For a cruise misile "hit the building we were aiming at and not the hospital next door" counts as "safe landing". Sadly even by that definition the US's cruise misiles rarely "land safely". From which I can only conclude that NASA didn't write their software. NASA tends to land things safely far more often than not. They've had a few nice landings on MARS now for example - the ESA's last attempt went kerplatz.
>Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
That ought to be the default outcome however. If they want to keep something out of the public's hands - they should have to defend that decision and request a special exemption.
Your ISS example is silly though. The reason you can't demand a ticket isn't because you don't own a legitimate share in that great endeavour - but because the cost of getting you there would EXCEED your share. If you pay the travel fees though - their happy to let you visit.
Which is, of course, why NASA keeps giving the software away to the public - who did, after all, pay for it. Their contributions to the rest of the economy has been pretty significant. There's hardly a data-center left in the world that doesn't have clusters. Big cloud providers like AWS utterly rely on them for reliability and performance scaling - and their early-use cases like building cheap super-computers for things like climate modeling, aerodynamic engineering or rendering awesome looking animated movies are all alive and well. And that all started at NASA with the original Beowulf clusters - a technology idea they subsequently made freely available and became one of the original major growth-points for Linux in science and industry.
That's not good enough. Not "snooze" and then wait for three days. You NEVER get to reboot a customer's computer without his explicite consent- it's HIS computer not YOURS.
If you really won't do what linux does and give him a nice little notice that says "updates available - install at your convenience" then you can pop up to say "Updates here, may I reboot? " and if the user says no, ask again tomorrow- but NEVER go ahead without his permission.
There is nothing more fucking anoying than having your OS randomly reboot in the middle of you trying to do work. It should never happen.
Right - because pointing out that you asked a really stupid question at the end with a completely obvious answer - after meticulously answering your every statement with facts - is REMOTELY SIMILAR to being "down to mindless insults".
No - the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments. I just refuse to respond to the dumbest question I have ever seen with anything more than scornful derision. Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ? Even so I'm not even sure that counts as an insult - it honestly just seems like a mildly euphemistic but essentially accurate description.
It had to happen. They've been ignoring all other laws related to work and employment ever since their founding -why would they NOT start ignoring licensing laws for drivers ?
Must be a libertarian - those guys seriously think that a stop sign on a road is an intrusion into personal liberty comparable to slavery and traffic signals are the flashing signs of the fascist police state. How dare the evil gubmit tell me when I can cross the intersection. Letting everybody get a chance to cross safely is socialism I tell you !
Now, be an honest person and go grab an envelope and a sheet of paper. Write on the paper "Remember what you said about sixty year old drivers - now give your keys to your kids NO MATTER WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN DRIVE OR NOT - all those people I thought couldn't drive, they also thought they could". On the envelop wrote "Open on my 60th birthday"
>>That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
>Care to back that up with something?
Sure. Every philosophy textbook written in the past 3000 years. Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
>Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
The suggestion of a licensing scheme is not pushed by people who want a complete ban. Why would you not assume the former is a good compromize to leave the ban-wanters without a leg to stand on - rather than jumping to a fallacious slippery slope argument ? There has never been a slippery slope in all of human history except for actual, literal slopes that were, you know slippery - like wheelchair ramps with soap on them. But metaphoric slippery slopes are a flagrant fallacy. They are a bullshit argument people make up to prevent reasonable actions by falsely claiming that the reasonable action would automatically cause an unreasonable action.
>But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time? Actually - no, a one-step-at-a-time ban has not happened. Bans are typically done in a single massive law pushed through at great personal political cost often ending several politicians careers as they act on what they believe are right. Then you have countries that go for strong regulatory frameworks and licensing schemes - in ALL of those guns remain legal to own, and owned by the majority of people who previously owned them. It's certainly possible that a country could go from 'no gun law' to 'license and permit' to 'gun ban' but there has NEVER been a a case where this was a planned path. The closest was 'no gun law decades ago' because 'regulation and permit's and a completely diferent government many decades later - responding to a major event like a massacre ended up banning guns and abandoning the old regulatory approach - NOT expanding it. That's not a slippery slope, that's a series of entirely unrelated events by very different people decades appart.
>No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where? If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
>Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
Rate of fire. The distinction that matters. Hunters need one shot every hour or so. A rate of fire of more than once per minute is excessive. Only SOLDIERS need more than that.
>Because you say so. And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans. Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban - and more importantly, there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted. Conservative Americans would do ANYTHING to stop terrorism - EXCEPT lose out on the chance to sell the terrorists guns.
>You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right? Yes, but since this was directly based on a standing supreme court ruling - by one of the most conservative supreme court judges of all time - the ultimate activist judge, the oughts of that are quite low here. Of course nobody can predict a court outcome with any certainty, but if I was going to place bets - I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.
>And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right. So it was just a 'political victory' when that same supreme court found that the 2nd ammendment DOES create a personal right to own fire-arms - in the SAME decision that this was based on ? Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing. It's, of course, possible that the political victory can be wrong - but all the data suggests it's not.
>I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I While I would be happy to say that gun control laws shouldn't be the same even across a state. Cities and rural areas have completely different realities when it comes to guns - to have the same rules apply doesn't make sense. In a rural environment (as I wrote above) a gun can feed your family - and while it may not be good for self defense it's better than the alternative which is "nothing at all" since the cops couldn't get there in less than an hour and the population is too small for private armed-response services to be available and even if there were THEY couldn't get there in under an hour. Even then though -an old fashioned no-cartridge chamber-loaded hunting rifle is all you actually need. In a city - where there is about a 50% chance any shot will kill an innocent bystander - the situation is entirely different, the population density changes everything - the stats are all different, and self-reliance is is utterly impossible in the first place. It's literally not possible to EXIST in a city UNLESS everybody is inter-dependent, there's no possible way millions of people in close proximity can co-exist without existing interdepently. Different scenario - different outcomes - different rules should apply. In a city - 99.999% of all times a trigger is pulled it's to commit a murder. It makes no sense not to curb the availability of the guns for the in a thousand cases where it's for a legitimate purpose. In a rural environment - homocide isn't even in the top TEN most common reasons to pull a trigger.
The trouble is that the two things exist side-by-side. It's impossible to enforce a gun-ban in a city if you lack one in the surrounding country-side. So how do we adapt the rules to the situation ? Frankly - Australia is pretty similar to the US in this regard, including vast rural areas with scattered big cities - but the ban there did not, ultimately, have any major negative effects. One way to solve the discrepency is simply to make the city rules apply everywhere on the basis that since the vast majority of people live in the cities the smallest harm is the one that only annoys a tiny portion of the population - rather than leads to excessive death in the vast majority. But this may not be the only approach one could take. I'd be open t
Update: since I wrote the last post the US 2nd circuit appeals court found that the AR-15 is not constitutionally protected. Antonin Scalia's Heller ruling established the idea that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to fire-arm ownership - that ruling drew the line at "military grade weapons" as not being thus protected, using the M16 as an example.
Thus far the NRA has claimed that the line drawn is at full-auto versus semi-auto. But the appeals court has roundly rejected that reasoning today saying Heller's line is drawn on lethality. Specifically whether the weapon is "most useful for military work" - that line means the AR-15 falls outside it's scope despite being only a semi-automatic. It is, in fact, mentioned by name as a weapon that - while not being fully-automatic has a rate of fire and lethality so close to that of the full-auto M16 that it must fall in the same legal category as legal category's should be based on practical effect rather than arbitrary lines.
This is a pretty good step forward as a weapon I myself earlier said has essentially zero legitimate uses is no longer constitutionally protected. You *could* use an AR-15 for self defense - but it's a ridiculously cumbersome weapon for that job - it's MUCH more suitable for killing a large number of people, which when the military does it is called "war" but when a citizen does it is called "mass murderer" (that I think the latter name should also apply to the former case we'll leave aside).
If you really want a weapon for self-defense - your best bet is actually a mid-to-large calibre revolver. The short barrel doesn't make a big difference - accuracy in self-defense situations is terrible anyway but the shorter bullet-travel-distance reduces the odds of hitting an innocent bystander. But a revolver is a relatively simple mechanism so your risk of a jam is greatly reduced (the number one downside of pistols for self defense - besides the ones applying to all guns - is their high tendency to jam) , it can be effectively wielded by a person who isn't very strong and can't handle a big kickback - and medium-to-large calibre because small-calibre weapons are more prone to jamming.
I still don't think it's a smart approach ot self defense, it's still a terrible technology if that's your goal - but if you INSIST on using a bad tool for the job - at least use the BEST of the bad tools and let us take the one that has near-zero usability for that purpose out of the hands of the people who would like to use it to shoot up schools because their pissed they can't get laid.
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane. They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
And it's not gun ownership per se that's the problem - and very few people think it is, it's lack of adequate regulation to ensure that before you get a gun you 1) Are not a felon (you know like expanding background checks to online and gun shows would do - the only thing Obama tried to achieve and failed) 2) Maybe some restrictions on WHAT KIND Of guns you can buy - an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER. There is literally nothing useful you can do with it that is not also harmful to other people.
Canada's gun ownership isn't far behind the USA - but homocide rates are far lower. But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'. Same in New Zeeland.
Restricting guns to those that have legitimate purposes - like hunting rifles, works. For self-defense a single shot weapon or maybe a semi-automatic pistol is just fine. You won't hit your target anyway so at least don't hit more than one innocent bystander.
And before you say "But Switzerland" the gun-nuts always cite Switzerland and none of them know a thing about it. I have friends who live there - and they filled me in on the bits that you don't know. Firstly - yes, everybody in Switzerland owns a gun - but nobody gets it BEFORE undergoing extensive training (which they must update yearly). And nobody NOBODY in Switzerland has a gun in his house. Those guns they own - are all kept in central armories, you're not ALLOWED to take it out of that armory except for your annual training updates or if a war were to break out. So, in reality, Switzerland is one of the most gun-free societies on earth.
The reality is that there are a lot of things that contribute to homocide rates, gun ownership is just one of many. But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact. And even if it had NO influence on homocide rates it would STILL a good thing because at least other weapons don't kill innocent bystanders.
But you probably don't need to ban them to get most of the good effects. Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim. You'll have a lot LESS innocent bystanders if people in America would at least stop holding their damn guns SIDEWAYS ! Could we PLEASE at least teach people not to do that stupid shit ? It may look awesome in a Spike Lee movie but you would be more accurate shooting blindfolded ! Oh and make the test useful - at least one person in the USA in one of the few states that has at least a basic proficiency test was able to pass it. He can't READ it though - because he is completely blind.
>What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Nothing as such - I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns (and the side claim that this implies gun control would have no effect).
But let's address YOUR claims then:
> Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), Countries with gun bans generally do. Not military as a rule but cops in Britain and New Zeeland are unarmed for ordinary police work. They only get a gun issued when they are entering a specific, known-threatening situation. They don't get to walk around armed. Result: In the past 20 years exactly 2 people have been shot by police in the UK. The US cops kill more people than that EVERY DAY. But when the odds are that criminals won't have guns - there's no reason for the cops to carry anything more dangerous than a nightstick.
>and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in You will never prevent ALL of them. But contrary to your claim - you don't NEED to. Because it turns out - smugglers don't sell shit to random people on the street. To get a smuggler to sell you something you need to have criminal connections. You need people to vouch for you. They won't sell you a smuggled gun unless they are damn sure you're not an undercover cop. You can't just walk down to the docks by Sydney harbour and start asking random strangers to sell you an illegal gun. Now your hardcore career criminals - they'll still have guns (biker gangs in Aus for example), but they tend not to be involved in petty-crimes like housebreaking and the like. Their crimes rarely have much impact on the general public. On the other hand the moron who wakes up one day and decides he wants to go into some public place and start shooting until he leaves the biggest pile of bodies he can before he gets shot ? That idiot - he can't GET a gun in those countries. Which is why events like that are extremely rare there. The US had 48 mass shootings in the last 20 years. The next 20 countries COMBINED had 22. Many of them had none. All of them have decent gun control laws.
> but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates. Non-gun homocide isn't JUST low because guns are easy to find in the US - it is low EVERYWHERE - because it's actually pretty fucking hard. People tend to fight back if you try to kill them. With a gun - you can kill them from far away, reliably. With a bat or a knife - you have to seriously risk your own life if you want to do it. So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT.
>I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT. You'll never have a homocide rate of zero, but you can get pretty damn close if you take guns out of the picture. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fact that we can't end ALL murder isn't an argument against preventing SOME murders.
>All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good. No. It's taking away a stupid choice (for self defense - there is no worse thing ever designed than a gun, it's the perfect thing to attack with, it's an atrociously bad thing to defend with) to let other people feel their hearts still beating. There is a reason you are stasticially MORE likely to get shot if you own a gun than if you don't - MUCH more. It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used when you are calm and your breathing is under control is the dumbest thing ever to give to somebody who is afraid for their life.
Another example is military. Back at the end of World War 2 the army sold off a bunch of excess stuff. My grandmother bough a set of cooking pots. They were aluminium - which at the time was not yet very widely used - built for soldiers cooking in the field. They were made by one of the companies who made top-of-the-range kitchen utensils at the time, I forgot the name - but I believe they still do. But these were made to military specifications - designed to survive being driven around in the back of a Jeep over open fields with no roads, and the rough cooking of wartime conditions and survive. May have been Adis but I wouldn't be willing to say that under oath.
Here's the thing - the typical lifetime of a consumer grade cooking pot by the same company is 3 to 5 years. 10 if you get really expensive stuff and get lucky.
Those pots my granny bought back in 1945 ? She bought several set. One went to each of her two daughters, and she kept one for herself. I inherited hers after she passed away in 2006. I am now the third generation to use those pots. Most of the pots I bought in my lifetime has since been discarded as they got warped by heat. The ones my granny bought in 1945 are still going strong without the slightest signs of visible wear. My mom still cooks with her set, and my aunt with hers as well.
Being used in typical urban kitchens - after being designed for wartime conditions - these pots are basically indestructable - and they couldnt' have been THAT much more expensive to make since the Army was able to buy such bulk that my granny on her bottom-of-the-rung-didn't-finish-high-school civil servant income was able to buy several sets in bulk after the war.
Now can you imagine what would have happened if the company was selling this stuff in stores in 1945 ? They'd be out of business ages ago since their business sales could never exceed population growth (which is declining in the kind of economies where people can buy high-end cook ware). Once bought - a family would have that for generations - and their only hope is when families branched wide enough that there were more kids than pots and some had to buy again. So they don't - just because they CAN mass produce pots that last for generations - it's not in their interest to do so. This is the downside of the capitalist demand to always grow and always having to earn - it means that you must run your business in such a way as to guarantee you'll have customers next year, to do that you can't just treat existing ones well - you have to make sure what you sell them WILL need a replacement soon enough. That this leads to massive waste and using up resources far faster than required is a pity but one that you cannot avoid. I suppose you could make a case for selling pots that will last generations by charging three hundred times what pots normally cost and making a crapload of money once off to retire on - the trouble is, when you do that, nobody buys them: not because they can't see the value, a pot your grandchildren will use (And thus far the evidence is my kid will get those pots from me one day and make it 4 generations) once off is definitely cheaper than replacing your cookware every few years, even at 300 times the price. It's just that very few people have the kind of money to be able to take advantage of that deal.
They'll do exactly what MS did with the red-ring of death. They would rather give a replacement device for FREE than allow you to fix the one you have.
You underestimate engineers. We went from "first flight" to the moon in less than 70 years. We went from "First rocket" that flew 30 feet to the moon landing in about 4 decades.It's JUST AS LIKELY that we'll go from "material with enough tensile strength invented" to "space elevator" in a few decades too.
Indeed the Lunar Lander as it was built then could not have been done without the (recent) invention of Mylar. And they had to get creative at times - working under extreme limits on weight with an extremely precise set of requirements they had to meet. One of their biggest breakthroughs was tossing out the chairs. Have the crew stand upright - and that meant they could make the observation windows much smaller (since the pilot could stand directly in front of them as opposed to looking through them from a chair) - which cut the weight even more.
There is no doubt that a space elevator - if it's ever done - will require similar bouts of creative ingenuity which are utterly impossible to predict prior to the fact, it will be a case of engineers coming before a seemingly insurmountable conflict of requirements and getting creative to meet them all.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh right... I had forgotten about that little embarrassment until now.
For a cruise misile "hit the building we were aiming at and not the hospital next door" counts as "safe landing". Sadly even by that definition the US's cruise misiles rarely "land safely". From which I can only conclude that NASA didn't write their software. NASA tends to land things safely far more often than not. They've had a few nice landings on MARS now for example - the ESA's last attempt went kerplatz.
>Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
That ought to be the default outcome however. If they want to keep something out of the public's hands - they should have to defend that decision and request a special exemption.
Your ISS example is silly though. The reason you can't demand a ticket isn't because you don't own a legitimate share in that great endeavour - but because the cost of getting you there would EXCEED your share. If you pay the travel fees though - their happy to let you visit.
Which is, of course, why NASA keeps giving the software away to the public - who did, after all, pay for it. Their contributions to the rest of the economy has been pretty significant. There's hardly a data-center left in the world that doesn't have clusters. Big cloud providers like AWS utterly rely on them for reliability and performance scaling - and their early-use cases like building cheap super-computers for things like climate modeling, aerodynamic engineering or rendering awesome looking animated movies are all alive and well.
And that all started at NASA with the original Beowulf clusters - a technology idea they subsequently made freely available and became one of the original major growth-points for Linux in science and industry.
Everything is hot-swappable if your hands can move faster than an electron.
That's not good enough. Not "snooze" and then wait for three days. You NEVER get to reboot a customer's computer without his explicite consent- it's HIS computer not YOURS.
If you really won't do what linux does and give him a nice little notice that says "updates available - install at your convenience" then you can pop up to say "Updates here, may I reboot? " and if the user says no, ask again tomorrow- but NEVER go ahead without his permission.
There is nothing more fucking anoying than having your OS randomly reboot in the middle of you trying to do work. It should never happen.
Right - because pointing out that you asked a really stupid question at the end with a completely obvious answer - after meticulously answering your every statement with facts - is REMOTELY SIMILAR to being "down to mindless insults".
No - the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments. I just refuse to respond to the dumbest question I have ever seen with anything more than scornful derision. Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
Even so I'm not even sure that counts as an insult - it honestly just seems like a mildly euphemistic but essentially accurate description.
It had to happen. They've been ignoring all other laws related to work and employment ever since their founding -why would they NOT start ignoring licensing laws for drivers ?
It says "or" not "XOR" - both is fine too.
Must be a libertarian - those guys seriously think that a stop sign on a road is an intrusion into personal liberty comparable to slavery and traffic signals are the flashing signs of the fascist police state.
How dare the evil gubmit tell me when I can cross the intersection. Letting everybody get a chance to cross safely is socialism I tell you !
So I was sitting in my Ford Kuga, vape in the left hand, Note7 in the right hand... yeah I'm a total bad-ass
(for those countries where the joke doesn't make sense: http://ewn.co.za/2017/01/12/an... )
Yes. We really SHOULD ban billboards near public roads. Would save a great many lives.
Now, be an honest person and go grab an envelope and a sheet of paper. Write on the paper "Remember what you said about sixty year old drivers - now give your keys to your kids NO MATTER WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN DRIVE OR NOT - all those people I thought couldn't drive, they also thought they could".
On the envelop wrote "Open on my 60th birthday"
And stick it up somewhere you can't lose it.
Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
>>That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
>Care to back that up with something?
Sure. Every philosophy textbook written in the past 3000 years. Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
>Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
The suggestion of a licensing scheme is not pushed by people who want a complete ban. Why would you not assume the former is a good compromize to leave the ban-wanters without a leg to stand on - rather than jumping to a fallacious slippery slope argument ? There has never been a slippery slope in all of human history except for actual, literal slopes that were, you know slippery - like wheelchair ramps with soap on them. But metaphoric slippery slopes are a flagrant fallacy. They are a bullshit argument people make up to prevent reasonable actions by falsely claiming that the reasonable action would automatically cause an unreasonable action.
>But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
Actually - no, a one-step-at-a-time ban has not happened. Bans are typically done in a single massive law pushed through at great personal political cost often ending several politicians careers as they act on what they believe are right. Then you have countries that go for strong regulatory frameworks and licensing schemes - in ALL of those guns remain legal to own, and owned by the majority of people who previously owned them.
It's certainly possible that a country could go from 'no gun law' to 'license and permit' to 'gun ban' but there has NEVER been a a case where this was a planned path. The closest was 'no gun law decades ago' because 'regulation and permit's and a completely diferent government many decades later - responding to a major event like a massacre ended up banning guns and abandoning the old regulatory approach - NOT expanding it.
That's not a slippery slope, that's a series of entirely unrelated events by very different people decades appart.
>No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
Sorry but corporate standards require all text editors be configured to code in Comic Sans.
>Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
Rate of fire. The distinction that matters. Hunters need one shot every hour or so. A rate of fire of more than once per minute is excessive. Only SOLDIERS need more than that.
>Because you say so.
And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans. Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban - and more importantly, there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted. Conservative Americans would do ANYTHING to stop terrorism - EXCEPT lose out on the chance to sell the terrorists guns.
>You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right?
Yes, but since this was directly based on a standing supreme court ruling - by one of the most conservative supreme court judges of all time - the ultimate activist judge, the oughts of that are quite low here. Of course nobody can predict a court outcome with any certainty, but if I was going to place bets - I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.
>And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
So it was just a 'political victory' when that same supreme court found that the 2nd ammendment DOES create a personal right to own fire-arms - in the SAME decision that this was based on ?
Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing. It's, of course, possible that the political victory can be wrong - but all the data suggests it's not.
>I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I
While I would be happy to say that gun control laws shouldn't be the same even across a state. Cities and rural areas have completely different realities when it comes to guns - to have the same rules apply doesn't make sense. In a rural environment (as I wrote above) a gun can feed your family - and while it may not be good for self defense it's better than the alternative which is "nothing at all" since the cops couldn't get there in less than an hour and the population is too small for private armed-response services to be available and even if there were THEY couldn't get there in under an hour. Even then though -an old fashioned no-cartridge chamber-loaded hunting rifle is all you actually need.
In a city - where there is about a 50% chance any shot will kill an innocent bystander - the situation is entirely different, the population density changes everything - the stats are all different, and self-reliance is is utterly impossible in the first place. It's literally not possible to EXIST in a city UNLESS everybody is inter-dependent, there's no possible way millions of people in close proximity can co-exist without existing interdepently. Different scenario - different outcomes - different rules should apply.
In a city - 99.999% of all times a trigger is pulled it's to commit a murder. It makes no sense not to curb the availability of the guns for the in a thousand cases where it's for a legitimate purpose. In a rural environment - homocide isn't even in the top TEN most common reasons to pull a trigger.
The trouble is that the two things exist side-by-side. It's impossible to enforce a gun-ban in a city if you lack one in the surrounding country-side. So how do we adapt the rules to the situation ? Frankly - Australia is pretty similar to the US in this regard, including vast rural areas with scattered big cities - but the ban there did not, ultimately, have any major negative effects. One way to solve the discrepency is simply to make the city rules apply everywhere on the basis that since the vast majority of people live in the cities the smallest harm is the one that only annoys a tiny portion of the population - rather than leads to excessive death in the vast majority.
But this may not be the only approach one could take. I'd be open t
Update: since I wrote the last post the US 2nd circuit appeals court found that the AR-15 is not constitutionally protected. Antonin Scalia's Heller ruling established the idea that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to fire-arm ownership - that ruling drew the line at "military grade weapons" as not being thus protected, using the M16 as an example.
Thus far the NRA has claimed that the line drawn is at full-auto versus semi-auto. But the appeals court has roundly rejected that reasoning today saying Heller's line is drawn on lethality. Specifically whether the weapon is "most useful for military work" - that line means the AR-15 falls outside it's scope despite being only a semi-automatic. It is, in fact, mentioned by name as a weapon that - while not being fully-automatic has a rate of fire and lethality so close to that of the full-auto M16 that it must fall in the same legal category as legal category's should be based on practical effect rather than arbitrary lines.
This is a pretty good step forward as a weapon I myself earlier said has essentially zero legitimate uses is no longer constitutionally protected. You *could* use an AR-15 for self defense - but it's a ridiculously cumbersome weapon for that job - it's MUCH more suitable for killing a large number of people, which when the military does it is called "war" but when a citizen does it is called "mass murderer" (that I think the latter name should also apply to the former case we'll leave aside).
If you really want a weapon for self-defense - your best bet is actually a mid-to-large calibre revolver. The short barrel doesn't make a big difference - accuracy in self-defense situations is terrible anyway but the shorter bullet-travel-distance reduces the odds of hitting an innocent bystander. But a revolver is a relatively simple mechanism so your risk of a jam is greatly reduced (the number one downside of pistols for self defense - besides the ones applying to all guns - is their high tendency to jam) , it can be effectively wielded by a person who isn't very strong and can't handle a big kickback - and medium-to-large calibre because small-calibre weapons are more prone to jamming.
I still don't think it's a smart approach ot self defense, it's still a terrible technology if that's your goal - but if you INSIST on using a bad tool for the job - at least use the BEST of the bad tools and let us take the one that has near-zero usability for that purpose out of the hands of the people who would like to use it to shoot up schools because their pissed they can't get laid.
I don't AGREE that such things shouldn't be sold - I just know what THEIR argument for not selling them is.
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane.
They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
And it's not gun ownership per se that's the problem - and very few people think it is, it's lack of adequate regulation to ensure that before you get a gun you
1) Are not a felon (you know like expanding background checks to online and gun shows would do - the only thing Obama tried to achieve and failed)
2) Maybe some restrictions on WHAT KIND Of guns you can buy - an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER.
There is literally nothing useful you can do with it that is not also harmful to other people.
Canada's gun ownership isn't far behind the USA - but homocide rates are far lower. But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Same in New Zeeland.
Restricting guns to those that have legitimate purposes - like hunting rifles, works. For self-defense a single shot weapon or maybe a semi-automatic pistol is just fine. You won't hit your target anyway so at least don't hit more than one innocent bystander.
And before you say "But Switzerland" the gun-nuts always cite Switzerland and none of them know a thing about it. I have friends who live there - and they filled me in on the bits that you don't know. Firstly - yes, everybody in Switzerland owns a gun - but nobody gets it BEFORE undergoing extensive training (which they must update yearly). And nobody NOBODY in Switzerland has a gun in his house. Those guns they own - are all kept in central armories, you're not ALLOWED to take it out of that armory except for your annual training updates or if a war were to break out. So, in reality, Switzerland is one of the most gun-free societies on earth.
The reality is that there are a lot of things that contribute to homocide rates, gun ownership is just one of many. But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact. And even if it had NO influence on homocide rates it would STILL a good thing because at least other weapons don't kill innocent bystanders.
But you probably don't need to ban them to get most of the good effects. Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim. You'll have a lot LESS innocent bystanders if people in America would at least stop holding their damn guns SIDEWAYS ! Could we PLEASE at least teach people not to do that stupid shit ? It may look awesome in a Spike Lee movie but you would be more accurate shooting blindfolded !
Oh and make the test useful - at least one person in the USA in one of the few states that has at least a basic proficiency test was able to pass it. He can't READ it though - because he is completely blind.
>What does this have to do with the homicide rate?
Nothing as such - I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns (and the side claim that this implies gun control would have no effect).
But let's address YOUR claims then:
> Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones),
Countries with gun bans generally do. Not military as a rule but cops in Britain and New Zeeland are unarmed for ordinary police work. They only get a gun issued when they are entering a specific, known-threatening situation. They don't get to walk around armed. Result: In the past 20 years exactly 2 people have been shot by police in the UK. The US cops kill more people than that EVERY DAY. But when the odds are that criminals won't have guns - there's no reason for the cops to carry anything more dangerous than a nightstick.
>and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in
You will never prevent ALL of them. But contrary to your claim - you don't NEED to. Because it turns out - smugglers don't sell shit to random people on the street. To get a smuggler to sell you something you need to have criminal connections. You need people to vouch for you. They won't sell you a smuggled gun unless they are damn sure you're not an undercover cop.
You can't just walk down to the docks by Sydney harbour and start asking random strangers to sell you an illegal gun. Now your hardcore career criminals - they'll still have guns (biker gangs in Aus for example), but they tend not to be involved in petty-crimes like housebreaking and the like. Their crimes rarely have much impact on the general public.
On the other hand the moron who wakes up one day and decides he wants to go into some public place and start shooting until he leaves the biggest pile of bodies he can before he gets shot ? That idiot - he can't GET a gun in those countries. Which is why events like that are extremely rare there. The US had 48 mass shootings in the last 20 years. The next 20 countries COMBINED had 22. Many of them had none. All of them have decent gun control laws.
> but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
Non-gun homocide isn't JUST low because guns are easy to find in the US - it is low EVERYWHERE - because it's actually pretty fucking hard. People tend to fight back if you try to kill them. With a gun - you can kill them from far away, reliably. With a bat or a knife - you have to seriously risk your own life if you want to do it. So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT.
>I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'.
Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT. You'll never have a homocide rate of zero, but you can get pretty damn close if you take guns out of the picture. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fact that we can't end ALL murder isn't an argument against preventing SOME murders.
>All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
No. It's taking away a stupid choice (for self defense - there is no worse thing ever designed than a gun, it's the perfect thing to attack with, it's an atrociously bad thing to defend with) to let other people feel their hearts still beating. There is a reason you are stasticially MORE likely to get shot if you own a gun than if you don't - MUCH more. It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used when you are calm and your breathing is under control is the dumbest thing ever to give to somebody who is afraid for their life.
Another example is military. Back at the end of World War 2 the army sold off a bunch of excess stuff. My grandmother bough a set of cooking pots. They were aluminium - which at the time was not yet very widely used - built for soldiers cooking in the field.
They were made by one of the companies who made top-of-the-range kitchen utensils at the time, I forgot the name - but I believe they still do. But these were made to military specifications - designed to survive being driven around in the back of a Jeep over open fields with no roads, and the rough cooking of wartime conditions and survive. May have been Adis but I wouldn't be willing to say that under oath.
Here's the thing - the typical lifetime of a consumer grade cooking pot by the same company is 3 to 5 years. 10 if you get really expensive stuff and get lucky.
Those pots my granny bought back in 1945 ? She bought several set. One went to each of her two daughters, and she kept one for herself. I inherited hers after she passed away in 2006.
I am now the third generation to use those pots. Most of the pots I bought in my lifetime has since been discarded as they got warped by heat. The ones my granny bought in 1945 are still going strong without the slightest signs of visible wear. My mom still cooks with her set, and my aunt with hers as well.
Being used in typical urban kitchens - after being designed for wartime conditions - these pots are basically indestructable - and they couldnt' have been THAT much more expensive to make since the Army was able to buy such bulk that my granny on her bottom-of-the-rung-didn't-finish-high-school civil servant income was able to buy several sets in bulk after the war.
Now can you imagine what would have happened if the company was selling this stuff in stores in 1945 ? They'd be out of business ages ago since their business sales could never exceed population growth (which is declining in the kind of economies where people can buy high-end cook ware). Once bought - a family would have that for generations - and their only hope is when families branched wide enough that there were more kids than pots and some had to buy again.
So they don't - just because they CAN mass produce pots that last for generations - it's not in their interest to do so. This is the downside of the capitalist demand to always grow and always having to earn - it means that you must run your business in such a way as to guarantee you'll have customers next year, to do that you can't just treat existing ones well - you have to make sure what you sell them WILL need a replacement soon enough. That this leads to massive waste and using up resources far faster than required is a pity but one that you cannot avoid.
I suppose you could make a case for selling pots that will last generations by charging three hundred times what pots normally cost and making a crapload of money once off to retire on - the trouble is, when you do that, nobody buys them: not because they can't see the value, a pot your grandchildren will use (And thus far the evidence is my kid will get those pots from me one day and make it 4 generations) once off is definitely cheaper than replacing your cookware every few years, even at 300 times the price. It's just that very few people have the kind of money to be able to take advantage of that deal.
They'll do exactly what MS did with the red-ring of death. They would rather give a replacement device for FREE than allow you to fix the one you have.
You underestimate engineers. We went from "first flight" to the moon in less than 70 years. We went from "First rocket" that flew 30 feet to the moon landing in about 4 decades.It's JUST AS LIKELY that we'll go from "material with enough tensile strength invented" to "space elevator" in a few decades too.
Indeed the Lunar Lander as it was built then could not have been done without the (recent) invention of Mylar. And they had to get creative at times - working under extreme limits on weight with an extremely precise set of requirements they had to meet. One of their biggest breakthroughs was tossing out the chairs. Have the crew stand upright - and that meant they could make the observation windows much smaller (since the pilot could stand directly in front of them as opposed to looking through them from a chair) - which cut the weight even more.
There is no doubt that a space elevator - if it's ever done - will require similar bouts of creative ingenuity which are utterly impossible to predict prior to the fact, it will be a case of engineers coming before a seemingly insurmountable conflict of requirements and getting creative to meet them all.