Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Shooter 'Nasim Aghdam' Reportedly Had Website With Manifesto That Targeted YouTube For Censorship, Demonetization (abc7news.com)
The woman who entered the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, this morning and started shooting has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. According to ABC7 News, "the YouTube shooter was a user of the platform" and had "a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. According to her website, a possible motivation for the shooting could have been tied to her many YouTube accounts, which she says have seen a decline in viewership over the past few months."
Here is a timeline of events from our original post:
Police have responded to multiple 911 calls at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From a report: Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at the company, tweeted that there is an active shooter on campus. The San Bruno Police Department instructed people to stay away from 901 Cherry Avenue, where the company is located. Multiple 911 calls have been received from inside the building, according to a report from local news station KRON. In a Twitter thread, YouTube product manager Todd Sherman said that employees first thought there had been an earthquake. People began running out of their meetings, he said, but before reaching the exit, they got word that someone had a gun. Sherman said he saw blood on the floor and the stairs. He also said the shooter may have committed suicide. Vadim Lavrusik, who works at YouTube's products team, tweeted, "Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers."
Update 20:30GMT: Google has issued the following statement, "we are coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available." San Bruno Police said it was "responding to an active shooter. Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive."
Update 20:40 GMT: CBS San Francisco reports: KPIX 5 reporter Andria Borba said at least two Homeland Security units were responding. Police radio transmissions describe casualties being taken to local hospitals. San Francisco General Hospital spokesman Brent Andrew said the hospital received patients from the incident but could not confirm a number.
Update 21:20 GMT: ABC News is reporting that the suspected shooter is a white adult female, and that this is "leaning towards a workplace violence situation."
Update 21:30 GMT: Law enforcement has confirmed that the shooter was a white female dressed in a headscarf. The woman reportedly shot her boyfriend then herself. It's unclear exactly how many people have been injured, but early reports estimate at least 9-10 victims. There is no word on their conditions.
Update 03:10 GMT: ABC7 News is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. She reportedly had a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. Contrary to previous reports, she is said to have no relationship with anyone in the YouTube facility.
UPDATE 03:40 GMT: Aghdam's website can be found here.
Update 04:15 GMT: The shooter is believed to have known at least one of the victims, two law enforcement officials told CNN. Other sources suggest the shooter drove up from San Diego. YouTube says her YouTube channel "has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations."
Here is a timeline of events from our original post:
Police have responded to multiple 911 calls at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From a report: Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at the company, tweeted that there is an active shooter on campus. The San Bruno Police Department instructed people to stay away from 901 Cherry Avenue, where the company is located. Multiple 911 calls have been received from inside the building, according to a report from local news station KRON. In a Twitter thread, YouTube product manager Todd Sherman said that employees first thought there had been an earthquake. People began running out of their meetings, he said, but before reaching the exit, they got word that someone had a gun. Sherman said he saw blood on the floor and the stairs. He also said the shooter may have committed suicide. Vadim Lavrusik, who works at YouTube's products team, tweeted, "Active shooter at YouTube HQ. Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk. Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers."
Update 20:30GMT: Google has issued the following statement, "we are coordinating with authorities and will provide official information here from Google and YouTube as it becomes available." San Bruno Police said it was "responding to an active shooter. Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive."
Update 20:40 GMT: CBS San Francisco reports: KPIX 5 reporter Andria Borba said at least two Homeland Security units were responding. Police radio transmissions describe casualties being taken to local hospitals. San Francisco General Hospital spokesman Brent Andrew said the hospital received patients from the incident but could not confirm a number.
Update 21:20 GMT: ABC News is reporting that the suspected shooter is a white adult female, and that this is "leaning towards a workplace violence situation."
Update 21:30 GMT: Law enforcement has confirmed that the shooter was a white female dressed in a headscarf. The woman reportedly shot her boyfriend then herself. It's unclear exactly how many people have been injured, but early reports estimate at least 9-10 victims. There is no word on their conditions.
Update 03:10 GMT: ABC7 News is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Nasim Aghdam. She reportedly had a website with an alleged manifesto that targeted YouTube for censorship and demonetization of her video content. Contrary to previous reports, she is said to have no relationship with anyone in the YouTube facility.
UPDATE 03:40 GMT: Aghdam's website can be found here.
Update 04:15 GMT: The shooter is believed to have known at least one of the victims, two law enforcement officials told CNN. Other sources suggest the shooter drove up from San Diego. YouTube says her YouTube channel "has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations."
Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to take out the shooter.
I'm not a fan of the companies practices but I'm not about to go kill people who work there. That's just batshit insane.
I'm not going to try to lump this person into any particular group or ideology, but after reading some of the quotes from her manifesto, she doesn't come off as a mentally stable individual.
I don't know if her channels have been deleted or if people have made copies of her videos, but one thing that may be fascinating about this particular case is that the suspect has likely created an extensive number of videos over the past several years that will probably give investigators a pretty accurate view into her thought process. Hopefully that will prove helpful in identifying other individuals who appear to be expressing at risk behavior and that we'll be able to figure out what can be done to treat whatever it is that's wrong with them.
I'm not a fan of the companies practices but I'm not about to go kill people who work there. That's just batshit insane.
She pretty much fit the definition of batshit insane. A vegan and animal rights activist who had no trouble shooting people - who last time I checked, are also animals.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What other recourse do we have against the corporate/government AI/mass surveillance/media leviathan?
A cultural and social change? One that doesn't want a quick and violent fix to complex issues?
most of the voters are brain-deleted drones with zero self interest
No, I think you'll find that self-interest is on a massive uptick
The people in that office were not innocent
Let's say that for the moment I'll go along with your argument and assume you mean 'guilty of something' ...
They deserved it
... and then we reach this.
No.
No they did not.
I sincerely hope that I've just fed a troll, but silence is assent, and on the off chance that you actually believe what you posted - I sincerely hope that you get better because if this is what you believe, then I can only offer my sympathy and regret.
ABC7 is a Sinclair owned TV station, it runs the "Terror threat" segments Sinclair scripts to ramp up the fear. I would take any claim it makes with a pinch of 'Sinclair' salt.
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-americas-largest-local-tv-owner-turned-its-news-anc-1824233490
Saying she was a 'you tube user' is meaningless, CBS she was believed to be the girlfriend of the man she shot.
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the skull, listening to the inner discourse of a Vegan Animal Rights Activist buying a gun? Talk about incoherence.
Look through her website. It's linked in the OP. It's worth a few minutes of your time if you're interested in this case, before it gets nuked. Many youtube videos linked through it already are.
She's some kind of a hardcore vegan activist of Iranian origin. Has separate youtube channels for Turkish, Iranian and English audiences. Claims persecution from everyone from youtube to "anti-vegan animal business supporting criminals trying to harm me/kill me" (with picture of what look to be a nail stuck in a car's tyre, with tyre remaining inflated).
Huge message in the middle of the page on yellow background states the following:
BE AWARE! Dictatorship exists in all countries but with different tactics! They only care for .There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site,
personal short term profits & do anything to reach their goals even by fooling simple-minded people,
hiding the truth, manipulating science & everything, putting public mental & physical health at risk,
abusing non-human animals, polluting environment, destroying family values, promoting materialism &
sexual degeneration in the name of freedom,..... & turning people into programmed robots!
"Make the lie big, Make it simple, Keep saying it, And eventually they will believe it" Adolf
Hitler... There is no free speech in real world & you will be suppressed for telling the truth that is not
supported by the system. Videos of targeted users are filtered & merely relegated, so that people can
hardly see their videos!
your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!
Not what I would call the most stable individual in the world. Shame, she's actually quite a good looking woman, with no religious head covering at all in the pictures that are still up. Linking her to islamism based on just the headscarf is likely not an accurate description. Hardcore vegans on the other hand are well known for violently attacking anyone who opposes their views. Just ask the folks working in laboratories that conduct animal testing.
A cultural and social change
And which cultural and social change, pray tell, is winning on a basic human right like free speech? It seems to me that corporations, government, and a lot of people are for censorship and the abrigation of freedom and liberty. Laws follow culture and if the UK is any kind of canary in the coal mine then the future looks very grim if not scary when combined with modern technology and information war.
I won't defend this crazy person but censorship and a culture of censorship (youtube, twitter, facebook, any social media) fight against inalienable rights that we all have from birth. Government does not bestow freedom and as such even if it is not the government that facilitate censorship when that freedom is restricted people will strike back as it has been the case throughout history. It has mostly been tame, like boycotts, but I hear too much talk of civil war from all political stripes. Talk becomes action soon enough. Too often lately have we embraced censors and tyrants. Too often have we dehumanized anyone that disagrees. It is no wonder that we start to see people respond in kind and in escalation.
The vast, vast majority of perpetrators of gun violence in this country are not Persian or women or vegan.
Did you, by any chance, came out after the Vegas shooting to say that the vast, vast majority of perpetrators of gun violence in this country are not wealthy white males? Of course you didn't.
Spin it any way you want, you're a phony.
lucm, indeed.
Idiot. They all breathe oxygen too. Perhaps we should ban air? Our are you too stupid to realize that air doesn't create stupidity or invite violence. Neither do guns.
The fact that a Persian vegan woman is the perpetrator in this instance does not change the fact that the vast, vast majority of perpetrators of gun violence in this country are not Persian or women or vegan.
Yeah! Just like the vast mojority of police shooting victims aren't black!
Wait ... what? NOW you want to talk about population statistics? And what about earlier?
if the killer is dead and anyone who really knew the truth of why she did what she did is dead, and whatever truth does exist is easily suppressed, that's a sort of blank check for using fear as a tool of influence.
Maybe you should start 23 youtube channels and an ugly website to share this with people so they too can fight back. And if it doesn't work, or if it doesn't quiet down the voices, I hear the NRA is offering big discounts on membership lately.
lucm, indeed.
OK, libtard. Let's ban ALL guns. And when you suffer a home invasion by a team of armed thugs intent on harming you and yours and you manage to barricade yourself into a safe room, and then the unarmed police show up. What will they do? If all guns are banned, then even the police should not have them. After all, we would hate to see ANYONE shot, even evil perps intent on harming innocent people.
Just like those dickheads in that California coffee shop who don't want to serve armed police. Were I the chief of police in that city, I would refuse to show up and assist that place no matter what manner of evil was befalling that place. Intolerance cuts both ways.
I find this hilarious. Some judgemental you tube censor messed with a 51/50. I feel more things like this will happen since most of these weirdos will be marginalized. Sadly it was not a gun CH content creator that did this:-)
I'm not a fan of the companies practices but I'm not about to go kill people who work there. That's just batshit insane.
True, but maybe you and she are in different live situations.
I mean.... you're not a small channel owner whose livelihood depends on money from Youtube, who suddenly experience an unexplained loss of views and revenue due to Youtube's arbitrary and capricious algorithms.
Perhaps she already had some sort of paranoid personality issues, and when she realized, she wasn't going to have a way of making ends meet, she was driven to insane and self-destructive behaviors, including the shooting.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff....
Sorry, no. Your karma was reduced by independent moderators who are offended by your apocryphal ravings and unsubstantiated paranoid blather.
Animals are her family? WTF?
I know there's a stereotype out there about Muslim men fornicating with barnyard animals, but I don't think you should take it THAT literally ...
CNN is still reporting it was the result of a lovers triangle lol
The people in that office were not innocent. They were working for an evil entity. They deserved it, the families they built with that profit from evil deserve their loss.
Yeah, you tell them! Those Charlie Hebdo shooters had the right idea, amirite?
Here's a web site with answers for you: https://www.mentalhealth.gov/g...
Awwwww... someone offended Billy at Shareblue. I guess it must really suck when even the people to whom you show the most irrational favoritism, consider you a villain fit to be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Remember when you Progressive tools told us classical small-L liberals to pack up our culture of tolerance and go get fucked? Well yeah, brohan, you stooges just discovered that there are *other* violently intolerant assmunches out there. Have fun!
Why did you change it from "gun violence" to "mass shootings"?
To fit your narrative? Because the vast majority of gun violence is not committed by white men.
> Might always makes right.
You DO realize that the fallacy of Iron Rule has been replaced with the Golden Rule, right?
Looks like what I'd expect if the Timecube author took up veganism.
Around 654 AD, Muslims invented the condom, using the lower intestine of a goat.
In 1827, the British perfected this by first taking the intestine out of the goat.
basic human right like free speech
You've introduced that all on your own. I was countering the GPs rhetorical statement that violence/shootings was the only response to corporatism. They were arguing for revolution, I was making a case for evolution. I am arguing that looking for quick fixes, especially violent 'fixes' are unlikely to work on problems that have taken a long time to reach the point they have.
But to your point;
culture of censorship (youtube, twitter, facebook, any social media)
All of these are private organisations, not governments. Usually, censorship and free-speech arguments revolve around governments limiting speech. If I am in a friend's home and start criticising their choice in interior decoration, there's nothing to stop the friend asking me to leave - nor would this be considered censorship. If you don't like the rules that these social media services ask you to abide by, don't use them. If you've built a business, identity or way of life on or around a service over which you have no control and provided by someone with whom you have no contract then claiming you have some kind of 'right' is stretching the use of that term to something that it doesn't usually mean.
when that freedom is restricted people will strike back
What freedom do you see being restricted by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc.? How is that different from any company refusing to offer or to continue to offer a service if you refuse to abide by the terms of that service? Do you consider that these companies have some kind of obligation to provide you with a service on your terms? Do you equate being arrested for saying certain things with having your video rankings on Youtube lowered for saying those things and if so, why?
Laws follow culture
So do 'rights'. They are not universal. They are a kind of cultural axiom. 'We believe these truths to be self-evident ...' They cannot be argued because they are the foundation upon which arguments rest. But they can and do change.
Rights do not exist in a vacuum. Rights only exist when others agree to or with them. I see a lot of arguments about rights - demands for rights that have been infringed or abrogated, but very little about responsibilities. Demands for rights are very self-focussed. Responsibility tends to be about commitment to the community, society and culture in which you live. I see corporations as examples of rights over responsibilities - the right to profit without concern over the cost to community.
Until people stop demanding their rights and start working on their responsibilities, I'm not sure that the culture that has allowed these corporations to be successful is going to change. The US has some of the worst poverty; the greatest income inequality; the highest rate of incarceration with, at the same time, some of the worst racial imbalance in sentencing; worst healthcare outcomes of any other western country and in some statistics, are worse than traditionally totalitarian regimes and some third world countries. These have more to do with the violence you see and the talk of civil war than whether Youtube has stopped ranking your stream as highly as they did.
Civil war between whom? Seriously. That's just stupid. To have a civil war you need two clearly defined sides. The United States is not even close to that kind of situation.
So how about revolution then? Well it sounds nice - very heroic, like Lenin and Castro and Ho Chi Minh. But what ideology will be behind this revolution? Marxism-Leninism? Yeah, good luck with that, it's 60+ years out of date and was never popular here anyways. Strict Constitutionalism? That wouldn't be much of a revolution, now would it?
Do YOU have an ideology that is going to lead our country to freedom, prosperity, and happiness? Well put it forward!
But you're not going to. Because you're an employee of a Chinese- or Russian-bankrolled troll factory. You have no actual interest in American politics. The hard questions of political philosophy are WAY out of your league. But hey, you get paid $0.50 for every post whipping up civil unrest in the States.
She's not entitled to a livelihood from Youtube.
And the mass majority of gun violence IN THE WORLD in the last decade is mainly by white Americans
No. That award goes to MIddle Easterns, with almost 500,000 deaths in Syria alone in the last 7 years.
Close second: Latinos. Just in Mexico there was 30,000 violent deaths last year, which is twice the number of gun victims in the USA. Of course a bunch of Mexican deaths are beheadings or people burnt alive, but still. Throw in about 25,000 in Venezuela, 4,000 in Honduras, etc. and it adds up quickly to a whole lot of non-White people killing non-White people.
As for Iraq, the total death toll since 2003 is between 125,000 and 250,000 (depending who you ask). And the US military is only around 55% white, so even if only the white soldiers were guilty that's still a lot less than what has happened in many non-White countries over the same period.
I know it's easier to blame white males, but facts are not on your side.
lucm, indeed.
And the mass majority of gun violence IN THE WORLD in the last decade is mainly by white Americans
Not even close. Tally up the mass murders in African and the Middle East, where people local to those regions slaughter each other in enormous numbers, and you'll see that ... never mind, you know you were lying. Stop it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There's no indication that she was a muslim, other than her Iranian origin. That's like assuming a East Asian gangster is a Buddhist kung-fu master without any other supporting fact.
Her website and youtube videos do paint her as a hardcore vegan, liberal, and an animal rights activist. Nothing about Allah or Koran or anything religious. She was probably an atheist.
And yes, unsurprisingly there's little to no mention of her and this Youtube shooting on Democratic Underground. They'd be screaming to high heaven if the shooter was named Billy Joe Bob.
What they all have in common is the easy availability of guns, which is fucking stupid. Guns should be banned.
This is easily proved false.
The US has always had lots of guns in civilian hands. It's one of the reasons Japan never invaded in WW2.
We've only started having these problems recently.
Something has changed, and it's not the availability of guns.
Even "the gun violence problem" has not grown worse, in fact dramatically the opposite.
Over the last 25 years gun-related homicides are down over 50%.
Over the same past 25 years, gun violence victimization is down over 75%.
What we do have that nobody on either side wants to discuss or even acknowledge is a public mental health crisis.
Most of the mass-shooters in the last ten years have been either under mental health treatment and medications or were until just prior to their crimes.
Homeless shelters are packed with the mentally ill that used to be institutionalized in order to keep both they and the public safe.
Laws already on the books that should have stopped at least some of the mass shootings were not enforced.
So what happens if you pass more laws and bans and they too are not enforced? Pass more laws?
You've decided that instead of restricting the freedom of mentally ill people you'd rather restrict the freedoms of everyone in order to avoid dealing with the mentally ill.
Plus, you know what happens if a gun ban is actually passed? Look what happened with drugs. The cartels will have a new cash commodity to sell Americans. Even better, these weapons won't have any restrictions. Think of street criminals with fully-automatic weapons, RPGs, grenades, landmines, 'Stinger'-type anti-aircraft rockets, and more.
Stop with the knee-jerk emotional bullshit. Use that lump of gristle 3 feet above your ass for something more than a hat rack.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Correct is not the accurate answer. OTOH...
I seem to remember a study I ran across awhile ago that claimed that social norms were only maintained by those oppressed by their violation occasionally throwing personal costs to the wind and acting violently to revenge themselves on those violating them. In that case I'd say her mistake was poor targeting, but she probably did the best she could.
OTOH, I suspect her targeting was poor enough that it will have no effect.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
To have a civil war you need two clearly defined sides. The United States is not even close to that kind of situation.
The incarceration rate in the US has been compared to states that are in the midst of civil war. Nothing else comes close. Given the inequity in sentencing based on race and you have a situation where a 'side' is being defined by default. Throw in a media that's all-but unregulated and loves to fan the flames and you have the ingredients for a fairly ugly division on class and racial lines. It won't be the 'clean' civil war of competing ideologies; it will be the 'dirty' kind of unrest and spontaneous outbreaks of violence of the oppressed.
Do YOU have an ideology that is going to lead our country to freedom, prosperity, and happiness? Well put it forward!
Not from the US and any change needs to grow internally, not be imposed externally - something that the US might want to consider with regards its foreign policy - but you might want to try moderating the demonisation of social policies. If you could shrink the income inequality, provide some kind of safety net for those at the bottom of society you'd remove some of the desperation and the 'nothing to lose' factor. If there's some way to make true-er the claim that the US is somewhere where hard work will get you somewhere and improve social mobility, then you'd get more buy in for the other values you espouse.
The thing is, there can't be change until the problems are acknowledged and I'm not sure that this has happened, yet.
The people in that office were not innocent. They were working for an evil entity. They deserved it, the families they built with that profit from evil deserve their loss.
I work at Google. I have friends who work at Youtube. On behalf of all of us and all of them: *Fuck you*.
I personally am proud to work for a company that is a major foundation of the open internet, a company that funnels its profits into things like scanning books and making them publicly available or developing self-driving cars without the profit-driven rush that leads to accidents from uber+tesla. I know not everyone is a fan of what we do, and even though I disagree, I get it and I'm sorry.
But you know what, whether Google is good or bad, the people who work here are just normal people doing the best we can with our lives. We do not deserve what happened, and you can take your judgmental bullshit and stuff it.
There is no such thing as a gun ban.
There is only gun redistribution.
"Banning guns" means you give all the guns to the government to enforce the "gun ban." See how that works out, circa 1940 Jews.
She pretty much fit the definition of batshit insane. A vegan and animal rights activist who had no trouble shooting people - who last time I checked, are also animals.
Nothing new there. Orwell wrote about it years ago.
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL,
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Animal Rights: A Dangerous Aspect of Our New Secular Religion
‘Who are you to judge?’
. . . Then in the 1990s, something started to change dramatically in how her students responded to the sobering tale. Rather than being horrified by it, some claimed they were bored by it, while others thought the ending was “neat.”
When Ms. Haugaard pressed them for more of their thoughts, she was appalled to discover that not one student in the class was willing to say the practice of human sacrifice was morally wrong! She describes one interaction with a student, whom she calls Beth:
“‘Are you asking me if I believe in human sacrifice?’ Beth responded thoughtfully, as though seriously considering all aspects of the question. ‘Well, yes,’ I managed to say. ‘Do you think that the author approved or disapproved of this ritual?’
“I was stunned: This was the [young] woman who wrote so passionately of saving the whales, of concern for the rain forests, of her rescue and tender care of a stray dog. ‘I really don’t know,’ said Beth; ‘If it was a religion of long standing, [who are we to judge]?’”
How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture
Tomorrow's menus will include a fine selection of steamed frogs, lightly killed by the most gradual temperature increases.
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
Works well here in the UK. We have some armed police, but the vast majority only carry a truncheon.
Yes, I do disagree being that California is in the top ten states with the strictest gun laws. Her father wasnâ(TM)t even aware she had one. Stating crimes involving guns are committed by people who have easy access to guns is incorrect. Chicago has the strictest gun laws of all states and the highest crime. Itâ(TM)s not the law abiding concealed carry permit holders killing children and citizens in the street, itâ(TM)s criminals whose access to guns have been cutoff by gun laws and guess what...THEY STILL GET THEM!
your "analysis" is very shallow and not worthy of Slashdot.
First, most "gun violence" in the USA is actually suicides; these are people who want to kill themselves and simply select a gun because it seems fast and certain to work.
Second, much of the remaining "gun violence" in the USA is associated with criminal gang activity. The evidence we have from other countries with strict gun control is that criminal gangs do not go away, they simply kill with illegal guns or with other weapons.
Third, FBI statistics for 2016 (Obama admin numbers, not Trumpian data) point out that more Americans were murdered with bare hands and fists and feet than with rifles. More Americans were also killed with blunt instruments in 2016 than with rifles, and more Americans were also killed with knives than with rifles. The report does NOT lump together hands, knives, and clubs to exceed deaths by rifles - EACH of those categories outnumbered rifle deaths on its own (so much for the need to ban "assault rifles").
We also kill huge numbers with cars, pills, ladders, robes, etc.
It's also true that most mass-shooters are politically left-leaning, most are young men who are either [a] fatherless, [b] on mind-altering drugs, or [c] associated with Islam. Some of our most-infamous shooters have been presidential assassins (or would-be assassins who got off a shot), ALL of which were to the political left of their targets with the exception one who was found clinically insane.
NONE of the nation's infamous mass shooters or assassins has been an NRA member, a politically-active Republican, or a member of a well-known Christian church or Jewish synagogue.
ALL proposals for "gun control" inconvenience or actively violate the Constitutional rights of the very people in the USA who are least likely to do one of these shootings. NONE of the nation's infamous shooters were deterred from doing their actions because there was a law against it. Most of the nation's mass shootings happen in states and/or cities with the toughest gun laws and usually within "gun free zones".
With all of the above, you say "Guns should be banned". [facepalm]
Let's just cut to the chase and ban murder....oh, wait a sec...
How could this possibly happen? I thought California had strict gun control.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
However, it is arguably committed by people to whom guns are easily available. Do you disagree?
Not necessarily. I'm surrounded by guns. Gun shops, gun ranges, neighbors with guns. Literally within earshot of a rifle range. I can walk outside with a small rifle, kill a rabbit in my garden and wave at a neighbor playing with his kids while I carry it to and fro. Guns, guns, guns. And no one is getting shot.
Twenty minutes south of me you're in a major metropolitan area where mostly blacks and Latinos shoot each other up routinely. Another body every other day or so.
I don't know how they get their guns but it's probably not much more difficult for them than it is for me. We'll call it a wash; same ease of acquiring guns. In truth we have a LOT more guns — and vastly better guns — than they do. But for the sake of argument we'll say it's the same.
So what is the difference between here and there? It certainly isn't the ease with which someone gets a gun, as you argue. It isn't wealth either. I'm not wealthy. I'm not trailer trash but I can find those people too because they're not far away; poor as dirt and also not shooting each other with anything like enough frequency to matter.
You don't want to deal with that question, do you? You want the cop out answer and the ban hammer, because unless your will is being forced onto others you're not satisfied. You have that in common with the angry inch that shot up YouTube HQ today.
A vegan and animal rights activist who had no trouble shooting people - who last time I checked, are also animals.
Well, anecdotal evidence, I know, but many vegan, animal activists I met think that animals are better than humans (there's no criminality among animals!!1!) and despise humans who do not care animals like they do.
We've only started having these problems recently.
That might have something to do with:
From 1968 to 2012 the number of guns per capita doubled.
From 2008 to 2013 gun manufacturers doubled their output from 630K/yr to 1200K/yr
Per capita. Means very little if Farmer Bob owns now 9 guns instead of the 3 he had 40 years ago while his 2 neighbors don't own any. Does he walk around with 9 guns on him at all time? Does he walk into a bar or the supermarket or to church with them? So even IF the number of guns in private ownership increased, and yet the overall firearms homicide rate dropped during that same period, I guess I should thank you for proving the point that it's quite unequivocally not the guns that are the causative agent here.
You've decided that instead of restricting the freedom of mentally ill people you'd rather restrict the freedoms of everyone in order to avoid dealing with the mentally ill.
Stop being so PC, persecution complexes are for betas.
Every other country in the world has the same amount of mental illness as the US. No other wealthy industrialized country as even close to the same level of gun violence. The problem isn't mental illness.
The US has the same amount of mental illness as every other country in the world? Citation please. In fact, for such a claim, multiple citations from differing sources, peer reviewed.
Your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
When internet was an interconnection of academic networks and you had all sorts of interesting and useful stuff on various servers for us students to research. You could find a "howto" on installing your very own private unix server at home.
Now that is has been completely commercialised you find things like this; people getting killed by uneducated individuals fascinated by all the information thrown at them. Can we go back to the way things were, now, please?
Ok, so from 1968 to 2012 the number of guns per capita doubled.
Yet the U.S. Homicide rate is currently about 20% lower than it was in 1968! You've proven increasing the number of guns in the U.S. doesn't result in more people being murdered. Congratulations.
P.S. Schools are much safer than in the 90s, shooting incidents involving students have been declining for decades.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
They still get them because the laws are only local instead of federal. Chicago would be much better off if people couldn't get guns so easily in nearby states. The majority of the guns used in crime there are from out of state.
The problem wouldn't go away entirely with stricter gun laws, but increasing the effort/cost required to get a gun legally would increase black market prices for guns and leave fewer criminals able to afford them.
It's not about population statistics, it's about the fact that blacks are on average massively more criminal than whites. Per head of population.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
who last time I checked, are also animals.
You have the right ... TO DIIIIIIIEEEE!! HAHAHHAHAA
You need to take a leisurely stroll Chicago on a Saturday night in the summer to cure you from the illusion.
Four hits, no kills, only herself. She's bad at this. Remember the Bernie supporter who opened fire on a baseball field full of Republicans? 50 shots fired, 5 hits, no kills.
Remember when some terrorists killed everyone at the Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas? That's OK, the Texans don't remember that either. The terrorists were shot and killed outside the event. They were wearing body armor, too. They were killed by head shots.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The problem with this anecdotal evidence is that you probably simply don't notice most vegan and animal friends that are not as radicalised as PETA members. And it's not your fault for not noticing them. The moderate or silent ones don't stand out and therefore it's easy to assume that they're just 'normal' people whose values do not differ that much from your own. Just be aware that this perceptional bias exists.
The same applies really to all groups be it things that people don't choose like their sex or ethnicity or things they can choose like being Republicans, Democrats, Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, atheists, gamers, feminists, vegans or whatever. Extreme cases always stand out and nitpicking them as a primary example for their group is a very popular propaganda tool.
This event does not qualify as a mass shooting. It is a rampage shooting. A mass shooting has 4 or more fatalities (other than the shooter). So stick to the event at hand, gun violence.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Yet those nearby states don't have anywhere near the same violence. Nor is it actually easy to buy a gun in those neighboring states if you are from Illinois. Fact when you buy a firearm the request your ID to run the background check. If they see you are from another state, and you are trying to purchase a hand-gun (the weapon used in the vast majority of shootings in Chicago) the sale is stopped. It's illegal. A resident of Illinois can only buy a handgun in Ill. A long gun is different but they are rarely used in gun violence. (blunt objects kill more people every year than all long guns combined). Okay so you say Indiana residents are buying the guns and sending them to Chicago. A few maybe, but repeat strawman buys will get you caught. So to provide a significant supply of strawman purchased firearms would require a rather significant pool of buyers willing to risk felony charges.
More guns in Chicago are traced as stolen than legally purchased in neighboring states. Last year thieves stole over 100 handguns from a train car in the railyards. Guess where they are finding those guns. In Chicago gangs.
Good thing there's a massive invisible wall called a state border, stopping people from bringing guns into Chicago.
Well said!
Guns are not the reason Japan never invaded during WWII. They didn't have the manpower to invade the United States and China simultaneously and they knew it. By the time they bombed Pearl harbor they had been at war with China for almost a decade and it was turning into a stalemate. They talked about invading Australia, a much less populous country with a much smaller military by comparison and decided that was a bad idea too. It would divert too many resources from the China effort.
Where you might be right is Germany made overtures to Mexico to invade the US and one of the reasons they declined was an armed population. Mexico also didn't see the benefit of poking that hornet's nest since they didn't want to lose another war with the USA and cede yet more territory. There was also some doubt Germany had the ability to finance it as promised.
Guns don't keep us from being invaded especially not in the modern era. It didn't stop the British twice. It didnt stop the Mexicans. Let history be your teacher.
>A vegan and animal rights activist who had no trouble shooting people - who last time I checked, are also animals.
A lot of animal lovers are misanthropes. It starts with equalizing "rights" of humans and animals and proceed to extreme forms of misanthropy. Nobody emphasizes nowadays that human life is incomparably more valuable than the life of an animal.
Humans are NOT animals. Calling humans animals is like calling a person a shitter. Both are technically true, but it is also denigrating.
The commonality of humans and animals is much less important than uniqueness of humans compared to animals. This simple fact is not taught at all.
That's how you get large mammals on a plane (yes, humans are NOT mammals, humans are NOT apes, humans are NOT even Homo Sapiens)
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Persian woman wearing a headscarf in sunny CA? That's a pretty strong indicator. Most non-muslim women ditch the scarves as soon as they get out of middle eastern nations where they are mandated regardless of ones faith.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Wrong, civil wars happen perfectly fine with more than two sides and without any particular ideology because many, and maybe most civil wars are not wars for something, but against something. This kind of war unites vastly different groups with changing the status quo being their only common goal.
What the fuck do you think is happening in Syria right now?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
People in Chicago still have easy access to weapons primarily because most of the country has lots of guns, making it easy to get them there.
You and those who are thinking it is otherwise are not thinking it through, and instead creating a narrative that you'd wish to believe in.
The golden rule is just an indirect iron rule.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I wish I had mod points. That's the best thing I've read in a long time around here. Your neighborhood is about like my neighborhood.
Guns everywhere and nobody getting shot. I wonder why . . .
Until the anti-gun crowd can answer that question honestly, I don't care to hear anything they're screaming.
The liberals will not say much at all about her but if it had been done by a white man, they would be raving. Her being a female and a muslim will not play well with the liberal narrative.
I was under the impression that the "liberal narrative" was that guns should be heavily regulated. To that end, I'm certain they are still going to be saying that regardless of who the shooter is. Seriously, what is this liberal narrative? Only white males misuse guns? I would love to get the answer to this question.
Glad she's not around to waste taxpayer money on a trial that would surely in California not earn her the stiffest possible penalty as it would here in Texas.
Well, we all thank you for your bravery in these trying times, Anonymous Coward. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The fact that a Persian vegan woman is the perpetrator in this instance...
...only points to the fact that the intersection of Persians, vegans and women is comparatively small in the US.
does not change the fact that the vast, vast majority of perpetrators of gun violence in this country are not Persian or women or vegan.
That obviously doesn't tell you anything about relative frequencies.
Ezekiel 23:20
Huh? Did he get promoted from president to immortal god?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know what country has the most assault weapons per capita in private hands? Switzerland. You know in what country you have one of the lowest gun related homicides worldwide? Switzerland.
It's not the guns. It's the people wielding them and the situation they're in. Want to eliminate killing sprees? Give people a reason not to go on one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, we belong to the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Chordata, the Mammalia class and Primates order, the Hominidae family, Genus homo and Species Homo Sapiens.
Except for the last one there are other animals we share this trait with. And except for the latter two, there are currently others who share the same level on the classification chart.
What makes a human human? What makes a human not an animal? What's special about us?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Out of curiosity, where do you work? Want to bet I find a reason to kill you for it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The main reason why there is no criminality among animals is that there are no laws among them either. No laws, no criminals. Without a law against shooting you and taking your stuff, I shoot you and take your stuff without becoming a criminal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's no such thing as "punching down". There's just satire, which is what they published, and actual violence, which is what their attackers did when they murdered them in cold blood.
Stop using newspeak to confuse two entirely different things. It's ideologically motivated manipulation to justify why some people do not deserve sympathy or empathy.
Except in a proxy war there are two clearly defined sides. In Syria not so much.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The problem with this anecdotal evidence is that you probably simply don't notice most vegan and animal friends that are not as radicalised as PETA members.
That may be true.
If the robbers are 99% sure that you don't have a weapon, they would simply just threaten you with their gun instead of shooting you on sight.
Then you simply let them rob your house and make sure to have a home insurance.
Then after you are robbed and they have left you call the cops to report the crime.
What would you rather do, get robbed of your new shiny 4K TV or risk your life and possibly your family’s life?
Not letting the police have guns however is just retarded and if you can't trust the law enforcement in your country you got way larger issues than gun control.
Signs are there that she is a Muslim. But I also see nothing there pointing to her having some sort of "jihadist" ideology. Her rant goes off against everyone who disagrees with her ideology, which appears to be a mix of left and right.
Things she rants about from the left:
* Veganism
* Corporations
* Pollution
Things she rants about from the right:
* Family values
* Sexual degeneracy
Things she rants about that could be from either:
* Materialism (although you probably see complaints more often from the left)
* Censorship (although you probably see complaints more often from the right)
Doesn't fit neatly into any box except "angry and feels the world is against her"
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
What? Two lots of police show up?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What do you mean, "if"?
I don't think Andrew Finch has much confidence in them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And they couldn't find any good caricaturists among themselves so they blew shit up. Makes sense.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What Charlie Hebdo did was punching down...
"Punching down" is the new term that liberals have invented to mean satire against something they hold sacred.
What we do have that nobody on either side wants to discuss or even acknowledge is a public mental health crisis.
I feel the problem is more of both sides are too combative on what they want / don't want to address this well. It seems many conservatives want to say "It's a mental health problem" but then don't want to do a lot to help provide mental health care. But then the liberal response I've usually seen to any conservative mentioning mental health issues is "YOU DONT WANT FREE HEALTHCARE YOU LOVE GUNS REEEEEEE!" To which the response is more of a "muh 2nd amendment and guns!" Really sucks people can't work together at least SOMEWHAT to improve things.
This woman was not the first vegan terrorist, but judging from some of the comment threads here she lives in the hearts of those people who stone Bay Area corporate commuter buses. This is an important voter demographic in California.
What we do have that nobody on either side wants to discuss or even acknowledge is a public mental health crisis.
People have been talking about mental health in relation to guns for a while. Democrats have been talking about it too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Friendly reminder that ALL Arabs and Hispanics are counted as "White"
Please forward this information to diversity@google.com so they can expand their discriminatory practices to a larger segment of the population
lucm, indeed.
It's not about population statistics, it's about the fact that blacks are on average massively more criminal than whites. Per head of population.
Did you ever think about the fact that this crime data can easily be manipulated by the police? For instance, NYC had (has?) a stop and frisk law that they only applied to minority people. So they end up finding drugs on a lot more minorities than white people because they don't bother frisking them. Then all of the sudden you have a lot more minorities that are ex-convicts and cannot find work who all of the sudden resort to crime to live and then their neighborhoods become more dangerous, causing the police to spend more time there stopping and frisking people and all of the sudden you have a population who has been manipulated into being more criminal than others.
It's not just about stop and frisk, it's about violent crime, burglaries, etc. Why would the police be manipulating that data? We're not in a political climate for them to do so.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
It's not about population statistics, it's about the fact that blacks are on average massively more criminalized than whites. Per head of population.
Fixed that for you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Works fine in the rest of the world.
The sarcasm is strong with this one.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
You have it wrong. If those stopped & frisked had drugs on them, then they were already criminals. There is no right to drugs - and not having drugs is an incredibly easy trick - even for the poor & jobless.
You are right that whites don't get stopped as much. But it happens - and then they rarely have drugs on them so why stop them again?
If statistics bear out that some visibly identifiable group is more likely to have drugs on them, then stopping those more is reasonable. Wheter it is their age (young people experiment more with drugs) their choice of car, their clothing style (dopeheads care only about dope, and bother less with looks ) - OR THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN.
Yes - stopping blacks is sensible if the blacks indeed are more criminal. Which they are in some jurisdictions, and not in others.
Guess what - when there is another bank robbery/large scale burgling, the known white career criminals have their homes searched too.
Her website screems "underf*cked & emotionally neglected avergage frustrated chump with a gun" only that this time the chump is a woman. Good to know that diversity is moving in on that territory aswell.
I hope no victim dies from the attack, AFAICT one victim still is critical.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think it's due to the internet.
30 years ago we, as individuals, still had beliefs and convictions, but support and information of such was limited to the people around us, magazines/newsletters, and maybe TV coverage (if widely popular). Even books.
The niches were very niche, they had little communication ability. Small pockets at best.
Enter the internet. Support for extreme or violent beliefs is available 24/7 (support for pretty much anything).
"There's someone else like me!"
While I don't transit such sites, I assume they throw out ideas that are bad, and it only takes one individual to latch onto such an idea and carry it out.
30 years ago such ideas would have been much less widespread, potentially limited to a single person.
Excellent ending of your post by the way.
BlameBillCosby.com
Obvious troll is obvious.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Please elaborate that statement.
An armed population doesn't bow to tyrants. An unarmed population can do nothing but bow to tyrants. The fact that some unarmed countries don't yet have tyrants, doesn't really help your argument.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Like a woman can't go kill crazy unless it's over a man.
Most likely, it's population density, and the higher total crime rates that go along with that, even if the per capita crime rates are actually lower. Our puny little human brains SUCK at those kind of statistics for the same reason we are scared of terrorists and mass shootings, despite them being the least likely forms of violent death.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Hopefully, we wil NOT get a dupe of this article!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Technically shooting Youtube employees isn't a violation of their Terms of Service.
Must've been something she had in the videos..
It's not just about stop and frisk, it's about violent crime, burglaries, etc. Why would the police be manipulating that data? We're not in a political climate for them to do so.
and what do you think happens to a person when they get arrested for drug possession and get put on probation or spend a year or two in jail? They find that they can't get stable employment and have to resort to crime to eat. The police manipulate the data by how they focus their man hours. They may not even realize that they are manipulating the data. And this process was started a long time ago, when the police were mostly white and there were a lot of openly racist people in this world. Just go read the book Les Miserables and you can see that this was a problem 200 years ago. It only takes one criminal conviction to ruin your life forever.
Purely out of curiosity and absolutely unrelated, where do you live, and do you have weapons?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When conservatives can use "religious nutjob" as a way to distance themselves from their fringe off-the-deep-end idiots, so can liberals use SJWs to do the same.
There's sane people and insane people on both sides of the spectrum. Not embracing everyone "on my side" as my ally is the first step to getting to a way you can cooperate with the other side. You'll notice that they, too, have their loonies and once you separate them from the sane ones, you can find a common ground to work on.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Chicago has the ... highest crime."
Citation please? Chicago doesn't even make the top ten.
https://www.worldatlas.com/art...
Perhaps you're thinking of that imaginary place where Trump lives and gets his information.
It is very likely that the decline in murder rate in the US is due to better emergency care;. See http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108876790200600203. Overall, violence levels have gone down by many metrics worldwide, not just in the US, so this is something likely independent of guns, most likely reduction in lead levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis. As observed by one of the other commentators, per a capita gun rate isn't very useful for predicting or influencing much if the same people who would otherwise own one gun or two guns now own 5 guns.
and what do you think happens to a person when they get arrested for drug possession and get put on probation or spend a year or two in jail?
You tell me. Has NYC's crime rate gone up or down in the last 5 decades? Or are you claiming that's being manipulated as well?
Do you have a YouTube Channel? I need debunking material and it seems you could deliver beautiful samples.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's more that I don't care.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's really become necessary to use that many words to say it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is that we have launched into attacks and defenses of Gun Control, Vegans, Muslims, and Women.
But there's no discussion about the way that social media has created a belief system that if you just upload some videos, you'll be a star. It's an unrealistic belief that every person can post some videos and make a living. Who knows whether her videos were being censored? Maybe, maybe not. But it's the environment in which people construct their sense of self around social media fantasies that seems more of a root cause here.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
What we do have that nobody on either side wants to discuss or even acknowledge is a public mental health crisis.
Nobody on either side wants to discuss guns either, because they are convinced the 'other side' feels the exact opposite of them (e.g. All guns everywhere / No guns anywhere).
While mental health is definitely an issue, any discussion would unfortunately fall into the same black and white us vs them screaming arguments.
Most likely, it's population density, and the higher total crime rates that go along with that, even if the per capita crime rates are actually lower. Our puny little human brains SUCK at those kind of statistics for the same reason we are scared of terrorists and mass shootings, despite them being the least likely forms of violent death.
On a per capita basis urban crime rates are higher than suburban and suburban are higher than rural.
http://victimsofcrime.org/docs/default-source/ncvrw2015/2015ncvrw_stats_urbanrural.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
> You've proven increasing the number of guns in the U.S. doesn't result in more people being murdered. Congratulations.
Nah, you've just proven how to hide truth with misleading statistics. For example you cited homicides in general, not gun deaths.
In fact, gun deaths and gun ownership are almost linerally correlated. Here is a chart of state gun deaths vs gun ownership rates.
And from a study published in the American Journal of Public Health:
Conclusions. We observed a robust correlation between higher levels of gun ownership and higher firearm homicide rates. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.
Yes, all of those right-wing vegans protesting they Keystone pipeline and all of those left-wingers railing about "sexual degeneracy" and shouting drill-baby-drill.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Her website screems "underf*cked & emotionally neglected avergage frustrated chump with a gun"
This BBC article paints a slightly different picture: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
She seems to have been trying to make it as a social media star, with YouTube being a big part of her income. Maybe her only income... No sign of a Patreon account and other platforms like Instagram and Facebook don't pay.
YouTube de-monetized her videos (or maybe whole channels, it's not clear) due to their content, which seems to have been animals right related. Some of it was quite graphic, so naturally YouTube put age restrictions on it and pushed it down the search results. When people search for "pigs" they generally aren't looking for graphic depictions of them being slaughtered or mistreated, and YouTube was certainly never going to put that on the front page.
So her "career" is in the pan, income cut off, and it's basically a given that she had mental health issues if she thought shooting up YouTube was a good idea. Unlike the sexually frustrated "incels" you refer to, she appears to have done little planning or preparation for this attack, hence the low number of casualties.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So everyone who ever fought in a war was "batshit insane"?
What does that have to do with this insane woman?
They wanted to protect families (their own) but they destroyed other people's families, so they're "batshit insane"?
Differential diagnosis. She was a paranoid. She thought that free speech meant she could say whatever she liked, and o one was allowed to respond.
No, you're just terrified by this 'news event' and you refuse to analyze the situation rationally because you know you'll be validated for signalling collective victimhood.
Truth is, your incoherent response shows that you might go unhinged as well. You should go back on your meds Brainless animal.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If mere contradiction is the definition of "batshit insane" we're in real trouble. In any case the supposed contradiction is an artefact of your misreading 'animal' here.
You should have spoken to her for a whie - you could have been the hero just by boring her to death, my pendulous pedant.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So, other than the veganism (and maybe the being-female, Slashdot does seem to skew male), she's basically what you'd get if you put all Slashdot commenters into a blender and hit the button.
All we need now is to find out she hates copyrights and wrote rants on the "MAFIAAAAA" and we're all set.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Capitalism (...) is merely a material value system which is inherent in every society
You're confusing Capitalism with commerce and free markets. They aren't the same thing.
To understand the difference it's important to understand what the word "capital" means. People tend to think it means "money", but that's an oversimplification. "Capital" is synonymous actually synonymous with "means of production", which in turn means all those things (the means) a person can use to create (produce) rent and wealth, specifically enough rent and wealth so as to survive and thrive.
A person without access to means of production cannot do much when left to themselves other than to pick (or steal) food and, if needed, distribute punches, kicks and worse things. So the person either manages to somehow obtain means of production of their own to then begin having a life worth living, or go to someone who does own means of production, shows themselves capable of working with them, and then asks to be allowed to use those means to produce wealth in exchange for keeping a slice of the wealth they created, the owner of the means of production keeping the difference.
That's the definition, and as a definition it's neutral. Things get interesting when, in light of it, you begin to look at how things are and, maybe, at how they ought to be.
What characterizes Capitalism is the idea that it's perfectly okay for some people to own means of production and for the majority of people to now own means of production, thus having to place themselves as workers under the orders of owners of the means. The owner (capitalist) can then use the wealth the workers produced for him so as to by even more means of production, becoming even more needed by workers who don't own means of production. Which in turn give him even more wealth with which to buy even more means of production, and so on and so forth.
That's the Capitalist ideal, and it's supported not only by the owners themselves, but by non-owners who believe themselves capable of eventually becoming owners of means of production in the same fashion, and by non-owners who don't believe themselves capable of that but who nonetheless have a comfortable enough life under it.
Socialism has a different take on the issue. Socialists think it unfair for the means of production to end up accumulated more and more in the hands of a few people, so they believe in an alternative system in which the means of production are owned by a government that takes care to spread the wealth produced by those means among the people in a roughly equal manner, the supposition being that in this way everyone together owns (through the government) the means of production.
Between both beliefs there are intermediate mixes, such as Social-Democracy, which believes in a managed form of Capitalism in which people are allowed to accumulate means of production, but are overseen by the government so as to not do bad things with the means they own.
And there are beliefs outside the line that goes from Capitalism to Socialism. One such is Distributism, which believes everyone should own their means of production individually, so that it'd neither accumulate in the hands of a few as happens in Capitalism, nor in the hands of state bureaucrats as happens in Socialism (and much less the hands of a mix of both).
As for markets, and free markets, they exist in all of the above (except for pure Socialism). As such, a free market activist can actually be aligned with any of them. And then we have the distinctions between the different pro-free-market schools of thought. Libertarianism, for example, is one such, and one more closely aligned with Capitalism, although not completely (a typical difference: Capitalism is okay with owners of means of production using the wealth they accumulate to buy laws favoring themselves against competitors, something Libertarianism is strongly opposed to).
So, while markets are indeed common to all human experience, Capitalism itself isn't. The ability to accumulate the means of production is fairly recent in historical terms, it has but a few centuries. Markets, in contrast, predate that by thousands of years. As such, it's useful to distinguish both.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Why would the police be manipulating that data?
Because then people like you will say "oh it's fine that they stop black people more often, because black people are more often criminals!"
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
When uneducated people talk about Fascism, they envision swastikas and marching stormtroopers. When educated people talk about Fascism, they talk about mandatory conformity to dogmatic ideas, threats of violence to enforce conformance, and lack of regard for individualism.
Your behavior fits my understanding of Fascism and I find it deeply ironic that you probably self-identify as anti-fascist.
I believe there is a correlation between mass Muslim immigration and crime - especially rape, and especially especially child rape.
However, I see no indication that this particular woman was a hadji.
This looks like a case of a mentally ill person with a gun.
Nothing new there. Orwell wrote about it years ago.
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I love animals. Most are quite honest.
And even though I believe that humans are fatally flawed and doomed to extinction, I certainly don't hate humanity.
But she had a love for animals that was at core, based on hate. Which ended up pretty predictably.
Then there was that vegan thing. Many (most?) vegans start out believing that the choices they make are some sort of ""this is good, that is bad contrast. Its how they can start out saying "I don't eat anything with a face", and end up not eating honey because the bees didn't give consent. The problem of course is that nothing but chemoautotrophs exist without killing something else. Animal or plant, something dies so we can live
tl;dr version - all life is precious, but I gotta eat somethng!
Coupled with her on display paranoia, and using the Youtube platform to spread her rants against Youtube, it's not at all surprising that she slipped over the edge into a psychotic murderous break.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I was guessing, that since a handgun was used, and it wasn't a 50yr old white guy with a problem, or a messed up kid, that it just didn't fit their current narrative that helps push the anti-gun movement currently in swing.
It's almost like the news is saying "Oh, well, wrong type of mass shooting".
That fact that it hit YouTube really shocks me, that it has dropped off the radar so soon, I figured the location alone would have made it a front page news item for at least a few days....?
Where's David Hogg now? Why aren't they running him out there now to speak out once again on gun violence?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A vegan and animal rights activist who had no trouble shooting people - who last time I checked, are also animals.
Well, anecdotal evidence, I know, but many vegan, animal activists I met think that animals are better than humans (there's no criminality among animals!!1!) and despise humans who do not care animals like they do.
You need to check out Chimpanzees. Anyhow, love of animals based on hatred of humans is a sure fire recipe for disaster.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You should probably make sure that is illegal before calling the police. They don't take kindly to people wasting their time with frivolous calls. In my back yard? Yes, illegal. If I go to my friend's house 20 minutes away? We can shoot in his back yard no problem, and the cops will do nothing because no law is being broken.
Simply owning a firearm makes one a gun nut? Not every gun owner is a member of the NRA, or amassing an arsenal of a thousand guns. Many gun owners are regular people who don't get all worked up about this.
What is special about humans is that we have free will, that we know about God, that we have moral code that is different from learned instincts.
What does not make us different is intellect per se.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The fact that a Persian vegan woman is the perpetrator in this instance
should not matter if the feminist narrative that both genders are biologically, mentally, and psychologically equal. If it matters, then there's something different about how men and women are wired and that needs to be acknowledged and accounted for by society at large.
I'm not advocating for either position, here; merely pointing out that the two cannot coexist.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
98% of Iranians in Iran do, but most immigrants here from Iran seem to identify themselves as Persians and only about half are Muslim from what I see... but I know a bunch of Z's so my perspective might be skewed.
Yeah, and many countries with a Tyrannt have/had an armed population that simply sucked it up ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The internet has facilitated small niche's finding each other across the world.
The problem I see is not that folks are communicating, it's that the self checking mechanisms are seemingly non-existent. Right now, it's all about emotion, and who can make one feel more X.
--
"This love is silent" - T.S. Elliot
The majority of the guns used in crime there are from neighboring cities.
Chicago is a city, not a state, and we're talking about city ordinance, not state law. We see the same thing in Oakland, by the way, so Chicago isn't a one-off. Neighboring cities? Safe to walk around at night. Oakland, where criminals know people are less likely to be armed because the city has tougher gun laws? Really not safe to walk around during the day.
If it were a state law, you'd be correct, the guns would come in from neighboring states; however, if it were federal law, they'd come in from neighboring countries.
I know it's hard for people like you to remember that other countries exist, because then you have to admit that other countries with prevalent gun ownership don't have the same (not just gun violence) violence problem we have in the US, and that countries exist with much lower gun ownership but much worse violence problems than the US -- and both point hold true even if you restrict to gun violence. And when you admit either (or both) of those things, you point out that the guns aren't the problem, the violence is.
Are guns a contributing factor? Maybe, maybe not, and it's pointless to discuss because the cat is out of the bag already. People like you seem to think that getting guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens would somehow make things better, but you have more than a couple shining examples to look at of where that has been done and had very much the opposite effect and you simply choose to ignore them. Take away a criminal's deterrent and crime goes up, not down; and criminals don't care about getting caught with illegal guns, or they wouldn't have guns in the first place -- nobody (mass shooters intent on dying during the event excepted) uses a legally bought gun to commit a crime.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The term you are looking for is "straw purchase", it's a federal crime, and carries a penalty of up to $250,000 and 10 years in prison. Sentencing is usually on the higher side of that scale and the typical buyer only gets 10%; even on an expensive handgun, that's less than $200. It's not easy to find a buyer for a straw purchase; it's a whole lot easier to duck into a dark alley and buy one for $200 out of some dude's trunk, so that's what actually happens.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
We shouldn't invest in mental health care because it takes too long?
--
"What's up doc?" - B. Bunny
Ok, so from 1968 to 2012 the number of guns per capita doubled.
I think one important thing to remember is per-capita doesn't tell you who owns guns. According to this story, it's about 1/3rd of US people. And appears to be declining (though lack of formal statistics make the trend noisy)
So it's not that more people own guns, it's gun owners owning more guns.
And that is a big part of why the "gun debate" in the US has the character it currently has. There's a minority of people who really like guns and thus are highly motivated to keep several of them. The majority doesn't have any guns, and thus supports gun regulation or at least does not oppose it.
Don't bother, they never listen. You point out countries with high rates of gun ownership and low incidence of gun violence (or any violence, really) and they cry "exception that proves the rule." You point out countries with low gun ownership but higher-than-the-US rates of gun violence (or, again, violence in general) and they scream "third-world shithole!"
Any reasonable and logical person can look at deaths-per-gun-owned and see that they're not the same in every country; they're not even close enough to be statistical error. A third-world shithole has fewer guns but more factors making people want to kill each other, so more people kill each other there, and it matters not that the idiot who can't see this wants to call the place third-world or a shithole -- reality still applies in those places just the same as it does everywhere else.
As you point out, people who want to kill each other do and people who don't don't. And if we're being honest, guns are much more precise and targeted than the alternative methods of mass killing: cars, trucks, and bombs. If I had to choose which kind of attack I was going to be a victim of, I'd choose a mass shooting every time. Stay out of sight after you hear the first shot and you probably don't get shot yourself. A bomb doesn't need to see you and take aim to kill you, and any of the other options are so sudden and make no noise prior to the event, so you don't even know you should take cover until you're already dead. Plus, mass shootings have the benefit of the shooter typically ending up dead and unable to carry out another crime, while drivers can drive off and bombers can plant devices and be out of range when they go off, living to perform another act of mass killing. Guns are definitely the least scary of the options when you consider reality.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'm talking about the 24/7 news channels on TV, not blogs on the internet.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What is free will? And how certain are you that you have any? I remember an experiment where they put a person into a MRT, put a button into his hand and told him to press it whenever he feels like it. They knew a full second before he pressed that button that he would because the relevant areas in his brain worked. And a full second is "a bit" longer than signal relay takes through our nervous system.
We're also by far not the only ones with a moral code. Animals have been shown to refuse food if the "price" was that another animal (they didn't have prior contact to) got an electric shock. As soon as the animal made the connection between getting a treat and some other animal being shocked in response to them accepting it, they refused the treat. How would you explain this?
So what's left is our ability to have imaginary friends next to real ones. And considering what atrocities that caused, I dare say it's not one of the traits that should make us the "superior being"...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I suppose the US is also causing 30% of south african men in this survey to have participated in rape. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
Okay, so guns are made illegal in the US, then it's only the border states with gun problems. Only, the gun problems there are worse because criminals know their victims are unarmed and defenseless. Same amount of gun violence, just concentrated around the edges.
What you say is certainly true, but you need to follow it to its logical conclusion to see why it's not an argument for what you propose. Gun violence is more prevalent in Chicago than it is in the neighboring cities (where the guns are coming from) where people are allowed to be armed, because criminals know people in those cities might be armed and people in Chicago probably are not. Easier targets make for happier hunting.
My FIL is a customs agent, they find cars with trunks full of guns on a daily basis -- and they don't search everyone coming in, which means more are getting through than they're stopping. Getting rid of legal guns in the US won't stop that, because the illegal guns are coming from Mexico and (yes, really) Canada. Oh, and from overseas; they nab at least one shipping container a month full of them.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's completely nonsensical. Do you think white people are sneaking into poor black neighborhoods and murdering them? Or do you suppose police are hiding white corpses in white neighborhoods?
And not every NRA member is a gun nut. Some of us purchased lifetime memberships before they jumped the rails and are only members today for the fact that our memberships are lifetime.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'm at something of a loss as to what else we can be doing that we're not currently
If it's as bad as you seem to think it is, I'm afraid to inform you that the answer involves something you with to see banned.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I've heard several people saying that liberals are saying this and loving this, but has anyone yet found one of the liberals who is supposedly saying this or loving this? So far, no citations.
I'm thinking this liberal hearsay might be a liberal lie, spread by the liberal establishment to undermine liberals and make everyone turn to liberalism to get away from liberalism.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
They implemented strict gun laws sometime around 2016. Here is a nice little article discussing how helpful that was http://www.latimes.com/opinion...
50 cent party on slashdot. I'm impressed, some of you can read english and even comprehend it to a very limited degree!
Oh fuck that. There's no tinfoil hat for this poster. He's just a pathetic moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why did Mark David Chapman leave a full time job in Hawaii, fly all the way to New York and shoot John Lennon in the chest? You're trying to attribute rational thoughts to people who have become fundamentally irrational.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most of her positions actually seemed kind of reasonable for a PETA type. If you watch any of her youtube videos though she's very wooden in her facial expression and posture. I'd bet the girl had been on a long-term stint of anti psychotics / anti depressants. Combine that with youtube demonetization and.. you hit unstable people in their pocketbook, a certain percentage of them are going to react in socially unacceptable ways.
What freedom do you see being restricted by Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc.? How is that different from any company refusing to offer or to continue to offer a service if you refuse to abide by the terms of that service? Do you consider that these companies have some kind of obligation to provide you with a service on your terms? Do you equate being arrested for saying certain things with having your video rankings on Youtube lowered for saying those things and if so, why?
The problematic thing about this historically valid position is that virtually all platforms on the internet are privately owned and if you wish to communicate in the 21st century you use those platforms. Yes it is true that you can still go out onto the street and state your beliefs or print out a pamphlet but if that is no longer the means of communication... it doesn't do any good to have freedom of speech if you can only have it in a language no one any longer speaks or reads.
At which point does this start to get silly?
When we start unbanning anything that feels good. Feeling good is for perverts and degenerates.
Playing devil's advocate here, but I'd like to point out that the penalty for apostasy in Islam (according to Islam) is death.
I could easily see why 98% of a population would claim belief if it kept their heads firmly attached.
Most of the mass-shooters in the last ten years have been either under mental health treatment and medications or were until just prior to their crimes.
Citation needed. While many mass shooters have a history of mental illness, the majority don't. Look at the facts: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
Laws already on the books that should have stopped at least some of the mass shootings were not enforced.
So what happens if you pass more laws and bans and they too are not enforced? Pass more laws?
Let's start by funding improvements to the background check system, and requiring it for private sales. You can see that many of the mass shooters purchased guns legally and passed background checks, even when they shouldn't have. This offers a meaningful mechanism for reducing gun violence and saving lives, and doesn't even require anything more than making sure that existing systems work better.
The cartels will have a new cash commodity to sell Americans. Even better, these weapons won't have any restrictions. Think of street criminals with fully-automatic weapons, RPGs, grenades, landmines, 'Stinger'-type anti-aircraft rockets, and more.
That's already happening, for the small subset of people that have any interest in it - an acquaintance of mine got an unlicensed full-auto AK without much trouble at all. The big question is WHY people would want these things in the first place. What the hell are you going to do with a landmine? Somehow cartels haven't created a massive black market for military-grade weaponry in Europe, or Japan... why would it suddenly spring up out of nowhere? Where would this massive demand come from? Remember, you don't have the addictive properties of alcohol or drugs to drive sales, and guns aren't consumable to guarantee repeat customers.
Stop with the knee-jerk emotional bullshit. Use that lump of gristle 3 feet above your ass for something more than a hat rack.
Why don't you take your own advice, instead of painting fantasy scenarios where gun control inexplicably turns the U.S. into a Mad Max world overnight?
All the shame in the world won't take away their money; and what shame do you think they feel from being judged by us meaningless peons, anyway? Mind you, I'm not advocating for a violent uprising either; simply pointing out that if things are truly as bad as some people seem to think they are, that's the only solution. That's also the reason for the 2nd Amendment; remember, it was written right after we fought off our former overbearing and oppressive government.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Typos, gotta love 'em. It sure seems that you wish to see guns go away; if you do not, then I apologize for the accusation.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Because he just cant believe that his imagination doesnt match reality.
"His name was James Damore."
White America has deliberately caused that violence
Oh, you mean with our secret time travel technology? That must be how "white Americans" went back in time and caused tribes in Africa to develop elaborate warrior castes and kill each other in huge numbers. Our secret time travel system must be how we caused the middle eastern cultures to begin slaughtering each other for centuries before the US existed. Sectarian hate and grudge slaughter in the middle east dates back hundreds and hundreds of years, and hasn't let up, ever. Your own eagerness to display your ignorance of history, as usual, is a separate matter. Or, more likely, you know you're lying and are hoping nobody notices because you're a coward.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Wrong... Wrong.
Chicago is the 6th highest in PER CAPITA gun crime.
We're casually doxxing people now? How are these two idiots comments not removed and their IP permanently banned yet? Wtf.... C'mon /.
I find it no surprise the left leaning media has difficulty dealing with this shooting. What is lost here is that violence can come from anyone at anytime, regardless of politics or beliefs. Lately, too much has been made of the left or the right to blame for people going nuts with guns. We as people should not be become so safe spaced in our ideals that we forget the realities of the world around us are still very much there, even if choosing to live and work in a part of the country that embraces those beliefs. If we choose liberty over safety, there is a daily responsibility to accept the weakness of the human condition, and be responsible for that freedom, or we get treated like a bunch of children and have no liberty. That is the polarizing forces at work in the USA as of right now. The gun debate is only a small part of a much larger and more challenging social polarization in place right now.
Not to mention most gun violence in the US is not committed by white men.
Stinger missiles are illegal to own now. Why do you think keeping them illegal will suddenly spike the availability of them? Seems like quite the stretch. 10g of cocaine is a lot easier to hide than a truck full of landmines so I don't really get your comparison with drugs either
Because his "distant neighbors of color" aren't getting their guns via legal channels in the first place. Adding red tape and hoops to jump through will only affect those who already aren't going to commit murder.
Thats a myth.
Weapon ownership is more or less the same ratio in USA and Switzerland.
In Switzerland members of the militia have an assault rife at home, but since 2007 no ammunition.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Not quite. Definition of "mass shooting" was changed during the Obama administration to four or more fatalities INCLUDING the shooter.
It should also be noted that a "mass shooting" has occurred if someone opens fire, wounding one person, then is killed by a cop along with three other people killed by the cops at the scene.
Yes, it's possible to be a "mass shooting" if four innocent bystanders are killed by the cops in the process of stopping the "mass shooter" (who doesn't actually have to even hit anyone with his/her shots)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What is Google gatekeeping? What free and open thing have they "taken over?"
I have not yet encountered these things, and I use both Google and non-Google websites all the time. Your words don't match up to my observed reality.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Most of her positions actually seemed kind of reasonable for a PETA type. If you watch any of her youtube videos though she's very wooden in her facial expression and posture. I'd bet the girl had been on a long-term stint of anti psychotics / anti depressants. Combine that with youtube demonetization and.. you hit unstable people in their pocketbook, a certain percentage of them are going to react in socially unacceptable ways.
Good point about the meds - her expression looked like the one on some guys I knew who were on thorazine.
This is a pretty random incident. Doesn't play to any of the narratives we hear about guns and workplace violence. Just a kook who became unhinged. And very strange that she took herself out with the gun. Women tend to commit suicide through non-violent means.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That moment when you desperately try to play grammar nazi, and end up in your own death camp.
Holy shit balls. I wish people with your capability to understand basic tenants of gun ownership wrote our laws. Not dumbshits who say ARs left them crying, and somehow making a magazine release illegal (bullet buttons, etc) is safer. If gun ownership was an underlying root cause, homicides would be huge in Oklahoma and Texas compared to the NorthEast (Maine, NH, NY, etc). I do think there's a social-economic link, so I don't 100% agree with your points. However, you are able to logically work through the debate. Phuck I wish there were more people like you in the national debate on guns.
Makes sense. Most anti-social behavior appears when populations are stressed. Low numbers, there are a low number of social issues from anti-social behaviors. Start over-crowding or making resources scarce and then issues start popping up. Probably is statistically linked to depression, suicide, and similar problems. I'm guessing though.
Great Britain thought this too in 1750's, 1760s, and not so much after that. :D
The US has always had lots of guns in civilian hands. It's one of the reasons Japan never invaded in WW2.
Congratulations, you made it into the club "Dumbest comment ever", welcome.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yeah, because getting ammo is the showstopper here.
I live in a country with fairly tight weapon laws. But even I could go into any weapons store and buy ammo, I might have to show ID, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I used to say, of all the facts, press get about 40%. Of the 40% they probably only capture and understand 40%. Leaving us with 16% of the original. With the 16% they accurately present 40% in context, which leaves the reader with the ability to discern about 7% of what's actually going on in any situation. The more of an expert you are in ANY field, the more you realize how stupid our press, media, etc have become. They're great at sensationalism, but suck at everything else. Miley Cyrus gets front page while genocide runs on page 6. We are also at fault. 100% of teens can identify Miley Cyrus, while probably 20% can ID Biden, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, etc.
"Well regulated" in context means "well trained and equipped", junior.
Sorry but Europe seems to have no problem severely limiting the flow of illegal guns into their countries. Same with Asian countries like China or Japan.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
That's completely nonsensical. Do you think white people are sneaking into poor black neighborhoods and murdering them? Or do you suppose police are hiding white corpses in white neighborhoods?
The process I am talking about does not happen over the course of days, weeks, months, or even years. Minorities have been treated differently by the police for a long time. These people already have a hard time making ends meet, and some resort to crime out of desperation. This is especially true for ex-convicts who often can’t even get honest work to begin with. It’s a cycle that tends to make things worse over time. I have a friend who is harassed by police in NYC so often that he is happy to go places with me so that he won’t have to worry about the police. He looks like a Rastafarian but is smart and well educated, and very financially stable. He is profiled everywhere he goes and he has no criminal record whatsoever. You don’t think that such treatment can cause people to lose respect for law enforcement and even the law itself? Crime is worse because these people feel like they have nothing to lose. They feel that way because of countless decades of oppression and mistreatment. It has nothing to with their skin color and everything to do with their environment. To suggest that a person’s likelihood to commit crime is tied entirely to their race and not their socioeconomic status is preposterous. Is there some crime gene that only black people have?
European and Asian countries tend to have much tighter borders than we do, so this suddenly stops being a gun control conversation and starts being an immigration conversation. Are you sure you want to paint that particular target on your back?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Your net is too small. Middle Easterners have been murdering millions for thousands of years, not hundreds. Look up the origins of Wahhabism. It started shortly after the death of Christ. The "Crusades" is often cast as a response in 1095 to Christians being murdered by Muslims, while crossing the Mediterranean. So that's 925 years ago that people on a large scale started getting pissed off about it.
The book "5 Pillars of Islam" really explains it well. And it's depressing when you realize just how long people have been killing each other over their invisible friend, beliefs, etc.
and what do you think happens to a person when they get arrested for drug possession and get put on probation or spend a year or two in jail?
You tell me. Has NYC's crime rate gone up or down in the last 5 decades? Or are you claiming that's being manipulated as well?
I am not suggesting that anyone is overtly or intentionally manipulating data. But do you not think that there might be some sort of a sampling bias in place? You have more police presence in minority neighborhoods -> minorities have more interactions with the police -> more minorities are caught committing the crimes that many people commit on a regular basis. Most people commit a crime on a daily basis, sometimes out of ignorance of the law and sometimes out of maliciousness. But in either case, once you get caught and thrown into the correctional system, you will have a hard time regaining control of your life. So minor crimes turn into more serious crimes as desperation increases. I do not believe that blacks or other minorities are predisposed to committing crime. Wealth is a strong deterrent to committing crime, however. The more you have to lose, the less incentive you have to commit crime.
I'll talk statistics.
Blacks in our country have a poverty rate 3 times higher than whites.
http://federalsafetynet.com/us...
Meanwhile poverty is a leading indicator for criminal activity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh how the world changes when you don't just look at a single data point and make broad conclusions based off of it.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Well, we belong to the kingdom Animalia, the phylum Chordata, the Mammalia class and Primates order, the Hominidae family, Genus homo and Species Homo Sapiens.
Except for the last one there are other animals we share this trait with. And except for the latter two, there are currently others who share the same level on the classification chart.
What makes a human human? What makes a human not an animal? What's special about us?
The only thing that make a human, human is the aggregate characteristics of the entities with whom we procreate (which are basically other humans).***
As for other "characteristics", we now know that other species have language, know how to count, make plans, etc., which is all the things we call thinking (i.e., I think therefore I am). The only thing that we are clinging to today for our humanity is the arbitrary definition of the "divine" (e.g., we somehow possess some sort un-measurable magical property called a soul or other property).
Historically, we humans used to invoke the divine explanation to justify all sorts of things like genocide, segregation, etc, so it is reasonable to assume that many of us (whether or not we feel ourselves religious), still feel compelled to think of humans as separate from animals (or others we feel superior to), when of course we humans are, by most scientifically determinable measures, basically an animal (e.g., homo-sapiens have about 23,000 genes, and a fly has about 31,000 genes, so we are far from the most complex or evolved).
***This is probably why Neanderthals (and potentially other undiscovered members of the genus homo) are probably basically human even though they have been arbitrarily categorized otherwise.
You need fine motor skills to really shoot well. Now, had she been a good meat eater, she'd have had the fine motor skills to hit the target.
Yes, because that makes perfect sense. Really? You're more afraid of a gun that gives you warning to take cover than you are of a bomb that doesn't?
It's got nothing to do with whether or not I like guns and everything to do with having giving it some actual critical thought.
You like flaunting your lack of logic and fuck critical thinking, it's less important than taking ineffective "feelgood" actions.
Very bigly of you.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The friends of politicians are other politicians; quite often, their families are comprised of other politicians, lawyers, and... .you know what? Huh... I just don't think their friend and family are gonna shame them all that much.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
For an assault rifle, yes it is.
In Germany you can not buy ammo at all without a license. Sure, you can smuggle it from some eastern countries into Germany or Switzerland. However I doubt that you can make so much money with it that people take that risk.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why does Chicago have a MUCH higher homicide rate than Houston? They have "similar" population densities, and its MUCH easier to get a gun in Houston, yet FAR more murders happen in Chicago.
Chicago: Population density of 11,898 people per square mile
Houston: Population density of 3,660 people per square mile
That's not what I would call "similar". And the difference of ease in getting a firearm is the amount of time it takes to get from Chicago to Gary.
The NRA has jumped the rails, but just join GOA in addition and your good.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Who do I join when GOA jumps the rails? And do I have to join two new organizations to offset two that've jumped the rails?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So what if the brownshirts were fighting commies ? It's like saying you can't have multiple parties with the same idea duking it out. They were of the same cloth, the socialist murderous one. Whereever socialism went, famine and purges followed. Every, single, time. Hi Venesuela !
Love of allpowerful nanny state ? Check !
Love of god emperor champion of the people ? Check !
Heavy state welfare ? Check ?
Adverse to personal liberties ? Check !
Extreme xenophobia and aggresivity towards others ? Check !
How are they different again ?
Finally someone comes up with some good rational analysis, ...
Add to that: she was really paranoid. She thinks she is being targeted, often unfairly.
Not only did she think that Youtube is 'filtering' her videos, and reducing their views, and demonetizing them, she was thinking that 'anti-vegan animal supporting supporting criminals' (her words) are trying to harm/kill her, because she found something piercing her tires. Looks like a hypodermic needle which may have been accidental. Yet she attributes that to animal rights stickers on her car!
She was living in a self-made up persecution complex, and then she went over the edge.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
They didn't invade the US because they lost at Midway.
Hawaii was already a territory. They would have invaded Hawaii after they took Midway.
Your argument is against them invading the continental US.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You know Chicago is actually the antithesis of your point right? The gun control measures you're referring to were all lifted around 2000 when they were struck down by the supreme court. If you go look at homicide rates for Chicago, they go down in the 80s when gun control was enacted, and jump back up in 2000 when they were revokes.
In short, everything you just said is wrong.
So what if the brownshirts were fighting commies ? It's like saying you can't have multiple parties with the same idea duking it out. They were of the same cloth, the socialist murderous one. Whereever socialism went, famine and purges followed. Every, single, time. Hi Venesuela !
Love of allpowerful nanny state ? Check !
In socialism there is no nanny state, as the people/workers govern themselves.
Love of god emperor champion of the people ? Check !
See above. A "god emperor champion of the people" is not present in socialism.
Heavy state welfare ? Check ?
Socialism isn't a welfare state: the people own all means of production therefore they are all entitled to their share of the proceeds/products.
Adverse to personal liberties ? Check !
As long as a person contributes their share to the economy/state, why would the state care what that person is doing?
Extreme xenophobia and aggresivity towards others ? Check !
Socialism doesn't care about race, ethnicity, or nationality: socialism's end goal was to liberate all people/workers so that they could benefit from their own labor.
How are they different again ?
You seem to have confused "socialism" with Stalinism, Maoism, Juche, and other authoritarian, strong-man,socialist-like systems, but none of them were truly socialist systems. The NSDAP was a fascist organization which is also an authoritarian system and, since the Cold War has conditioned people to think of the authoritarian regimes of China/USSR/etc whenever they hear "socialist", it's a common mistake to liken the two.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I think the primary reason why this story will be buried is because the response of google/youtube won't fit the narrative. 99% chance they're going to have armed guards at their campuses from here on out, aka "good guys with guns", to defend against this kind of thing. Not marches, or magazine capacity limits, or waiting periods, or banning "scary" looking guns - they're going to use the best defense against bad guys with guns.
Sunni/Shia, two clearly defined sides.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If they worked, why were they revoked? And how does that explain Oakland (which I mentioned in another thread in this discussion, in comparison with Chicago)?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The word "Iranian" comes directly from the word "Aryan".
Persians are in fact Caucasian. That word comes from the region of the Caucasus which, if you consult a map, is directly adjacent to modern Iran (and was historically where the Persian people originated).
[Citation Needed] because Chicago says New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco have stricter gun laws on the books.
In yesterday's article I asked for the same proof and that person so far has not responded. Maybe you will either provide the requested information or have the courage to admit you're wrong?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Ugh, tell me about it... These people seem to think that guns won't still get into the country if they're suddenly illegal. My FIL is a customs agent, I hear periodically about the gun shipments they seize on a daily basis, along with an admission that they know they're not stopping even 10% of what's coming in. When the only way to obtain a gun is through illegal means, only people intent on using them for illegal purposes will obtain them -- and they will
I don't think that's what anybody wants, but these people seem to think that guns magically can't cross international borders. They must think our military lands in a country, goes into a gun shop, and buys its arsenal there, rather than bringing their own.
I wonder what people think will happen when criminals know you're not armed because your average law-abiding citizen isn't going to go buy a black-market gun.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
ugh... flubbed the HTML... end of the first paragraph should read "and they will obtain them."
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Finally someone comes up with some good rational analysis, ...
Add to that: she was really paranoid. She thinks she is being targeted, often unfairly.
See this video. She makes some valid points about what is 'age restricted' and what should not be, but then in her mind it is 'they' are targeting her specifically.
Not only did she think that Youtube is 'filtering' her videos, and reducing their views, and demonetizing them, she was thinking that 'anti-vegan animal supporting supporting criminals' (her words) are trying to harm/kill her, because she found something piercing her tires. Looks like a hypodermic needle which may have been accidental. Yet she attributes that to animal rights stickers on her car!
For a comparison, one of my sites was de-listed from Google's index some years ago. They sent me an email saying that it had 'inappropriate content'. I contacted them back saying: tell me which page has that content, and I will remove it. They send back the same form letter, no specifics at all. On the third try, I mentioned that the probably objectionable content is where I compiled a list of common 419/Nigerian type scams, and that is to warn against them, NOT to promote them! They responded with a form letter that my site was being indexed again!
So, it was an algorithm glitch. Had I been as paranoid as her, I would have thought that I was being unfairly targeted because I am [insert pet conspiracy theory here].
She was living in a self-made up persecution complex, and then she went over the edge.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Austria is considered to have the most relaxed laws in the European Union.
From aged 18, Austrians can freely buy and own certain types of shotguns and semi-automatic rifles for sport and hunting. They only have to be registered with a licensed dealer within six weeks of purchase.
Non-repeating shotguns don't need a license.
Austria is one of the few EU countries where self-defense is a valid reason for gun ownership. Media reports say gun ownership in Austria has soared in the wake of the refugee crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants from Syria and Iraq arrive in Europe.
Still, automatic weapons are banned, following the minimum standards which apply across the EU.
Seems that automatic weapons are all that's banned in the EU. For all intents and purposes, they're banned in the US as well; you can get a permit to own one but it must be made before 1986 and there aren't many of those left. You literally never hear of one being used in a crime.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Do you even live in Chicago? I've got news for you, it isn't the legal gun owners who are shooting people. It's the gang-affiliated felons who are already prohibited from owning a weapon.
Gun violence is more prevalent in Chicago then neighboring cities due to the large number of gang members (drug sales) and a city and county government that lacks the political will to crack down on people of "color" who commit crimes.
Okay, so guns are made illegal in the US, then it's only the border states with gun problems. Only, the gun problems there are worse because criminals know their victims are unarmed and defenseless. Same amount of gun violence, just concentrated around the edges.
Or, perhaps, not so concentrated around the edges. I've said before -- outlaw guns nationwide, and they'll be smuggled in disguised as routine cocaine shipments.
If GOA goes soft, you move on. But odds are low.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But do you not think that there might be some sort of a sampling bias in place?
For certain types of, yes. For others, no. I don't think murder rates are heavily affected by sampling bias, for instance.
I do not believe that blacks or other minorities are predisposed to committing crime.
I know how you feel, but let me ask this.. have you elevated idealism over rationality? Is there any evidence whatsoever that would convince you that blacks (or any group) are predisposed to committing crime? Speaking of "any group", don't you believe that men are more predisposed to committing violent crime than women, or that young people are more predisposed than old people? I would be surprised if you said no, so I'll go ahead and ask in that case what makes race so special?
Wealth is a strong deterrent to committing crime, however. The more you have to lose, the less incentive you have to commit crime.
And yet you just said most people commit a crime on a daily basis. I actually disagree with you, I think rich people are just as likely to commit crimes as others, perhaps even more so. Especially if you control for other factors like age and race. That said, it may also go back to what I said earlier and depend on the type of crime. I don't think rich people are running around murdering others at the same rate as poor people, but I wouldn't be surprised at all about drug use, prostitution, illegal pornography, cheating on taxes, etc.
Well, yeah, but it'll start out concentrated around the borders, since that's where the guns will land first. You're right though, it will spread.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Why does someone outside of Chicago have any say over Chicago's laws? Aside from the obvious "state and federal laws apply" answer, of course.
I don't live in Chicago, or even in Illinois; it's not that I'm an idiot or that I can't remember, it's that it wasn't relevant to me until this very moment so why would I know it?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Your'e a bad person.
Things she rants about that could be from either:
* Censorship (although you probably see complaints more often from the right)
When the fuck did that happen? Does no one remember the pseudo brown-shirts dragging away war-protesters? Does no one remember the ACTUAL brown-shirts? How about the cops evicting the Occupy movement and forcefully dispersing them? Is that not censorship? Is this not a concept that liberals hold close to their heart? Because if this changed somewhere along the line, I've got some learnitude to impart to some kids skulls with a clue-by-four.
Way to talk past the issue. "gun deaths" and the homicide rate are two different things. Yeah, I was talking about homicides in general, not suicides, i.e. "gun deaths" (which mostly consist of suicides using a gun, which in turn gets substituted into suicides by other methods if you reduce access to guns). Homicides in general is the best statistic because it takes into account both sides of the gun availability question:
1. How many guns are available for use in attacking someone
2. How many guns are available for use in defending someone
It also helps that what any sane person is trying to reduce is homicides in general. It doesn't really matter to a dead person and their family what was used to kill them, just if they're dead or not.
There isn't a correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but the reverse isn't true. If there isn't any correlation, than it's virtually impossible for their to be a primary causation.
P.S. Your own quoted study says "could not determine causation". That's because most firearm-related homicides occur where the crime rate is high (i.e. gang areas in cities) and more people buy guns to protect themselves when they feel more threatened by a higher crime and homicide rate.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
you have to include the production of new money
I'm not sure that makes much sense. Money itself isn't a means of production, it's a representation of the wealth that was produce by means of production. As such, it comes later in the productive causal chain, even if when it does appear it's then used for purposes such as accumulating even more means of production. By itself, though, it's incapable of being used for anything, a proof of which can be found in any country that went through hyperinflation. In those, the government decided it needed more money (rather than more production), and turned the printers up to eleven. End result? Lots and lots and LOTS of paper to represent the same limited amount of stuff, that didn't increase one iota, with the end result that stuff divided by amount of paper = every individual bit of stuff represented by more paper.
That's why Classic Liberals and Libertarians, who analyze this from the other pole, say money is subjective: because it's "worth" whatever people think it's worth, a sum of subjective evaluations. It makes things flow more smoothly, that's for sure, but were we to remove it from the picture entirely and we'd still get a market. A more cumbersome one in that exchanges would become more complex, but a market all the same. And one with accumulation of the means of production, were a Capitalist mindset running on top of this moneyless market.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
The homicide rate decline tracks an overall crime level decline, so while that may be improved by better emergency care, it's unlikely to be the primary driver of it.
The answer is actually pretty obvious. The homicide rate in the United States is primarily related to gang violence. If you take gang-areas out of the equation, the U.S. homicide rate looks much closer to the OECD averages. Whatever is reducing gang wars and the crime rate overall pretty much has to be the primary driver behind the homicide and the firearm-related homicide rate reductions. You can call that reduction in lead levels, or increased incarceration, or better anti-gang task forces, or all three, but none of it is causally linked to the number of firearms per capita.
In terms of extreme examples (D.C. is similar), Detroit has half the gun ownership rate of the surrounding areas, but with 7% of Michigan's population, Detroit had 50% of the murders in the State. Obviously it's not the gun ownership rate causing murder rates.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but the reverse isn't true. If there isn't any correlation at all, than it's virtually impossible for their to be a primary causation. At best, you could show a small secondary effect being overridden by a much larger primary causation.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
CNN
MSNBC
Fox News
and really....not on the regular big 3 networks either.
I mean, that school shooting, was on these channels almost 24/7 for days after it happened.....this was but a mere blip yesterday, with a very few mentions here and there today on these new channels.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
True enough, although remember, we're talking about rates, so as the absolute number of people doubled in that time frame, the number of people owning guns also doubled. The way you phrased it ("not that more people own guns") may mislead someone.
The bottom line is that the rate of gun ownership, the rate of households with guns, the number of guns, none of those things correlates much with the homicide nor the firearm-homicide rates in the United States, so they're unlikely to be the primary driver of homicides. There are other causes which drive the homicide rate and as most of that rate consists of gangland murders and does correlate with the overall crime rate, that's probably your best place to investigate the primary cause.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Looking through this comment and your posting history, you are pretty much the epitome of the "shit-poster only trying to sow as much discord as he can." I have no idea if you're a Russian account trying to poison the well; I have no way of knowing, really. But you really try to live up to the stereotype as much as you can.
Ok so according to you we have 2 definitions:
1) Socialism as the claim of theoretical utopian hipothesis defined by 1-2-3-4 philosophers.
2) Socialism as the practical result of dousins of states, milions of bureaucrats, bilions of people claiming to implement above theoretical concept. To say they weren't trying would be a flat out lie.
And you say hey, nr1 seems more correct/entitled meaning of the word.
I would say anyone who chooses nr1 is a profoundly TRUE socialist person.
Iranians are a different ethnicity from arabs.
I thought the crazy bitch killed herself. Is she posting her bullshit from beyond the grave?
It did accomplish something, were I youtube I would be taking a VERY hard look at how heavy handed their censorship and demonetization affects people and I would be doing it right goddamn now.
That is NOT how people respond to shootings and other attacks like that. Instead, most people think 1) This person was fucking crazy. 2) Her ideas were WAY too trivial to warrant shooting someone over. 3) Her ideas were pretty crazy too. 4) I don't think she had a good point.
Someone going in and attacking reinforces their own feeling of correctness, it stiffens their spine, it doesn't make them say "oh damn, someone fired a gun, maybe we went too far." Because when someone goes nutso and freaks out like that, it becomes all the easier to dismiss what they were upset about as the ravings of a madwoman. And they aren't wrong, either.
Yeah...I was and still am, somewhat "shocked" that this story has dropped SO quickly off the news map....
It's certainly the top story here. But our news media loves to move from obsession to obsession, because obsessions sell.
I was guessing, that since a handgun was used, and it wasn't a 50yr old white guy with a problem, or a messed up kid, that it just didn't fit their current narrative that helps push the anti-gun movement currently in swing.
Or because, unlike most of the big-news shooting this last year, no one (aside from the shooter) died. Three injuries in total, and we don't really have any other information since then. "30 people died in a mass shooting" is orders of magnitude more important than "3 people were injured in an attempted shooting.." Why would you think the latter was in any way comparable?
Or the ugly truth is that these events happen so often now in the US that one where the only victim where the perpetrator herself does not qualify as newsworthy.
Many mass shooters had received mental health treatment that usually included drugs.....but he wants you to think they're using illicit drugs to increase the moral panic.
OP never mentioned illicit drugs, he said mind-altering. You know, like anti-depressants?
For the two hundred years before that decision, it was accepted that the government had the right to regulate guns as a mechanism to regulate the militia.
Wrong. "Well regulated", means able to shoot accurately, it has nothing to do with legal regulations. The militia was all able-bodied adults.
Gun control is a damage mitigation strategy. The goal is to make it harder to commit a mass shooting, and to make you slower while you are committing your mass shooting.
Also incorrect. The ultimate objective of gun control is to take away one of our essential freedoms. If the objective were to reduce the number of casualties we'd be doing proactive things like locking doors, improving physical security and actually investigating tips about violent individuals.
Most mass shooters are expecting to die in the police response. The presence of armed civilians is not a deterrent. Especially because exactly zero mass shootings have been ended by an armed civilian.
Plenty of attacks have been stopped by armed civilians. There was a mall shooter a few years ago who was confronted by an armed civilian and killed himself. There was a recent story in a local crime blog about a conceal carry license holder stopping a 3 on 1 attack. Here's an older article about some of the attacks that were stopped by a good guy with a gun. There have been a number of attackers that have been stopped by a concealed carry license holder in Chicago since the McDonald decision.
We will never find security in giving up essential liberties.
Laws follow culture.
Acknowledged and extended.
Laws are starting to be censorious as in the case of the UK and EU.
You claim. The right to free speech has long been held to be subject to limitations with respect to the harm it may cause to others - libel, slander, sedition, misinformation in advertising or false claims etc. The restrictions on speech in the UK and EU have always been greater than in the US, that trend continues and in the form it always has - justified by a claim of harm to others.
There is a large culture and a lot of institutions that advocates for censorship.
'Censorship' is a bait word. You've not defined it and my attempt to ask you to actually state your position resulted in a claim that I failed to comprehend your meaning. You seem to be trying to imply that _any_ limitation on speech is censorship. Maybe you believe that to be true, but pretty much every society and government has recognised that there need to be limits on individual rights where exercising that right harms others, including speech.
People will retaliate to censors, even if it is not the government because Rights do not come from government.
While you may well have a right to express yourself, you have no right to demand that I or any other person assist you in that. Private companies can restrict what you use their services for without ever coming near your 'rights'.
You seem to arguing for the existence of natural rights. Fair enough, better thinkers than either of us have argued the same although I tend towards the other direction, but in either case Youtube restricting content is not a violation of your rights. If you want to link that to the restrictions on speech in the UK, please offer more than a hand wave or assertion. Your claim that I've failed to comprehend you is poor excuse.
I agree. The ubiquity of things like the internet and the major players on it make them similar to things like the rise of the telephone, electricity, water etc.
I'd argue that services like Facebook should probably be regulated like other utilities.
None of this has anything to do with rights or the abrogation of those. These are arguments of utility, of social contract, of standards of living.
This is not new, it's just the current version of the same process that saw the breakup of Ma Bell, saw the regulations of power and water that now exists etc.
By all means argue that we need to have these companies be accountable to their communities and society. Let's talk about the cost and value of regulating these services in a similar way to other communication. But I maintain that the GP is confusing privilege for right.
Go back to Breitbart.
I consider myself as a moderate centrist; I do not have cable and I stay away from the news media in general. I would say that I'm equally exposed to second-hand CNN and Fox News based on the barbershop I pick when I need a shave (they tend to have news on TV in the waiting area but are set on different channels).
So the fact that you're putting me in the Breitbart crowd indicates that you are yourself a bitter liberal who has such a fanatical point of view that you can't help but demonize people you disagree with. This is not a sign of maturity, this is a sign of too much time spent in an echo chamber such as facebook or twitter.
lucm, indeed.
You started off ok with the whole "corporations by definition can't restrict your freedoms"
Not wanting to be pedantic, but I'm arguing, specifically that the refusal to provide you with a service is not a restriction of your rights. It might restrict your freedom. A corporation can also, certainly, restrict freedoms and violate rights - look at the tobacco industry threatening people into silence for a literal violation of the right to free speech. Youtube restricting your videos may limit your freedom, but is not a violation or restriction of your rights.
kind of went off the rails there with 'rights being fluid & just cultural norms'
May I suggest that you take a look at the distinction between natural and legal rights? There have even been people who have argued that natural rights don't exist; that all rights are legal rights (I tend to that opinion, but admit to be little more than an interested amateur). Calling the position 'off the rails' is a little harsh.
If or when 'society' once again recognizes that fundamental rights are exactly what the Bill of Rights says they are can 'responsibilities' be expected from individuals.
I'm genuinely interested - which rights from your Bill of Rights do you think have been violated, restricted or otherwise limited?
With respect to granting rights to corporations, there's some interesting argument about whether only individuals can have rights, or whether groups can have rights (families? religions? minority groups? corporations). I tend to side on the 'only individuals can have rights', but I'm on even less knowledgeable ground here.
To your examples;
'Corporation = people'. The debate over what rights that are held by natural persons can be applied to a corporation is over a century old. Can a corporation enter into a contract with a person? Should they be taxed? Should the rights of the members of a corporation cease to exist when they act as a corporation, and if not, how are they applied while still allowing limited liability? It's complex and I certainly don't like what I see as a betrayal of the social contract with corporations. Corporations (esp. limited liability corporations) allow individuals to pool resources while limiting the risk in the case of the failure of the business. This is clearly to promote investment and to make easier (even possible) businesses that couldn't exist without such support, but to the extent that this was allowed for the betterment of society, those rights and protections come with responsibilities that I see as being increasingly ignored. But that's not really about corporations violating my rights.
'RICO laws are used to confiscate property'. A clear perversion of justice and a violation of rights to do with property and ownership. I agree, totally. I don't care for the argument that it was necessary to go after organised crime. Violation of the rights of criminals is still a violation of rights.
'Privacy rights and abortions'. I'm not sure I understand what you are arguing. You claim that rights to privacy don't exist. I'd argue that they do, it's just that they have never been defined - partly because there has never been this degree of ubiquitous surveillance. We can see that people have a belief that they have some kind of right to privacy, it's just that the laws are struggling to 'catch up'. Can Facebook use the date it collected and sell it to CA? People are outraged, but the EUALA makes it legal - just not ethical. So, I suspect, laws will be made to patch up this violation of public trust, just as similar laws have been enacted to guard medical records, tax records, information held by the government ...
I see the growing body of law around privacy as an attempt to codify cultural and social values that will eventually accumulate into a definition of a fundamental right. This is the proce
The Huffpost doesn't have a single story about it right now on their website...but they are covering "Dear Men, Itâ(TM)s Totally OK To Wear Makeup".
The republic is broken
Given that it started as a plutocracy and only in relatively modern times moved away from that, I'd argue that either it was always broken or it's working as intended.
The vast majority of the population have absolutely no true self-interest
Yeah. They should be interested in what _you_ think they should be interested in. I don't care if you think they are idiots, deciding that their interests are not 'true' is the sort of rhetoric that usually has decisions being made for people's 'own good'.
The self-aware minority that value liberty are being attacked on every front
Here and elsewhere you have the same 'member of a small, persecuted elite' self-identification going on. Anyone who disagrees simply fails to comprehend, because the truth is just so obvious.
Narcissist or nut of another flavour - your posts aren't pretty.
The only thing that makes sense is revolution
No. No it really does not make sense. Look, I think the US has significant problems and even so, it's still a better place to live than a lot of other places. Not the best, and not as good as some think, but better than some of its critics claim. Change that, by all means. Work on real equality. Call the corporations to heel. Reign in and dismantle the MI complex. But blood-in-the-streets revolution? FFS read some history.
as to your signature; if this is the quality of your posts, then your karma loss is entirely the result of people not liking you blood thirsty, elitist condescension.
Try not to cherry-pick so much. The facts are evident in the National Academies’ Firearms and Violence report:
summarized as "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population."
Your Washington post link is irrelevant. No one (except leftists with a man to fill with straw) is arguing that killing criminals in self-defense is the usual way for people to defend themselves using guns. Generally speaking, criminals just leave people alone once they figure out they're armed. From the Obama Administration CDC sponsored Institute of Medicine and National Research Council Report:
Let me guess, you get your "statistics" from cherry-picking left-wing "news" articles which are regurgitated press releases from anti-gun groups?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I mean.... you're not a small channel owner whose livelihood depends on money from Youtube, who suddenly experience an unexplained loss of views and revenue due to Youtube's arbitrary and capricious algorithms.
Advertisers don't want to advertise on gory content and YouTube's just bending to their will. Maybe they're overreacting, or their algorithms aren't very accurate, or maybe they should've told those advertisers to fuck off, but they're not demonetizing people for shits and giggles.
If people don't want YouTube to be beholden to advertisers, then people will need to pay for it, e.g. through YouTube Red or Patreon.
Heck, the Daily Stormer got a new host when the old one decided it was violating the ToS, so there's no reason anybody else can't. Anyone with a few bucks can get on the Internet and say almost whatever stupid thing they want. (They'll take you down for child pornography or obviously facilitating illegal activity, typically.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Until the pro-gun crowd realizes that there are people getting shot, although not necessarily in their neighborhoods, I don't care to hear anything they're screaming.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's it! Quick! Change the subject instead of addressing the response to your BS assertion! You sure are a predictable little coward.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Typically, primitive people don't kill each other in great numbers. That normally requires outside influence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't have the statistics to show you offhand, but this is likely what GP is saying.
People are recorded as criminals if they've been arrested, charged, and convicted of or confessed to a crime. None of these are inherently race-neutral. A white person who commits a crime that isn't obvious is less likely to be suspected than a black person. Whites are more likely to be let off with a warming. Whites are more likely to make arrangements that don't get them charged. Fifth Amendment protections are not enforced nearly enough. The net result is that a black who does a specific thing is a lot more likely to wind up as a criminal than a white who does that thing.
There's other feedback loops in play. Someone who starts with respect for the law, and is consistently treated badly by police, will likely lose that respect. Someone who's been convicted of a crime, and therefore has great difficulty in making a living by lawful means, is likely to commit more crimes.
However, it suits many people to quote slanted statistics as if they were gospel, as long as they conform to the people's preconceptions.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
False on both counts. An armed population will have little choice but to submit, because the tyrant's forces are organized and centrally controlled and the populace is neither. Unarmed populations can do things about tyrannies. The trick in overthrowing a tyranny is morality, not violence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There was one fatality (the shooter) and one victim in critical condition (according to Wikipedia. Also from Wikipedia are definitions of mass shootings. One requires four deaths, which didn't happen. One requires three shooting victims, not including the shooter, and the YouTube shooting barely qualifies.
In other words, it wasn't a particularly notable incident. We tend to notice school shootings, and sometimes church shootings. This was neither. So far, only the shooter has been killed, to the best of my knowledge, although another person could die.
David Hogg is a survivor of a mass killing in a school, and is likely interested in similar crimes, which this really wasn't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This man assisted me in hacking my CHEATING HUSBAND Facebook account and he is a very good hacker for services like :WhatsApp, call logs, test messages etc. He delivers in 2hrs or less you can contact him via:
Email: E N R I Q U E H A C K D E M O N 11 ( a t ) G M A I L d o t C O M.
WhatsApp: + 1 ( 6 2 8 ) 2 0 3 - 7 0 0 5
Text/Call: + 1 ( 4 0 9 ) 9 9 9 - 3 4 7 7 .
You make a whole lot of assumptions. The Supreme Court struck down those laws because they were unconstitutional. They were in violation of an amendment to The Constitution that is still very much in effect. The Supreme Court did the right thing; that's why the laws were struck down even though they (appeared to) work.
I do find it curious that my questions about Oakland are consistently being ignored, though, in every thread in which I've asked them. Are the answers just too uncomfortable of a truth for you?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
As any cat owner will tell you, a cat knows very well that there is a god.
Itself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually Socialism just means the workers own the means of production and get the lion's share of the benefits of their work
Sorry, but that's incorrect. I mentioned Distributism for a reason. If you'd like to know what is for the workers to actually own their means of production, in opposition to what socialists consider such ownership to be, I'd suggest you to familiarize yourself with it. One good introduction is Hillaire Belloc's "The Servile State", in which he shows how both Capitalism and Socialism (plus Fascism) are different historical developments arising from the same set of mistakes about human interaction. The book has two parts, the first of historical analysis, which is excellent, and the second of predictions about possible future developments that didn't materialize mostly due to technological developments he couldn't imagine. As it's out of copyright, you can find it easily on free ebook sites.
ALL capitalist systems have always had some form of regulation towards the good of the state or the good of the public
True. And evidently I'm summing up things a lot. The actual historical difference is that Social Democracy aims towards bringing forth Socialism through gradual reforms, step by step from within bourgeois morality rather than in opposition to it. Be as it may, this form of regulation has a different nature from that typical of Capitalism, and therefore it does actually count as a middle ground, since it's intended to be so.
Actually, the ability to accumulate the means of production goes back thousands of years: the nobles of many states did this routinely.
If you mean due to slavery, then yes, certainly. But that's more than control of the means of production, it includes control of the labor power itself, or to name it differently, absolute alienation. What characterizes Capitalism is the radical separation between means of production on the one hand, labor power on the other, and the dynamics of the relationship between both.
Consider, in that regards, that in pre-Capitalist societies it was uncommon for non-slaves to be pure laborers completely devoid of their own means of production. That did happen, but it was more usually the case that freemen were owners of their own means of production with which they then produced their own wealth. That causes a very different social stratification than the one characteristic of Capitalism proper.
One theme Belloc develops in his book, by the way, is the interesting late-Middle Ages' case of English serfs. The system of land ownership had developed in such a way over there that even they could be considered, for most practical purposes, as owner of their own means of production due to the existence of common lands that could be used by anyone and were outside the reach of nobility. It was the closing down of those lands and their possession by nobility during the Modern Age that created the mass of unemployed workers who then, when the Industrial Revolution began, became the first proletarians of the then new, actually Capitalist system of production. (And then Belloc goes on to analyze how that in turn gave rise to Socialism, and how both could be better understood as a deviation from what History could have been had the Medieval arrangement been allowed to develop further along the lines it had been going before being destroyed by Modern nobility.)
So, while in a way you're correct, they're scenarios too different to be directly comparable.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Typically, primitive people don't kill each other in great numbers. That normally requires outside influence.
So, you're calling the people who invented many of the features of our contemporary math and astronomy ... "primitive?"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.