels (in the US - there are so little of such that it's quite possible that in most states those are quite possibly entirely legal).
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's a LOT easier to defend yourself against any of those than against a gun. A gun-wielder doesn't have to get close.
Besides which -this 'perfectly logical' argument is disputed by the fact that deadly hate crimes are among the biggest reductions in the immediate aftermath of gun bans everywhere. Guns give people a major ego-boost - exactly because they are hard to defend against. Take that away, and a helluva lot of hate-filled people are too scared to actually ACT on their hate.
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No it's not. This is just ideological rhetoric.
Or Science. But I'm sure that won't change your mind...
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
So now along with 5000 Genders, we got a million races based on beer preference.
--------
But they won't let race be fluid, while gender can be. I don't understand, gender is much more defined. We all descended either from Adam and Eve - or - from the same group of curious monkeys. When we breed between races our offspring are not sterile like a liger or mule. But, for some reason it isn't PC to let race be fluid while gender can be.
It does. It also illustrates your rather disappointing lack of humor.
It could just be that you aren't as funny as you think you are.
And it's where left wing, reshuffle everything idealists end up turning simple concepts into meaningless messes. And where you don't understand why when a decent majority of people believe in most of your concepts, you are adament about derailing the train for the least important matters.
And herein lies the point of your babble. A little rant about the left, or the democrats, or whoever it is you hate.
For the record I have no political leaning, both sides are as crazy as each other, so anyone attacking one, is clearly on the other and therefore to me just as crazy.
If you want the science, you can start here: https://www.scientificamerican...
Wanting to cut $1M off welfare and spend $100M more on prisons doesn't make one in favor of a small government.
The US federal budget for prisons is less than $10 billion while the budget for entitlements is 2.33 trillion, basically prisons are rounding error in the kind of thing that they'd like to cut.
But hey, you pulled some numbers out of your backside - totally convincing! /s
Nope, those conservatives want a huge government in involved in every aspect of people's lives. Telling people who they can sleep with, what services they can get from a doctor, and all that.
You do realize that those are Evangelical/social conservatives, not pro-business/small government conservatives, right? They don't even overlap that much.
Massive, invasive authoritarian fascist government. Gun rights activists are as much fascists as the fascists who grabbed guns in the '30s.
Hyperbolic fear-mongering at its most absurd. "Less government intrusion" is literally a cornerstone of their political philosophy, but in your mind that makes them fascists.
>Please try to keep in mind that you, or your culture, don't get the privilege of defining what is "rational" for the whole world, or specifically in someone else's culture. "Rational" is defined by the culture it is being considered within.
Errr no. Rationality, be definition, is not determined by culture, religion or anything other than two things: facts and numbers. The things you cite are such perfect examples of irrational arguments that they are recognized as a fallacyh ("appeal to tradition"). They are not valid rational arguments.
More importantly - there isn't a single situation in the USA. There is a world of difference in what gun ownership even MEANS depending on where you live. In the country-side, a gun is a way to feed your family, in the worst-case (rare) scenario of a crime it may actually be an effective defense - but even if it's a bad defense it's better than nothing, which is the alternative, and the risk FROM the guns are low because you're isolated - if you miss your target you hit a tree. Big deal.
In a city - the facts are entirely different. Here - guns are used PRIMARILY to blow heads off, and hardly ever for things like hunting. Here - their extremely inefficient nature as a defense tool has much more serious consequences than "I missed and the bad guy got me" - here when you miss, you kill an innocent bystander. There isn't any empty space around you for the bullet to go. There aren't any trees to hit - your backstop is innocent people.
And never over-estimate the effectiveness of guns as a self-defense device, in all human history we have not invented a LESS effective tool for that job (with the possible exception of the bow and arrow). Guns only fire straight if your breathing is right, and your hands are steady. When your life is at risk - staying calm is very hard, and when your not calm your hands get sweaty and shaky, and your breathing becomes rapid - that makes it virtually impossible to hit what you intend to shoot at - and, in a city, that almost guarantees hitting somebody who has nothing to do with the event. I love guns, I grew up with them in a rural area - and I'm an excellent shot. But I refuse ot own one, I refuse ot have one in my house - because this is a city I live in now, and a gun is a terrible idea. The risk of my toddler getting her hands on it is BIGGER than the risk of us being attacked. The odds of it helping if we ARE attacked is so low that it's now worth the risks. There's a reason why the number one performance enhancing drug for Olympic shots is Prozac... what good is a self-defense device that only WORKS if you are perfectly calm ? A good self defense device should work well even if you are panicking. Guns are terrible at the job. Hell a bat gives you better odds - you can swing accurately enough to hit your target even if you're panicking (and the adrenaline rush would probably make you swing HARDER than you otherwise could) - and if you DO miss the odds of killing your own kid or the neighbor's kids are practically zero. You can just swing again.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yeah yeah, we'll care about THAT hypocrisy when pro-lifers all accept that they are morally binding themselves to also oppose the death penalty AND support a comprehensive welfare state.
If you demand the birth of a kid to a person ill equipped to care for one, but won't assist in the feeding, clothing, shelering and schooling of that kid - then you're not pro-life you are pro-birth. And that's morally repugnant.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Your number is off by a bout 3000 times.
The fatal shootings last year in the US were well over 12-thousand.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Depends on your definition of feminism indeed.
Yes, but only in a trivial sense. The super extreme view is held be a small fraction of people who inhabit certain places on the internet and happen to be very noisy. If you attempt to use that definition outside of that group, or people aware of that group, you will essentially be using a private definition and will be misunderstood.
I'm taking the current "modern" feminists (third wave feminism) which you can see in action on Twitter (eg. the GamerGate instigators).
I don't see how the instigators---either the dude who posted that long screed or the people attacking Anita Asrkeesian---are feminists by any definition of the word.
more modern definitions leave the equality out of it.
No, not really. This is not to say you can't fine some wingnut somewhere who does so. The internet is a large place and you can find someone professing to belong to some cause to say almost anything. The fact that a small number of nutcases exist doesn't really say anything about the general cause. Mostly, equality is left out on in the rather peculiar fantasies of TheRedPill, AVFM and other such places.
A traditional feminist movement in modern eras would be primarily focused on countries around the world where women don't have the rights yet to run for president
No. You're saying what YOU think feminists ought to do. There's still plenty to do back home. There is also more wrong in the world than any one person can try to fix, and complaining that someone is concentrating on a cause they like, not some other cause you don't even like enough to do anything about is a cheap rhetorical trick. It's meaningless because it can be levelled at more or less anything, because there is always somewhere else worse in the world. Come to think of it, why are you wasting time arguing on the internet when there are people being tortured in North Korea? You should be spending your time helping them.
you could just be a part of it and not see the issue of what your group represents (eg. if your definition of feminism comes from AmiMojo
If you're going to claim AmiMojo is part of a hate group then have a massive [citation needed]. That says far, far more about your biases than about his IMO.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
Maybe not the underlying issues but take away the guns and you have a lot less people getting shot and killed. The guy might have still been assaulted but it's a lot harder to actually kill someone with your hands or a knife. It's ridiculous to say taking away the guns won't change anything, because it will.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
What's this have to do with the price of dead Hindus in Alaska?
New to posting, eh?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But they won't let race be fluid, while gender can be. I don't understand, gender is much more defined. We all descended either from Adam and Eve - or - from the same group of curious monkeys. When we breed between races our offspring are not sterile like a liger or mule. But, for some reason it isn't PC to let race be fluid while gender can be.
To be blunt, the gender morass as they are trying to define it, has shifted from sexual characteristics to sexual preferences, and in doing so, they have shown themselves to be rather obsessive compulsive about attaching a label to everything in sight. Even worse, they are wordsmithing so obsessively that in their world of genders, a Transsexual male is not the same gender as a transsexual man. A distinction with no difference.
And yeah it's like the opposite for race.
One might be forgiven for believing that they just like bitching.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm pretty sure it can be classified as both racist and xenophobic.
Perhaps those Americans are correct that owning guns secures their freedom. How many lives have been lost under HItler, Stalin, Mao, and others when guns were restricted? How does the freedom of the average European compare with that of an American? Just last week, a Dane was charged with blasphemy for burning a Quran. Is that Dane truly free? Most Americans would say no. Freedom has its price, and most US citizens are comfortable with that.
yea, because groups of native guerilla soldiers could never drive out a technologically more advanced adversary, that only happens in Fairytales and movies... oh wait...
Your linked data actually proves the point that Americans are a free society due to guns. If one looks at the list, there are nations that have greater deaths per capita from homicide with far fewer guns per capita. There are also nations that have extremely low homicide rates with high guns per capita. So, the correlation that guns lead to the death by homicide is not there. Rather, culture drives the death not the tool.
Interestingly, the largest component of US deaths by guns is suicide. Even in choosing our death, Americans have freedom.
It does. It also illustrates your rather disappointing lack of humor.
It could just be that you aren't as funny as you think you are.
Do you just skim posts, finding something to take umbrage at? Didn't read what I wrote after that? Allow me to explain.
You didn't have to find it funny. A person would look at that, and say "that's ridiculous" some might find it funny, some not. And that's okay. But even so, a display of non-insulting humor where a poster pokes fun at themselves, indicates an extension of friendly notion, that even if if the recipient does not find it amusing, at least they can make some judgements.
And your response tells me much about you, taken with your other posts like:
Only if your definition of race comes from the 19th century, which in itself is a little racist.
Just because the stupid end of society can't deal with grey doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
Nice.
And it's where left wing, reshuffle everything idealists end up turning simple concepts into meaningless messes. And where you don't understand why when a decent majority of people believe in most of your concepts, you are adamant about derailing the train for the least important matters.
And herein lies the point of your babble. A little rant about the left, or the democrats, or whoever it is you hate.
I have to chuckle, when there are others here who label me as a liberal or socialist. No, actually I tend to analyze a situation, and put it to a test of whether it makes sense, and if it is likely to work, or it it is just screwed up ideology. I've torn conservatives to shreds when they try to trump science with politics and declare the energy retention characteristics of different gases, or when they express such a faulty concept of human nature as to believe in trainwreck economics like the trickle down effect or Laissez-faire.
But the left comes into a well deserved beatdown when they require 88 genders, which means that a simple term once based upon what parts you were born with, has completely changed to mean sexual preference. And so fluid that there is somehow a difference between the aforementioned Transsexual man, and Transsexual male.
For the record I have no political leaning, both sides are as crazy as each other, so anyone attacking one, is clearly on the other and therefore to me just as crazy.
Racist, stupid, and now crazy. What a bundle of joy you are. handing out the pejoratives like candy at Easter.
Your idea of labeling anyone who criticizes one political affiliation as automatically belonging to the other political affiliation is simply wrong, especially when you seem to demand fluidity in other matters, yet are in a big hurry to label me as something that I'm not.
If you want the science, you can start here: https://www.scientificamerican...
Race as a social construct is very nice for psychologists, but tell me, is it bad to know that people originating from a certain area and subject to certain diseases by their genetics now forbidden knowledge? Is the very researching of this sort of thing racist? From the article:
"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."
Wordsmithing, and basically completely abandoning race altogether for some regional approach that will soon become race again.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control.
I know you believe your coworker would be alive if there was gun control; but you are wrong. The guy would have killed him no matter what; perhaps by dragging him behind a truck until all of his skin was torn off as happened to a American of Mexican descent. Or perhaps your friend would have been lynched. That used to be real popular.
I should mod you down for making this about gun control instead of hate, but meh. Your lack of rational thought is typical.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The legal hassle is worth it when you're paying $20,000/year less
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Good news everyone, gun control debate over!
Oh, you're so clever!
Kicked up to 165,000 by Bush and Obama. You are behind.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If he is unskilled, train him. On the job training used to be common.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Neither should be allowed at all. We should be training our own people.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No. I understand that people - all people - are born into belief systems with varying degrees of imposition. Nevertheless I believe, and laws tend to back me on this, that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions. If your religion tells you to kill someone you will be deemed a crimina in my countryl, for example. Why should my judgement differ? Your examples cite racism which I agree is unacceptable due to colour not being an attribute we choose.
This type of thing wouldn't happen without Tata Consulting invading this nation.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The loss of his "Desktop Support Job" to Indian body shops.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Were? Unlike the KKK, the black supremacists have gained in power and are quite active.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In other words, Trump is guilty by association because he didn't disavow one of the 5000 things Trump-haters demand he disavow every day.
Not even a joke, Europeans and Asians are not 100% Homo sapiens, it's what sets us apart from the apes.
Feminists today are genocidal maniac terrorists- and should be called out as such, no matter how "mainstream" they are.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Now consider this - that ammendment also says this has to be 'well regulated'.
There are loads of gun control laws and the only people they affect are those who follow the rules...they have no real impact on criminals as we see time and time again. I would say that in general firearms are pretty well regulated, but you can't regulate intent and intent can change at any time. How do you regulate or control intent?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The fact that he shot someone in a bar strongly implies that he's a bad problem solver and won't make it past that part of the interview.
You need to follow the full thread, my 'here' is New Zealand. You do make my point, you do have 3000 times the fatal shootings for 70 times the population. But, hey, freedom ra ra ra!
It's a good example why it's a bad idea for people to walk around with guns (or knives).... If he didn't have a gun all he would be able to have done is beat the guy up, but that would be easier for the crowd to control..
Even though I like guns very much, it should not be available (easily) to regular citizens. Most people are killed by their own guns by accident, and that should tell something.. But then again, most people are just too stupid to understand that.
Thank you for your reasoned response. I agree that numbers by themselves paint a too simple view of a complex issue and I acknowledge there is no quick fix. I just wish people would take the time to think about things and to wonder what are the options. At the risk of creating further offense I notice the USA is very inward looking. My last trip there was for 2 weeks and during my time there I only saw two TV news stories about what was happening outside the USA, all the other news was internal.
Well your logic falls apart there since no one is saying the government and military need to turn all of our guns in as well. Guns make the weak stronger, most people wouldn't listen to cops if they didn't have the threat of force. And a literal countless number of people would be worse off from home invasions and muggings and violence without guns to protect them. I'd give up guns if all the police and all the military gave theirs up. But I'm secure in knowing that will never happen.
Under Federal law, employers generally cannot discriminate against employees on the basis of:
Race
Sex
Pregnancy
Religious Affiliation
National Origin
Disability
Age
Military Affiliation
Bankruptcy
Genetic Information
Citizenship Status
Funny, political party isn't up there. What a wonderful false equivalence you've devised.
And don't forget bona fide occupational qualifications! If the job skill required is logical thought and the prospective seeker voted for Trump, that'd be legal discrimination even if they *were* a protected group. Which, again, you're... I mean, *they're* not.
What I'm getting at is that there's always "a way". You just need an alternative. "The position is no longer available (but one with a different ID is and there just happens to be the person we want to hire already signed up for it)." How about, "The job description and requirements have changed (to make sure there's something in there that you don't have as a legal excuse, even though the person we want to hire has that one but is missing four other ones)". It's amazing.
Ya cause in the 1900's they were treated fairly
No they weren't -- the reason we have all of these European ethnic groups associated with a 'white' race is to dissociate themselves with their immigrant status and heritage - precisely because they were being discriminated against.
The bigger irony to this story, is these same people who have immigrant backgrounds (and that would be all European Americans) turn around and discriminate against new immigrants.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
In the 1900s (and earlier) people came here to work hard and succeed. While that still exists in many cases, in others we have people looking for handouts or looking to do harm because of their hatred for the US. Immigration isn't a simple topic and today's world doesn't make it simpler, not for the US anymore than for Europe.
I call BS on that. Have you ever heard of the "Sacco and Vanzetti" case?
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born American anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the April 15, 1920 armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. They were executed in the electric chair seven years later at Charlestown State Prison. Both men adhered to an anarchist movement that advocated relentless warfare against what they perceived as a violent and oppressive government.
Or, the Wall Street Bombing of 1020?
The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 pm on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. The blast killed 30 people immediately, and another eight died later of wounds sustained in the blast. There were 143 seriously injured, and the total number of injured was in the hundreds.[1]:160–61 The bombing was never solved, although investigators and historians believe the Wall Street bombing was carried out by Galleanists (Italian anarchists), a group responsible for a series of bombings the previous year. The attack was related to postwar social unrest, labor struggles, and anti-capitalist agitation in the United States.
The Los Angeles Times bombing was the purposeful dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building in Los Angeles, California, on October 1, 1910 by a union member belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. The explosion started a fire which killed 21 newspaper employees and injured 100 more. It was termed the "crime of the century" by the Times. Brothers John J. ("J.J.") and James B. ("J.B.") McNamara were arrested in April 1911 for the bombing. Their trial became a cause célèbre for the American labor movement. J.B. admitted to setting the explosive, and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. J.J. was sentenced to 15 years in prison for bombing a local iron manufacturing plant, and returned to the Iron Workers union as an organizer.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
...individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions....
You hit the nail on the head there - people should be judged on their actions (or to steal better words from MLK, "the content of their character"), rather than the color of their skin, or their affiliations.
This is a key point in the political context: think about it, if we all walked in lock step with the party line at the exclusion of all other ideas (for those of us who associate with a political party) there would be no opportunity for change, negotiation, or reconciliation for the population at large. Diversity is critical to the functioning of our American government, regardless of your political bent.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
"bad problem solver"="never trained to solve problems"
. That is something that can actually easily be fixed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The 19th-century idea of race could be more varied, with "race" used to refer to nationality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People have generally switched to knives in Europe due to poor gun availability and their 3 to 4 times lower homocide rates reflect this.
Absolutly mental health is an important concern and as you say the US doesnt do a very good job at taking care of those with issues. The homocide and gun violence levels in the US versus Europe are so drastically different that it doesnt seem that mental health issues alone can come close to explaining away the difference, however.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I've read about history, not just the news. I know what happened in Yugoslavia, in WWII, where a group of enthusiastic individuals with rifles and the like got into fights with poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly equipped regular troops. It wasn't pretty, and it would be worse now, and major power armies nowadays are neither poorly trained, poorly led, or poorly equipped.
Land wars, since the end of WWI, have been conducted by trained groups of people with a variety of weapons, including rifles, machine guns, grenades, and mortars. The German Army was highly successful in WWII, and their low-level tactics were based around machine guns, riflemen being secondary. Forces that were primarily rifle-armed, such as the WWII Chinese Army, were routinely defeated. ISIS has lots of weapons, not just rifles, from the collapse of national armies in the area.
Moreover, in the US it's illegal to go out and buy a modern infantry rifle. A private citizen may only buy automatic weapons that were made before 1987.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The general population drives cars without murdering pedestrians and prepares and serves food with murdering diners. If the general population can be trusted not to commit murder in those ways, what makes them prone to commit murder with a gun?
Thanks for making it very easy for me to set the go idiot flag on your account.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way.
What Trump has done is give aggrieved people a convenient scapegoat for their problems. He's a demagogue. Nobody is saying he is the root of these problems, but he's certainly a major factor in the increasing amount of hate and fear directed at immigrants in America, and beyond.
In the 1900s (and earlier) people came here to work hard and succeed.
The murdered man was an engineer working for Garmin. It seems pretty obvious he came to the U.S. "to work hard and succeed".
Cant have him doing that, it'd make the local yokels look lazy.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
Quoted For Truth.
However when you mention the M word... and people lose their shit.
A few weeks back a man robbed a convenience store in France wearing a Burka. This news erupted across the United Kingdom (which isn't in France for those playing along in Alabama) and people were shouting that the Burka should be banned and rational arguments pointing out that it wont stop convenience stores being taken for a few hundred Euro were being dismissed out of hand... I mean it was a national security issue and all that.
There as another robbery on that day, closer to home in Solihul near Birmingham. A small group of thieves not wearing Burkas stole 3 million pounds (Stirling, as in Doctor Who money) worth of Jaguar-Land Rover engines from the JLR factory. They did so by using a white Scania lorry. This was clearly a non issue as none of the major news papers reported it, I found out about it via the Car Memes facebook page that referenced a Car Throttle article the day after. My suggestion that this could be fixed by banning white Scania lorries was met with utter dumbfoundment by those who suggested banning Burkas would fix petty crime.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Now, do Trump supporters show more racial biases than other people? Yes. Whether you call them "racist" is just a question of where you draw the line on using that particular label.
I think you desperately wish that to be true. Didn't the democrats have "the taco bowl"
No idea what you're talking about.
and didn't Clinton show up to meetings "on black people time"?
So Clinton is racist because SNL wrote a bad joke?
I have seen so many racist anti-Trump statements, supporters and actions than I have ever seen of Trump supporters.
I seriously don't even know what you're talking about.
I stole this Sig
Inebriation is no barrier to driving https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehic..., it is just a barrier to driving properly.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
http://www.petition2congress.c...
Casteism
https://qz.com/889524/the-us-s...
Casteism
I'll do software jobs and Americans should do menial jobs. This type of uncivilized Caste system is not acceptable in USA; https://qz.com/918834/indians-...
Casteism
Because of Brahmin, India became the Most Racist Country In The World http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Casteism
Race as a social construct is very nice for psychologists, but tell me, is it bad to know that people originating from a certain area and subject to certain diseases by their genetics now forbidden knowledge? Is the very researching of this sort of thing racist?
Originating from a certain area isn't race. That is the point. How do you define race these days? It's not being from a certain area, since migration patterns throw this out the window. It's not the colour of their skin or their features since the variations are so large. So how do you define race in a scientifically useful way? And to bring it back on topic, how is this case of shooting an Indian that you thought was Arabic, not racist?
The point being made, was that the gun-rights activists would choose to cut 1 million from welfare, but gladly endorse 100 million in prisons.
It wasn't clear that this was a hypothetical, but I still don't think the libertarian-leaning, 'small-government', pro-gun type of conservatives want to spend more money on much of anything.
But anyway, looking at the numbers, the federal government has about 10% of the nation's prisoners, so you're ignoring the other 90%.
Yes, but now you have to include state and local budgets into the mix as well. This was just a quick, order-of-magnitude estimate.
These are the people who vote for 3-strikes laws, who vote for 10-20-life. Who scream for marijuana criminalization. ... Too bad for the ones who made the choice of their tent-mates then.
Every political group has to ally with other groups it doesn't completely agree with, that's how politics works. Do you think that communists like working with pro-globalization neo-liberals in the Democratic party?
I think this particular sub-group would be fine with married gay marijuana farmers living next door as long as they didn't have to fight gun-control legislation every election cycle.
Nope, it makes them HYPOCRITES. Was that hard for you to grasp?
The fact that you think all conservatives are a homogeneous mass of group-thinkers make them hypocrites?
MLK wasn't saying its fine to assault people purely because they share ethnicity with someone else that you hold a grudge against.
Unlike the person to whom I replied.
Any BLM cunt wants to attack me because of my skin colour had better call an ambulance first, and a lawyer immediately after.
Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal"
Who's for that?
Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
For the most part, yes.
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
Logic is everything. You have nothing.
There is a reason soldiers are given guns as their primary weapon and not a car or knife. As long as a soldier's primary weapon is a gun, this argument carries no weight.
>What does this have to do with the homicide rate?
Nothing as such - I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns (and the side claim that this implies gun control would have no effect).
But let's address YOUR claims then:
> Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones),
Countries with gun bans generally do. Not military as a rule but cops in Britain and New Zeeland are unarmed for ordinary police work. They only get a gun issued when they are entering a specific, known-threatening situation. They don't get to walk around armed. Result: In the past 20 years exactly 2 people have been shot by police in the UK. The US cops kill more people than that EVERY DAY. But when the odds are that criminals won't have guns - there's no reason for the cops to carry anything more dangerous than a nightstick.
>and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in
You will never prevent ALL of them. But contrary to your claim - you don't NEED to. Because it turns out - smugglers don't sell shit to random people on the street. To get a smuggler to sell you something you need to have criminal connections. You need people to vouch for you. They won't sell you a smuggled gun unless they are damn sure you're not an undercover cop.
You can't just walk down to the docks by Sydney harbour and start asking random strangers to sell you an illegal gun. Now your hardcore career criminals - they'll still have guns (biker gangs in Aus for example), but they tend not to be involved in petty-crimes like housebreaking and the like. Their crimes rarely have much impact on the general public.
On the other hand the moron who wakes up one day and decides he wants to go into some public place and start shooting until he leaves the biggest pile of bodies he can before he gets shot ? That idiot - he can't GET a gun in those countries. Which is why events like that are extremely rare there. The US had 48 mass shootings in the last 20 years. The next 20 countries COMBINED had 22. Many of them had none. All of them have decent gun control laws.
> but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
Non-gun homocide isn't JUST low because guns are easy to find in the US - it is low EVERYWHERE - because it's actually pretty fucking hard. People tend to fight back if you try to kill them. With a gun - you can kill them from far away, reliably. With a bat or a knife - you have to seriously risk your own life if you want to do it. So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT.
>I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'.
Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT. You'll never have a homocide rate of zero, but you can get pretty damn close if you take guns out of the picture. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fact that we can't end ALL murder isn't an argument against preventing SOME murders.
>All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
No. It's taking away a stupid choice (for self defense - there is no worse thing ever designed than a gun, it's the perfect thing to attack with, it's an atrociously bad thing to defend with) to let other people feel their hearts still beating. There is a reason you are stasticially MORE likely to get shot if you own a gun than if you don't - MUCH more. It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used when you are calm and your breathing is under control is the dumbest thing ever to give to somebody who is afraid for their life.
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Now imagine the power hate has over people with guns - people who are already committed to being able to kill someone, and who see that as a valid way of solving problems...
So is money, if you don't spend it, or spend it on worthless things.
Why don't you simply read some statistics, hu?
t's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia? And you want to be proud about that or use it as an argument?
Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents?
Some accidents can be avoided, some not. A gun is just a waiting accident, especially in countries where you don't have to show that you can properly handle the gun. Toddler related boat accidents are btw. extremely rare. And that a toddler kills you with a boat is close to impossible.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Your statement makes no sense. So if the Army developed a laser weapon and that became the standard firearm, you'd be fine with firearms? Try again.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns
I've never claimed that - I was just trying to keep my claim about sources more conservative.
But let's address YOUR claims then:
Followed by two paragraphs that in no way address any of the arguments I'm trying to defend (which aren't mine, by the way - I was just pointing out the nonsense in quantaman's post).
So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT. ... Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT.
30 seconds of Googling (none completely unbiased, but they have actual numbers and citations, unlike some people):
Washington Post: Zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws
Washington Examiner: No, states with higher gun ownership don't have more gun murders
Crime Research: COMPARING MURDER RATES AND GUN OWNERSHIP ACROSS COUNTRIES
It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used...
Scaring people off is self defense, even if you never draw your weapon.
You don't seriously think there have only been two misguided, racially motivated killings in the last 10 years? Anyway, two incidents is perfectly adequate to illustrate that "Racism doesn't always attract the brightest bulbs."
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane.
They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
And it's not gun ownership per se that's the problem - and very few people think it is, it's lack of adequate regulation to ensure that before you get a gun you
1) Are not a felon (you know like expanding background checks to online and gun shows would do - the only thing Obama tried to achieve and failed)
2) Maybe some restrictions on WHAT KIND Of guns you can buy - an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER.
There is literally nothing useful you can do with it that is not also harmful to other people.
Canada's gun ownership isn't far behind the USA - but homocide rates are far lower. But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Same in New Zeeland.
Restricting guns to those that have legitimate purposes - like hunting rifles, works. For self-defense a single shot weapon or maybe a semi-automatic pistol is just fine. You won't hit your target anyway so at least don't hit more than one innocent bystander.
And before you say "But Switzerland" the gun-nuts always cite Switzerland and none of them know a thing about it. I have friends who live there - and they filled me in on the bits that you don't know. Firstly - yes, everybody in Switzerland owns a gun - but nobody gets it BEFORE undergoing extensive training (which they must update yearly). And nobody NOBODY in Switzerland has a gun in his house. Those guns they own - are all kept in central armories, you're not ALLOWED to take it out of that armory except for your annual training updates or if a war were to break out. So, in reality, Switzerland is one of the most gun-free societies on earth.
The reality is that there are a lot of things that contribute to homocide rates, gun ownership is just one of many. But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact. And even if it had NO influence on homocide rates it would STILL a good thing because at least other weapons don't kill innocent bystanders.
But you probably don't need to ban them to get most of the good effects. Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim. You'll have a lot LESS innocent bystanders if people in America would at least stop holding their damn guns SIDEWAYS ! Could we PLEASE at least teach people not to do that stupid shit ? It may look awesome in a Spike Lee movie but you would be more accurate shooting blindfolded !
Oh and make the test useful - at least one person in the USA in one of the few states that has at least a basic proficiency test was able to pass it. He can't READ it though - because he is completely blind.
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Update: since I wrote the last post the US 2nd circuit appeals court found that the AR-15 is not constitutionally protected. Antonin Scalia's Heller ruling established the idea that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to fire-arm ownership - that ruling drew the line at "military grade weapons" as not being thus protected, using the M16 as an example.
Thus far the NRA has claimed that the line drawn is at full-auto versus semi-auto. But the appeals court has roundly rejected that reasoning today saying Heller's line is drawn on lethality. Specifically whether the weapon is "most useful for military work" - that line means the AR-15 falls outside it's scope despite being only a semi-automatic. It is, in fact, mentioned by name as a weapon that - while not being fully-automatic has a rate of fire and lethality so close to that of the full-auto M16 that it must fall in the same legal category as legal category's should be based on practical effect rather than arbitrary lines.
This is a pretty good step forward as a weapon I myself earlier said has essentially zero legitimate uses is no longer constitutionally protected. You *could* use an AR-15 for self defense - but it's a ridiculously cumbersome weapon for that job - it's MUCH more suitable for killing a large number of people, which when the military does it is called "war" but when a citizen does it is called "mass murderer" (that I think the latter name should also apply to the former case we'll leave aside).
If you really want a weapon for self-defense - your best bet is actually a mid-to-large calibre revolver. The short barrel doesn't make a big difference - accuracy in self-defense situations is terrible anyway but the shorter bullet-travel-distance reduces the odds of hitting an innocent bystander. But a revolver is a relatively simple mechanism so your risk of a jam is greatly reduced (the number one downside of pistols for self defense - besides the ones applying to all guns - is their high tendency to jam) , it can be effectively wielded by a person who isn't very strong and can't handle a big kickback - and medium-to-large calibre because small-calibre weapons are more prone to jamming.
I still don't think it's a smart approach ot self defense, it's still a terrible technology if that's your goal - but if you INSIST on using a bad tool for the job - at least use the BEST of the bad tools and let us take the one that has near-zero usability for that purpose out of the hands of the people who would like to use it to shoot up schools because their pissed they can't get laid.
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You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane. They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The whole reason we have constant arguments about this in the US is that we have vast differences in culture - many people have grown up with guns all around them, others haven't seen a gun fire except on TV or in the movies. Some cities essentially banned all guns until recently, other places have tried to make gun ownership mandatory.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
As my third link did...
And before you say "But Switzerland"
France, Greece, Belgium, ...
an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER. ... But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact.
Because you say so.
the US 2nd circuit appeals
You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right? Don't throw a party until the Supreme Court has its say. And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, but remember I was in this to defend people who are pro-gun against a load of nonsense several posts ago. I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I do, groups that make use scary made-up terms like 'weapon of war' and 'assault weapon' to sway people, and politicians that run around screaming 'ban guns' every campaign and then claim they just want 'common sense gun control' that look like the first step in the process of banning them.
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia?
So not only are you wrong, but since you made it up you knew it was likely wrong before you said it, and don't care. Sad.
The US's homicide rate is below both the average and median for all countries. It's probably the worst of the first-world, but nowhere near third-word rates.
>Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
Rate of fire. The distinction that matters. Hunters need one shot every hour or so. A rate of fire of more than once per minute is excessive. Only SOLDIERS need more than that.
>Because you say so.
And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans. Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban - and more importantly, there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted. Conservative Americans would do ANYTHING to stop terrorism - EXCEPT lose out on the chance to sell the terrorists guns.
>You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right?
Yes, but since this was directly based on a standing supreme court ruling - by one of the most conservative supreme court judges of all time - the ultimate activist judge, the oughts of that are quite low here. Of course nobody can predict a court outcome with any certainty, but if I was going to place bets - I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.
>And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
So it was just a 'political victory' when that same supreme court found that the 2nd ammendment DOES create a personal right to own fire-arms - in the SAME decision that this was based on ?
Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing. It's, of course, possible that the political victory can be wrong - but all the data suggests it's not.
>I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I
While I would be happy to say that gun control laws shouldn't be the same even across a state. Cities and rural areas have completely different realities when it comes to guns - to have the same rules apply doesn't make sense. In a rural environment (as I wrote above) a gun can feed your family - and while it may not be good for self defense it's better than the alternative which is "nothing at all" since the cops couldn't get there in less than an hour and the population is too small for private armed-response services to be available and even if there were THEY couldn't get there in under an hour. Even then though -an old fashioned no-cartridge chamber-loaded hunting rifle is all you actually need.
In a city - where there is about a 50% chance any shot will kill an innocent bystander - the situation is entirely different, the population density changes everything - the stats are all different, and self-reliance is is utterly impossible in the first place. It's literally not possible to EXIST in a city UNLESS everybody is inter-dependent, there's no possible way millions of people in close proximity can co-exist without existing interdepently. Different scenario - different outcomes - different rules should apply.
In a city - 99.999% of all times a trigger is pulled it's to commit a murder. It makes no sense not to curb the availability of the guns for the in a thousand cases where it's for a legitimate purpose. In a rural environment - homocide isn't even in the top TEN most common reasons to pull a trigger.
The trouble is that the two things exist side-by-side. It's impossible to enforce a gun-ban in a city if you lack one in the surrounding country-side. So how do we adapt the rules to the situation ? Frankly - Australia is pretty similar to the US in this regard, including vast rural areas with scattered big cities - but the ban there did not, ultimately, have any major negative effects. One way to solve the discrepency is simply to make the city rules apply everywhere on the basis that since the vast majority of people live in the cities the smallest harm is the one that only annoys a tiny portion of the population - rather than leads to excessive death in the vast majority.
But this may not be the only approach one could take. I'd be open t
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It was a question: what was the point supposed to be? If you sample a large enough population over a long enough time, you can find some very bizarre behavior. It doesn't say much of anything about the population in general. The correct answer to "what conclusion should we draw about the general population?" is "none".
Also, to add onto what you say, amending the constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the states. Until an amendment is voted upon, all regulation of firearms by the federal government is actually unconstitutional except when twisting the amendment to mean something clearly not intended by the people who wrote and signed it originally.
Until that 2/3 vote, the amendment stands.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here. ... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.
But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?
The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.
Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nut straw-man.
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Rate of fire.
They're the same - they're semi-automatics. (Unless you're saying 'hunting rifle' means bolt-action. Or you're talking about ones modified to emulate fully-automatic behavior, but as you've mentioned even the NRA seems to be OK banning/regulating those.)
Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban
And they've halved in the US over the last 20 years, while civilian gun ownership has gone up 50%. All that tells me is that even if they're related other factors are far more important.
there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted
Which is irrelevant - ten people dying is terrible, but does it matter if they got shot or someone drove a truck into a parade?
But lets check the List of massacres in Australia to be sure - Monash, Hectorville, Hunt family, Logan ... wha?
A gun is a horrible, horrible tool for self defense ... Bruce Schneier
Again, that's not something I've made a claim about. But at least you've sort-of mentioned a source, even if it isn't an actual citation.
And these facts ... They won't go away because they are inconvenient or don't fit your personal narrative of how things work.
Same to you.
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That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
Care to back that up with something?
Nobody increased pilot's licenses until ONLY airline employees and fighter-pilots could qualify
Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
In no other country with a license-to-own-a-gun scheme has this happened ... Why do people fear something that has absolutely never happened to anything, ever - on the basis of fallacious reasoning?
But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
if a civil war creates a need they will FIND them
No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
>>That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
>Care to back that up with something?
Sure. Every philosophy textbook written in the past 3000 years. Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
>Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
The suggestion of a licensing scheme is not pushed by people who want a complete ban. Why would you not assume the former is a good compromize to leave the ban-wanters without a leg to stand on - rather than jumping to a fallacious slippery slope argument ? There has never been a slippery slope in all of human history except for actual, literal slopes that were, you know slippery - like wheelchair ramps with soap on them. But metaphoric slippery slopes are a flagrant fallacy. They are a bullshit argument people make up to prevent reasonable actions by falsely claiming that the reasonable action would automatically cause an unreasonable action.
>But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
Actually - no, a one-step-at-a-time ban has not happened. Bans are typically done in a single massive law pushed through at great personal political cost often ending several politicians careers as they act on what they believe are right. Then you have countries that go for strong regulatory frameworks and licensing schemes - in ALL of those guns remain legal to own, and owned by the majority of people who previously owned them.
It's certainly possible that a country could go from 'no gun law' to 'license and permit' to 'gun ban' but there has NEVER been a a case where this was a planned path. The closest was 'no gun law decades ago' because 'regulation and permit's and a completely diferent government many decades later - responding to a major event like a massacre ended up banning guns and abandoning the old regulatory approach - NOT expanding it.
That's not a slippery slope, that's a series of entirely unrelated events by very different people decades appart.
>No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
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Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
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I don't live in Iran and neither do you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
You might have heard of him, but you clearly didn't read Aristotle. This might be more your speed, and they have a whole section on "non-fallacious usage".
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
So you're down to mindless insults. I think I'll call this a victory. :)
Right - because pointing out that you asked a really stupid question at the end with a completely obvious answer - after meticulously answering your every statement with facts - is REMOTELY SIMILAR to being "down to mindless insults".
No - the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments. I just refuse to respond to the dumbest question I have ever seen with anything more than scornful derision. Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
Even so I'm not even sure that counts as an insult - it honestly just seems like a mildly euphemistic but essentially accurate description.
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after meticulously answering your every statement with facts ... the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments
Except you haven't answered the vast majority of my statements - on rate of fire, Australian mass shootings, the correlation between gun ownership and homicide - all of them were just never mentioned again after I made a rebuttal. On the other hand, every post you've made has brought up irrelevant things that are unrelated to anything I've mentioned - court cases, mass shootings, self-defense - that's all you making a straw-man, which you still couldn't defend properly.
So from my perspective you have (by omission) conceded nearly every argument you've put forward, while desperately trying to come up with something I can't rebut with a single sentence or link. So even though I'm not pro-gun, this discussion has just solidified my belief that pro-gun people have reasonable (if not entirely convincing) arguments, and gun control advocates (at least the ones here) are just responding to their gut reactions and don't have reasonable arguments.
Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
At least that a reasonable misunderstanding of the point I was making.
So to clarify my first point, I do believe that in peacetime the number of guns can be reduced (by say, 95%), my point about drugs was about who still manages to get them - people who don't care about breaking the law, or who are desperate. So the remaining 5% of the guns will be in the hands of career criminals and other dangerous people, not hunters and old people on isolated farms. So it's plausible that even a fairly effective gun ban might not even lower gun crime that much.
So if we reduce civilian gun ownership by 95% (and I have to assume you advocate this in every country) where do the gun come from in wartime (say a second US civil war)? Military and law enforcement in the country need them, foreign ones are state-owned and controlled, so you can't count on them getting smuggled in. And even if every civilian-owned firearm on earth found its way to the US quickly that would barely get the rate up to the current world average, let alone the US's rate, let alone the even higher rate that would occur if they had all the guns they have now and were importing more. On top of that people who are gun owners now would instead have to pay inflated wartime prices while the economy has collapsed to get their hands on one. But you don't think any of this will affect availability? They'll just ... "FIND them"?
How many third world countries are left on the planet? 5 or 10?
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia. USA is barely out of the leading 1/3rd in murder cases, as well with guns as without. However it seems it improved over the last decades and my numbers were a bit outdated.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia
What a good idea! Here's some people citing solid data ... looks like the US rate is below average and median - weird.
Well, maybe they're biased. I'll check the wiki's List of countries by intentional homicide rate, sort by rate, and ... 108 of 218, and still 21 away from Somalia, which isn't even counting civil war deaths.
You can't "reinterpret it" either
You sure as hell can. Or at least SCOTUS can. The text of the second specifically states that the right to bear arms was necessary in order to allow a militia to protect the free state. It says nothing about the current motto of guns for self-defense. Which was apparently not even made an official interpretation until 2008 (http://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/report/the-second-amendment-and-the-inalienable-right-self-defense even though it was common mantra long before that.
Not to mention any gun control laws of any sort (even "don't let convicted criminals have guns") is technically reinterpreting the second amendment. At least if the federal government tries to enact such a law (there's apparently some question whether states could enact such a law without technically violating the second. That same link talks about it a bit as well.)
Heck, SCOTUS can even repeal constitutional amendments if they feel like it, as was done with the 18th amendment (prohibition.)
Government "by the people" doesn't "reeducate" the people.
No, the people reeducate the people. I never said anything about the government. You have the NRA "educating" people about how awesome guns are. Why is there no massive organization of that scale to present the opposing side? In fact given how much the NRA contributes to campaigns, I would expect the government to be among the last places to promote gun reduction and safety. I mean how many times did Obama promise to do something after the string of mass shootings last year? And what was done? A bunch of squat because he was up against a Republican congress that was intentionally squashing anything he did out of spite, no matter whether it was good for the country or not. That's even before we start into how many of them are in the NRA's pockets.
And gun rights have majority support in the US
And there's the problem. As long as people want their crazyassed neighbor having the right to own firearms, nothing will change significantly.
Hence the need to reeducate people with modern facts and research rather than some one-liner law from two centuries ago that no longer really applies as it was intended (we don't see too many militias around) and was written at a time when gun technology was wholly different (they didn't have a lot of uzis, miniguns or rocket launchers to worry about in 1791.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Neither did those people. As far as I know, it isn't legal in Iran either but even if it was, does the threat of it stop more people from being victims of it or the legality/illegality of it?
Let me ask you another question, how many times does a mother have to tell a child a stove is hot? Some children will need told once while some will have to touch it and find out for themselves. Does the consequences of the action deter the behavior for those who take someone's word for it?
Your point is lost on the fact that there is nothing illegal about being religious if you do not commit illegal acts. People are responsible for their own actions but the question is not of an action but of a choice which might not be valid depending on how they are brainwashed into their belief systems. Religion is often not a choice at all for some people unless you can somehow undo the brainwashing with your own.
Your judgement should be different specifically because religion is not illegal and it would take a constitutional amendment in order to make it so. This country was founded on the belief that you can have whatever religious beliefs you wanted and it is enshrined in the first protections against government intrusion right there with the freedom of speech. For you to discriminate against someone for any legal act they participate in is still discrimination just the same as it would be to deny services to gays or blacks or some other minorities.
I was not cherry picking. You were opposing races, and I was just pointing out that most crimes (even the most hideous) are not race-related. Or trying to, at least.
Having an agenda would be creating an agency to report crimes made by illegal immigrants to be able to communicate on those, although proportionally more crimes of the same nature would be committed by legal immigrants or citizens. But nobody would do that, would they?
I agree with your sentiment; live and let live I say, really. I don't want to discriminate.
But I still have to disagree about religion. There are countless perfectly legal things people can do that I would consider a mistake. I consider it "not wrong" to consider these things if I need to evaluate someone for any reason.
That religion is legal, common and influential does not change that one bit. That its followers might be brainwashed doesn't either. That's hardly a pass.
We all judge people, there's no high ground here. But we're drawing lines and I'm saying there's what you're born with and there's your actions. Gay and black are the former, religion is the latter, as is every moronic thing you've ever thought someone was an idiot for doing.
I'm not making a call here saying religion is one of those. I'm just saying it's not wrong to judge them both the same way because they are both ultimately decisions.
Regardless even of what action is taken the decision itself can be judged without shame because it's on you. No one else can make it.
They can try. But you're always your own last word.
To suggest otherwise is to say that people are born into or beholden to religion on the same kind physical level as, say, being born gay. No way. Being Christian is not the same as being gay or black. Being Muslim is not the same as being trans.
It's a lifestyle, a choice. As such, fair game. Own it or fix it.
Judge not lest ye be judged, indeed.
State of California.
It's true, it's H1-B is not immigration, it's a visa. People come to the US on various kinds of visas everyday.
Just like it's wrong murder German tourists here on visa, it's wrong to murder people on a work visa (H1-B, TN, etc)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire