While I agree with most of what you said, last I heard should the long odds come around, we can't see some of the smaller ones that could do major damage.
Worst case senario is a 'rock' that's as close to pure metal as they come and just below our min detection size.
However I seriously doubt hubble would be in any use pattern to help spot a killer we got very lucky. Hubble is built for far longer distances and I'm not shure how well it could be re-tasked.
I was just hitting what I could recall off the top of my head with that handfull. And if I could pull that many out of random memory...
And trying to downgrade some of the more well known literature of the past by pointing out that some loss of translation because of a significant drop of civilisation for a few hundred years....
As far as the dark ages go food and shelter and little else was important, let alone a bunch of musings on the meaning of it all, however profound.
I seriously doubt Micky Mouse or Brittiny spears will even be known in 500 years outside obscure historical texts even if society continues, let alone if we go through something akin to the dark ages.
Copyright and Patents as the original founders intended it could have value in helping foster the public domain of knowledge and culture, but as it is it meerly strangles inovation and public discourse while it encourages meaningly littigation for profits sake.
First off 1600 was not 'millenea' ago. IIRC the Bible, Koran, Socrates, Homer, Plato, and who knows how many other written works that are generally considered 'great' were written before 1600.
And as far as the constitutional authority granting congress the ability to create such things as copyright and patents, the founding fathers were not at all certain it was a good idea, thus the words MAY (not must or even should) and 'limited time'. It was with much reservation they put what little they did in there, and the fact that they did shows they didn't consider it a natural thing, but rather something that needed to be explicitly granted in the highest document of the land for the government to be able to do it.
Thomas Jefferson in particular was leary of copyright, at first including copyright as another form of monopoly, which he was against. Later he argued that if included at all it should be very limited and more as a temporary (One generation, that being to him the timespan in which half of all people living or more at the time of creation was statistically likely to have died) protection of the common man against larger entities.
And after the consititution and bill of rights had become law of the land he cautioned that ideas themselves were uncopyrightable, only particular expressions of them.
]
That makes a bit more sense. Though I would hope the police,fbi, etc. would aslo act on behalf of 'the little guy' I do agree it's excessive to spend the taxpayers money, especially on jailing 'offenders'.
I'd rather they just shorten Copyright back to a reasonable duration and limit it to intentional profiteering. If I make a mix tape/cd for a budy or two, the courts should be able to ignore it. Now if I make a few thousand copies and try to sell them at the local gas station chain or some such that would make sense to sue over.
Another thing they should do is limit 'real' damages to the retail costs, not production costs as if the infringer literally stole the only copy of the master tape.
But the days of the riaa and other old style middle man having total reign over popular culture are fading fast and thier trying to fend off thier own inevitable demise rather than adapt. And this means they use thier money while they still have it to buy all sorts of useless, but sadly not painless, laws from thier pet politicians.
You've got a future in writing if you want it. Possibly even in speach writing for politicians. Or perhaps respectable fiction
Not shure if what you said has much validity, but you shure said it well. Sounded like the premis to some sci-fi novell.
(consider this a backhanded compliment:)
HUH? if we did it for millinia and got works of art and music how did it not work. If your saying some didn't get proper credit that's true, but other than that you make no sense, though I suspect you're so deep into the thinking of copyright as a natural thing you don't realize it.
Copyright only works if it achieves it's purpose, that purpose to enrich the public domain with more art and litrature and music and such.
Since such things happened before copyright it therefore follows that copyright is NOT necessary to such things, just potentially benificial. However with the constant extensions going on the public domain now grows only by voluntary contribution, just as it did before copyright, only now it's in direct competition with this artificial thing.
Now that I can't put my mod points here (already posted) I'll have to just do it verbally.
Thank you for trying to enlighten that person who's feeding the stupid vicious circle that keeps the democan republicrat goons in office.
Unfortunately you get that going the other way as well.
If it's purely civil what happens when a big corp with deep pockets and TEAMS of laywers on fixed payroll decide to make thier own closed source version of some gpl app owned by one guy who's main job only pays 40k/year and is raising kids.
You got it, the big money wins again. Not saying criminalizing it is the right answer eigther. But keeping it purely civil doesn't alone balance the scales any, and may make it worse.
Are you saying they wanted a court order or just written confirmation to move the domain?
Up to a point I would HOPE transfering domains wouldn't be just an e-mail, but would require a bit of confirming. Hijacking seems a bit too easy already.
There have been a few domain snatch stories lately where all that happened was someone sent a email and just took the thing.
Actually they found out later it wasn't the game they were investigating. Although they said the game supplement in question was a 'hacking how to' manual, in thier meaning of the word hack, it wasn't thier real reason.
What they were investigating was the publishing of a phone company document on a bbs operated by the same guy who ran SJG's bbs. The document supposedly was proprietary telco info worth thousands of dollars, though in actuality it was a pamphlet about 911 services they gave out for free for the asking.
The upside of the whole mess is the EFF was founded.
The other upside is your's trully owns a copy of "Gurps Cyberpunk", the book that was so delayed by the above idiocy.
I think this could be a YMMV situation. I've known of cases where the 'special trained' unit had trouble telling the difference between a floppy disc and a keyboard and didn't believe the owner of the system when he explained how his computer couldn't have done something impossible (we're talking the level of cluefullness that causes lusers to call thier atx case the cpu and say they 120 gigabiters of rom). And in the same week another such unit tracked down someone sending cc#'s to someone else over fido-net while spoofing the node they were sending the mail from.
Not necessarily(sp?), but of course the point behind a dirty bomb is to convince everyone that exactly that is the problem. It works via the scare word 'radioactive'.
Thogh of course one couldn't take chances. What would really happen is people close to blast would suffer just as any simular blast would cause. And as soon as someone said it was dirty people would panic and rush away in chaotic haste (this last bit the point of a dirty bomb). Next would come the clean up at great expense followe by most but not all moving back and then a few months to years later by all the 'xyz corp, with no bid contract, did they really clean it up or just pretend' conspiracies and claims and scandles. Then the congressional hearings and pointless laws and government buyouts (possibly the second round) and more expense on eigther proving the first cleanup or not and maybee doing it again. The protests about where to bury the slightly radio-active dirt. And sheesh you get the idea. This is why a 15kg black-poweder bomb with traces of americurium (from smoke detectors) is more trouble than what mcviegh used.
Was this city or county police? Just curious because it's my understanding the city police are not up to the same standards as county (to put it nicely).
I live in Jefferson County myself, but I've worked and lived in St. Louis county and have friends who live in the city, near the city border with Afton.
If the threat was even remotely serious (and not just hot air by angry people) they should have at least broke it up.
What you describe could be construed as assault. You could always file a complaint on them.
Complaints against officers often seem to do nothing, but once they hit a certain threshold (whatever is judged to be typical background noise of bs) things tend to get very serious very fast for them.
FWIW the County police are mostly pretty nice people, esp off duty. Spent several hours overnight with a group of total strangers waiting for the opening of SW:TPM including an officer who must have got off duty around 3am to join us and he was pretty cool. That night before was the best part of SW:TPM.
Well it is a breach of the second amendment as intended.
A Well regulated militia is one that works well and functions properly, think regulated as in machine not laws.
Arms means '..every arm of the soldier, however terrible..' according to the man who wrote it.
One of the main intents of the second amendment was that the US government should never have a superior military ability relative to it's people, they even limited the ability to budget the military to a max of two years at a time.
One could argue that's because the books are incomplete.
The truth is people learn in different ways. I'd probably learn more from reading those books than talking to those people. The reason being I simply don't learn anywhere near as well from the spoken word as I do from the written. Having the labs would be good though, I do get some benifit there.
The three main learning styles are visual (mine) auditory(definately not mine) and practice. I suspect most people are practice and few don't learn that way to some degree.
"but most subjects that requires substantial problem solving are much more learnable with a qualified and engaged prof in the room."
Which has what to do with most colledges? Just thinking of a college instructor or two I've had. One wouldn't speak above a wisper (half the class insisted on thier money back) another was so anoying more than half the class wanted to be paid to be there.
Though I did have one really good one, got 2/3 of the way through his class and realized he'd only taught me a couple things, or so I thought till I actually tried to summerize those few things and found out how much C I had learned. It just seemed like we hadn't done all that much. Really good ones sneak the info into you while you're kinda having fun.
I would argue that saying "excuse mister, did you break into my house to kill me and rape my wife or just steal my vcr" is stupid as is assuming the latter should someone break into your house. I'm talking darwin award stupid.
re:1)Not usually, many thieves,rapist,etc will RUN if they see a gun in the hands of a home-owner.
Maybee your #1 would make sense if we were talking someone weaker than the criminal with a simple melee weapon, but few crooks are so lacking as to attack someone with a gun.
#2 assumes you know why a crook has broken into your home, which is not usually the case, and assumes you'll just shoot someone who breaks in if you have a gun, also not usually the case.
Generally most crooks will run like hell if you meerly point a gun at them and tell them to get the hell out. Those that don't are usually on drugs or insane and not rational.
I never said I FELT the police couldn't do thier job, they usualy do it fine. I said thier job can't be to protect each and every individual from each and every other individual. Simple fact.
The police have NO obligation to protect you individually even if they KNOW you personally are in danger. Thier obligation is to the community at large. This has been established repeatedly in the courts when people have tried to sue because thier 911 calls and such didn't result in a cop at thier door fast enough to stop whatever unpleasantness was occuring.
As far as a society where guns were not needed, yes could be better, will never happen till the very nature of mankind changes. I'm not shure such a change would be for the better. Maybe we'd have to be ants or some other creature with no individuality. In any event that's a LONG way off.
As far as all those jobs, I've probably done some of each to small degree (except the bridge engineer, never needed to cross anywhere where a bridge would be needed). They don't require superman, nor in many cases for minor things are the pro's needed. Yes you need a doctor to remove and apendix, but to apply a bandaid? One should call the fire department if thier house is on fire, but anyone can unplug and take a fire extinguisher to the tv should it have an issue. And so on.
The society where that level of harmony exists and everything is done by only by specialists doese exist in our world, but I don't want to be an insect thank you.
Ahh replace credit with use crack cocain. makes an interesting read.
But seriously, the ability to pay back credit is amatter of income-outgo. If you make more than you spend, the remainder represents your maximum ability to pay back credit.
What a history of doing so shows is willingnes to pay back credit, and the planning necessary not to exceded one's ability to do so.
The problem is most credit card companies figure your ability as the sum of ability and willingness, and issue credit based on paying the MINIMUM payment, which is amount that leaves you paying huge interest rates for years.
And they do this based on data that in 1/4 to 1/3 of all cases has significant errors.
Is it any wonder we have a situation where most people are in debt rather than saving money. Not that the creditors are alone in blame here, the "OH SHINY I WANT" factor aplies rather heavily.
How often one has used credit is only one part of thier picture. A person with a decent job,car,etc. who's never used credit has shown better fiscal discipline than most is more like to be able to pay credit that doesn't cause him to encroach on the limit of his means. Though a creditor should be aware of the change in circumstances to cause such an individual to seek credit.
If he really is beating his wife then a felony conviction for assault (perhaps with a nice side of intent to do something even worse) will do that just fine.
If however your just digging up a boogman that rarely exists, stop worring about it. Most people, even the most red-neck stereotype matcheing 90IQ types wouldn't really consider what you suggest. And the rare few that do wouldn't get far, unless of course all thier neighbors were just helpless idiots who dutifly turned in thier guns while he burried his a sealed container late one night.
It a bogus argument if made up, always has been. a real bad-guy won't turn in his weapons and won't say 'oh he might call 911 and only leave me a half hour or so to rape his wife and shoot his kids', but he might think 'hmm his wife sure perty, but i don't want no.30-06 in muh spare ribs'.
May I ask what community you live in. That one in three is an impressive ratio, even considering it probably represents permits issued vs eligible citizens and not actual numbe of people carrying at any one moment. If not hyperboly it leave me real hope a few here and there 'get it'. And even if hyperboly there must be a fairly high number anyway to give one something to exagerate.
I may one day get around to the wife and children thing (make my parents pretty happy and stop them bugging/embarrising me as much) and knowing a safe community or two would be nice.
Course knowing my luck it's gonna be a really cold part of some northern state.
And I find your words, and thier implied lack of understanding of a basic truth even scarier.
And yes a well armed citizenry DOESE mean a safer and more just society, not a perfect one, but better than one where the people are beholden to the police and army to keep the thugs and murderers and crooks from hurting them.
All gun grabber nonsense (and that's all it is) is predicated on the theory that man cannot controll himself and must be controlled for his own good, how else can they suppose people will start shooting each other up given guns?
The simple truth is most people would not kill someone who pissed them off no matter how easy. Have you ever tried to run someone over with your car? poison thier food? maybe just chop thier hand off with meat cleaver? NO almost certainly not and this is true for most people, and a gun wouldn't change that.
However for the tiny minority of people who do wish others harm, most wish to survive in of themselves and will not by choice take unecessary risks, such as by robbing someone who may shoot them to protect thier family.
Words fail you because none can place reason or truth to your emotion born, I hope, of ignorance of history and fact.
One of my favorite shows on talk radio (got an fm talk station here, also mostly right wing, but not entirely) is also done by a lawyer. However he no longer practices (though he mentioned he still pays bar dues or whatever so he's probably still allowed) and has some other lawyer do the free leagle segment once a week.
Can't remember if he's got his own seperate site, but is the radio stations page on him.
If you're in the greater St. Louis area you might listen in. The rest of the stations weekday lineup is pretty much repitious political crap, but his show is pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree with most of what you said, last I heard should the long odds come around, we can't see some of the smaller ones that could do major damage.
Worst case senario is a 'rock' that's as close to pure metal as they come and just below our min detection size.
However I seriously doubt hubble would be in any use pattern to help spot a killer we got very lucky. Hubble is built for far longer distances and I'm not shure how well it could be re-tasked.
Mycroft
I was just hitting what I could recall off the top of my head with that handfull. And if I could pull that many out of random memory... .
And trying to downgrade some of the more well known literature of the past by pointing out that some loss of translation because of a significant drop of civilisation for a few hundred years....
As far as the dark ages go food and shelter and little else was important, let alone a bunch of musings on the meaning of it all, however profound
I seriously doubt Micky Mouse or Brittiny spears will even be known in 500 years outside obscure historical texts even if society continues, let alone if we go through something akin to the dark ages.
Copyright and Patents as the original founders intended it could have value in helping foster the public domain of knowledge and culture, but as it is it meerly strangles inovation and public discourse while it encourages meaningly littigation for profits sake.
Mycroft
But apparently one of the mods didn't like it. OH well so much for humor.(admittedly the feeble humor of admitting to likeing the new coke)
Mycroft
First off 1600 was not 'millenea' ago.
IIRC the Bible, Koran, Socrates, Homer, Plato, and who knows how many other written works that are generally considered 'great' were written before 1600.
And as far as the constitutional authority granting congress the ability to create such things as copyright and patents, the founding fathers were not at all certain it was a good idea, thus the words MAY (not must or even should) and 'limited time'. It was with much reservation they put what little they did in there, and the fact that they did shows they didn't consider it a natural thing, but rather something that needed to be explicitly granted in the highest document of the land for the government to be able to do it.
Thomas Jefferson in particular was leary of copyright, at first including copyright as another form of monopoly, which he was against. Later he argued that if included at all it should be very limited and more as a temporary (One generation, that being to him the timespan in which half of all people living or more at the time of creation was statistically likely to have died) protection of the common man against larger entities.
And after the consititution and bill of rights had become law of the land he cautioned that ideas themselves were uncopyrightable, only particular expressions of them.
]
Mycroft
That makes a bit more sense. Though I would hope the police,fbi, etc. would aslo act on behalf of 'the little guy' I do agree it's excessive to spend the taxpayers money, especially on jailing 'offenders'.
I'd rather they just shorten Copyright back to a reasonable duration and limit it to intentional profiteering. If I make a mix tape/cd for a budy or two, the courts should be able to ignore it. Now if I make a few thousand copies and try to sell them at the local gas station chain or some such that would make sense to sue over.
Another thing they should do is limit 'real' damages to the retail costs, not production costs as if the infringer literally stole the only copy of the master tape.
But the days of the riaa and other old style middle man having total reign over popular culture are fading fast and thier trying to fend off thier own inevitable demise rather than adapt. And this means they use thier money while they still have it to buy all sorts of useless, but sadly not painless, laws from thier pet politicians.
Mycroft
You've got a future in writing if you want it. Possibly even in speach writing for politicians. Or perhaps respectable fiction
Not shure if what you said has much validity, but you shure said it well. Sounded like the premis to some sci-fi novell.
(consider this a backhanded compliment:)
Mycroft
HUH? if we did it for millinia and got works of art and music how did it not work. If your saying some didn't get proper credit that's true, but other than that you make no sense, though I suspect you're so deep into the thinking of copyright as a natural thing you don't realize it.
Copyright only works if it achieves it's purpose, that purpose to enrich the public domain with more art and litrature and music and such.
Since such things happened before copyright it therefore follows that copyright is NOT necessary to such things, just potentially benificial. However with the constant extensions going on the public domain now grows only by voluntary contribution, just as it did before copyright, only now it's in direct competition with this artificial thing.
Mycroft
Now that I can't put my mod points here (already posted) I'll have to just do it verbally.
Thank you for trying to enlighten that person who's feeding the stupid vicious circle that keeps the democan republicrat goons in office.
Mycroft
Unfortunately you get that going the other way as well.
If it's purely civil what happens when a big corp with deep pockets and TEAMS of laywers on fixed payroll decide to make thier own closed source version of some gpl app owned by one guy who's main job only pays 40k/year and is raising kids.
You got it, the big money wins again.
Not saying criminalizing it is the right answer eigther. But keeping it purely civil doesn't alone balance the scales any, and may make it worse.
Mycroft
Are you saying they wanted a court order or just written confirmation to move the domain?
Up to a point I would HOPE transfering domains wouldn't be just an e-mail, but would require a bit of confirming. Hijacking seems a bit too easy already.
There have been a few domain snatch stories lately where all that happened was someone sent a email and just took the thing.
Mycroft
Actually I rather liked new Coke.
Mycroft
Actually they found out later it wasn't the game they were investigating. Although they said the game supplement in question was a 'hacking how to' manual, in thier meaning of the word hack, it wasn't thier real reason.
What they were investigating was the publishing of a phone company document on a bbs operated by the same guy who ran SJG's bbs. The document supposedly was proprietary telco info worth thousands of dollars, though in actuality it was a pamphlet about 911 services they gave out for free for the asking.
The upside of the whole mess is the EFF was founded.
The other upside is your's trully owns a copy of "Gurps Cyberpunk", the book that was so delayed by the above idiocy.
Mycroft
I think this could be a YMMV situation. I've known of cases where the 'special trained' unit had trouble telling the difference between a floppy disc and a keyboard and didn't believe the owner of the system when he explained how his computer couldn't have done something impossible (we're talking the level of cluefullness that causes lusers to call thier atx case the cpu and say they 120 gigabiters of rom). And in the same week another such unit tracked down someone sending cc#'s to someone else over fido-net while spoofing the node they were sending the mail from.
Mycroft
Not necessarily(sp?), but of course the point behind a dirty bomb is to convince everyone that exactly that is the problem. It works via the scare word 'radioactive'.
Thogh of course one couldn't take chances. What would really happen is people close to blast would suffer just as any simular blast would cause. And as soon as someone said it was dirty people would panic and rush away in chaotic haste (this last bit the point of a dirty bomb). Next would come the clean up at great expense followe by most but not all moving back and then a few months to years later by all the 'xyz corp, with no bid contract, did they really clean it up or just pretend' conspiracies and claims and scandles. Then the congressional hearings and pointless laws and government buyouts (possibly the second round) and more expense on eigther proving the first cleanup or not and maybee doing it again. The protests about where to bury the slightly radio-active dirt. And sheesh you get the idea. This is why a 15kg black-poweder bomb with traces of americurium (from smoke detectors) is more trouble than what mcviegh used.
Mycroft
Was this city or county police?
Just curious because it's my understanding the city police are not up to the same standards as county (to put it nicely).
I live in Jefferson County myself, but I've worked and lived in St. Louis county and have friends who live in the city, near the city border with Afton.
If the threat was even remotely serious (and not just hot air by angry people) they should have at least broke it up.
What you describe could be construed as assault.
You could always file a complaint on them.
Complaints against officers often seem to do nothing, but once they hit a certain threshold (whatever is judged to be typical background noise of bs) things tend to get very serious very fast for them.
FWIW the County police are mostly pretty nice people, esp off duty. Spent several hours overnight with a group of total strangers waiting for the opening of SW:TPM including an officer who must have got off duty around 3am to join us and he was pretty cool. That night before was the best part of SW:TPM.
Mycroft
Well it is a breach of the second amendment as intended.
A Well regulated militia is one that works well and functions properly, think regulated as in machine not laws.
Arms means '..every arm of the soldier, however terrible..' according to the man who wrote it.
One of the main intents of the second amendment was that the US government should never have a superior military ability relative to it's people, they even limited the ability to budget the military to a max of two years at a time.
Mycroft
One could argue that's because the books are incomplete.
The truth is people learn in different ways. I'd probably learn more from reading those books than talking to those people. The reason being I simply don't learn anywhere near as well from the spoken word as I do from the written. Having the labs would be good though, I do get some benifit there.
The three main learning styles are visual (mine) auditory(definately not mine) and practice. I suspect most people are practice and few don't learn that way to some degree.
Mycroft
"but most subjects that requires substantial problem solving are much more learnable with a qualified and engaged prof in the room."
Which has what to do with most colledges?
Just thinking of a college instructor or two I've had. One wouldn't speak above a wisper (half the class insisted on thier money back) another was so anoying more than half the class wanted to be paid to be there.
Though I did have one really good one, got 2/3 of the way through his class and realized he'd only taught me a couple things, or so I thought till I actually tried to summerize those few things and found out how much C I had learned. It just seemed like we hadn't done all that much. Really good ones sneak the info into you while you're kinda having fun.
Mycroft
I would argue that saying "excuse mister, did you break into my house to kill me and rape my wife or just steal my vcr" is stupid as is assuming the latter should someone break into your house. I'm talking darwin award stupid.
re:1)Not usually, many thieves,rapist,etc will RUN if they see a gun in the hands of a home-owner.
Maybee your #1 would make sense if we were talking someone weaker than the criminal with a simple melee weapon, but few crooks are so lacking as to attack someone with a gun.
#2 assumes you know why a crook has broken into your home, which is not usually the case, and assumes you'll just shoot someone who breaks in if you have a gun, also not usually the case.
Generally most crooks will run like hell if you meerly point a gun at them and tell them to get the hell out. Those that don't are usually on drugs or insane and not rational.
Mycroft
I never said I FELT the police couldn't do thier job, they usualy do it fine. I said thier job can't be to protect each and every individual from each and every other individual. Simple fact.
The police have NO obligation to protect you individually even if they KNOW you personally are in danger. Thier obligation is to the community at large. This has been established repeatedly in the courts when people have tried to sue because thier 911 calls and such didn't result in a cop at thier door fast enough to stop whatever unpleasantness was occuring.
As far as a society where guns were not needed, yes could be better, will never happen till the very nature of mankind changes. I'm not shure such a change would be for the better. Maybe we'd have to be ants or some other creature with no individuality. In any event that's a LONG way off.
As far as all those jobs, I've probably done some of each to small degree (except the bridge engineer, never needed to cross anywhere where a bridge would be needed). They don't require superman, nor in many cases for minor things are the pro's needed. Yes you need a doctor to remove and apendix, but to apply a bandaid? One should call the fire department if thier house is on fire, but anyone can unplug and take a fire extinguisher to the tv should it have an issue. And so on.
The society where that level of harmony exists and everything is done by only by specialists doese exist in our world, but I don't want to be an insect thank you.
Mycroft
Ahh replace credit with use crack cocain.
makes an interesting read.
But seriously, the ability to pay back credit is amatter of income-outgo. If you make more than you spend, the remainder represents your maximum ability to pay back credit.
What a history of doing so shows is willingnes to pay back credit, and the planning necessary not to exceded one's ability to do so.
The problem is most credit card companies figure your ability as the sum of ability and willingness, and issue credit based on paying the MINIMUM payment, which is amount that leaves you paying huge interest rates for years.
And they do this based on data that in 1/4 to 1/3 of all cases has significant errors.
Is it any wonder we have a situation where most people are in debt rather than saving money. Not that the creditors are alone in blame here, the "OH SHINY I WANT" factor aplies rather heavily.
How often one has used credit is only one part of thier picture. A person with a decent job,car,etc. who's never used credit has shown better fiscal discipline than most is more like to be able to pay credit that doesn't cause him to encroach on the limit of his means. Though a creditor should be aware of the change in circumstances to cause such an individual to seek credit.
Mycroft
If he really is beating his wife then a felony conviction for assault (perhaps with a nice side of intent to do something even worse) will do that just fine. .30-06 in muh spare ribs'.
If however your just digging up a boogman that rarely exists, stop worring about it. Most people, even the most red-neck stereotype matcheing 90IQ types wouldn't really consider what you suggest. And the rare few that do wouldn't get far, unless of course all thier neighbors were just helpless idiots who dutifly turned in thier guns while he burried his a sealed container late one night.
It a bogus argument if made up, always has been. a real bad-guy won't turn in his weapons and won't say 'oh he might call 911 and only leave me a half hour or so to rape his wife and shoot his kids', but he might think 'hmm his wife sure perty, but i don't want no
Mycroft
May I ask what community you live in. That one in three is an impressive ratio, even considering it probably represents permits issued vs eligible citizens and not actual numbe of people carrying at any one moment. If not hyperboly it leave me real hope a few here and there 'get it'. And even if hyperboly there must be a fairly high number anyway to give one something to exagerate.
I may one day get around to the wife and children thing (make my parents pretty happy and stop them bugging/embarrising me as much) and knowing a safe community or two would be nice.
Course knowing my luck it's gonna be a really cold part of some northern state.
Mycroft
And I find your words, and thier implied lack of understanding of a basic truth even scarier.
And yes a well armed citizenry DOESE mean a safer and more just society, not a perfect one, but better than one where the people are beholden to the police and army to keep the thugs and murderers and crooks from hurting them.
All gun grabber nonsense (and that's all it is) is predicated on the theory that man cannot controll himself and must be controlled for his own good, how else can they suppose people will start shooting each other up given guns?
The simple truth is most people would not kill someone who pissed them off no matter how easy. Have you ever tried to run someone over with your car? poison thier food? maybe just chop thier hand off with meat cleaver? NO almost certainly not and this is true for most people, and a gun wouldn't change that.
However for the tiny minority of people who do wish others harm, most wish to survive in of themselves and will not by choice take unecessary risks, such as by robbing someone who may shoot them to protect thier family.
Words fail you because none can place reason or truth to your emotion born, I hope, of ignorance of history and fact.
Mycroft
One of my favorite shows on talk radio (got an fm talk station here, also mostly right wing, but not entirely) is also done by a lawyer. However he no longer practices (though he mentioned he still pays bar dues or whatever so he's probably still allowed) and has some other lawyer do the free leagle segment once a week.
Can't remember if he's got his own seperate site, but is the radio stations page on him.
If you're in the greater St. Louis area you might listen in. The rest of the stations weekday lineup is pretty much repitious political crap, but his show is pretty good.
Mycroft