I'm guessing here, but I suspect this is a reaction to a recent Judge ruling that Blogging is a form of Journalism that attracts the same protection as tradisional media enjoy with regards to not divulging their sources. If just by blogging you can become a "journalist" people might start blogging to prevent the Police from catching the evil terrists.
True, but it's a bit illogical really - the fact that most people use blogs for things other than news reporting doesn't mean that those who do use it for news reporting shouldn't be given the same protections as professional journalists.
After all, I'm sure that far less than 5% of websites are news websites, but that doesn't mean the news organisations publishing through online websites aren't considered journalists!
"Blogging" isn't a single type of activity - it just means you're using a particular form of technology (compare with "making a webpage"), and says nothing about what you're using it for. And I agree with you, it would be bad to only allow a select few to be "journalists", and it seems silly to base the distinction on whether they use a blog or a non-blog webpage.
The key quote from the article states, " Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material."
Given such low journalistic integrity, we should view the typical blog as merely an opinion piece.
But this is highly misleading. Remember, only 5% are reporting news as their primary topic in the first place, and 34% see their blog as journalism, yet this figure is for all blogs, not those trying to be journalists.
In other words, you can't put these statistics together in any meaningful way, without knowing how they correlate. It could be - and in fact, it's highly likely - that most if not all of those not verifying facts and linking to sources were those who used blogs as a journal, talking about what they did this week. Clearly, this doesn't apply, so they'd answer "No".
And lastly, it'd be nice to see the media achieve a better rate of fact checking and linking to sources (e.g., consider how the tabloids just copy the same story from each other word for word without any consideration to it's validity).
So even to your dicussion, you understand that it must first be decided if the fetus is human/has human rights. I'm not sure now why you disputed this.
In general, I would agree that the deciding factor is whether a fetus is a full human being with human rights.
However, I'm not convinced that, even if we treated a fetus as human, it is required that the mother continues the pregnancy, and I disagree with your analogy to looking after a child. Looking after or not abusing is one thing, but providing life support via your body is another. For example, I don't believe we have mandatory organ donation for mothers if it turns out that one is needed for the child? If a child (i.e., not a fetus, but after birth) developed a condition which required the mother to be hooked up to some life support for 9 months, I don't think everyone would agree that as part of her legal responsibility, she is bound by the law to do so.
Now, the issues you raised are real. It would be very difficult to make an exception for rape that didn't have unjust consequences.
Right, if you're saying we shouldn't make an exception, that's fine, I just wanted to know where you stood. Earlier I read it that you thought we could somehow make an exception for rape.
Tell me, do you trawl through the millions of online photo albums put up by people you don't know, and complain you find them boring? And that this implies that these people are boring, and there is no point to putting photos online?
And despite the fact that you spend your time trawling through what complete strangers put up that clearly has no relevance to you, you talk as if they're the ones who have no life?
Adoption is a delegation of responsibility, not an abdication of responsibility. It would not be legal to hand over a child to be killed, it must be given to someone who will provide due care and protection.
My point is that a comparison to after birth is not possible here. I'm not up to date on the adoption process, but I didn't think it was a woman's responsibility to find someone willing to take it - rather, it's given up for adoption, and the state handles it? The state is more than welcome to take care of the fetus if it likes... of course, the fetus won't survive, but that's why it's not analogous.
It only becomes relevant if we assume the fetus is human and has human rights, so that question has to be answered first. Surely you're not saying that if a fetus is not human there might still be any reason to deny access to abortion? No?
Yes I mean in the situation where we decide the fetus has human rights - although note that many people argue a fetus should have rights not because it is a human being, but because it will become one.
In any case, many laws have exceptions, so making abortion on demand illegal would not have to mean there were no exceptions for special circumstances.
How would you make an exception for rape? If it just requires a rape claim, then you're just going to get a lot of people claiming it was rape - at the risk of men being unfairly accused. If a conviction is required, firstly that will probably take too long, and secondly, in most cases there isn't enough evidence to convict.
It is established that a parent has a legal responsibility to see that their child is cared for adequately (even if through adoption etc). People can be charged with neglect, not for harming a child (abuse), but for not adequately protecting/providing for it. Therefore if the fetus is determined to be human, there is a strong case for saying that the responsibility of the woman as the parent to protect and provide for the child, and that this responsibility takes a higher priority than the woman's right to her own body.
The parent doesn't have to have the responsibility, as they can give the baby up to adoption; what you say only applies if they don't choose that. So that doesn't apply to before birth, since the fetus cannot be removed except by an abortion.
Of course, there are circumstances like rape etc that deserver further discussion, but since most abortions are not a result of special circumstances, I will not deal with those in this post.
Of course it is still relevant to this issue, you can't avoid it, unless you are going to deny the choice to women who are raped.
no doubt the term "pro-life" is a joke. "pro-choice" is a joke as well. just how many "pro-choice"-ers will be in favor of gay marriage for example? probably more than the other side but nowhere near 100%. pro-choice is in favor of choice for the things they'd like to choose. pro-choice means "pro-abortion rights", nothing more.
Well, it means pro-choice-of-abortion, compared with anti-choice-of-abortion. But that's a bit of a mouthful, so it gets shortened. Pro/Anti-abortion-rights works too, I guess.
Pro/Anti-life is just misleading altogether, even when applied only to fetuses specifically - pro-choice people don't want to get rid of all fetuses.
I'm always in favor of more rights and more choice. I'm in favor of life too. None of that helps me choose sides in the abortion matter.
You have to decide what is more important in this particular situation. Presumably they're not absolutes - I doubt you would defend the right to life of a blade of grass or bacterium, for example. If you're saying you both want the right of a woman to choose to abort her pregnancy, and the right of a fetus to live - well, yes, you do have a problem. But clearly that's not the fault of the names chosen by each side!
That is an interesting perspective. As science progresses, the set of all life which is "viable outside of the womb" is going to eventually be equal to the set of all "potential for becoming life". The abortion debate seems to be about a disagreement about an interval of time whose limit is zero. That's true, anyway, if we presume your definition of "pro-life" and "pro-choice".
From the perspective of a pro-choice person, it's not about "life is valuable if it's viable outside the womb", but rather along the lines of "a woman has the right to do what she likes with her body".
If and when it's possible to grow a fetus in an artificial womb, then fine - instead of our current day abortions, the woman's pregnancy will still be aborted if the woman wishes, but instead the fetus can be grown in an artificial womb and given up for adoption. Hopefully that will satisfy everyone - but I don't think that means there is anything wrong with their point of views.
It's not about arguing time intervals, it's about a woman's body, and currently the technology doesn't exist to support a fetus without using the woman's body.
"pro life" and "pro choice" people are talking past each other anyway. Pro lifers believe everything with the potential for becoming life (zygote onwards in some cases) should be protected, while pro choicers believe things that only things which would be viable life forms outside of the womb should be protected.
Strawman. Many pro-choice people believe sentient life should be protected - so they may be against late stage abortion.
This discovery means nothing in this debate, because the basic concept of what constitutes life (potential life versus viable life) is not affected.
Some anti-choice people may claim this means fetuses become sentient earlier than we thought.
Yours is a common argument. In an earlier era in the 1970s people were saying, why don't we spend that money here on earth where it's needed? Yet, every cent of that money is spent here on earth; it's not as though we launch tons of dollar bills into orbit and eject them into space. Thousands of engineers, scientists, physicians, space suit makers, rocket ship builders, computer programmers, astrophysicists, and others are employed by the space program.
I don't understand this. Yes, obviously we didn't launch dollar bills, but that's obviously not what people mean. The point is that money is spent - yes, "on earth" - building something which goes into space. That's money that could have been spent elsewhere.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm in favour of space exploration. But I'm confused as to what you're trying to say here. Money spent on space can't also be spent on something else too.
I agree with nczempin - it sounds like you're falling for the Broken Window Fallacy.
I think these space programmes are a disgusting waste of public money. When the earth is a paradise and there is no more (avoidable) suffering, THEN we can start exploring space.
And shouldn't we be spending money on the starving and homeless, before we spend money on computers so we can post to Slashdot?
And if you really wanted that job so badly, why weren't you willing to be paid less to do it
Perhaps the cost of living is higher than the country being offshored to.
Not only that, but let the living standards increase in other countries, and they'll be able to afford to buy all of our luxuries
And they will demand higher wages, and eventually we'll be back where we started. In the meantime, they won't be able to buy our luxuries, nor will the workers who have been laid off.
Yeah, and why do they mention Pathfinder but not the Beagle? I mean yeah, it crashed... but that's not the point, it still landed, that's just anti-British Americocentrism!
Like I said it's probably just because I used Fx first and got used to it's implementation, but from an (attemped) objective viewpoint I think it's better to have the tabs closer associated with their contents (and unfortunately the customise options you pointed me to don't include Firefox's position).
Well now I'm confused, because I just checked Firefox to see where the tabs are to compare - and they're at the top!
I'm using version 1.5.0.1, so not that old. Is it possible to change the position of the tabs in Firefox? And in what way does Opera's options not include Firefox's position? Whether it's top or bottom, you can choose - it even does left or right.
Also whilst checking out Firefox, I see that it has the view preferences not only separate to the main options, but accessable only from another menu altogether - did they change this recently? If not, what do you mean?
Options are spread out all over the place and hard ot navigate. The two seperate panels (Appearance and Preferences) aren't particularly helpful, but just the layout of both is awful.
I think separating appearance configuration out is a good thing, rather than cluttering up a single window. I guess it's a matter of opinion. Are there some options you wouldn't be sure in which of the two they would be kept in?
Middle click support. I can middle click just about anywhere in Firefox to open the target in a new tab/window (dependant on my settings). I can't in Opera.
I don't know if I'm misunderstanding you, but middle click for new window works fine here. Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts->Middle Click Options.
I don't like having my tabs way up the top of the browser and far from the page (though this could just be due to Firefox's implementation being my first)
Well mine are at the bottom. And this is a subjective thing, not a "bad UI" issue. (Er, try rightclick on tab->Customize->Placement.)
I was amazed at the licence terms; it might just be that I'm not used to seeing them but on IE7 it was so restrictive about what you could do and they kept the right to do anything, including (if I remember right) the ability to change the contract without telling you about it. It actually said that you should re-read the agreement regularly because they might change it at any time, needless to say I won't be installing a final version of it.
And my contract here says you owe me 100 pounds. Whether a court will enforce that is another matter though.
Yes, clearly our prisons are empty - no one is forced to go their thanks to the human rights act!
And what's so wrong about being able to sue someone? Last time I looked, the police don't always shoot with good reason. Being able to sue doesn't mean you'll be successful - that's up to the courts to decide. But I'd be worried of a country where citizens had no legal right to claim compensation as a result of wrong-doings by the police or other Government-run body.
I don't know if you've paid attention to the news in the last five years, but given recent events such as locking up people for extended periods of time without even charging them (let alone trial), or the police being allowed to shoot innocent people without facing any reprisals, your statements couldn't be further from the truth.
I fail to see how your comment is even relevant - the issue was that muggers would fear being shot by their potential victims, nothing to do with going to prison. In fact, in this parallel-Universe fantasy-England you live in where no one has to go to prison, that just strengthens the OP's point, because people wouldn't have to fear prison if they shot muggers. I guess you just have an axe to grind.
A good point, although not all muggers will be deterred - after all, muggers often use knives here, even though their victim could have one too. So maybe some are deterred, but you have to factor that against those who have now gone from using knives to using guns (and hence greater risk of death), or possibly those who shoot first rather than take the risk.
Do you have a source for those rates? How is the murder rate affected?
Another point is that if guns are already banned in the US, there are still plenty of guns in circulation. The point about the UK is trying to keep the number of guns available low in the first place, so the figures don't quite apply to over here. Sure, professional criminals may still be able to get them, but the point is to reduce the chances of petty thieves and random yobs getting hold of them.
A bank was robbed in London. Police told the press that the probable cause of the crime was that money was kept there... A woman was raped in Central Park, New York. A representative of the police force told the press...
But if more robberies were occuring because more vans were driving around full of money, then that would be worth citing as a cause. If a particular crime has increased, it is useful to know whether this is due to say poorer policing, or more opportuning for that crime.
I don't see where the police or Government talked about "blame" (anyone have a direct quote?) - that's something the press, and Slashdot, have chosen to say as far as I can see.
Strawman. No one claims it never happens, the argument is that it happens less.
Now, if the pro-gun argument is that having guns would somehow allow you to defend yourself and prevent thefts happening - well would you? If you had a gun at the back of your neck, you'd get out your gun and try to shoot first, despite the high probability that you'd end up dead?
And unlike conventional blogs, I know people read that junk I write. They mod me down.
But is popularity a good measure? This would mean most "blogs" aren't blogs, as not all are unpopular (e.g., on LiveJournal, where one might get 10s or 100s of replies, but here you're lucky to get a few).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing here, but I suspect this is a reaction to a recent Judge ruling that Blogging is a form of Journalism that attracts the same protection as tradisional media enjoy with regards to not divulging their sources. If just by blogging you can become a "journalist" people might start blogging to prevent the Police from catching the evil terrists.
True, but it's a bit illogical really - the fact that most people use blogs for things other than news reporting doesn't mean that those who do use it for news reporting shouldn't be given the same protections as professional journalists.
After all, I'm sure that far less than 5% of websites are news websites, but that doesn't mean the news organisations publishing through online websites aren't considered journalists!
"Blogging" isn't a single type of activity - it just means you're using a particular form of technology (compare with "making a webpage"), and says nothing about what you're using it for. And I agree with you, it would be bad to only allow a select few to be "journalists", and it seems silly to base the distinction on whether they use a blog or a non-blog webpage.
The key quote from the article states, " Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material ."
Given such low journalistic integrity, we should view the typical blog as merely an opinion piece.
But this is highly misleading. Remember, only 5% are reporting news as their primary topic in the first place, and 34% see their blog as journalism, yet this figure is for all blogs, not those trying to be journalists.
In other words, you can't put these statistics together in any meaningful way, without knowing how they correlate. It could be - and in fact, it's highly likely - that most if not all of those not verifying facts and linking to sources were those who used blogs as a journal, talking about what they did this week. Clearly, this doesn't apply, so they'd answer "No".
And lastly, it'd be nice to see the media achieve a better rate of fact checking and linking to sources (e.g., consider how the tabloids just copy the same story from each other word for word without any consideration to it's validity).
So even to your dicussion, you understand that it must first be decided if the fetus is human/has human rights. I'm not sure now why you disputed this.
In general, I would agree that the deciding factor is whether a fetus is a full human being with human rights.
However, I'm not convinced that, even if we treated a fetus as human, it is required that the mother continues the pregnancy, and I disagree with your analogy to looking after a child. Looking after or not abusing is one thing, but providing life support via your body is another. For example, I don't believe we have mandatory organ donation for mothers if it turns out that one is needed for the child? If a child (i.e., not a fetus, but after birth) developed a condition which required the mother to be hooked up to some life support for 9 months, I don't think everyone would agree that as part of her legal responsibility, she is bound by the law to do so.
Now, the issues you raised are real. It would be very difficult to make an exception for rape that didn't have unjust consequences.
Right, if you're saying we shouldn't make an exception, that's fine, I just wanted to know where you stood. Earlier I read it that you thought we could somehow make an exception for rape.
Tell me, do you trawl through the millions of online photo albums put up by people you don't know, and complain you find them boring? And that this implies that these people are boring, and there is no point to putting photos online?
And despite the fact that you spend your time trawling through what complete strangers put up that clearly has no relevance to you, you talk as if they're the ones who have no life?
Adoption is a delegation of responsibility, not an abdication of responsibility. It would not be legal to hand over a child to be killed, it must be given to someone who will provide due care and protection.
... of course, the fetus won't survive, but that's why it's not analogous.
My point is that a comparison to after birth is not possible here. I'm not up to date on the adoption process, but I didn't think it was a woman's responsibility to find someone willing to take it - rather, it's given up for adoption, and the state handles it? The state is more than welcome to take care of the fetus if it likes
It only becomes relevant if we assume the fetus is human and has human rights, so that question has to be answered first. Surely you're not saying that if a fetus is not human there might still be any reason to deny access to abortion? No?
Yes I mean in the situation where we decide the fetus has human rights - although note that many people argue a fetus should have rights not because it is a human being, but because it will become one.
In any case, many laws have exceptions, so making abortion on demand illegal would not have to mean there were no exceptions for special circumstances.
How would you make an exception for rape? If it just requires a rape claim, then you're just going to get a lot of people claiming it was rape - at the risk of men being unfairly accused. If a conviction is required, firstly that will probably take too long, and secondly, in most cases there isn't enough evidence to convict.
It is established that a parent has a legal responsibility to see that their child is cared for adequately (even if through adoption etc). People can be charged with neglect, not for harming a child (abuse), but for not adequately protecting/providing for it. Therefore if the fetus is determined to be human, there is a strong case for saying that the responsibility of the woman as the parent to protect and provide for the child, and that this responsibility takes a higher priority than the woman's right to her own body.
The parent doesn't have to have the responsibility, as they can give the baby up to adoption; what you say only applies if they don't choose that. So that doesn't apply to before birth, since the fetus cannot be removed except by an abortion.
Of course, there are circumstances like rape etc that deserver further discussion, but since most abortions are not a result of special circumstances, I will not deal with those in this post.
Of course it is still relevant to this issue, you can't avoid it, unless you are going to deny the choice to women who are raped.
no doubt the term "pro-life" is a joke. "pro-choice" is a joke as well. just how many "pro-choice"-ers will be in favor of gay marriage for example? probably more than the other side but nowhere near 100%. pro-choice is in favor of choice for the things they'd like to choose. pro-choice means "pro-abortion rights", nothing more.
Well, it means pro-choice-of-abortion, compared with anti-choice-of-abortion. But that's a bit of a mouthful, so it gets shortened. Pro/Anti-abortion-rights works too, I guess.
Pro/Anti-life is just misleading altogether, even when applied only to fetuses specifically - pro-choice people don't want to get rid of all fetuses.
I'm always in favor of more rights and more choice. I'm in favor of life too. None of that helps me choose sides in the abortion matter.
You have to decide what is more important in this particular situation. Presumably they're not absolutes - I doubt you would defend the right to life of a blade of grass or bacterium, for example. If you're saying you both want the right of a woman to choose to abort her pregnancy, and the right of a fetus to live - well, yes, you do have a problem. But clearly that's not the fault of the names chosen by each side!
That is an interesting perspective. As science progresses, the set of all life which is "viable outside of the womb" is going to eventually be equal to the set of all "potential for becoming life". The abortion debate seems to be about a disagreement about an interval of time whose limit is zero. That's true, anyway, if we presume your definition of "pro-life" and "pro-choice".
From the perspective of a pro-choice person, it's not about "life is valuable if it's viable outside the womb", but rather along the lines of "a woman has the right to do what she likes with her body".
If and when it's possible to grow a fetus in an artificial womb, then fine - instead of our current day abortions, the woman's pregnancy will still be aborted if the woman wishes, but instead the fetus can be grown in an artificial womb and given up for adoption. Hopefully that will satisfy everyone - but I don't think that means there is anything wrong with their point of views.
It's not about arguing time intervals, it's about a woman's body, and currently the technology doesn't exist to support a fetus without using the woman's body.
"pro life" and "pro choice" people are talking past each other anyway. Pro lifers believe everything with the potential for becoming life (zygote onwards in some cases) should be protected, while pro choicers believe things that only things which would be viable life forms outside of the womb should be protected.
Strawman. Many pro-choice people believe sentient life should be protected - so they may be against late stage abortion.
This discovery means nothing in this debate, because the basic concept of what constitutes life (potential life versus viable life) is not affected.
Some anti-choice people may claim this means fetuses become sentient earlier than we thought.
Yours is a common argument. In an earlier era in the 1970s people were saying, why don't we spend that money here on earth where it's needed? Yet, every cent of that money is spent here on earth; it's not as though we launch tons of dollar bills into orbit and eject them into space. Thousands of engineers, scientists, physicians, space suit makers, rocket ship builders, computer programmers, astrophysicists, and others are employed by the space program.
I don't understand this. Yes, obviously we didn't launch dollar bills, but that's obviously not what people mean. The point is that money is spent - yes, "on earth" - building something which goes into space. That's money that could have been spent elsewhere.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm in favour of space exploration. But I'm confused as to what you're trying to say here. Money spent on space can't also be spent on something else too.
I agree with nczempin - it sounds like you're falling for the Broken Window Fallacy.
I think these space programmes are a disgusting waste of public money. When the earth is a paradise and there is no more (avoidable) suffering, THEN we can start exploring space.
And shouldn't we be spending money on the starving and homeless, before we spend money on computers so we can post to Slashdot?
Er, no I didn't.
You're just spouting off the conventional wisdom without any real research into the facts.
Mac users keep their machines longer than WinTel users because Macs have a longer useful life.
I might say the same to you.
You're still thinking like a techy. People don't care about the specs
They do care about price though.
And if you really wanted that job so badly, why weren't you willing to be paid less to do it
Perhaps the cost of living is higher than the country being offshored to.
Not only that, but let the living standards increase in other countries, and they'll be able to afford to buy all of our luxuries
And they will demand higher wages, and eventually we'll be back where we started. In the meantime, they won't be able to buy our luxuries, nor will the workers who have been laid off.
Yeah, and why do they mention Pathfinder but not the Beagle? I mean yeah, it crashed... but that's not the point, it still landed, that's just anti-British Americocentrism!
Like I said it's probably just because I used Fx first and got used to it's implementation, but from an (attemped) objective viewpoint I think it's better to have the tabs closer associated with their contents (and unfortunately the customise options you pointed me to don't include Firefox's position).
Well now I'm confused, because I just checked Firefox to see where the tabs are to compare - and they're at the top!
I'm using version 1.5.0.1, so not that old. Is it possible to change the position of the tabs in Firefox? And in what way does Opera's options not include Firefox's position? Whether it's top or bottom, you can choose - it even does left or right.
Also whilst checking out Firefox, I see that it has the view preferences not only separate to the main options, but accessable only from another menu altogether - did they change this recently? If not, what do you mean?
Options are spread out all over the place and hard ot navigate. The two seperate panels (Appearance and Preferences) aren't particularly helpful, but just the layout of both is awful.
I think separating appearance configuration out is a good thing, rather than cluttering up a single window. I guess it's a matter of opinion. Are there some options you wouldn't be sure in which of the two they would be kept in?
Middle click support. I can middle click just about anywhere in Firefox to open the target in a new tab/window (dependant on my settings). I can't in Opera.
I don't know if I'm misunderstanding you, but middle click for new window works fine here. Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts->Middle Click Options.
I don't like having my tabs way up the top of the browser and far from the page (though this could just be due to Firefox's implementation being my first)
Well mine are at the bottom. And this is a subjective thing, not a "bad UI" issue. (Er, try rightclick on tab->Customize->Placement.)
I was amazed at the licence terms; it might just be that I'm not used to seeing them but on IE7 it was so restrictive about what you could do and they kept the right to do anything, including (if I remember right) the ability to change the contract without telling you about it. It actually said that you should re-read the agreement regularly because they might change it at any time, needless to say I won't be installing a final version of it.
And my contract here says you owe me 100 pounds. Whether a court will enforce that is another matter though.
What restrictions did it have?
What on earth?
Yes, clearly our prisons are empty - no one is forced to go their thanks to the human rights act!
And what's so wrong about being able to sue someone? Last time I looked, the police don't always shoot with good reason. Being able to sue doesn't mean you'll be successful - that's up to the courts to decide. But I'd be worried of a country where citizens had no legal right to claim compensation as a result of wrong-doings by the police or other Government-run body.
I don't know if you've paid attention to the news in the last five years, but given recent events such as locking up people for extended periods of time without even charging them (let alone trial), or the police being allowed to shoot innocent people without facing any reprisals, your statements couldn't be further from the truth.
I fail to see how your comment is even relevant - the issue was that muggers would fear being shot by their potential victims, nothing to do with going to prison. In fact, in this parallel-Universe fantasy-England you live in where no one has to go to prison, that just strengthens the OP's point, because people wouldn't have to fear prison if they shot muggers. I guess you just have an axe to grind.
A good point, although not all muggers will be deterred - after all, muggers often use knives here, even though their victim could have one too. So maybe some are deterred, but you have to factor that against those who have now gone from using knives to using guns (and hence greater risk of death), or possibly those who shoot first rather than take the risk.
Do you have a source for those rates? How is the murder rate affected?
Another point is that if guns are already banned in the US, there are still plenty of guns in circulation. The point about the UK is trying to keep the number of guns available low in the first place, so the figures don't quite apply to over here. Sure, professional criminals may still be able to get them, but the point is to reduce the chances of petty thieves and random yobs getting hold of them.
A bank was robbed in London. Police told the press that the probable cause of the crime was that money was kept there... A woman was raped in Central Park, New York. A representative of the police force told the press...
But if more robberies were occuring because more vans were driving around full of money, then that would be worth citing as a cause. If a particular crime has increased, it is useful to know whether this is due to say poorer policing, or more opportuning for that crime.
I don't see where the police or Government talked about "blame" (anyone have a direct quote?) - that's something the press, and Slashdot, have chosen to say as far as I can see.
What a shame the UK disarmed their citizenry
Why is it a shame? How would being armed have helped in this case?
Strawman. No one claims it never happens, the argument is that it happens less.
Now, if the pro-gun argument is that having guns would somehow allow you to defend yourself and prevent thefts happening - well would you? If you had a gun at the back of your neck, you'd get out your gun and try to shoot first, despite the high probability that you'd end up dead?
And...
And unlike conventional blogs, I know people read that junk I write. They mod me down.
But is popularity a good measure? This would mean most "blogs" aren't blogs, as not all are unpopular (e.g., on LiveJournal, where one might get 10s or 100s of replies, but here you're lucky to get a few).