But your proposed common sense laws don't make sense. At least not if your goal is to prevent violence.
Imagine that criminals were driving very fast and killing people. And your solution was "not to get rid of cars" but to get rid of "assault cars." Your solution was to ban black cars (red cars, brown cars, green cars and other colors were good - but black was not); and you banned detailing and you banned leather seats and wooden steering wheels. All these "common-sense" car-laws do not impede the use of "assault cars".
It's getting bad in Europe right now. You guys are hurtling towards serious sectarian violence. Freedom of speech is being quelled. Wrong-think prosecutions currently exist. Your society is fracturing badly. And all that is without the mass immigration and the cultural and financial problems that is bringing.
A 120 lb woman can't defend herself against a 240 lb man breaking into her home. But if she had a pistol she could. Now both of them are in mortal danger. With a pistol or rifle she could defend herself against more than one attacker.
Hunting is a functional purpose.
Hmmmm, maybe but not with the same type of gun as self defence and then only take it when you're actually hunting, ok, i'll give you that one
Actually yes - it would be the same rifle. A.223 (the most popular version of the AR) is a varmint round. In many states it's illegal to shoot deer with it (because it's not a powerful enough round.) It's the cartridge that determines the damage not the rifle (lock -brings in the rounds, stock - rests it against your body, and barrel - contains the exploding gas and directs the projectile. The rifles you're talking about banning are not assault rifles. They are all standard semi-automatic rifles. Again - take a look at what makes something an "assault" weapon. It's an ergonomic add-on (pistol grip). These add ons do not make the rifle more deadly.
Not being helpless in the face of tyranny is a functional purpose.
How's that working at the moment? US police shoot anyone they feel like. People that feel like they need to defend themselves about from the police are victimised and chastised even further. Take a knee? Trump is the closest thing to tyrant the us has ever seen and a big chunk of people are eating it right up. People want to go on about the 2nd amendment. Now's your chance. The situation the US finds itself in now is the situation that was written for so go grab your well regulated militia and go restore some order.
Police shootings have not gone up over decades. The killings of unarmed men are in the 20-50 per year(Don't have time to look up Bureau of Justices Statistics right now)
And, in case it matters, more white people are shot than black (although the percentage rate of black is higher than white)
I don't consider Trump a tyrant. What has he done that contravenes the US constitution?
Has he tried to quell free speech? No. But the left is shutting down discourse on college campuses (using violence and the heckler's veto). Left wing organizations try to deplatform people they disagree with.
Has he shut down newspapers like Maduro did? Is Trump and evil right using their influence to deplatform people? No. Once again that's on the left.
The authoritarian impulses are coming from the left. We are going through a Cultural Revolution now. I can see many on the left (those that equate small-government libertarians with fascists) being in favor of reeducation camps. So, yeah. Not giving up my rifles.
Self-defense is not "movies." The right to self-defense is not something to simply give away.
We don't have a gun accessibility problem. We have a gang problem. Take away gang related violence and our gun problem magically goes away.
So, the real question is why are you so adamant about removing guns? If it was about safety you would be focused on gangs. If you were truly concerned about the instrument of destruction you would be concerned about pistols as they account for about 90% of the gun violence.
Instead you focus on the firearms least used in gun violence.
You evidently have far more faith in the benevolence of government than I do.
There are 100s of stories every day of police taking 10 minutes to arrive - and that's in an urban setting. In rural settings police are often 30+ minutes away. You're dead or raped in that time.
The media's coverage of defensive gun use is close to non-existent. Not because it doesn't happen but because they are, in this arena, propagandists. Depending on what is constitutes defense gun use the stats run from over 1000/week to 10,000 a week.
According to you pre-WW1 technology semi-automatic riffles are "assault weapons." I stressed pre-WWI because there is very little about today's AR-15 - or any other semi-automatic rifle that separates it from earlier semi-automatic rifles: at least as far as accuracy, speed of delivery, and magazine capacity are considered. Don't believe me? Look at what is banned - it all ergonomically and safety related add-ons.
Expandable stocks,
thumbhole stocks,
pistol grips,
suppressors (makes it less loud) Bullets break the sound barrier there is no "silence" for that. Suppressors lessen the noise of the expanding gas. It reduces it from EAR DAMAGING FUKIN LOUD to simply very LOUD.
Lying to Congress in the 2000s while a President Bush appointee would disqualify him, in my opinion.
Having consensual sex of any sort at any age does not disqualify him; nor does drinking to excess, nor lying about sexual conquests as a teenager, young man.
Except more people are killed by bricks than by rifles.
Murders have remarkably stable over the last 20+ years at around 13,000/year +/- 1,000. That means, that as the population has increased murders have decreased.
Each year about 400 people are murdered by rifles.
Knives are about 1800/year
Blunt objects are about 600/year. So bricks, clubs, hammers kill about 50% more people per year than do rifles.
Personal objects (hands, feet) kill around 850/year.
The choice of killing are handguns. However, I rarely hear gun control people talk about handguns - they're always talking about rifles like the, oh so scary AR-15.
And yet rifles make up less than 5% of the murders in this country.
And the overwhelming amount of murders are... GANG violence. We have a GANG problem.
We used to have guns sent anonymously in the mail from Sear Roebuck catalogs. - No Problem.
We used to have gun clubs and rifle ranges at schools. No Problems.
Now we have a problem? Why? It's not the guns. It's something else. You're not focusing on the problem if you're focusing on the guns.
Now, if the problem is citizen opposition to government control; if it's citizen opposition to re-education camps; then yes - citizen ownership of rifles is a problem.
Politicians, such as AOC, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, are on the record thinking that their office gives them the power to rule. No. They are employees hired to legislate. We are citizens. Not subjects.
Now, those who want the government to be all-powerful do not see the populace as citizens. They are a herd to be led, if they're docile, or whipped, if they're not.
You're such a self-righteous homophobe. Oh, right, when you say it - it's just trash talk - but when others say it, it's evidence of their bigotry.
There was no evidence that there was a rape. Re your assertions of criminality: since Bill Clinton lied under oath he should have been removed from office. Right?
How about Hillary's remarks regarding her email server?
I was alive, and in college at the same time, and boofing meant getting wasted - no reference at all to anal sex. Anal sex most definitely was not prevalent in the heterosexual community back then. It was too effing gay. You should have known that but you don't. What were you 2 years old?
And yet the examples you gave show the logical absurdity of the nanny state.
You can't own your own body as regards sex, gambling, abortion, drugs and not have ownership over your own body for something like wearing seat belts.
If you think that people, and not governments, can decide who to have sex with; or what substances they ingest then you ought to be opposed to the government forcing you to wear seatbelts.
Living in a remote area where you have NO electricity, no running water (and obviously) no car means your CO2 production is limited to burning wood. There are tens of millions of such people living in China today, in 2019. They want - and will get running water and electricity.
A frugal lifestyle (small apartment, bicycle to work, no A/C) etc... in the west produces many times the CO2. Case in point - your refridgerator, TV and internet.
Comparing per capita is close to useless as regards implementing policy.
Ok. I'm a city boy but have lived in many rural parts of this country. Virtually everyone I met cared about the environment - as regards clean water, clean air, etc... There are disagreements about how best to accomplish environmental goals. Take a look at France, and the yellow-vest movement to see what happens when environmentalists simply use raising taxes as a means of getting where they want to.
I've never heard of rolling coal - and that is fuked up beyond belief if it's simply to pollute. I've skimmed through the article headers (I'm blocked from accessing sites at work) and I read about this partially being a protest. I don't know what they're protesting - but, on the surface, it seems to be a stupid way to make your point.
Ha. That was the gist of social contract theory as espoused throughout the 17th and 18th C.
Hooker,
Hobbes,
Locke - Madison, Jefferson
Diderot,
Montesquieu
And, of course, enshrined in Blackstone.
It started being altered in the 19th C with the Counter-Enlightenment theorists.
Just as liberals appropriated the term "liberal" meaning individual liberty- it flipped the concept of rights around from that which you have by being born to that given to you by governments.
Here's how you know what a right is - if someone needs to provide to you (education, healthcare, housing) then it's not a right. If it's something you have - that can only be infringed by others - for instance the right to speak your opinions, speak your opinions in public, publish them, believe in the god of your choice (or not) - then it's a right.
You started off making sense and being coherent but you lost me when you started spewing misinformed, bigoted foolishness at the end. No one wants pollution. You seem to have a hard time differentiating between the stated goal of a reform and the actual practice once it's implemented.
Never said " the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" I said that large portions of the south was razed and that it was in economic ruins. And deservedly so.
300 years ago the 1% were royalty and the overwhelming majority of the population lived in what we now call third-world squalor.
It was capitalism that allowed for the technological and economic and social advances. Capitalism did not cause poverty - it existed before. Capitalism created more wealth. Yes. Many people got rich (read about the Pareto Distribution) but the poor got wealthier as well.
Which did better - East Germany or West Germany? (both with the same original culture)
Which did better - North Korea or South Korea? (both with the same original culture)
Socialism failed. By the 1970s even the socialists knew that. Hence the rise of this pseudo-intellectual sop called post-modernism and it's newer intersectional variant.
He's actually more correct than not. Sherman's March did raze large sections of the south. The South was in economic ruins and the plantation owners were also in ruins. Slavery was paid for in blood and treasure. Jim Crow, you can argue was not. But then, the whole idea behind the Great Society rhetoric which expanded welfare and the like in the 1960s, was to jump-start black economic progress.
It didn't work out that way did it? And yet trillions were spent.
Slashdot Mirror
We do regulate the fu*k out of guns.
But your proposed common sense laws don't make sense. At least not if your goal is to prevent violence.
Imagine that criminals were driving very fast and killing people. And your solution was "not to get rid of cars" but to get rid of "assault cars." Your solution was to ban black cars (red cars, brown cars, green cars and other colors were good - but black was not); and you banned detailing and you banned leather seats and wooden steering wheels. All these "common-sense" car-laws do not impede the use of "assault cars".
It's getting bad in Europe right now. You guys are hurtling towards serious sectarian violence. Freedom of speech is being quelled. Wrong-think prosecutions currently exist. Your society is fracturing badly. And all that is without the mass immigration and the cultural and financial problems that is bringing.
Self-defense is a functional purpose.
Only if the other person has a gun also
A 120 lb woman can't defend herself against a 240 lb man breaking into her home. But if she had a pistol she could. Now both of them are in mortal danger. With a pistol or rifle she could defend herself against more than one attacker.
Hunting is a functional purpose.
Hmmmm, maybe but not with the same type of gun as self defence and then only take it when you're actually hunting, ok, i'll give you that one
Actually yes - it would be the same rifle. A .223 (the most popular version of the AR) is a varmint round. In many states it's illegal to shoot deer with it (because it's not a powerful enough round.) It's the cartridge that determines the damage not the rifle (lock -brings in the rounds, stock - rests it against your body, and barrel - contains the exploding gas and directs the projectile. The rifles you're talking about banning are not assault rifles. They are all standard semi-automatic rifles. Again - take a look at what makes something an "assault" weapon. It's an ergonomic add-on (pistol grip). These add ons do not make the rifle more deadly.
Not being helpless in the face of tyranny is a functional purpose.
How's that working at the moment? US police shoot anyone they feel like. People that feel like they need to defend themselves about from the police are victimised and chastised even further. Take a knee? Trump is the closest thing to tyrant the us has ever seen and a big chunk of people are eating it right up. People want to go on about the 2nd amendment. Now's your chance. The situation the US finds itself in now is the situation that was written for so go grab your well regulated militia and go restore some order.
Police shootings have not gone up over decades. The killings of unarmed men are in the 20-50 per year(Don't have time to look up Bureau of Justices Statistics right now)
And, in case it matters, more white people are shot than black (although the percentage rate of black is higher than white)
I don't consider Trump a tyrant. What has he done that contravenes the US constitution? Has he tried to quell free speech? No. But the left is shutting down discourse on college campuses (using violence and the heckler's veto). Left wing organizations try to deplatform people they disagree with.
Has he shut down newspapers like Maduro did? Is Trump and evil right using their influence to deplatform people? No. Once again that's on the left.
The authoritarian impulses are coming from the left. We are going through a Cultural Revolution now. I can see many on the left (those that equate small-government libertarians with fascists) being in favor of reeducation camps. So, yeah. Not giving up my rifles.
Self-defense is not "movies." The right to self-defense is not something to simply give away.
We don't have a gun accessibility problem. We have a gang problem. Take away gang related violence and our gun problem magically goes away.
So, the real question is why are you so adamant about removing guns? If it was about safety you would be focused on gangs. If you were truly concerned about the instrument of destruction you would be concerned about pistols as they account for about 90% of the gun violence.
Instead you focus on the firearms least used in gun violence.
You evidently have far more faith in the benevolence of government than I do.
There are 100s of stories every day of police taking 10 minutes to arrive - and that's in an urban setting. In rural settings police are often 30+ minutes away. You're dead or raped in that time.
The media's coverage of defensive gun use is close to non-existent. Not because it doesn't happen but because they are, in this arena, propagandists. Depending on what is constitutes defense gun use the stats run from over 1000/week to 10,000 a week.
The following article, using a very strict definition of DGU estimates a bit over 1000/week.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/jus...
According to you pre-WW1 technology semi-automatic riffles are "assault weapons." I stressed pre-WWI because there is very little about today's AR-15 - or any other semi-automatic rifle that separates it from earlier semi-automatic rifles: at least as far as accuracy, speed of delivery, and magazine capacity are considered. Don't believe me? Look at what is banned - it all ergonomically and safety related add-ons.
Expandable stocks,
thumbhole stocks,
pistol grips,
suppressors (makes it less loud) Bullets break the sound barrier there is no "silence" for that. Suppressors lessen the noise of the expanding gas. It reduces it from EAR DAMAGING FUKIN LOUD to simply very LOUD.
Self-defense is a functional purpose.
Hunting is a functional purpose.
Not being helpless in the face of tyranny is a functional purpose.
The US today, is going through it's version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Lying to Congress in the 2000s while a President Bush appointee would disqualify him, in my opinion.
Having consensual sex of any sort at any age does not disqualify him; nor does drinking to excess, nor lying about sexual conquests as a teenager, young man.
Except more people are killed by bricks than by rifles.
/year. So bricks, clubs, hammers kill about 50% more people per year than do rifles. /year.
... GANG violence. We have a GANG problem.
Murders have remarkably stable over the last 20+ years at around 13,000/year +/- 1,000. That means, that as the population has increased murders have decreased.
Each year about 400 people are murdered by rifles.
Knives are about 1800/year
Blunt objects are about 600
Personal objects (hands, feet) kill around 850
The choice of killing are handguns. However, I rarely hear gun control people talk about handguns - they're always talking about rifles like the, oh so scary AR-15. And yet rifles make up less than 5% of the murders in this country.
And the overwhelming amount of murders are
We used to have guns sent anonymously in the mail from Sear Roebuck catalogs. - No Problem.
We used to have gun clubs and rifle ranges at schools. No Problems.
Now we have a problem? Why? It's not the guns. It's something else. You're not focusing on the problem if you're focusing on the guns.
Now, if the problem is citizen opposition to government control; if it's citizen opposition to re-education camps; then yes - citizen ownership of rifles is a problem.
US Statistical Abstract - 2012
Year - 2000, 2005, 2008,2009 Handguns - 6,778 7,565 6,755 6,503
Rifles - 411 445 375 352
Knives or cutting - 1,782 1,920 1,897 1,836
Blunt objects - 617 608 614 623
Personal weapons - 927 905 861 815
Not as simple as that now is it?
Politicians, such as AOC, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, are on the record thinking that their office gives them the power to rule. No. They are employees hired to legislate. We are citizens. Not subjects.
Now, those who want the government to be all-powerful do not see the populace as citizens. They are a herd to be led, if they're docile, or whipped, if they're not.
I guess you missed the part that this is an invasive species.
You're such a self-righteous homophobe. Oh, right, when you say it - it's just trash talk - but when others say it, it's evidence of their bigotry.
There was no evidence that there was a rape. Re your assertions of criminality: since Bill Clinton lied under oath he should have been removed from office. Right?
How about Hillary's remarks regarding her email server?
I was alive, and in college at the same time, and boofing meant getting wasted - no reference at all to anal sex. Anal sex most definitely was not prevalent in the heterosexual community back then. It was too effing gay. You should have known that but you don't. What were you 2 years old?
And yet the examples you gave show the logical absurdity of the nanny state.
You can't own your own body as regards sex, gambling, abortion, drugs and not have ownership over your own body for something like wearing seat belts.
If you think that people, and not governments, can decide who to have sex with; or what substances they ingest then you ought to be opposed to the government forcing you to wear seatbelts.
It's far more complicated than per capita.
Living in a remote area where you have NO electricity, no running water (and obviously) no car means your CO2 production is limited to burning wood. There are tens of millions of such people living in China today, in 2019. They want - and will get running water and electricity.
A frugal lifestyle (small apartment, bicycle to work, no A/C) etc... in the west produces many times the CO2. Case in point - your refridgerator, TV and internet.
Comparing per capita is close to useless as regards implementing policy.
Or increase cost.
Or, if the cost isn't increased, accelerate the cost curve.
My father had alzheimers and consumed almost no sugar.
Never drank soda.
Preferred oranges, plums and grapes for dessert (as opposed to pie/cake)
The only sugar he would consume would be that which is found in potatoes and bread (which he made or got from a local Italian bakery)
My aunt is 90 and is sharp as a whip. She has sugar (in the form of jam) every morning. And has a piece of cake (which she baked) every night.
Oh, and both were extremely physically active (walking, gardening) throughout their lives.
Moral of the story - consuming sugar != alzheimers.
You're correct that there are people who do that.
Ok. I'm a city boy but have lived in many rural parts of this country. Virtually everyone I met cared about the environment - as regards clean water, clean air, etc... There are disagreements about how best to accomplish environmental goals. Take a look at France, and the yellow-vest movement to see what happens when environmentalists simply use raising taxes as a means of getting where they want to.
I've never heard of rolling coal - and that is fuked up beyond belief if it's simply to pollute. I've skimmed through the article headers (I'm blocked from accessing sites at work) and I read about this partially being a protest. I don't know what they're protesting - but, on the surface, it seems to be a stupid way to make your point.
Ha. That was the gist of social contract theory as espoused throughout the 17th and 18th C.
Hooker,
Hobbes,
Locke - Madison, Jefferson
Diderot,
Montesquieu
And, of course, enshrined in Blackstone.
It started being altered in the 19th C with the Counter-Enlightenment theorists.
Just as liberals appropriated the term "liberal" meaning individual liberty- it flipped the concept of rights around from that which you have by being born to that given to you by governments. Here's how you know what a right is - if someone needs to provide to you (education, healthcare, housing) then it's not a right. If it's something you have - that can only be infringed by others - for instance the right to speak your opinions, speak your opinions in public, publish them, believe in the god of your choice (or not) - then it's a right.
You started off making sense and being coherent but you lost me when you started spewing misinformed, bigoted foolishness at the end. No one wants pollution. You seem to have a hard time differentiating between the stated goal of a reform and the actual practice once it's implemented.
They don't care about individual rights. There isn't any "women's" right that isn't also a "man's" right. You either own your own body or you do not.
And, very few liberals - and close to no progressives - believe that we own our own bodies.
After all - individual ownership of owns body is antithetical to the nanny state.
Never said " the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery" I said that large portions of the south was razed and that it was in economic ruins. And deservedly so.
What makes you want to dispute that?
300 years ago the 1% were royalty and the overwhelming majority of the population lived in what we now call third-world squalor.
It was capitalism that allowed for the technological and economic and social advances. Capitalism did not cause poverty - it existed before. Capitalism created more wealth. Yes. Many people got rich (read about the Pareto Distribution) but the poor got wealthier as well.
Which did better - East Germany or West Germany? (both with the same original culture) Which did better - North Korea or South Korea? (both with the same original culture)
Socialism failed. By the 1970s even the socialists knew that. Hence the rise of this pseudo-intellectual sop called post-modernism and it's newer intersectional variant.
He's actually more correct than not. Sherman's March did raze large sections of the south. The South was in economic ruins and the plantation owners were also in ruins. Slavery was paid for in blood and treasure. Jim Crow, you can argue was not. But then, the whole idea behind the Great Society rhetoric which expanded welfare and the like in the 1960s, was to jump-start black economic progress.
It didn't work out that way did it? And yet trillions were spent.
I have. And no, there isn't socialism in Locke or Paine.
Yes to a lot of Rousseau's points.
The fundamental axiom of social contract theory is:
"I promise not to kill you and take your stuff if you promise not to kill me and take mine."
That axiom is antithetical to socialism.
Progressivism altered the social contract to be
"I promise to force you to not eat meat if you promise to force me to not eat wheat."
Don't forget including their wife's boyfriend in their wedding pictures.