Key distinction in death count: FIRST WORLD COUNTRY. I MADE THIS DISTINCTION IN MY POST...
Your odds of surviving natural disasters greatly depends on the level of modernization in your country. California has 30M people living there and just as many earthquakes as Mexico, but 142 fatalities since 1980 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... vs Mexico with 46,000 with a population 4x larger than California. The difference is level of modernization...
Your key error is you are assuming that CO2 production would be ongoing. If CO2 was actually becoming a problem, then we would have already shifted most of the energy base production to solar, wind and nuclear. Thus, there would be no "keeping up with emissions". The production of new CO2 from fossil fuels would be the first line of attack and the algae farm would be for scrubbing the excess CO2 back down to some lower level. Just look at Germany, France, and some of the other European countries. Nearly eliminating fossil fuels is possible if you want to spend the money on it.
As far as sequestration, all the coal mines, depleted oil fields etc make the ideal location, that is where the CO2 came from in the first place...
It is really not a hard problem to solve, just expensive, and not at all clear that it is actually a problem at this point. Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years (just google underwater ruins). When it clearly becomes a problem, we will fix it.
And you have the assinine assumption that I ever said someone would be walking around with a rifle at a concert. THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID. What I said (go read the first damn post) was someone having a rifle in their truck that they could get to in 90 seconds...good grief man, you are barking up the wrong tree. And you are confused precisely because you are ignorant and continue to be so by choice...
I might piss my self getting shot at, but I would still shoot back. You would just piss yourself.
You are a textbook example of a liberal, trying to twist the world to fit your point of view while simultaneously being proudly ignorant of reality. You can keep posting, but I'm done arguing with someone who just wants to twist words.
My "cant aim for shit" paragraph was in jest, sorry you couldn't figure that out... "highly technical military term" should have been a huge clue...
License to operate and expected lifespan I can agree should be long as you describe, but I would be shocked at more than a 5 year warranty period from the builder. Things wear out and in capital equipment especially it is up to the owner to follow the PM schedule or suffer the consequences.
Or, you know stop thinking about the slowest form of plant...
There are many forms of Algae that consume CO2 very rapidly in the right environment, on the order of nearly 1 ton of CO2 per 2 tons of algae limited primarily by availability of CO2. If you bubble CO2 through the algae, they will consume it in a couple of days with the right nutrients (most of the necessary nutrients could be found on the seafloor and vacuumed up to the surface using compressed, bubbled air and pipes. If it really is an emergency, you can consume your 40 billion tons of CO2 in about 4 years by seeding a 500 mile x 500 mile section in the pacific ocean near the equator (647 billion square meters with ~650 GW of light energy available for the algae) with plant food and algae and then harvesting it using 1000 tanker ships pulling up 200,000 tons of algae per trip (or more likely a neutral buoyancy underwater pipeline). This assumes that you could grow the algae from the surface to ~7 feet in depth, giving you a total growing volume of ~1.75 trillion cubic feet of growing water for your algae (~1.75 billion tons of algae every week, assuming you miss a lot in the filtration/separation process). If your tanker ships each made round trips at 6 day intervals (or you set up a neutral buoyancy pipeline to shore), you could recapture all that carbon in ~4 years, assuming your harvester ships could keep up. You would have to pump the Algae into old empty mines or otherwise sequester it so the carbon couldn't escape, but this is hardly the apocalypse... After 4 years you could probably start using the Algae as a fuel or food source, so most of the equipment would continue to be useful at a lower rate of use.
If global warming actually becomes a problem, we can fix it. Call an engineer when it is a real problem (don't ask a politician, an empty suit journalist or a "climate scientist", their answers are only more money to fund more research).
*Can't tell if trolling or genuinely that stupid? Points at the mass murders by ISIS members with trucks...*
Difficult to commit suicide with a gun when you do not have access to one.
But what you alt left types can't seem to grasp is dead is dead, regardless of the method. Guns just happen to be one of the most effective tool to kill humans. The US is nowhere near the top of the suicide list. With 350,000,000 guns in the US we should be far and away number one in suicides right?... Oops, nope, we are 46 place in suicides, behind China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Sweden, Finland and 39 other countries... Care to try the BS game again? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No, the difference is we used to lock up the crazies, paranoid schizophrenics and the lot for everyone's safety, then the ACLU destroyed the system and we turned all the mentally ill out on the streets...
You are a moron and are obviously bad at math and statistics. No wonder you hide behind AC.
"4x more likely to die of a gunshot."
OK, if non gun owners are 10x more likely to be murdered, but with knives, bats, machete etc. those are damn good odds for the gun owner.
So the sheep like you who don't arm yourself are 10x more likely to be murdered, but at least you can take solace that it is less likely to be a gun.
OTOH, gun owners like me are 10x less likely to be murdered because when people come at us with anything but a gun, we take them out. If someone comes at us with a gun, maybe we have a 50/50 chance at surviving, while unarmed sheep like you are already dead on the floor we are able to at least have a fighting chance.
"who the fuck brings a rifle to a rock concert though?"
50 years ago, people were almost constantly armed if they wanted to be, and it was a common sight to see trucks driving around with a rifle rack. It wasn't an issue of bringing a gun. If you drove somewhere, you were armed, if you could make it back to your truck (or hell any active or retired military would have broken a window and pulled out that rifle to use against the shooter) and that was the contrast I posited in my original post.
"I also note you've smoothly moved from "hunters" to "retired military" with no acknowledgement after I pointed out that returning fire is very much different from hitting a target. Your dishonesty has been noted."
I simply added them to the list because there were dozens at that concert (I watched TV interviews with some of them after the shooting). I stand by my original statement. I will stack my experienced hunter returning fire 90 seconds after the shooting started over your 15 minute police response any day of the week. Whether you are a trained soldier or just a marksman, you are going to be very scared either way, but you have to set it aside and focus on what needs to be done. A patriot is a patriot. The guy who stopped the Texas church shooter was just an armed citizen.
"Can't aim for shit" is a technical military term proudly passed down through the generations. I learned it along with marksmanship, gun safety and hunting from my father and grandfather. My grandfather was an army ranger sniper in WW2 in Europe who first taught advanced marksmanship and then shipped out on D-day. The reason he was such a good shot? He grew up hunting... Most hunters who practice and hunt regularly are better shots with their long gun than the police and at least on par with your average enlisted man (excluding snipers/special forces/etc). To a large degree it is experience putting rounds on the target and shooting under different conditions and relative elevations that makes you a better shot.
Look, if you are going to be a pompous ass, at least be right. I said Europe, not the UK. Unless the rest of the continent phased into another dimension, there are a lot more countries in Europe than just the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Filter by region and look through EUROPE...
And the African American murder rate is a tragedy, and a fact. It has nothing to do with race or racism, it has everything to do with a violent, defective sub culture that rejects upstanding citizenship in favor of the gangster life. To claim it is racist is stupid bullshit that no one will tolerate anymore. State your argument or shut up and let the grown ups talk.
If you remove that sub culture and avoid the liberal inner cities, your risk of homicide is ~2.5 per 100k, which is comparable to many and lower than some countries in Europe. If you are interested in actual facts, feel free to read up and un-brainwash yourself...
The gun grabbers are focused on assault weapons (AKA semiautomatic long guns and carbines) (never mind like 90% plus of murders are committed with handguns) because the semiautomatic long rifle is the main threat to their long term agenda of subjugation of the US citizenry, destruction of the constitution and imposition of the alt-left fascist wonderland.
I have yet to hear an alternative explanation that holds any water. Any of the more powerful long rifle cartridges can penetrate body armor, which you can guarantee all the jack booted brown shirts of the progressives will be wearing. Thus, no way they can set aside the constitution until we are disarmed. After that, they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want because they will have all the guns (police, military, etc.) and we will be disarmed. They learned this message from the mass murderer Vladimir Lenin who once remarked "1 man with a gun can control 100 without." https://www.brainyquote.com/qu...
Theres these things that the citty folk have never seen. I hear they are quite common and actually contain most of the carbon on the planet... Plants I think they are called.... They are very good at scrubbing CO2 down into the parts per million range (for you non-science majors and climate "scientists" that is very damn little left in the atmosphere.
The two questions I have is why was Fukushima still active after 30 plus years? What exactly is the warranty period for nuclear power plants.
I would love to get a 30 year warranty on my car or phone. I see they are trying to sue GE... Who issued permits in Japan for this plant? Typically responsibility shifts to the operator after power plants are completed and functioning well since regardless of design or workmanship you can easily destroy a power plant through incompetence or insufficient maintenance.
It is also interesting that the reactor survived the quake it'self but was essentially destroyed by the tsunami.
There is this concept in liability law called Act of God. The Japan Tsunami qualifies if anything ever did. That event killed 15,894 people in a first world country, and as far as I am aware is the highest death toll event in a first world country in at least 70 years outside of war. The Tsunami wave reached a peak height of 133 feet. That is Biblical level apocalyptic disaster right there.
You are not even worth a response. I sincerely hope the police are nearby for whatever shit goes down in your life to save you. I don't have that concern for myself.
Just keep in mind that your survival is dependent on people like me and you wouldn't last a week on a deserted island because everything key to your survival is done for you by someone else.
Look, you are clearly from the UK and have no clue WTF you are talking about. Please stick to topics to which you have knowledge.
Just so you don't make a complete fool of yourself next time, here are some statistics. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
Note that African Americans make up 15% of the population while accounting for ~2500 out of 5700 murders. There is clearly a sub culture of violence there that does not extend to the other minorities or indeed the other 85% of the population.
Considering you live in the UK, unless you served in the military, your only experience with guns has been TV, movies and the pap that your liberal media has spoon fed you. Meanwhile, disarmed Europe is one charismatic dictator away from another Hitler... Atheism and antisemitism area already well on their way in Europe. https://www.huffingtonpost.com... https://www.spectator.co.uk/20...
The Las Vegas shooter was firing AR15 style rifles from 35 stories up at 500 yards range at nearly full auto at night using a bump stock. (One rifle at at a time, probably swapping rifles to keep from warping the barrels). The only reason he hit anyone was the sheer number of bullets he fired and the fact that he was firing into a crowd of 22,000 people. His hit ratio was ~550 injured or killed or about 2.5%. And that was aiming for a mob of people who were unaware of what was going on, at least at first. Anyone who as ever fired a fully automatic weapon knows that you cannot aim for shit at full auto. Anyone who has even seen a bump stock in action knows that you can't hit the broad side of a barn at 100 yards using one. The barrel and sight literally jump around in your hands beyond even the normal recoil... Compare that to a hunter (or retired or active duty military, many of whom were in the crowd) with a rifle crouched behind a truck looking for the shooter. At full auto, the muzzle flashes from the MGM were readily apparent to many witnesses.
The problem with businesses in general (I can't speak about Equifax because I am not fully up to speed on all the facts there) is that there must be some legal release of liability for best practices. For example, in Engineering, if you can demonstrate that you followed state of the art best practices, you are pretty much assured of avoiding criminal or civil liability, even if your product kills someone.
In the real world, shit happens, and some things are just un-knowable until they happen. I am all for C-level and board of directors jail time and mandatory fines of $1000 or actual damages per person harmed, whichever is higher for all data breaches, but a federal criminal investigation must show negligence first.
The US has far more freedom than Europe, and if you remove a 15% violent, lawless minority that commits 50% of all murders in the US, we have the same or better murder rate than Europe. The most heavily armed states with the highest CCW numbers also have the lowest crime rates, including murder rates. If you actually want to know the truth based on facts (rather than just virtue signaling your liberal friends or feeding your own vanity) check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/More-Gu...
That would mean that almost everyone who does not carry a gun will either get killed or have a loved one killed in front of them. That clearly is not the case.
The incapability and incuriosity of liberals always suprises me, but I guess at this point it should not...
Fallacy 1: The only harm that a person can experience is murder. This is clearly false. The woman who draws her CCW and confronts a rapist following her in a parking garage late at night may not be stopping a murder, but a rape. The man who draws his CCW when he observes a mugging is not stopping a murder. The list goes on. CCW holders can stop most criminal on innocent crime if they are the intended victim, or if the intended victim is nearby. Stopping a rape or mugging or assault is also good and valuable to society.
Most Americans will never ever be threatened by a gun, except by police. Most who are shot are shot by legally purchased guns.
Fallacy 2: Including criminals in "Americans threatened by gun toting police" is not only fallacy conflation, it is downright evil. It is extremely dishonest and irrational to lump criminals into the same category as innocent citizens (unless you are a criminal or planning on becoming one). We as a society want police to threaten criminals with the use of deadly force. Criminals and those suspected of violent crimes should be treated fairly, but if they fail to obey lawful police commands, they should be shot dead, and that is often what happens. I don't want a police officer risking his life for some piece of garbage that does not respect the rule of law. You sure as hell wouldn't be willing to risk your life for some non-compliant stranger who likely just raped or murdered or whatever the crime was. Why should you expect a police officer to? They are people too, who want to make it home to kiss their wives and tuck their kids into bed. Don't want to get shot, don't fight with police.
Fallacy 3: Nearly all guns in the US were legally purchased in the beginning. Outside of crimes of passion, almost all guns used in crimes were stolen or otherwise illegally obtained, for the same reason that criminals steal a car to use as their getaway car. Guns and cars can both be tracked, unless they are already stolen.
Fallacy 4: Exactly no person in the history of the world has ever been shot by a gun. Everyone who has ever been shot has been shot by someone else, using a gun. Guns are a tool. Get your shit straight.
There was very little truth in your statement so far. If you can't see that, I feel sorry for you.
Two things are in common for every mass shooting. 1: A deranged, insane, man or a terrorist. (FTFY) 2: A gun. Reducing that combination is prudent.
I agree, which is why we need to re-institute involuntary commitment for insane people, see something say something and deport every radical Muslim in the US, bug every radical mosque and not import a single new radical Muslim. Problem solved. (And before you shit a brick, note the differentiation between normal, law abiding Muslim and RADICAL?) Please don't go full retard and say I am for deporting/banning all Muslims...
You want to take away the guns because you see no value in them, but that is because you are ignorant, not because there is no value to an armed citizenry. Tens of thousands of crimes are s
It is true that we have it good, and to a large extent, the reason we have it good is because we used to have the majority of the electorate in the US well educated and capable of thinking for themselves. They cared about truth and pursued it and they voted based on the truth they had found. The system was never perfect, but it was continuously getting better, and then the Democrats realized that they were losing power, so they switched their focus from graft, election rigging and political beatings and started focusing on identity politics, brainwashing in state run schools, and controlling the narrative by controlling the media. In the last 8 years, the alt-left progressives almost succeeded in destroying the country. They have been importing 3rd world peasants both legally and illegally by the millions per year, and enacting legislation that was destroying the middle class. The goal of the alt left is to get 60% of the voting population as ignorant, illiterate peasants who will vote Democrat in exchange for handouts and table scraps. At that point, the Dims can do whatever the hell they want and always get elected and the country as we know it will be gone. They already succeeded in California. Before the amnesty that they talked Regan into, California was a Republican state with a history of Republican governors. After the 1986 amnesty, California became a guaranteed blue state.
Almost every liberal I have ever spoken to is convinced of their virtue over everyone else, they are confident in their superiority, but they can't argue their position out of a paper bag, because they don't have a clue about logic or the actual facts, it is all emotion, backstopped by their education on what to think and the fake news media. If their population grows large enough, the US will devolve into a third world cesspool of corruption like Mexico or Venezuela. Both of whom used to be much better off with a democratic government, but who lost their countries through ignorance and government handouts.
The price of freedom is not only eternal vigilance, but knowledge and keeping abreast of the issues and facts and the capability of wading through the bullshit and emotion.
The history I am referring to is the recent past, something like 1950 to 1970, after which the ACLU eliminated involuntary confinement, and the government shut down the majority of sanitariums in favor of "pill" treatments which clearly do not work for a large swath of the mentally ill. Were there historically a few people committed who did not be long? I am sure there were and it was shitty for them. That single issue could have been more easily addressed with some form of independent federal oversight, rather than completely shutting down the system as was actually done by the ACLU and the supreme court.
In the real world, no system is perfect. However, we have reverted to the state that the mentally ill existed in for the last 3000 years, being treated like human garbage, living on the street, committing assaults and murders on themselves or the public. The progress that had been made with involuntary commitment was wiped out by the misguided lawyers at the ACLU, and now we have to live with the result, where we have paranoid schizophrenics and psychotics and sociopaths running around free in a society where we have a lot of individual responsibility (in the form of cars, guns and the easy ability to make bombs, etc.) Rather than limiting the freedom of everyone, we need to realize that the mentally ill do not need freedom, they need protection from themselves, and it may not be pretty, but that is the truth of the matter.
Gun violence and gun deaths are total bullshit, I hope you know that. In disarmed countries guns are just replaced with other lethal weapons that disadvantage women and the weak because they require more physical strength and skill to kill with (knife, machete, baseball bat, etc.)
Gun deaths and gun violence are lower in Europe, so is their freedom and safety. But actual murder rates with whatever the hell they use (kitchen knife, machete, baseball bat, car, etc.) are very comparable to the US, once you exclude a very violent 15% minority that exists in the US whom liberals continuously protect and pander to.
You don't get your concealed carry permit and carry every day because your life is constantly at risk, you train and prepare for the one or two times in your life where being armed can save your life or the life of a loved one. You are probably just too young and ignorant yet to have had one of those moments, but they happen to almost everyone. And then the libtards try to hide and dial 911 and pray that armed men (AKA police) get there in time (average response time is between 7 and 15 minutes, most violent crime is done and the perp gone by then). The armed conservative picks their moment, draws their weapon and makes a difference. Often verbal warnings and defensive brandishing are sufficient to stop a crime. Mass shootings stopped by an armed citizen save far more people than those stopped by police: http://dailyanarchist.com/2012...
All the proof you need is that nearly all of the Democrat gun grabbers in the US congress either have a concealed carry permit or have armed bodyguards. Good enough for them, but not the rest of us...
I grew up seeing many people who had gun racks in the back windows of their pickups with hunting rifles hanging there. We never had mass shootings. The piece of shit in Las Vegas could have been dealt with if there had been just one experienced hunter with a scoped 30-06 and some ammo. At the very least the shooter would have taken cover when the rounds started coming in. An experienced hunter can easily do 6" groupings at 1000 yards with a 30-06. You can reliably hit a man sized target out to probably twice that distance, and if you get hit with a 30-06 round, you are probably going down.
It is high time that the US government start a blacklist of foreign companies with terrible security practices and block them from importing into the US. Sure, we can't sue DJI, but we sure as hell can block any new shipments from DJI China until they get their shit together, and then require them to pay US cyber security bounties to a third party responsible for auditing and probing their software for 5 years after they get permission to start importing again. This is basic consumer protection. We don't let the Chinese import toys with lead paint, why would we let them import software with HUGE vulnerabilities...
This is likely a case of correlation instead of causation. 40 years ago, the same correlation was probably between TV viewing time and depression. If you are isolated and have no friends, you consume more content in an effort to distract or otherwise fill your time. In the era of TV, people watched a lot of TV to fill the time and distract themselves. In the era of the internet, people are online a lot more, and at least online, if you get into a hobbiest chat room or an MMO and join a good guild, you can still have some real meaningful human interaction.
Both are still a lot better than the centuries old method of alcoholism and drug addiction, that will definitely destroy you...
I was referring to the more recent past: 1950s through 1970s where involuntary commitment in sanitariums kept the mentally ill from harming themselves or others. It was certainly not perfect, but after the 1970s where the ACLU essentially eliminated involuntary commitment, we are back to the mentally ill living on the streets and sleeping in doorways... No one is saying the mentally ill have had it easy throughout history, but at least in the 1960s they had a roof over their head and 3 square meals a day and someone trying to help them.
Mental health care and mental illness has always been problematic, and while in the past it was primarily the responsibility of friends and family to take action if there was a concern, with our increasingly connected society, there is increased responsibility to escalate posts of concern to the proper authorities/mental health professionals. The problem with Facebook, Google and the other internet monopolies is that they want this massive marketshare, but then are demonstrably incapable of handling the responsibilities that come with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Key distinction in death count: FIRST WORLD COUNTRY. I MADE THIS DISTINCTION IN MY POST...
Your odds of surviving natural disasters greatly depends on the level of modernization in your country. California has 30M people living there and just as many earthquakes as Mexico, but 142 fatalities since 1980 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... vs Mexico with 46,000 with a population 4x larger than California. The difference is level of modernization...
Your key error is you are assuming that CO2 production would be ongoing. If CO2 was actually becoming a problem, then we would have already shifted most of the energy base production to solar, wind and nuclear. Thus, there would be no "keeping up with emissions". The production of new CO2 from fossil fuels would be the first line of attack and the algae farm would be for scrubbing the excess CO2 back down to some lower level. Just look at Germany, France, and some of the other European countries. Nearly eliminating fossil fuels is possible if you want to spend the money on it.
As far as sequestration, all the coal mines, depleted oil fields etc make the ideal location, that is where the CO2 came from in the first place...
It is really not a hard problem to solve, just expensive, and not at all clear that it is actually a problem at this point. Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years (just google underwater ruins). When it clearly becomes a problem, we will fix it.
And you have the assinine assumption that I ever said someone would be walking around with a rifle at a concert. THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID. What I said (go read the first damn post) was someone having a rifle in their truck that they could get to in 90 seconds...good grief man, you are barking up the wrong tree. And you are confused precisely because you are ignorant and continue to be so by choice...
I might piss my self getting shot at, but I would still shoot back. You would just piss yourself.
You are a textbook example of a liberal, trying to twist the world to fit your point of view while simultaneously being proudly ignorant of reality. You can keep posting, but I'm done arguing with someone who just wants to twist words.
My "cant aim for shit" paragraph was in jest, sorry you couldn't figure that out... "highly technical military term" should have been a huge clue...
License to operate and expected lifespan I can agree should be long as you describe, but I would be shocked at more than a 5 year warranty period from the builder. Things wear out and in capital equipment especially it is up to the owner to follow the PM schedule or suffer the consequences.
Or, you know stop thinking about the slowest form of plant...
There are many forms of Algae that consume CO2 very rapidly in the right environment, on the order of nearly 1 ton of CO2 per 2 tons of algae limited primarily by availability of CO2. If you bubble CO2 through the algae, they will consume it in a couple of days with the right nutrients (most of the necessary nutrients could be found on the seafloor and vacuumed up to the surface using compressed, bubbled air and pipes. If it really is an emergency, you can consume your 40 billion tons of CO2 in about 4 years by seeding a 500 mile x 500 mile section in the pacific ocean near the equator (647 billion square meters with ~650 GW of light energy available for the algae) with plant food and algae and then harvesting it using 1000 tanker ships pulling up 200,000 tons of algae per trip (or more likely a neutral buoyancy underwater pipeline). This assumes that you could grow the algae from the surface to ~7 feet in depth, giving you a total growing volume of ~1.75 trillion cubic feet of growing water for your algae (~1.75 billion tons of algae every week, assuming you miss a lot in the filtration/separation process). If your tanker ships each made round trips at 6 day intervals (or you set up a neutral buoyancy pipeline to shore), you could recapture all that carbon in ~4 years, assuming your harvester ships could keep up. You would have to pump the Algae into old empty mines or otherwise sequester it so the carbon couldn't escape, but this is hardly the apocalypse... After 4 years you could probably start using the Algae as a fuel or food source, so most of the equipment would continue to be useful at a lower rate of use.
If global warming actually becomes a problem, we can fix it. Call an engineer when it is a real problem (don't ask a politician, an empty suit journalist or a "climate scientist", their answers are only more money to fund more research).
Difficult to commit mass murder with a knife.
*Can't tell if trolling or genuinely that stupid? Points at the mass murders by ISIS members with trucks...*
Difficult to commit suicide with a gun when you do not have access to one.
But what you alt left types can't seem to grasp is dead is dead, regardless of the method. Guns just happen to be one of the most effective tool to kill humans. The US is nowhere near the top of the suicide list. With 350,000,000 guns in the US we should be far and away number one in suicides right? ... Oops, nope, we are 46 place in suicides, behind China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Sweden, Finland and 39 other countries... Care to try the BS game again?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No, the difference is we used to lock up the crazies, paranoid schizophrenics and the lot for everyone's safety, then the ACLU destroyed the system and we turned all the mentally ill out on the streets...
Check out the graph: https://thesocietypages.org/so...
In 1974(?) the ACLU case happened, and the number of mass shootings has been climbing ever since.
In a free society you cannot eliminate all risk, but involuntary incarceration clearly needs to be re-instituted for the mentally ill...
You are a moron and are obviously bad at math and statistics. No wonder you hide behind AC.
"4x more likely to die of a gunshot."
OK, if non gun owners are 10x more likely to be murdered, but with knives, bats, machete etc. those are damn good odds for the gun owner.
So the sheep like you who don't arm yourself are 10x more likely to be murdered, but at least you can take solace that it is less likely to be a gun.
OTOH, gun owners like me are 10x less likely to be murdered because when people come at us with anything but a gun, we take them out. If someone comes at us with a gun, maybe we have a 50/50 chance at surviving, while unarmed sheep like you are already dead on the floor we are able to at least have a fighting chance.
Jackass...
"who the fuck brings a rifle to a rock concert though?"
50 years ago, people were almost constantly armed if they wanted to be, and it was a common sight to see trucks driving around with a rifle rack. It wasn't an issue of bringing a gun. If you drove somewhere, you were armed, if you could make it back to your truck (or hell any active or retired military would have broken a window and pulled out that rifle to use against the shooter) and that was the contrast I posited in my original post.
"I also note you've smoothly moved from "hunters" to "retired military" with no acknowledgement after I pointed out that returning fire is very much different from hitting a target. Your dishonesty has been noted."
I simply added them to the list because there were dozens at that concert (I watched TV interviews with some of them after the shooting). I stand by my original statement. I will stack my experienced hunter returning fire 90 seconds after the shooting started over your 15 minute police response any day of the week. Whether you are a trained soldier or just a marksman, you are going to be very scared either way, but you have to set it aside and focus on what needs to be done. A patriot is a patriot. The guy who stopped the Texas church shooter was just an armed citizen.
"Can't aim for shit" is a technical military term proudly passed down through the generations. I learned it along with marksmanship, gun safety and hunting from my father and grandfather. My grandfather was an army ranger sniper in WW2 in Europe who first taught advanced marksmanship and then shipped out on D-day. The reason he was such a good shot? He grew up hunting... Most hunters who practice and hunt regularly are better shots with their long gun than the police and at least on par with your average enlisted man (excluding snipers/special forces/etc). To a large degree it is experience putting rounds on the target and shooting under different conditions and relative elevations that makes you a better shot.
Feel free to read up on some actual facts about gun control, and actual crime statistics trends.
https://www.nraila.org/issues/...
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-c...
Look, if you are going to be a pompous ass, at least be right. I said Europe, not the UK. Unless the rest of the continent phased into another dimension, there are a lot more countries in Europe than just the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Filter by region and look through EUROPE...
And the African American murder rate is a tragedy, and a fact. It has nothing to do with race or racism, it has everything to do with a violent, defective sub culture that rejects upstanding citizenship in favor of the gangster life. To claim it is racist is stupid bullshit that no one will tolerate anymore. State your argument or shut up and let the grown ups talk.
If you remove that sub culture and avoid the liberal inner cities, your risk of homicide is ~2.5 per 100k, which is comparable to many and lower than some countries in Europe. If you are interested in actual facts, feel free to read up and un-brainwash yourself...
https://www.nraila.org/issues/...
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-c...
The gun grabbers are focused on assault weapons (AKA semiautomatic long guns and carbines) (never mind like 90% plus of murders are committed with handguns) because the semiautomatic long rifle is the main threat to their long term agenda of subjugation of the US citizenry, destruction of the constitution and imposition of the alt-left fascist wonderland.
I have yet to hear an alternative explanation that holds any water. Any of the more powerful long rifle cartridges can penetrate body armor, which you can guarantee all the jack booted brown shirts of the progressives will be wearing. Thus, no way they can set aside the constitution until we are disarmed. After that, they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want because they will have all the guns (police, military, etc.) and we will be disarmed. They learned this message from the mass murderer Vladimir Lenin who once remarked "1 man with a gun can control 100 without." https://www.brainyquote.com/qu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Theres these things that the citty folk have never seen. I hear they are quite common and actually contain most of the carbon on the planet... Plants I think they are called.... They are very good at scrubbing CO2 down into the parts per million range (for you non-science majors and climate "scientists" that is very damn little left in the atmosphere.
Idiots.
So Firefox Quantum, what is next, Firefox Cherry? Firefox Dark? Firefox Quartz? Firefox Victory?
I will only upgrade if it gives my screen a cool blue glow... and I can mix in some Abraxo Cleaner and Turpentine for a big bang.
The two questions I have is why was Fukushima still active after 30 plus years? What exactly is the warranty period for nuclear power plants.
I would love to get a 30 year warranty on my car or phone. I see they are trying to sue GE... Who issued permits in Japan for this plant? Typically responsibility shifts to the operator after power plants are completed and functioning well since regardless of design or workmanship you can easily destroy a power plant through incompetence or insufficient maintenance.
It is also interesting that the reactor survived the quake it'self but was essentially destroyed by the tsunami.
There is this concept in liability law called Act of God. The Japan Tsunami qualifies if anything ever did. That event killed 15,894 people in a first world country, and as far as I am aware is the highest death toll event in a first world country in at least 70 years outside of war. The Tsunami wave reached a peak height of 133 feet. That is Biblical level apocalyptic disaster right there.
You are not even worth a response. I sincerely hope the police are nearby for whatever shit goes down in your life to save you. I don't have that concern for myself.
Just keep in mind that your survival is dependent on people like me and you wouldn't last a week on a deserted island because everything key to your survival is done for you by someone else.
Look, you are clearly from the UK and have no clue WTF you are talking about. Please stick to topics to which you have knowledge.
Just so you don't make a complete fool of yourself next time, here are some statistics. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
Note that African Americans make up 15% of the population while accounting for ~2500 out of 5700 murders. There is clearly a sub culture of violence there that does not extend to the other minorities or indeed the other 85% of the population.
Considering you live in the UK, unless you served in the military, your only experience with guns has been TV, movies and the pap that your liberal media has spoon fed you. Meanwhile, disarmed Europe is one charismatic dictator away from another Hitler... Atheism and antisemitism area already well on their way in Europe. https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/20...
The Las Vegas shooter was firing AR15 style rifles from 35 stories up at 500 yards range at nearly full auto at night using a bump stock. (One rifle at at a time, probably swapping rifles to keep from warping the barrels). The only reason he hit anyone was the sheer number of bullets he fired and the fact that he was firing into a crowd of 22,000 people. His hit ratio was ~550 injured or killed or about 2.5%. And that was aiming for a mob of people who were unaware of what was going on, at least at first. Anyone who as ever fired a fully automatic weapon knows that you cannot aim for shit at full auto. Anyone who has even seen a bump stock in action knows that you can't hit the broad side of a barn at 100 yards using one. The barrel and sight literally jump around in your hands beyond even the normal recoil... Compare that to a hunter (or retired or active duty military, many of whom were in the crowd) with a rifle crouched behind a truck looking for the shooter. At full auto, the muzzle flashes from the MGM were readily apparent to many witnesses.
The problem with businesses in general (I can't speak about Equifax because I am not fully up to speed on all the facts there) is that there must be some legal release of liability for best practices. For example, in Engineering, if you can demonstrate that you followed state of the art best practices, you are pretty much assured of avoiding criminal or civil liability, even if your product kills someone.
In the real world, shit happens, and some things are just un-knowable until they happen. I am all for C-level and board of directors jail time and mandatory fines of $1000 or actual damages per person harmed, whichever is higher for all data breaches, but a federal criminal investigation must show negligence first.
The US has far more freedom than Europe, and if you remove a 15% violent, lawless minority that commits 50% of all murders in the US, we have the same or better murder rate than Europe. The most heavily armed states with the highest CCW numbers also have the lowest crime rates, including murder rates. If you actually want to know the truth based on facts (rather than just virtue signaling your liberal friends or feeding your own vanity) check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/More-Gu...
That would mean that almost everyone who does not carry a gun will either get killed or have a loved one killed in front of them. That clearly is not the case.
The incapability and incuriosity of liberals always suprises me, but I guess at this point it should not...
Fallacy 1: The only harm that a person can experience is murder. This is clearly false. The woman who draws her CCW and confronts a rapist following her in a parking garage late at night may not be stopping a murder, but a rape. The man who draws his CCW when he observes a mugging is not stopping a murder. The list goes on. CCW holders can stop most criminal on innocent crime if they are the intended victim, or if the intended victim is nearby. Stopping a rape or mugging or assault is also good and valuable to society.
Most Americans will never ever be threatened by a gun, except by police. Most who are shot are shot by legally purchased guns.
Fallacy 2: Including criminals in "Americans threatened by gun toting police" is not only fallacy conflation, it is downright evil. It is extremely dishonest and irrational to lump criminals into the same category as innocent citizens (unless you are a criminal or planning on becoming one). We as a society want police to threaten criminals with the use of deadly force. Criminals and those suspected of violent crimes should be treated fairly, but if they fail to obey lawful police commands, they should be shot dead, and that is often what happens. I don't want a police officer risking his life for some piece of garbage that does not respect the rule of law. You sure as hell wouldn't be willing to risk your life for some non-compliant stranger who likely just raped or murdered or whatever the crime was. Why should you expect a police officer to? They are people too, who want to make it home to kiss their wives and tuck their kids into bed. Don't want to get shot, don't fight with police.
Fallacy 3: Nearly all guns in the US were legally purchased in the beginning. Outside of crimes of passion, almost all guns used in crimes were stolen or otherwise illegally obtained, for the same reason that criminals steal a car to use as their getaway car. Guns and cars can both be tracked, unless they are already stolen.
Fallacy 4: Exactly no person in the history of the world has ever been shot by a gun. Everyone who has ever been shot has been shot by someone else, using a gun. Guns are a tool. Get your shit straight.
There was very little truth in your statement so far. If you can't see that, I feel sorry for you.
Two things are in common for every mass shooting.
1: A deranged, insane, man or a terrorist. (FTFY)
2: A gun.
Reducing that combination is prudent.
I agree, which is why we need to re-institute involuntary commitment for insane people, see something say something and deport every radical Muslim in the US, bug every radical mosque and not import a single new radical Muslim. Problem solved. (And before you shit a brick, note the differentiation between normal, law abiding Muslim and RADICAL?) Please don't go full retard and say I am for deporting/banning all Muslims...
You want to take away the guns because you see no value in them, but that is because you are ignorant, not because there is no value to an armed citizenry. Tens of thousands of crimes are s
It is true that we have it good, and to a large extent, the reason we have it good is because we used to have the majority of the electorate in the US well educated and capable of thinking for themselves. They cared about truth and pursued it and they voted based on the truth they had found. The system was never perfect, but it was continuously getting better, and then the Democrats realized that they were losing power, so they switched their focus from graft, election rigging and political beatings and started focusing on identity politics, brainwashing in state run schools, and controlling the narrative by controlling the media. In the last 8 years, the alt-left progressives almost succeeded in destroying the country. They have been importing 3rd world peasants both legally and illegally by the millions per year, and enacting legislation that was destroying the middle class. The goal of the alt left is to get 60% of the voting population as ignorant, illiterate peasants who will vote Democrat in exchange for handouts and table scraps. At that point, the Dims can do whatever the hell they want and always get elected and the country as we know it will be gone. They already succeeded in California. Before the amnesty that they talked Regan into, California was a Republican state with a history of Republican governors. After the 1986 amnesty, California became a guaranteed blue state.
Almost every liberal I have ever spoken to is convinced of their virtue over everyone else, they are confident in their superiority, but they can't argue their position out of a paper bag, because they don't have a clue about logic or the actual facts, it is all emotion, backstopped by their education on what to think and the fake news media. If their population grows large enough, the US will devolve into a third world cesspool of corruption like Mexico or Venezuela. Both of whom used to be much better off with a democratic government, but who lost their countries through ignorance and government handouts.
The price of freedom is not only eternal vigilance, but knowledge and keeping abreast of the issues and facts and the capability of wading through the bullshit and emotion.
The history I am referring to is the recent past, something like 1950 to 1970, after which the ACLU eliminated involuntary confinement, and the government shut down the majority of sanitariums in favor of "pill" treatments which clearly do not work for a large swath of the mentally ill. Were there historically a few people committed who did not be long? I am sure there were and it was shitty for them. That single issue could have been more easily addressed with some form of independent federal oversight, rather than completely shutting down the system as was actually done by the ACLU and the supreme court.
In the real world, no system is perfect. However, we have reverted to the state that the mentally ill existed in for the last 3000 years, being treated like human garbage, living on the street, committing assaults and murders on themselves or the public. The progress that had been made with involuntary commitment was wiped out by the misguided lawyers at the ACLU, and now we have to live with the result, where we have paranoid schizophrenics and psychotics and sociopaths running around free in a society where we have a lot of individual responsibility (in the form of cars, guns and the easy ability to make bombs, etc.) Rather than limiting the freedom of everyone, we need to realize that the mentally ill do not need freedom, they need protection from themselves, and it may not be pretty, but that is the truth of the matter.
Gun violence and gun deaths are total bullshit, I hope you know that. In disarmed countries guns are just replaced with other lethal weapons that disadvantage women and the weak because they require more physical strength and skill to kill with (knife, machete, baseball bat, etc.)
Gun deaths and gun violence are lower in Europe, so is their freedom and safety. But actual murder rates with whatever the hell they use (kitchen knife, machete, baseball bat, car, etc.) are very comparable to the US, once you exclude a very violent 15% minority that exists in the US whom liberals continuously protect and pander to.
You don't get your concealed carry permit and carry every day because your life is constantly at risk, you train and prepare for the one or two times in your life where being armed can save your life or the life of a loved one. You are probably just too young and ignorant yet to have had one of those moments, but they happen to almost everyone. And then the libtards try to hide and dial 911 and pray that armed men (AKA police) get there in time (average response time is between 7 and 15 minutes, most violent crime is done and the perp gone by then). The armed conservative picks their moment, draws their weapon and makes a difference. Often verbal warnings and defensive brandishing are sufficient to stop a crime. Mass shootings stopped by an armed citizen save far more people than those stopped by police: http://dailyanarchist.com/2012...
All the proof you need is that nearly all of the Democrat gun grabbers in the US congress either have a concealed carry permit or have armed bodyguards. Good enough for them, but not the rest of us...
I grew up seeing many people who had gun racks in the back windows of their pickups with hunting rifles hanging there. We never had mass shootings. The piece of shit in Las Vegas could have been dealt with if there had been just one experienced hunter with a scoped 30-06 and some ammo. At the very least the shooter would have taken cover when the rounds started coming in. An experienced hunter can easily do 6" groupings at 1000 yards with a 30-06. You can reliably hit a man sized target out to probably twice that distance, and if you get hit with a 30-06 round, you are probably going down.
It is high time that the US government start a blacklist of foreign companies with terrible security practices and block them from importing into the US. Sure, we can't sue DJI, but we sure as hell can block any new shipments from DJI China until they get their shit together, and then require them to pay US cyber security bounties to a third party responsible for auditing and probing their software for 5 years after they get permission to start importing again. This is basic consumer protection. We don't let the Chinese import toys with lead paint, why would we let them import software with HUGE vulnerabilities...
This is likely a case of correlation instead of causation. 40 years ago, the same correlation was probably between TV viewing time and depression. If you are isolated and have no friends, you consume more content in an effort to distract or otherwise fill your time. In the era of TV, people watched a lot of TV to fill the time and distract themselves. In the era of the internet, people are online a lot more, and at least online, if you get into a hobbiest chat room or an MMO and join a good guild, you can still have some real meaningful human interaction.
Both are still a lot better than the centuries old method of alcoholism and drug addiction, that will definitely destroy you...
I was referring to the more recent past: 1950s through 1970s where involuntary commitment in sanitariums kept the mentally ill from harming themselves or others. It was certainly not perfect, but after the 1970s where the ACLU essentially eliminated involuntary commitment, we are back to the mentally ill living on the streets and sleeping in doorways... No one is saying the mentally ill have had it easy throughout history, but at least in the 1960s they had a roof over their head and 3 square meals a day and someone trying to help them.
Mental health care and mental illness has always been problematic, and while in the past it was primarily the responsibility of friends and family to take action if there was a concern, with our increasingly connected society, there is increased responsibility to escalate posts of concern to the proper authorities/mental health professionals. The problem with Facebook, Google and the other internet monopolies is that they want this massive marketshare, but then are demonstrably incapable of handling the responsibilities that come with it.