Because Europe (or at least the major European nations) already had vastly lower murder rates than the US before any gun control laws. Guns don't cause crime, culture does.
Yes, there is a culture of violence in the USA. And yes, allowing everyone to own guns is part of this culture of violence.
Which is supported only by your emotions and not by evidence. Literally close to half of the adults in the US own guns (and we're just talking the non-criminals here) - if guns had anything to do with "a culture of violence", the US would literally be a war zone. Hell, data on those who get concealed carry permits shows that they are the least likely people to commit a violent crime and have a significantly lower rate per capita of committing violent crimes than police officers - yes, that's right, you're several times more likely to be murdered by a police officer than to be murdered by an ordinary American that carries a concealed gun.
If everyone agreed on a choice, they could elect anyone they want
No, they can't because the existing political parties control who gets access to the ballot. Sure, you could try to do a write in campaign, but there's all sorts of legal loopholes to make that incredibly difficult. The existing system will not change that in order to make it easier for you to remove them, they are currently in fact making it harder for you to have any choice between the Republicans and Democrats. That's one issue that Republicans and Democrats are very bi-partisan on - doing everything possible to block anyone else from the ballot. You have a delusion that the existing political parties will vote to end their reign simply because you tell them to. Ron Paul is a great example of this - he was too popular, so the RNC changed the rules for the primary to ensure that their preferred candidate (Romney) won. The Democrats are no better with the incident in 2012 of the members soundly rejecting putting religion as part of the party platform and then the DNC put it in anyways to try and get more religious people to vote for Democrats. Corruption is beyond rampant and you will not eliminate the corruption by playing by the rules instated by the corrupt politicians.
I'm saying that it's almost impossible for an honest person to get elected and that even the better people that get elected are rapidly corrupted by the new-found power. It's not stupid to vote against that single issue because 1) incumbents almost always get re-elected and 2) they can always BS and claim something prevented them from achieving their goals and that they "need more time" or that there were "bad things in the bill" and that they didn't want to cause more harm than good.
They are worthwhile things to study, absolutely. However, they are not worthwhile things to spend $150k+ learning when you won't be able to get a job afterwards. If your family is insanely rich and you know that you'll never need to work a day in your life, then go ahead and major in one of those fields and have no useful skills. For those that need to pay the bills, it's a horrible way to spend a decade of your life and more than enough to buy a home..
Bingo. The worst professors I ever had were tenured and didn't give a damn about the quality of their teaching and any student complaints fell on deaf ears.
Problems with that - 1) Those "regular people" will never end up on the ballot due to the way the existing system works. 2) That contract won't hold up in court once they're in power (remember - the government makes the rules and can change them at any time without your consent).
If we could get everyone in the US to agree that NSA surveillance was bad, and then only support candidates who agreed with that position, then we could end it about 5 minutes after the next election.
No, it wouldn't end. Politicians LIE in order to get elected. Once they're in power, they don't give a damn about what you think. We've had countless politicians run on things like ending the wars and ending spying, yet do the exact opposite once they're in power.
Despite it's many imperfections, the US is still a democracy and our leaders are in place because we put them there.
Not really, when the political parties decide who you can vote for. Hell, even primaries they don't really give you any choice. When they control what choices you get, you don't really have a choice. That's not even counting the fact that most of the choices are nearly identical (like Romney and Obama). Thinking that you can change a broken system by using the broken system doesn't work. The American people need to make it loud and clear that they will literally throw the government out if they do not respect our rights and the Constitution. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the spine to do just that and we're stuck in an endless spiral of things getting worse and worse.
Well the land-owning aspect actually has valid reasoning behind it - those who own property have a stake in the outcome, whereas those who have nothing to lose don't care about negative outcomes. See how those who make poor choices today consistently vote for a larger and more oppressive government to absolve them of responsibility for their choices / actions.
It didn't say that people shouldn't do anything, I simply pointed out that voting doesn't accomplish anything - especially since incumbents almost always win. Writing letters and voting does nothing and never has - it takes making the government truly terrified of rebellion to inspire them to make changes...and the American people have lost the will to stand up for themselves.
But if you sit back on your apathetic butt and complain that the system is rigged and do nothing but whine about it, yeah, it will continue to be ruled by the people who do vote and do communicate with their representatives.
I do vote and write to representatives - I'm just not foolish enough to think it actually makes a difference.
I'm an US citizen....I'm in charge of my own government
That's funny that you actually believe that voters get any say in these types of programs. The US government does whatever it wants without repercussions, regardless of which party is in power - and it's been that way for a long time. They only bother with elections to provide the illusion that you're in control in order to keep the populace pacified.
In other professions, you're expected to put in as much time as necessary to get the job done. Teachers do seven hours a day with usually 1 hour a day to "prep" and 30 minutes to an hour for lunch, so 5 to 5.5 hours per day of teaching, not to mention that they work 9 months out of the year. Factor in that an experienced teacher can re-use the majority of their materials from previous years and there's very little truth to the "teachers are overworked" claims.
Honestly, my only issue with them is the price. When you're looking at over $1k, I would prefer to just use a Nexus 7 for $250 and buy a cheap ultrabook for $400-$500.
What happens to my existing 30 minute life-threatening event response time at that point?
Assuming you live in the US, buy a gun. Unless you're lucky, even with a 3 minute response time a life-threatening incident will leave you dead. Contrary to what you see on TV shows, the police rarely stop violent crime in progress - they simply write a report after the fact. Even in incidents like the shooting at Sandy Hook, the police where on scene in 2-3 minutes, yet it was still far too late.
Also, SCOTUS has ruled that the police have no duty to protect you, thus they have no duty to show up in a timely manner or actually help once they arrive. I forget the name of the case where this was decided, but it's a truly sickening read where the laziness of officers lead to multiple women being raped and then the court told them "Too bad, police cannot be held accountable for their actions".
Not to mention that the district attorney, public defender, and judge are normally all best friends (not to mention they all are friends with the local police). Both of my brothers are cops and openly admit that our "justice" system is a racket and that being arrested almost always results in a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts. Sadly, most people never have any involvement with the court system / police and thus are completely ignorant to how it works. I took half a day off work a couple of years ago and sat in the county courthouse watching cases being tried - it was a very eye opening experience where. I saw one girl get convicted of theft based purely on the word of another girl and I saw a woman get convicted of theft because she was on a sidewalk about 50 yards away from an attempted theft and she shouted something (unknown words to an unknown person) -- so clearly (according to the judge, prosecutor, and arresting officers) she must be guilty of aiding in the theft (despite no proof that she even knew the man). I suggest everyone spend time watching your local judge go about his daily duties - you'll most likely reconsider voting for them next time.
The problem being that most departments (I said most, not all) are overstaffed for the amount of crime and as a result put a significant portion of their officers on road detail to generate revenue. If they actually had enough crime to justify that number of officers, they sure as hell wouldn't be sitting on the side of the road waiting for someone to go over an arbitrary number.
Why should a car that won't be committing traffic infractions pay a fee for traffic infractions? That doesn't even come close to making sense. That's like saying everyone who puts on a seat belt should pay an extra fee to make up for "lost revenue" from fewer tickets for not wearing a seat belt.
Overspending? Oklahoma ran out of fat to cut decades ago, and had very little to begin with. Then they ran out of muscle. Now they're busy cutting out bone
I'd love to see their books. I spent years working as a contractor for a government agency and know first hand how much governments piss away money.
There are certain things a government in the developed world must do.
That's a load of crap. I'd love to see a list of these "vital" things - I'm willing to bet most of them are far from vital.
Roads don't just appear by magic you know. There are no pothole gnomes who magically fill holes in the road in the middle of the night for free. Leaving a bowl of milk and a ragged textbook on your front porch does not get you a new textbook the next morning.
And yet, I'm sure there's money being pissed away on "special projects", cushy retirement funds, expense accounts, etc that could easily be shifted to fix the roads.
Government is the only reliable way humans manage to achieve these things, and only a funded government manages to do them. An unfunded 'government' like what Somalia has is a sham and everybody except you knows it.
Thanks for letting me know that you're just a troll and not willing to have a rational discussion. I'll pull turn your "Somalia" line around on you - "If you love government control over all financial actions, why don't you move to North Korea?"
You're partially correct. The amount of tax that a business will pay is directly related to the elasticity of demand for their products / services. The more elastic the demand (the more people are willing to either buy a competing product or just do without it), the smaller the portion of the tax that they can shift to consumers. The less elastic the demand, the higher the portion of tax they can shift to consumers. If the government decided to levy an additional 10% tax on potato chips, the potato chip companies would have to eat most of that tax because most people would simply buy other snack foods instead of paying the higher price. If the government decides to levy an additional 10% tax on gas / diesel, consumers are going to be hit with all of that extra tax because most people don't have a choice in buying fuel (long term they can make other decisions to decrease the amount of fuel used, but that's a long story there).
How come every time a nation / state / city is overspending, people always immediately turn to how to raise more tax revenues? How come virtually no one ever looks at the other side of the math and looks at ways to cut spending? If you're in a dire financial situation, your first move is to cut all non-vital spending and then reassess the situation. For some reason, people don't think government spending should ever decrease.
How are managers supposed to hire the right candidates if HR refuses to let the right candidates' resumes through to the hiring manager? HR should have no part of the hiring process, especially since they don't have the slightest understanding about the skills required for the position (any position).
They get 400 applications a week and yes they need filtering.
Since your company is big enough to have an HR department, there's probably at least 2-3 recruiters. Even with just two, that's 40 resumes per day - it does not take that long to read a resume and it's really easy to toss the bad ones after just a few seconds. That doesn't sound like they "need" filtering, it sounds like they want filtering so that they don't need to read many resumes.
Even then they always complain they can not find qualified candidates.
That's because the crappy filtering software is eliminating the qualified candidates. I've had multiple jobs where I've gotten great performance reviews by my boss, yet I initially got turned down for them because the filtering software eliminate my resume and I couldn't get an interview until I finally got my resume directly to the hiring manager.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Europe (or at least the major European nations) already had vastly lower murder rates than the US before any gun control laws. Guns don't cause crime, culture does.
Yes, there is a culture of violence in the USA. And yes, allowing everyone to own guns is part of this culture of violence.
Which is supported only by your emotions and not by evidence. Literally close to half of the adults in the US own guns (and we're just talking the non-criminals here) - if guns had anything to do with "a culture of violence", the US would literally be a war zone. Hell, data on those who get concealed carry permits shows that they are the least likely people to commit a violent crime and have a significantly lower rate per capita of committing violent crimes than police officers - yes, that's right, you're several times more likely to be murdered by a police officer than to be murdered by an ordinary American that carries a concealed gun.
If everyone agreed on a choice, they could elect anyone they want
No, they can't because the existing political parties control who gets access to the ballot. Sure, you could try to do a write in campaign, but there's all sorts of legal loopholes to make that incredibly difficult. The existing system will not change that in order to make it easier for you to remove them, they are currently in fact making it harder for you to have any choice between the Republicans and Democrats. That's one issue that Republicans and Democrats are very bi-partisan on - doing everything possible to block anyone else from the ballot. You have a delusion that the existing political parties will vote to end their reign simply because you tell them to. Ron Paul is a great example of this - he was too popular, so the RNC changed the rules for the primary to ensure that their preferred candidate (Romney) won. The Democrats are no better with the incident in 2012 of the members soundly rejecting putting religion as part of the party platform and then the DNC put it in anyways to try and get more religious people to vote for Democrats. Corruption is beyond rampant and you will not eliminate the corruption by playing by the rules instated by the corrupt politicians.
I'm saying that it's almost impossible for an honest person to get elected and that even the better people that get elected are rapidly corrupted by the new-found power. It's not stupid to vote against that single issue because 1) incumbents almost always get re-elected and 2) they can always BS and claim something prevented them from achieving their goals and that they "need more time" or that there were "bad things in the bill" and that they didn't want to cause more harm than good.
They are worthwhile things to study, absolutely. However, they are not worthwhile things to spend $150k+ learning when you won't be able to get a job afterwards. If your family is insanely rich and you know that you'll never need to work a day in your life, then go ahead and major in one of those fields and have no useful skills. For those that need to pay the bills, it's a horrible way to spend a decade of your life and more than enough to buy a home..
Bingo. The worst professors I ever had were tenured and didn't give a damn about the quality of their teaching and any student complaints fell on deaf ears.
Because it's at least trying to do something, even if you know it's a wasted effort.
Problems with that - 1) Those "regular people" will never end up on the ballot due to the way the existing system works. 2) That contract won't hold up in court once they're in power (remember - the government makes the rules and can change them at any time without your consent).
If we could get everyone in the US to agree that NSA surveillance was bad, and then only support candidates who agreed with that position, then we could end it about 5 minutes after the next election.
No, it wouldn't end. Politicians LIE in order to get elected. Once they're in power, they don't give a damn about what you think. We've had countless politicians run on things like ending the wars and ending spying, yet do the exact opposite once they're in power.
Despite it's many imperfections, the US is still a democracy and our leaders are in place because we put them there.
Not really, when the political parties decide who you can vote for. Hell, even primaries they don't really give you any choice. When they control what choices you get, you don't really have a choice. That's not even counting the fact that most of the choices are nearly identical (like Romney and Obama). Thinking that you can change a broken system by using the broken system doesn't work. The American people need to make it loud and clear that they will literally throw the government out if they do not respect our rights and the Constitution. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the spine to do just that and we're stuck in an endless spiral of things getting worse and worse.
Well the land-owning aspect actually has valid reasoning behind it - those who own property have a stake in the outcome, whereas those who have nothing to lose don't care about negative outcomes. See how those who make poor choices today consistently vote for a larger and more oppressive government to absolve them of responsibility for their choices / actions.
But if you sit back on your apathetic butt and complain that the system is rigged and do nothing but whine about it, yeah, it will continue to be ruled by the people who do vote and do communicate with their representatives.
I do vote and write to representatives - I'm just not foolish enough to think it actually makes a difference.
I'm an US citizen....I'm in charge of my own government
That's funny that you actually believe that voters get any say in these types of programs. The US government does whatever it wants without repercussions, regardless of which party is in power - and it's been that way for a long time. They only bother with elections to provide the illusion that you're in control in order to keep the populace pacified.
In other professions, you're expected to put in as much time as necessary to get the job done. Teachers do seven hours a day with usually 1 hour a day to "prep" and 30 minutes to an hour for lunch, so 5 to 5.5 hours per day of teaching, not to mention that they work 9 months out of the year. Factor in that an experienced teacher can re-use the majority of their materials from previous years and there's very little truth to the "teachers are overworked" claims.
$800 is the price for the most stripped down model. Most of the models are $1,200 - $1,500.
Honestly, my only issue with them is the price. When you're looking at over $1k, I would prefer to just use a Nexus 7 for $250 and buy a cheap ultrabook for $400-$500.
What happens to my existing 30 minute life-threatening event response time at that point?
Assuming you live in the US, buy a gun. Unless you're lucky, even with a 3 minute response time a life-threatening incident will leave you dead. Contrary to what you see on TV shows, the police rarely stop violent crime in progress - they simply write a report after the fact. Even in incidents like the shooting at Sandy Hook, the police where on scene in 2-3 minutes, yet it was still far too late.
Also, SCOTUS has ruled that the police have no duty to protect you, thus they have no duty to show up in a timely manner or actually help once they arrive. I forget the name of the case where this was decided, but it's a truly sickening read where the laziness of officers lead to multiple women being raped and then the court told them "Too bad, police cannot be held accountable for their actions".
Not to mention that the district attorney, public defender, and judge are normally all best friends (not to mention they all are friends with the local police). Both of my brothers are cops and openly admit that our "justice" system is a racket and that being arrested almost always results in a guilty verdict, regardless of the facts. Sadly, most people never have any involvement with the court system / police and thus are completely ignorant to how it works. I took half a day off work a couple of years ago and sat in the county courthouse watching cases being tried - it was a very eye opening experience where. I saw one girl get convicted of theft based purely on the word of another girl and I saw a woman get convicted of theft because she was on a sidewalk about 50 yards away from an attempted theft and she shouted something (unknown words to an unknown person) -- so clearly (according to the judge, prosecutor, and arresting officers) she must be guilty of aiding in the theft (despite no proof that she even knew the man). I suggest everyone spend time watching your local judge go about his daily duties - you'll most likely reconsider voting for them next time.
The problem being that most departments (I said most, not all) are overstaffed for the amount of crime and as a result put a significant portion of their officers on road detail to generate revenue. If they actually had enough crime to justify that number of officers, they sure as hell wouldn't be sitting on the side of the road waiting for someone to go over an arbitrary number.
Why should a car that won't be committing traffic infractions pay a fee for traffic infractions? That doesn't even come close to making sense. That's like saying everyone who puts on a seat belt should pay an extra fee to make up for "lost revenue" from fewer tickets for not wearing a seat belt.
Overspending? Oklahoma ran out of fat to cut decades ago, and had very little to begin with. Then they ran out of muscle. Now they're busy cutting out bone
I'd love to see their books. I spent years working as a contractor for a government agency and know first hand how much governments piss away money.
There are certain things a government in the developed world must do.
That's a load of crap. I'd love to see a list of these "vital" things - I'm willing to bet most of them are far from vital.
Roads don't just appear by magic you know. There are no pothole gnomes who magically fill holes in the road in the middle of the night for free. Leaving a bowl of milk and a ragged textbook on your front porch does not get you a new textbook the next morning.
And yet, I'm sure there's money being pissed away on "special projects", cushy retirement funds, expense accounts, etc that could easily be shifted to fix the roads.
Government is the only reliable way humans manage to achieve these things, and only a funded government manages to do them. An unfunded 'government' like what Somalia has is a sham and everybody except you knows it.
Thanks for letting me know that you're just a troll and not willing to have a rational discussion. I'll pull turn your "Somalia" line around on you - "If you love government control over all financial actions, why don't you move to North Korea?"
You're partially correct. The amount of tax that a business will pay is directly related to the elasticity of demand for their products / services. The more elastic the demand (the more people are willing to either buy a competing product or just do without it), the smaller the portion of the tax that they can shift to consumers. The less elastic the demand, the higher the portion of tax they can shift to consumers. If the government decided to levy an additional 10% tax on potato chips, the potato chip companies would have to eat most of that tax because most people would simply buy other snack foods instead of paying the higher price. If the government decides to levy an additional 10% tax on gas / diesel, consumers are going to be hit with all of that extra tax because most people don't have a choice in buying fuel (long term they can make other decisions to decrease the amount of fuel used, but that's a long story there).
How come every time a nation / state / city is overspending, people always immediately turn to how to raise more tax revenues? How come virtually no one ever looks at the other side of the math and looks at ways to cut spending? If you're in a dire financial situation, your first move is to cut all non-vital spending and then reassess the situation. For some reason, people don't think government spending should ever decrease.
I wish I only changed my major once. It took me 6 1/2 years to get my bachelor's because I changed schools and majors three times.
How are managers supposed to hire the right candidates if HR refuses to let the right candidates' resumes through to the hiring manager? HR should have no part of the hiring process, especially since they don't have the slightest understanding about the skills required for the position (any position).
They get 400 applications a week and yes they need filtering.
Since your company is big enough to have an HR department, there's probably at least 2-3 recruiters. Even with just two, that's 40 resumes per day - it does not take that long to read a resume and it's really easy to toss the bad ones after just a few seconds. That doesn't sound like they "need" filtering, it sounds like they want filtering so that they don't need to read many resumes.
Even then they always complain they can not find qualified candidates.
That's because the crappy filtering software is eliminating the qualified candidates. I've had multiple jobs where I've gotten great performance reviews by my boss, yet I initially got turned down for them because the filtering software eliminate my resume and I couldn't get an interview until I finally got my resume directly to the hiring manager.