Oakland used to be a fine and wonderful place to leave your door unlocked overnight. Not anymore.
I'm sick of people bashing Oakland. Yes, parts of the city are frightening. But the parts that are good, are better than just about anywhere in the country. Some parts are both frightening and interesting--converted warehouse artists' lofts in the bad part of West Oakland, for instance. Oakland is where most of the Bay Area's cutting edge cultural scene moved when SF became too expensive. And Lake Merritt is lovely (if a little too suburban for my taste). Free Shakespeare in the park in summer, proximity to Berkeley and the University and all the great stuff there and a ton of amazing restaurants, many of which are actually affordable. I'd rather live in Oakland than just about anywhere else--except San Francisco, where I actually live:-) But sometimes I think I should move to Oakland. The only thing that prevents me is I don't want to have a car, and public transportation isn't as comprehensive as in The City.
I take it this "unfair competition" business is unique to the phone companies and their status as a regulated monopoly. As others have noted, I don't see the bottled water companies complaining about unfair competition from the municipal water systems.
If the government had granted the ability to have compulsory fees for everyone, even those who don't use the broadband provided, in order to pay for the others... would you be OK with this?
Sure! Why not. If enough people are unhappy about it, they can change the government. Majority rule and all that. There is no God-given right to only pay for the government services you use.
So: storage capacity or a screen + radio? I'll take the screen + radio, thank you.
Except... er. My Rio Cali doesn't play AAC files. I didn't care about that when I bought it, but I've been using the iTunes store more and more. I never thought I would, but it's just so damn easy compared to ferreting stuff out on KaZaA. That inferface is like crack.
My roommate's home page was set to yahoo.com. She never entered URLs into the address toolbar--always into the Yahoo search field. The distinction was lost on her. It makes my teeth itch just thinking about it.
Choosing who you bring into your company is a pretty damn basic right, and the majority cannot take it away.
Er. Which Constitutional amendment is that? I'm pretty sure that if the INS found out I was hiring illegal immigrants, they'd shut me down.
The majority clearly *does* have the right to impose its will on the minority. That's the most basic principle of democracy. Exceptions to majority rule are a fairly recent modification to the concept.
Say it with me: "My job does not belong to me." Try it again: "My job does not belong to me."
Say it with me: "I live in a democracy."
If the system hurts me and the majority of citizens to help the few, we have the right to change it so it works better for us.
This is how democracy works. Deal with it, or move to a non-democratic country. The right of corporations to pay the absolute rock-bottom price for everything is not in the Bill of Rights.
You talk of "the economy" as if all the growth in it is evenly distributed. But it's not. Wages have stagnated for decades, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up, and up, and up.
Let's say the demographic timebomb explodes. Corporate profits go down as employers are forced to raise wages to attract employees. If my wages are up, what do I care if corporate profits are down? Wealth is redistributed from shareholders to workers. For most of us, that's a good thing.
"[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
They were IMMIGRANTS. They came here to share the benefits and burdens of living in this country and make their lives here. H1B workers aren't immigrants. They come here for a few years and work for wages that no one who is planning to buy a house, raise a family, and send his kids to college in America could afford to work for. Then they go home to a country where their dollars buy 10 times as much, and where the wealthy are able to exploit the labor of a giant, peasant underclass with a standard of living close to that of European peasants 120 years ago.
These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.)
Great! So American corporations get an educated workforce without having to invest anything in the people at home, without having to create stable career paths for their workers. Why train and promote your junior programmers? It's so much easier to hire a kid in his 20s, work him like a dog for a few years, then lay him off when his salary demands are too high and plug in an experienced worker from overseas who doesn't need to earn enough to support a middle-class lifestyle in America. That's a great system if you're part of the 5 percent of the population that makes most of its money from investments. If you have to work for a living, it's a lousy deal. It's also a lousy deal for the countries that paid for their education, only to see the benefit go to corporations overseas.
I don't resent Indian programmers trying to make a living. In their place, I would do the same thing. But we need to recognize that we didn't build a middle class in this country by following the rules of laissez faire capitalism. We set limits on immigration to constrict the labor supply, organized workers into unions, and intervened in the economy to create rules that favored the creation of a middle class. Capitalism, as its name suggests, overwhelming rigs the game in favor of those who own capital. In recognition of this, we have to demand that the main beneficiaries of this system give something back so that those who don't own capital can also have decent lives.
We never really cared about exploration in the first place. The big push to get into space came because we were afraid the Soviets would develop space-based weapons that would annihilate us. Now that we're no longer afraid of that, we have other priorities than sending humans into space to collect moon rocks. Other countries' interest in manned space exploration (ie, China) seems to me more a function of the fact that their leaders are about 150 years old and still reeling from the propaganda loss they suffered when the Capitalists planted a US flag on the moon. Exploration? What are they expecting to find on the moon? It's a cold, dead, rock. Most of Earth's oceans remain unexplored, and we're far more likely to make novel discoveries exploring there.
I'm depressed that other industrial countries seem to be doing more to develop sustainable, non-petroleum energy sources. If there is to be a Manhattan Project for the 21st century, that would be it for me. But I'm not too depressed, because American universities are at the forefront of that effort, even if it isn't a priority of the government or the corporate establishment. With the right leadership, we could quickly jump into the lead.
George Bush did not win because of some evil Diebold exec or magical vote changing election booths.
How can you say that for certain when some of the machines leave no paper trail?
The fact that the exit polling was so wrong isn't conclusive proof of fraud, but it's enough to make me suspicious.
Tales of fraudulent voter registration were vastly exaggerated--an excuse for suppressing votes. Who cares if Elmer Fudd registered to vote? Elmer Fudd isn't going to show up at the polls.
We shouldn't even need to register weeks in advance to vote. It's just another way of keeping voters away from the polls, to the benefit of incumbents.
And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.
Newsom's campaign emphasized this issue. I'm not sure I agree with his approach, but suffice it to say he is not ignoring the homeless problem in order to implement free wireless. There is a measure on the city ballot to increase the sales tax and give all of the increase to social services. It will probably pass.
The thing is, homelessness is an enormously expensive problem to solve, probably beyond the means of any individual city. Cities that "solve" their problems with homelessness do so by shifting the burden to other cities--it's not like anyone checks your passport when you take BART in from Concord. There is nothing to stop Concord from cutting its social services budget to nothing, so those people are forced to go to San Francisco for their methadone. This is what has happened all over America. And why not? If you can get rid of your drug addicts and homeless by CUTTING the social services budget, why not do so? Nobody wants these people in their neighborhood. We need to stop shifting this problem around and solve it on a national level. Unfortunately, it's hard to muster the political will. When suburban people see that their communities have no homeless, they assume the problem has been solved, and it hasn't.
Wireless access, on the other hand, is relatively cheap, and can be done with or without national cooperation, so it doesn't make sense to put this on hold until we solve the problem of homelessness. It isn't merely a lack of $2-3 million that is at the root of the problem--if that were the case, a rich, liberal city like San Francisco would have solved it a long time ago.
Obligatory reference to the '80s Mike Myers skit
on
Mechanical Pong
·
· Score: 0
Diese is zee time on Sprockets venn vee PLAY PONG!
We know the Washington Post is liberal, we know the Washington Times is conservative
No! They are not flip sides of the same coin, damn it!
There isn't a left-wing equivalent to the Washington Times. When the Washington Post gets facts wrong, it's a BIG DEAL, because people of all political persuasions expect them to be accurate. The Washington Times is like Pravda. No one expects them to be accurate. The only reason anyone reads it is to find out the GOP's talking points for this week.
Post editor Ben Bradlee defined a difference between "objectivity," and "fairness." News staff have points of view which inevitably influence coverage, but nevertheless, in the spirt of fairness, they are expected to present other points of view in the best possible light, and to present them accurately, whether they agree or not. The Times doesn't hold its news staff to that standard, and that's why they aren't credible. They exist to promote the agenda of their owner, cult leader Sun Myung Moon, who thinks he is the messiah.
We would not be well served by a left-wing equivalent to the Washington Times. Two lies don't add up to one truth.
Moreover, the Washington Post hasn't been exactly hospitable to Democratic candidates in recent years. If they've been tilting their coverage to get Clinton, Gore, and Kerry elected, they've been doing a lousy job of it. Bob Woodward was given unprecedented access to the Bush White House to write his book, for Christ's sake. Do you think they'd do that for a reporter from some Leftist rag? And the editorial page publishes Charles Krauthammer.
I will stipulate that Post publisher Phil Graham was probably a little too close to John F. Kennedy. But that was a long time ago. In general, the Post is too intertwined with the power structure in Washington. But that doesn't make them a liberal newspaper. It makes them an objective newspaper with some problems. Given the structure of our institutions (government officials don't have to talk to you, if they don't like you), I'm not sure the Post can be less establishmentarian than they are without losing the access that makes them a newspaper of record.
Knowing the inner-city conditions and living costs of most major cities i've been to, i'm continually amazed anyone wants to live there.
I'm amazed that anyone thinks suburbia is a good place to raise kids. I was a prisoner in my home until I was 16 and allowed to drive a car. After-school options until that age were curtailed by the lack of transportation. It would have been good to have some kind of after-school clubs to go to, but who's gonna drive us home? Our school was 7 miles away. If you wonder why our culture is so vapid, maybe it's because the last generation of kids, instead of going to band practice or drama practice after school, went home to watch the Jefferson's on TV.
When my sister and I were in high school, we both had our own car, and worked crappy McJobs to pay for them. That's one household, four cars. We didn't need to haul things, usually--we just needed them to get ourselves places. What a waste.
I live in "inner city" San Francisco now, without a car, and I love it. My stress is so much lower now that I no longer spend an hour a day fighting traffic. No place in the city is more than 2 blocks from public transit. If I need a car, I can rent one, but so far I haven't needed to at all this year. My neighborhood isn't "crime-ridden." There was a murder a couple years ago, but the locals were as shocked as if it had happened in any Mayberry, USA. We have great parks that are much more interesting than any fenced-off suburban yard.
I do miss having a dog. Maybe when I can afford doggy day care...
I thought everybody but George Bush knew that the supposed economics of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were a crock.
The purpose of Bush's "hydrogen" initiative was to make himself less repulsive to moderates without actually having to, you know, DO anything. He wouldn't have proposed it if it required a serious commitment of resources during his presidency.
I think people should be allowed to own guns for defensive purposes. I don't think it should be an absolute right. We should be able to outlaw certain categories of weapons. I think we should require training, licensing, and registration, like we do for automobiles. Is that so terribly unreasonabe? I don't think so.
What I object to is people using fake data to support their arguments. Such folks should be run out of town on a rail. They don't do anyone any good.
I will give you credit for posting a link to an actual Web site. But I've never heard of the National Institute of Justice, and there is nothing in their report that supports any of the allegedly fraudulent stats cited previous.
I'll quote your own report here (without vouching for its credibility):
"Private citizens sometimes use their guns to scare off trespassers and fend off assaults. Such defensive gun uses (DGUs) are sometimes invoked as a measure of the public benefit of private gun ownership. On the basis of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year. But other surveys yield far higher estimates of the numbers of DGUs."
If I were unscrupulous, I could have edited the preceding quote to exclude the last sentence. But I wanted to take it in context. I'm not quoting the "other surveys" though, because I don't have any idea whether they're credible. Suffice it to say, they weren't conducted by the FBI, or by anyone commissioned by the FBI. Which is what the poster I was responding to claimed.
Why don't you try to dispute the statistics of the studies I did you give you references to
You want me to dispute your fake statistics?
OK, how's this. According to a study commissioned by Emory University, there is a 100 percent probability that you're an asshat who uses made-up statistics to try to win an argument.
The FBI commissioned a STUDY to determine the prevalence of defensive gun use, in response to independent studies which indicated it was much more common than the anti-gun lobby would like us to believe.
Where's the study? You give specific statistics but you can't link to the source you got them from? Liar.
Here's how you do it. According to the FBI, there were 1.43 million violent crimes in the United States in 2002. According to you, more than half this number were interrupted by the defensive use of a firearm. That's ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
You've never actually read the NY Times, have you?
Oakland used to be a fine and wonderful place to leave your door unlocked overnight. Not anymore.
:-) But sometimes I think I should move to Oakland. The only thing that prevents me is I don't want to have a car, and public transportation isn't as comprehensive as in The City.
I'm sick of people bashing Oakland. Yes, parts of the city are frightening. But the parts that are good, are better than just about anywhere in the country. Some parts are both frightening and interesting--converted warehouse artists' lofts in the bad part of West Oakland, for instance. Oakland is where most of the Bay Area's cutting edge cultural scene moved when SF became too expensive. And Lake Merritt is lovely (if a little too suburban for my taste). Free Shakespeare in the park in summer, proximity to Berkeley and the University and all the great stuff there and a ton of amazing restaurants, many of which are actually affordable. I'd rather live in Oakland than just about anywhere else--except San Francisco, where I actually live
I take it this "unfair competition" business is unique to the phone companies and their status as a regulated monopoly. As others have noted, I don't see the bottled water companies complaining about unfair competition from the municipal water systems.
If the government had granted the ability to have compulsory fees for everyone, even those who don't use the broadband provided, in order to pay for the others... would you be OK with this?
Sure! Why not. If enough people are unhappy about it, they can change the government. Majority rule and all that. There is no God-given right to only pay for the government services you use.
For about the same amount of money as the 512MB iPod Shuffle, you can get a flash-memory-based 256MB Rio Cali.
0 00 0AXKBK/103-1100119-7537416?v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B
The Cali also has a screen and an FM tuner.
So: storage capacity or a screen + radio? I'll take the screen + radio, thank you.
Except... er. My Rio Cali doesn't play AAC files. I didn't care about that when I bought it, but I've been using the iTunes store more and more. I never thought I would, but it's just so damn easy compared to ferreting stuff out on KaZaA. That inferface is like crack.
Don't worry. Spock's unique Vulcan physiology will enable him to survive and save the crew in the last 5 minutes. I call this "Deus ex Vulcana."
Yes. It literally means "etcetera".
No. I don't remember exactly what the acronym stands for, but it's not "etcetera." It's something Tables and Configurations.
My roommate's home page was set to yahoo.com. She never entered URLs into the address toolbar--always into the Yahoo search field. The distinction was lost on her. It makes my teeth itch just thinking about it.
Finally, the final nail in the coffin of God! This'll shut those Christians up for sure.
Choosing who you bring into your company is a pretty damn basic right, and the majority cannot take it away.
Er. Which Constitutional amendment is that? I'm pretty sure that if the INS found out I was hiring illegal immigrants, they'd shut me down.
The majority clearly *does* have the right to impose its will on the minority. That's the most basic principle of democracy. Exceptions to majority rule are a fairly recent modification to the concept.
Say it with me: "My job does not belong to me." Try it again: "My job does not belong to me."
Say it with me: "I live in a democracy."
If the system hurts me and the majority of citizens to help the few, we have the right to change it so it works better for us.
This is how democracy works. Deal with it, or move to a non-democratic country. The right of corporations to pay the absolute rock-bottom price for everything is not in the Bill of Rights.
You talk of "the economy" as if all the growth in it is evenly distributed. But it's not. Wages have stagnated for decades, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone up, and up, and up.
Let's say the demographic timebomb explodes. Corporate profits go down as employers are forced to raise wages to attract employees. If my wages are up, what do I care if corporate profits are down? Wealth is redistributed from shareholders to workers. For most of us, that's a good thing.
I think that maybe these countries lack some pride or something
Also reliable plumbing...
From the writeup:
"[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
They were IMMIGRANTS. They came here to share the benefits and burdens of living in this country and make their lives here. H1B workers aren't immigrants. They come here for a few years and work for wages that no one who is planning to buy a house, raise a family, and send his kids to college in America could afford to work for. Then they go home to a country where their dollars buy 10 times as much, and where the wealthy are able to exploit the labor of a giant, peasant underclass with a standard of living close to that of European peasants 120 years ago.
These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.)
Great! So American corporations get an educated workforce without having to invest anything in the people at home, without having to create stable career paths for their workers. Why train and promote your junior programmers? It's so much easier to hire a kid in his 20s, work him like a dog for a few years, then lay him off when his salary demands are too high and plug in an experienced worker from overseas who doesn't need to earn enough to support a middle-class lifestyle in America. That's a great system if you're part of the 5 percent of the population that makes most of its money from investments. If you have to work for a living, it's a lousy deal. It's also a lousy deal for the countries that paid for their education, only to see the benefit go to corporations overseas.
I don't resent Indian programmers trying to make a living. In their place, I would do the same thing. But we need to recognize that we didn't build a middle class in this country by following the rules of laissez faire capitalism. We set limits on immigration to constrict the labor supply, organized workers into unions, and intervened in the economy to create rules that favored the creation of a middle class. Capitalism, as its name suggests, overwhelming rigs the game in favor of those who own capital. In recognition of this, we have to demand that the main beneficiaries of this system give something back so that those who don't own capital can also have decent lives.
We never really cared about exploration in the first place. The big push to get into space came because we were afraid the Soviets would develop space-based weapons that would annihilate us. Now that we're no longer afraid of that, we have other priorities than sending humans into space to collect moon rocks. Other countries' interest in manned space exploration (ie, China) seems to me more a function of the fact that their leaders are about 150 years old and still reeling from the propaganda loss they suffered when the Capitalists planted a US flag on the moon. Exploration? What are they expecting to find on the moon? It's a cold, dead, rock. Most of Earth's oceans remain unexplored, and we're far more likely to make novel discoveries exploring there.
I'm depressed that other industrial countries seem to be doing more to develop sustainable, non-petroleum energy sources. If there is to be a Manhattan Project for the 21st century, that would be it for me. But I'm not too depressed, because American universities are at the forefront of that effort, even if it isn't a priority of the government or the corporate establishment. With the right leadership, we could quickly jump into the lead.
George Bush did not win because of some evil Diebold exec or magical vote changing election booths.
How can you say that for certain when some of the machines leave no paper trail?
The fact that the exit polling was so wrong isn't conclusive proof of fraud, but it's enough to make me suspicious.
Tales of fraudulent voter registration were vastly exaggerated--an excuse for suppressing votes. Who cares if Elmer Fudd registered to vote? Elmer Fudd isn't going to show up at the polls.
We shouldn't even need to register weeks in advance to vote. It's just another way of keeping voters away from the polls, to the benefit of incumbents.
And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.
Newsom's campaign emphasized this issue. I'm not sure I agree with his approach, but suffice it to say he is not ignoring the homeless problem in order to implement free wireless. There is a measure on the city ballot to increase the sales tax and give all of the increase to social services. It will probably pass.
The thing is, homelessness is an enormously expensive problem to solve, probably beyond the means of any individual city. Cities that "solve" their problems with homelessness do so by shifting the burden to other cities--it's not like anyone checks your passport when you take BART in from Concord. There is nothing to stop Concord from cutting its social services budget to nothing, so those people are forced to go to San Francisco for their methadone. This is what has happened all over America. And why not? If you can get rid of your drug addicts and homeless by CUTTING the social services budget, why not do so? Nobody wants these people in their neighborhood. We need to stop shifting this problem around and solve it on a national level. Unfortunately, it's hard to muster the political will. When suburban people see that their communities have no homeless, they assume the problem has been solved, and it hasn't.
Wireless access, on the other hand, is relatively cheap, and can be done with or without national cooperation, so it doesn't make sense to put this on hold until we solve the problem of homelessness. It isn't merely a lack of $2-3 million that is at the root of the problem--if that were the case, a rich, liberal city like San Francisco would have solved it a long time ago.
Diese is zee time on Sprockets venn vee PLAY PONG!
We know the Washington Post is liberal, we know the Washington Times is conservative
No! They are not flip sides of the same coin, damn it!
There isn't a left-wing equivalent to the Washington Times. When the Washington Post gets facts wrong, it's a BIG DEAL, because people of all political persuasions expect them to be accurate. The Washington Times is like Pravda. No one expects them to be accurate. The only reason anyone reads it is to find out the GOP's talking points for this week.
Post editor Ben Bradlee defined a difference between "objectivity," and "fairness." News staff have points of view which inevitably influence coverage, but nevertheless, in the spirt of fairness, they are expected to present other points of view in the best possible light, and to present them accurately, whether they agree or not. The Times doesn't hold its news staff to that standard, and that's why they aren't credible. They exist to promote the agenda of their owner, cult leader Sun Myung Moon, who thinks he is the messiah.
We would not be well served by a left-wing equivalent to the Washington Times. Two lies don't add up to one truth.
Moreover, the Washington Post hasn't been exactly hospitable to Democratic candidates in recent years. If they've been tilting their coverage to get Clinton, Gore, and Kerry elected, they've been doing a lousy job of it. Bob Woodward was given unprecedented access to the Bush White House to write his book, for Christ's sake. Do you think they'd do that for a reporter from some Leftist rag? And the editorial page publishes Charles Krauthammer.
I will stipulate that Post publisher Phil Graham was probably a little too close to John F. Kennedy. But that was a long time ago. In general, the Post is too intertwined with the power structure in Washington. But that doesn't make them a liberal newspaper. It makes them an objective newspaper with some problems. Given the structure of our institutions (government officials don't have to talk to you, if they don't like you), I'm not sure the Post can be less establishmentarian than they are without losing the access that makes them a newspaper of record.
Knowing the inner-city conditions and living costs of most major cities i've been to, i'm continually amazed anyone wants to live there.
I'm amazed that anyone thinks suburbia is a good place to raise kids. I was a prisoner in my home until I was 16 and allowed to drive a car. After-school options until that age were curtailed by the lack of transportation. It would have been good to have some kind of after-school clubs to go to, but who's gonna drive us home? Our school was 7 miles away. If you wonder why our culture is so vapid, maybe it's because the last generation of kids, instead of going to band practice or drama practice after school, went home to watch the Jefferson's on TV.
When my sister and I were in high school, we both had our own car, and worked crappy McJobs to pay for them. That's one household, four cars. We didn't need to haul things, usually--we just needed them to get ourselves places. What a waste.
I live in "inner city" San Francisco now, without a car, and I love it. My stress is so much lower now that I no longer spend an hour a day fighting traffic. No place in the city is more than 2 blocks from public transit. If I need a car, I can rent one, but so far I haven't needed to at all this year. My neighborhood isn't "crime-ridden." There was a murder a couple years ago, but the locals were as shocked as if it had happened in any Mayberry, USA. We have great parks that are much more interesting than any fenced-off suburban yard.
I do miss having a dog. Maybe when I can afford doggy day care...
I thought everybody but George Bush knew that the supposed economics of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were a crock.
The purpose of Bush's "hydrogen" initiative was to make himself less repulsive to moderates without actually having to, you know, DO anything. He wouldn't have proposed it if it required a serious commitment of resources during his presidency.
Chimpy McFlightsuit.
Why has taco not touched slashcode to make real improvements for almost 5 years?
I think it's because slashcode is perl and who the hell wants to modify perl code of this size and age?
Just a guess though.
Here's the thing:
I'm not anti-gun.
I think people should be allowed to own guns for defensive purposes. I don't think it should be an absolute right. We should be able to outlaw certain categories of weapons. I think we should require training, licensing, and registration, like we do for automobiles. Is that so terribly unreasonabe? I don't think so.
What I object to is people using fake data to support their arguments. Such folks should be run out of town on a rail. They don't do anyone any good.
I will give you credit for posting a link to an actual Web site. But I've never heard of the National Institute of Justice, and there is nothing in their report that supports any of the allegedly fraudulent stats cited previous.
I'll quote your own report here (without vouching for its credibility):
"Private citizens sometimes use their guns to scare off trespassers and fend off assaults. Such defensive gun uses (DGUs) are sometimes invoked as a measure of the public benefit of private gun ownership. On the basis of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year. But other surveys yield far higher estimates of the numbers of DGUs."
If I were unscrupulous, I could have edited the preceding quote to exclude the last sentence. But I wanted to take it in context. I'm not quoting the "other surveys" though, because I don't have any idea whether they're credible. Suffice it to say, they weren't conducted by the FBI, or by anyone commissioned by the FBI. Which is what the poster I was responding to claimed.
Why don't you try to dispute the statistics of the studies I did you give you references to
You want me to dispute your fake statistics?
OK, how's this. According to a study commissioned by Emory University, there is a 100 percent probability that you're an asshat who uses made-up statistics to try to win an argument.
The FBI commissioned a STUDY to determine the prevalence of defensive gun use, in response to independent studies which indicated it was much more common than the anti-gun lobby would like us to believe.
Where's the study? You give specific statistics but you can't link to the source you got them from? Liar.
Here's how you do it. According to the FBI, there were 1.43 million violent crimes in the United States in 2002. According to you, more than half this number were interrupted by the defensive use of a firearm. That's ridiculous.
Link to more crime statistics here.