I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking how a gun can save your life? The answer to that seems rather obvious, too... it can save your life by being used to stop someone who would otherwise kill you. Or maybe you're asking something else?
The protests were not about a mandate. They were against stores offering a new product. You should really use google before saying things.
Thanks for the link. However, as another commenter pointed out, the motivation is a little less clear than that, because there is one state (New Jersey) that has passed a law that will enact a mandate three years after the guns go on sale anywhere in the country, and that mandate will almost certainly motivate mandates elsewhere. All of which makes the sale a direct proxy for the mandate in New Jersey and an indirect but closely-linked proxy elsewhere.
Ah... so they weren't protesting the making available for sale. They were protesting the mandate. They were doing it by protesting the sale, because sale is a direct proxy for the mandate.
I'll admit, it did get buried pretty quickly, but this is from 2 weeks ago. FTA:
Raymond received numerous death threats in response to his interest in offering the guns at his store.
So I suppose it's not an organized protest, but still...
Okay, so there are a few wackos. That's the case regardless of the cause and the opinion. But the topic of discussion isn't the isolated wackos, it's the pro-gun groups.
Why should it be paid out of income taxes? You're assuming that's the right way, but do you have any basis for that assumption?
I'm fine with government being responsible for building roads, and to some extent road-building costs should be broadly distributed, including to non-users because they benefit from having the option of using the roads even if they don't. But it also makes perfect sense for those that incur the heaviest costs to pay the bulk of them, not for any punitive reasons but for economic efficiency. The economy as a whole is healthier if money is invested in the form of infrastructure that has the highest returns, and by aligning costs with usage we drive transportation to the most efficient means.
That's funny, but you also have to wonder if there's an opposite effect in play here: perhaps police are simply less likely to cite a driver of a car with a spinning LIDAR array on top and "Google" emblazoned on the side. Black dudes get pulled over at higher rates because there's a perception that they're more likely than average to be engaging in illicit conduct. I'd think cops would expect the odds that a corporate car that is part of a technology development and testing process is far less likely than average to be engaging in illicit conduct.
The wear from driving on roads is non-linear with vehicle weight. It really is the trucks that matter.
If trucks paid their fair share of the road maintenance, we'd probably see a lot fewer trucks on the interstates as freight shifted to trains (which are far more efficient and would be more cost-effective, if the trucking industry weren't heavily subsidized in the form of roads; railroads have to maintain their own track). Eventually we might even see long haul freight move off of the roads entirely, which would allow us to build cheaper interstates since they wouldn't have to withstand the constant pounding of heavy vehicles.
The net result would be a reduction in freight charges and less tax money devoted to road construction, making the economy as a whole more efficient. We should do it.
The idea that a person might have to be shown to be mentally competent and capable of owning and being responsible for a firearm isn't radical. It isn't even controversial outside of the gun nut circles. Even among mainstream GUN OWNERS, it's non-controversial.
Got something to support that assertion? I don't think you'll get much argument from gun owners that people should be mentally competent and capable, but I think you'll find a whole lot of opposition to government processes to check competence and capability and to restrict ownership to those who pass the tests.
seems like people protesting them even being sold should mean that it wasn't obvious
Cite? I never saw anything about people protesting them being sold.
Thank you also for informing us that the concept of authorized access to a physical device is never going to be reliable... I'll be sure to removed the keys from my car, and house immediately, I did not know that the technology for those things isn't ready yet, and NEVER will be
Don't be ridiculous. The context and the requirements are completely different. If you need to use a gun to defend your life, it has to work instantly. There can be no fumbling for keys, or rebooting the authentication device. This is why people have also long opposed mandating trigger locks for all guns, all the time.
Oh, and all passwords from my computer clearly not ready for prime time on that technology....
Again, completely different context and requirements.
Thank you for blessing us with your wisdom and keen insight on the opposite of what appears to be reality, as well as insight into what is clearly the future, how so many people could have missed the obvious reality of nothing every working unless it is approved of by you first is beyond me.
Deaths versus shootings...are you really that stupid as to not be able to tell the difference?
Here's your citation: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=number+of...
You need to actually read your citation. From the top link:
Deaths: From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional
shootings. More than a third of the victims were under 25 years of age.
So, 2005-2010 is six years. 3800 / 6 = 633 (actually it's a bit less than that, the article rounded up; and 2005-2010 was a range of particularly bad years; it's generally lower, and declining). 633 is quite different from 4000. But your claim was even stronger... that those 4000 were all accidentally shot by children. Your citation doesn't provide any numbers on how many of those people were accidentally shot by children, unfortunately. But it's clearly less than 633 per year, and therefore even farther from 4000 per year.
The rape threats, the murder threats, the wildly violent language...
What's interesting to me is that in online conversations about gun control, it's generally the anti-gun people who use such language. Not always, of course, but the overwhelming majority of violent language comes from those who want to restrict rights.
What's even more common from anti-gun people, of course, is ridicule, particularly of forms that imply sexual attachment to guns, or that guns are a mechanism for compensating for sexual deficiency, as though that has any relevance whatsoever. I suppose it's a way to deride the opposing position when you don't have any real arguments to make.
if gun fondlers
Yeah. Like that, though you at least veiled it a bit more than most.
need to be culled from the herd
And I see you did take the next step, proposing violence. Though, again, a bit more veiled than most. My experience of similar discussions makes me sure that if we debated a bit you'd eventually slide into clear calls for violent murder of gun owners, or at least someone else espousing your position would -- and odds are that none of the gun owners in the discussion would do anything like that.
they do oppose people's right not to be shot by a stupid gun
Bullshit.
They absolutely and completely support peoples' right not to be shot by a gun, smart or stupid, or murdered with any other tool, or with fists, feet, etc.
This is why murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, aggravated assault, assault, reckless endangerment, domestic violence and many related crimes are on the books and enforced, because people have a right not to be a victim of violence, particularly not deadly violence.
It's also why it's legal to defend yourself, up to and including with deadly force, when necessary.
In fact, the main reason pro-gun groups oppose smart gun mandates is because they fear such mandates would undermine the right not to be the victim of violence, by making making self-defense less possible (because the smart guns will be unreliable).
4,000 or so people in the US die every year because they're accidentally shot by children, ranging from toddlers to pre-teens.
Cite?
Given that CDP numbers put the total number of accidental shooting deaths annually between 500 and 600 -- for all ages of shooters -- I expect your link to be very interesting.
Did anyone really think that pro-gun groups would oppose manufacturers giving people the option of buying guns with additional safety devices?
What's really going on is that pro-gun groups are pretty certain (with good reason!) that these smart guns don't work reliably, and likely never will. Plus there's some concern about backdoors that might allow the guns to be deliberately disabled, which could enable smart gun mandates to easily turn into forcible disarmament.
But, given a smart gun that actually works, is very, very close to 100% reliable (meaning it almost never fails to recognize its authorized user, mostly), and isn't subject to control by third parties, I'm sure there would be a great market for them. I'd definitely buy one. I train a little from time to time in techniques for protecting my gun from being taken from me, and while I have considerable confidence in my ability to retain control of my gun, I'd love to have an additional technological backstop.
But it's very unlikely they'll ever be sufficiently reliable. So my response has been from the beginning: Let me know when all of the police forces have adopted them and love them, since cops are at considerable risk of being shot with their own guns. When police are confident that the reliability is high enough they want to carry them, then I'll be interested in looking at the possibility myself.
Mandates, however, make no sense. Build good enough technology and people will buy them. If that's not possible, then mandates are obviously going to meet with stiff resistance.
The NSA spied specifically on foreign corporations and the leaders of human rights organizations.
They didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers.
Do the math.
That doesn't follow. They spied on foreign corporations, organizations, heads of state, etc., but that's not all they spied on. And they didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers, but that doesn't prove they weren't spying on people like that, just that they failed. But it doesn't prove Jahoda's claims that catching criminals (terrorists) isn't one of their purposes. At most it proves that they suck at it. Or that the goal is inherently infeasible(*).
So, I repeat: Cite?
(*) My take is that it is mostly infeasible, and to the degree it can be achieved it's not worth the cost. But it's not at all uncommon for large organizations -- especially government organizations -- to spend vast amounts of effort and resources trying to do something that can't be done and isn't worth doing anyway. c.f. DRM, for one example that's top of mind.
See, they know you won't follow through after they're gone. That's why only they can be trusted to manage the process.
But how do I know they will follow through?
Actually, I probably don't have to worry about that, since their ability to survive without supermarkets and the global supply chains which stock them is basically zero. They'll die even if they change their minds. So, I suppose I have to bow to their logic. Except that they can bite me, of course.
Also, I should point out that you took that quote out of context. That's a very slimy method of argumentation.
In context, I was talking about the sparsely-settled regions of the coast which -- by definition! -- contain few people. For heavily-settled regions the cost of dikes is likely to be less than the cost of resettlement.
But anyone who thinks our goal should be to avoid altering our environment really hasn't thought it through, because the only way to achieve that goal is for us to cease existing.
There are people who believe that those espousing "avoid altering our environment" have thought it through, and their goal really is for humans to cease existing. I'm currently leaning toward believing these people.
If there are any such people, it would seem appropriate for them to start by removing themselves. I don't wish anyone ill, but it would be the logical step.
we know that the purpose has never been to catch criminals, it is to catch people doing things contrary to the interests of the state, conduct corporate espionage, and/or gather useful blackmail-worthy information for use at a future time.
And, if evolution has given you the right mix of large brain and clever hands, you can alter the nooks and crannies to suit you.
It's worth extending this thought a bit further to recognize that virtually all human life is based on altering the nooks and crannies. If you were to require humans to live in the world as-is -- no buildings, no farms, heck, even making clothing is arguably altering the environment to make it more livable -- there's very, very little area of this planet that could support human life. And even in the few regions that could support human life, that life would be harsh, dangerous and unpleasant.
We live by altering the world to suit us. Period. That doesn't mean we should alter it thoughtlessly, nor that there isn't value in preserving some areas unaltered. But anyone who thinks our goal should be to avoid altering our environment really hasn't thought it through, because the only way to achieve that goal is for us to cease existing.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking how a gun can save your life? The answer to that seems rather obvious, too... it can save your life by being used to stop someone who would otherwise kill you. Or maybe you're asking something else?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/threats-against-maryland-gun-dealer-raise-doubts-about-future-of-smart-guns/2014/05/02/8a4f7482-d227-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html
The protests were not about a mandate. They were against stores offering a new product. You should really use google before saying things.
Thanks for the link. However, as another commenter pointed out, the motivation is a little less clear than that, because there is one state (New Jersey) that has passed a law that will enact a mandate three years after the guns go on sale anywhere in the country, and that mandate will almost certainly motivate mandates elsewhere. All of which makes the sale a direct proxy for the mandate in New Jersey and an indirect but closely-linked proxy elsewhere.
Indeed, the article you linked points this out.
Ah... so they weren't protesting the making available for sale. They were protesting the mandate. They were doing it by protesting the sale, because sale is a direct proxy for the mandate.
I'll admit, it did get buried pretty quickly, but this is from 2 weeks ago. FTA:
Raymond received numerous death threats in response to his interest in offering the guns at his store.
So I suppose it's not an organized protest, but still...
Okay, so there are a few wackos. That's the case regardless of the cause and the opinion. But the topic of discussion isn't the isolated wackos, it's the pro-gun groups.
Why should it be paid out of income taxes? You're assuming that's the right way, but do you have any basis for that assumption?
I'm fine with government being responsible for building roads, and to some extent road-building costs should be broadly distributed, including to non-users because they benefit from having the option of using the roads even if they don't. But it also makes perfect sense for those that incur the heaviest costs to pay the bulk of them, not for any punitive reasons but for economic efficiency. The economy as a whole is healthier if money is invested in the form of infrastructure that has the highest returns, and by aligning costs with usage we drive transportation to the most efficient means.
... but have they tested it with a black dude in the driver's seat?
That's funny, but you also have to wonder if there's an opposite effect in play here: perhaps police are simply less likely to cite a driver of a car with a spinning LIDAR array on top and "Google" emblazoned on the side. Black dudes get pulled over at higher rates because there's a perception that they're more likely than average to be engaging in illicit conduct. I'd think cops would expect the odds that a corporate car that is part of a technology development and testing process is far less likely than average to be engaging in illicit conduct.
Of course, if police don't have to patrol the roads looking for traffic violations, we won't need as many police officers.
The wear from driving on roads is non-linear with vehicle weight. It really is the trucks that matter.
If trucks paid their fair share of the road maintenance, we'd probably see a lot fewer trucks on the interstates as freight shifted to trains (which are far more efficient and would be more cost-effective, if the trucking industry weren't heavily subsidized in the form of roads; railroads have to maintain their own track). Eventually we might even see long haul freight move off of the roads entirely, which would allow us to build cheaper interstates since they wouldn't have to withstand the constant pounding of heavy vehicles.
The net result would be a reduction in freight charges and less tax money devoted to road construction, making the economy as a whole more efficient. We should do it.
The idea that a person might have to be shown to be mentally competent and capable of owning and being responsible for a firearm isn't radical. It isn't even controversial outside of the gun nut circles. Even among mainstream GUN OWNERS, it's non-controversial.
Got something to support that assertion? I don't think you'll get much argument from gun owners that people should be mentally competent and capable, but I think you'll find a whole lot of opposition to government processes to check competence and capability and to restrict ownership to those who pass the tests.
seems like people protesting them even being sold should mean that it wasn't obvious
Cite? I never saw anything about people protesting them being sold.
Thank you also for informing us that the concept of authorized access to a physical device is never going to be reliable... I'll be sure to removed the keys from my car, and house immediately, I did not know that the technology for those things isn't ready yet, and NEVER will be
Don't be ridiculous. The context and the requirements are completely different. If you need to use a gun to defend your life, it has to work instantly. There can be no fumbling for keys, or rebooting the authentication device. This is why people have also long opposed mandating trigger locks for all guns, all the time.
Oh, and all passwords from my computer clearly not ready for prime time on that technology....
Again, completely different context and requirements.
Thank you for blessing us with your wisdom and keen insight on the opposite of what appears to be reality, as well as insight into what is clearly the future, how so many people could have missed the obvious reality of nothing every working unless it is approved of by you first is beyond me.
Nice try.
Deaths versus shootings...are you really that stupid as to not be able to tell the difference? Here's your citation: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=number+of...
You need to actually read your citation. From the top link:
Deaths: From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional shootings. More than a third of the victims were under 25 years of age.
So, 2005-2010 is six years. 3800 / 6 = 633 (actually it's a bit less than that, the article rounded up; and 2005-2010 was a range of particularly bad years; it's generally lower, and declining). 633 is quite different from 4000. But your claim was even stronger... that those 4000 were all accidentally shot by children. Your citation doesn't provide any numbers on how many of those people were accidentally shot by children, unfortunately. But it's clearly less than 633 per year, and therefore even farther from 4000 per year.
Heh. You failed to notice (or at least call him on) his recommendation of violence. "culled from the herd".
What a delightfully self-indicting post :)
The rape threats, the murder threats, the wildly violent language...
What's interesting to me is that in online conversations about gun control, it's generally the anti-gun people who use such language. Not always, of course, but the overwhelming majority of violent language comes from those who want to restrict rights.
What's even more common from anti-gun people, of course, is ridicule, particularly of forms that imply sexual attachment to guns, or that guns are a mechanism for compensating for sexual deficiency, as though that has any relevance whatsoever. I suppose it's a way to deride the opposing position when you don't have any real arguments to make.
if gun fondlers
Yeah. Like that, though you at least veiled it a bit more than most.
need to be culled from the herd
And I see you did take the next step, proposing violence. Though, again, a bit more veiled than most. My experience of similar discussions makes me sure that if we debated a bit you'd eventually slide into clear calls for violent murder of gun owners, or at least someone else espousing your position would -- and odds are that none of the gun owners in the discussion would do anything like that.
Thank you for making my point so clearly.
they do oppose people's right not to be shot by a stupid gun
Bullshit.
They absolutely and completely support peoples' right not to be shot by a gun, smart or stupid, or murdered with any other tool, or with fists, feet, etc.
This is why murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, aggravated assault, assault, reckless endangerment, domestic violence and many related crimes are on the books and enforced, because people have a right not to be a victim of violence, particularly not deadly violence.
It's also why it's legal to defend yourself, up to and including with deadly force, when necessary.
In fact, the main reason pro-gun groups oppose smart gun mandates is because they fear such mandates would undermine the right not to be the victim of violence, by making making self-defense less possible (because the smart guns will be unreliable).
4,000 or so people in the US die every year because they're accidentally shot by children, ranging from toddlers to pre-teens.
Cite?
Given that CDP numbers put the total number of accidental shooting deaths annually between 500 and 600 -- for all ages of shooters -- I expect your link to be very interesting.
Did anyone really think that pro-gun groups would oppose manufacturers giving people the option of buying guns with additional safety devices?
What's really going on is that pro-gun groups are pretty certain (with good reason!) that these smart guns don't work reliably, and likely never will. Plus there's some concern about backdoors that might allow the guns to be deliberately disabled, which could enable smart gun mandates to easily turn into forcible disarmament.
But, given a smart gun that actually works, is very, very close to 100% reliable (meaning it almost never fails to recognize its authorized user, mostly), and isn't subject to control by third parties, I'm sure there would be a great market for them. I'd definitely buy one. I train a little from time to time in techniques for protecting my gun from being taken from me, and while I have considerable confidence in my ability to retain control of my gun, I'd love to have an additional technological backstop.
But it's very unlikely they'll ever be sufficiently reliable. So my response has been from the beginning: Let me know when all of the police forces have adopted them and love them, since cops are at considerable risk of being shot with their own guns. When police are confident that the reliability is high enough they want to carry them, then I'll be interested in looking at the possibility myself.
Mandates, however, make no sense. Build good enough technology and people will buy them. If that's not possible, then mandates are obviously going to meet with stiff resistance.
Meanwhile, in airports they've been replaced by new machines that achieve exactly the same ends using slightly different technology.
But the traveling public has gotten used to it, and complaints have died down, so the new terahertz wave nudie scanners are the new normal.
The NSA spied specifically on foreign corporations and the leaders of human rights organizations.
They didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers.
Do the math.
That doesn't follow. They spied on foreign corporations, organizations, heads of state, etc., but that's not all they spied on. And they didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers, but that doesn't prove they weren't spying on people like that, just that they failed. But it doesn't prove Jahoda's claims that catching criminals (terrorists) isn't one of their purposes. At most it proves that they suck at it. Or that the goal is inherently infeasible(*).
So, I repeat: Cite?
(*) My take is that it is mostly infeasible, and to the degree it can be achieved it's not worth the cost. But it's not at all uncommon for large organizations -- especially government organizations -- to spend vast amounts of effort and resources trying to do something that can't be done and isn't worth doing anyway. c.f. DRM, for one example that's top of mind.
See, they know you won't follow through after they're gone. That's why only they can be trusted to manage the process.
But how do I know they will follow through?
Actually, I probably don't have to worry about that, since their ability to survive without supermarkets and the global supply chains which stock them is basically zero. They'll die even if they change their minds. So, I suppose I have to bow to their logic. Except that they can bite me, of course.
displacing a few people
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
Also, I should point out that you took that quote out of context. That's a very slimy method of argumentation.
In context, I was talking about the sparsely-settled regions of the coast which -- by definition! -- contain few people. For heavily-settled regions the cost of dikes is likely to be less than the cost of resettlement.
displacing a few people
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's all relative.
But anyone who thinks our goal should be to avoid altering our environment really hasn't thought it through, because the only way to achieve that goal is for us to cease existing.
There are people who believe that those espousing "avoid altering our environment" have thought it through, and their goal really is for humans to cease existing. I'm currently leaning toward believing these people.
If there are any such people, it would seem appropriate for them to start by removing themselves. I don't wish anyone ill, but it would be the logical step.
we know that the purpose has never been to catch criminals, it is to catch people doing things contrary to the interests of the state, conduct corporate espionage, and/or gather useful blackmail-worthy information for use at a future time.
Cite?
you can get a readable snap of a license plate from space with the appropriate satellite
Cite?
And, if evolution has given you the right mix of large brain and clever hands, you can alter the nooks and crannies to suit you.
It's worth extending this thought a bit further to recognize that virtually all human life is based on altering the nooks and crannies. If you were to require humans to live in the world as-is -- no buildings, no farms, heck, even making clothing is arguably altering the environment to make it more livable -- there's very, very little area of this planet that could support human life. And even in the few regions that could support human life, that life would be harsh, dangerous and unpleasant.
We live by altering the world to suit us. Period. That doesn't mean we should alter it thoughtlessly, nor that there isn't value in preserving some areas unaltered. But anyone who thinks our goal should be to avoid altering our environment really hasn't thought it through, because the only way to achieve that goal is for us to cease existing.