Without some clear distancing language (e.g. the legislature thought that...) one can't tell the difference between a mere statement of fact and an endorsement - English is funny that way. That's why I kept saying 'you seem to be suggesting' - I want you to make your position clearer.
I stated how it came about, to the best of my knowledge.
And I'm trying to point out that men leaving their wives and children on a whim was never a large fraction of divorces, but it did make a good boogyman. Or to use your terminology, there are probably more sluts than dicks (or maybe roughly the same number), but for some reason legally we not only favor sluts but are also willing to disfavor all men for the actions of the dicks.
This occurred because the men were suddenly free from the expenses of the family, whereas the women were forced to take on the financial burden of raising the children.
Exactly, this is after men no longer had default custody of the children after a divorce and people were trying to put financial responsibility back on his shoulders. I'm sorry if my extremely brief overview missed some of the twists and turns between the old common-law system and the one we have today.
But how is this a defense of ' "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families'? The fact you quoted was true no matter who initiated the divorce or for what reason.
And again, you seem to be suggesting that the bad behavior of those men justified the unfairness to all men. I'm suggesting that the number of 'dad abandons family on a whim' phenomena was blown out of proportion by the unfortunate victims of those cases, bigots, and people who saw a political advantage to be gained, and that even if it was true it wouldn't justify a wholesale shift in legal responsibility.
the father almost always profited and the mother almost always became impoverished
And the mother almost always got to raise the children and the father did not. I agree that both were unfair, but at least they weren't both unfair in the same direction, as they are tending toward now.
The legal system for child support came about because plenty of "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families when the going got rough or a more winsome piece of ass drifted on by.
What revisionist twaddle. Child support after a divorce came about because originally fathers kept the children and got both the benefits of custody and the responsibility to support them. Then we decided that children belong with their mothers, but financial responsibility should stay with the fathers.
The 'deadbeat dad' narrative came about as a way to defend this clearly unfair system, and the fact the fathers (quite reasonably) feel more responsible for children that they are allowed to be the fathers of, rather than kids they aren't allowed to see.
The problem the GP describes, with cuckolds paying child support for kids that aren't theirs, stems from the same sexist urge. In most cases a DNA test can only give a man responsibility (even if they were underage and she wasn't, even if he was unconscious) but not remove it (he was married to her at the time and waited until the child was six months old, he 'acted like a father').
And as a side note, it's incredibly crass of you to try to justify the ill treatment of some men by pointing out the bad behavior of other men.
Yep. It was definitely racism, which is a thing only white people ever do.
I was alluding to a particular kind of racist action during a particular period of one country's history. I realize you're too triggered to understand that, but when you stop hyperventilating please try again.
As we all know, OJ Simpson was perfectly innocent and certainly didn't kill anybody ever.
I would be shocked if OJ Simpson committed 10% of the homicides committed by black men that day, let alone over long enough time to draw conclusions about the broader societal effects.
The guy just screamed "innocent". Black people certainly didn't celebrate when one of their own was found not guilty. It was evil white people tricking you into believing that. Darn those white people.
You have issue that I am ill-equipped to deal with. Seek help, for good of yourself and those around you.
If a law is just 90% of the time, then a case should be dismissed 10% of the time.
We tried that. What was interesting is that the 10% of homicides were always white men accused of murdering black men. I forget why, but that became unpopular.
The courts often say that the bills should have been more specific.
Yes, the courts are a bureaucratic system designed to interpret the law and determine how it applies to certain cases. If the law isn't clear, or contradicts other law, then courts throw it out.
You seem to think that the Justice System should always dispense justice - but it can't, because 'justice' is an opinion, not a fact. This judge would end up throwing all the dark-skinned people in prison, that judge will do the reverse. He'll send women to jail for driving while female, she'll never send a woman to prison.
It would be absolute chaos, with with no way to tell if you 'really' broke a law, and no definitive way to change it.
So we're better off with some bad laws, clearly spelled out and evenly enforced, even if it's not always fair. We can understand the legal consequences of our actions, and have an unambiguous path to change those laws.
Why wouldn't they? The robots need to be manufactured and maintained, and the money not spent on that is a cost savings, which should lead to lower prices - which leads to more sales and thus more jobs, or people spending what they save on other things and thus more jobs.
Yes you can poke some holes in that reductionist example
Empty space doesn't count as a hole unless there's substance around it - which this argument doesn't have. Just the fact that money appears and disappears when convenient to your argument, but never the reverse, make it absurd. Grandma needed the money, but never spent it? Taxes didn't affect anything until Kanes 'rescues' people by giving them back they money he took from them? Nobody else will ever buy a candle at any price???
Has your physics teacher ever mentioned the frictionless surface, or the massless point. These don't exist either.
Yes, but they do follow the (relevant) laws of physics, they're just idealized. Your story has several economic equivalents of immovable objects - bounce a ball off of one and you've violated the conservation of momentum, so you simply can't use them.
there are different nash equilubria in economines and you can through no fault of your own end up in a lousy one.
And the same thing is true of good ones. The hard part is predicting which one you're headed for - our track record on that is abominable.
As we become more productive with robots one can either go to an economy where fewer people are employed and fewer people buy the now cheaper goods while wealth concentrates into the few people wiht enough capital to buy these expensive robots, or you could consider an increasingly socialist econonmy where we the increasing cheapness of goods lets us lead more procutive happy lives or lives with more leisure.
I'd list a dozen alternatives, but I'll stick with 'false dichotomy'.
Yes you can quibble, but if you extrapolate to infinite cheapness clearly I'm right.
No, you're not. If things were infinitely cheap then for a trivial amount one of the rich people could fund an endowment that would give every human being in existence all they'll ever need forever. You think they'd all turn down a chance at that kind of legacy?
I don't know what to make of this. The GP is talking about heat pumps, which heat more efficiently than burning fuel and both heat and cool at about the same efficiency, and the fact that on average people need more heating than cooling due to temperature differences where people live usually being larger where it's cold.
125* in the American south in a heat wave noon day sun and, what, 25* in northern Canada on average
The American South has never gotten that hot, while it's 10* in Iowa (not Canada) right now. And that's the point - on a record-setting 115* day in Georgia they're pushing a 40* temperature difference, while a -5* day in Iowa (happens most years) it's twice that - and because of the way temperature gradients work, that means 4 times the energy required to keep up with heat flow.
A hot place, near lethal for many activities, is 100*f... How do you achieve insulation cheaply from 125* ambient air and a 100* human body?
Healthy people can get along (uncomfortably) even at 134* (US record high in Death Valley) if they limit their activity and have plenty of water, while I don't think a blanket is going to do much for you at -45* (record cold at same location), let alone a place that gets really cold.
It's a *lot* more efficient to heat something by one degree than to cool it by one degree same amount.
No. Weirdly enough, it's pretty much the same.
Heating is typically pushing 100% efficiency...
Sure. But for the same amount of energy you can pump several times as much heat in or out.
That might sound like it's breaking the laws of thermodynamics, but because the efficiency of a heat engine can't exceed the ratio of the temperatures it's working with, there's no 'free' energy.
If that is true, where are the brownouts and rolling blackouts in cold climates? They are prevalent in urban centers in the high heat of the summer, but entirely absent in cold climates.
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia
What a good idea! Here's some people citing solid data... looks like the US rate is below average and median - weird.
Well, maybe they're biased. I'll check the wiki's List of countries by intentional homicide rate, sort by rate, and... 108 of 218, and still 21 away from Somalia, which isn't even counting civil war deaths.
after meticulously answering your every statement with facts... the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments
Except you haven't answered the vast majority of my statements - on rate of fire, Australian mass shootings, the correlation between gun ownership and homicide - all of them were just never mentioned again after I made a rebuttal. On the other hand, every post you've made has brought up irrelevant things that are unrelated to anything I've mentioned - court cases, mass shootings, self-defense - that's all you making a straw-man, which you still couldn't defend properly.
So from my perspective you have (by omission) conceded nearly every argument you've put forward, while desperately trying to come up with something I can't rebut with a single sentence or link. So even though I'm not pro-gun, this discussion has just solidified my belief that pro-gun people have reasonable (if not entirely convincing) arguments, and gun control advocates (at least the ones here) are just responding to their gut reactions and don't have reasonable arguments.
Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
At least that a reasonable misunderstanding of the point I was making.
So to clarify my first point, I do believe that in peacetime the number of guns can be reduced (by say, 95%), my point about drugs was about who still manages to get them - people who don't care about breaking the law, or who are desperate. So the remaining 5% of the guns will be in the hands of career criminals and other dangerous people, not hunters and old people on isolated farms. So it's plausible that even a fairly effective gun ban might not even lower gun crime that much.
So if we reduce civilian gun ownership by 95% (and I have to assume you advocate this in every country) where do the gun come from in wartime (say a second US civil war)? Military and law enforcement in the country need them, foreign ones are state-owned and controlled, so you can't count on them getting smuggled in. And even if every civilian-owned firearm on earth found its way to the US quickly that would barely get the rate up to the current world average, let alone the US's rate, let alone the even higher rate that would occur if they had all the guns they have now and were importing more. On top of that people who are gun owners now would instead have to pay inflated wartime prices while the economy has collapsed to get their hands on one. But you don't think any of this will affect availability? They'll just... "FIND them"?
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
So you're down to mindless insults. I think I'll call this a victory.:)
I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here.... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.
But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?
The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.
Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nut straw-man.
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Rate of fire.
They're the same - they're semi-automatics. (Unless you're saying 'hunting rifle' means bolt-action. Or you're talking about ones modified to emulate fully-automatic behavior, but as you've mentioned even the NRA seems to be OK banning/regulating those.)
Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban
And they've halved in the US over the last 20 years, while civilian gun ownership has gone up 50%. All that tells me is that even if they're related other factors are far more important.
there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted
Which is irrelevant - ten people dying is terrible, but does it matter if they got shot or someone drove a truck into a parade?
A gun is a horrible, horrible tool for self defense... Bruce Schneier
Again, that's not something I've made a claim about. But at least you've sort-of mentioned a source, even if it isn't an actual citation.
And these facts... They won't go away because they are inconvenient or don't fit your personal narrative of how things work.
Same to you.
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That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
Care to back that up with something?
Nobody increased pilot's licenses until ONLY airline employees and fighter-pilots could qualify
Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
In no other country with a license-to-own-a-gun scheme has this happened... Why do people fear something that has absolutely never happened to anything, ever - on the basis of fallacious reasoning?
But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
if a civil war creates a need they will FIND them
No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia?
So not only are you wrong, but since you made it up you knew it was likely wrong before you said it, and don't care. Sad.
The US's homicide rate is below both the average and median for all countries. It's probably the worst of the first-world, but nowhere near third-word rates.
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane. They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The whole reason we have constant arguments about this in the US is that we have vast differences in culture - many people have grown up with guns all around them, others haven't seen a gun fire except on TV or in the movies. Some cities essentially banned all guns until recently, other places have tried to make gun ownership mandatory.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
As my third link did...
And before you say "But Switzerland"
France, Greece, Belgium,...
an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER.... But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact.
Because you say so.
the US 2nd circuit appeals
You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right? Don't throw a party until the Supreme Court has its say. And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, but remember I was in this to defend people who are pro-gun against a load of nonsense several posts ago. I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I do, groups that make use scary made-up terms like 'weapon of war' and 'assault weapon' to sway people, and politicians that run around screaming 'ban guns' every campaign and then claim they just want 'common sense gun control' that look like the first step in the process of banning them.
I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns
I've never claimed that - I was just trying to keep my claim about sources more conservative.
But let's address YOUR claims then:
Followed by two paragraphs that in no way address any of the arguments I'm trying to defend (which aren't mine, by the way - I was just pointing out the nonsense in quantaman's post).
So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT.... Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT.
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
The point being made, was that the gun-rights activists would choose to cut 1 million from welfare, but gladly endorse 100 million in prisons.
It wasn't clear that this was a hypothetical, but I still don't think the libertarian-leaning, 'small-government', pro-gun type of conservatives want to spend more money on much of anything.
But anyway, looking at the numbers, the federal government has about 10% of the nation's prisoners, so you're ignoring the other 90%.
Yes, but now you have to include state and local budgets into the mix as well. This was just a quick, order-of-magnitude estimate.
These are the people who vote for 3-strikes laws, who vote for 10-20-life. Who scream for marijuana criminalization.... Too bad for the ones who made the choice of their tent-mates then.
Every political group has to ally with other groups it doesn't completely agree with, that's how politics works. Do you think that communists like working with pro-globalization neo-liberals in the Democratic party?
I think this particular sub-group would be fine with married gay marijuana farmers living next door as long as they didn't have to fight gun-control legislation every election cycle.
Nope, it makes them HYPOCRITES. Was that hard for you to grasp?
The fact that you think all conservatives are a homogeneous mass of group-thinkers make them hypocrites?
Wanting to cut $1M off welfare and spend $100M more on prisons doesn't make one in favor of a small government.
The US federal budget for prisons is less than $10 billion while the budget for entitlements is 2.33 trillion, basically prisons are rounding error in the kind of thing that they'd like to cut.
But hey, you pulled some numbers out of your backside - totally convincing!/s
Nope, those conservatives want a huge government in involved in every aspect of people's lives. Telling people who they can sleep with, what services they can get from a doctor, and all that.
You do realize that those are Evangelical/social conservatives, not pro-business/small government conservatives, right? They don't even overlap that much.
Massive, invasive authoritarian fascist government. Gun rights activists are as much fascists as the fascists who grabbed guns in the '30s.
Hyperbolic fear-mongering at its most absurd. "Less government intrusion" is literally a cornerstone of their political philosophy, but in your mind that makes them fascists.
The USA have the highest per capita gun related crime rate of the world
This appears to be both false and irrelevant. I couldn't find a source for all 'gun-related crime' across countries but even with more guns than people, the US's firearm-related homicide rate doesn't even make the top 10. And even if it was, it's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
(and the highest kill rate by toddlers (ab)using a gun).
So a country that has more than three times as many X per capita as nearly every other country has more accidents related to X? Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents? Let's find out!
But since none of this has anything to do with your claims about authoritarianism and tyranny (or your... 'creative' definition of a 'fact'), I guess you concede those points?
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact.... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
So you're presenting an... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...
I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.
...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing
Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.
One of the strongest arguments against adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution was that by calling out specific rights people would be justified in treating those rights differently than ones that didn't make the list. The whole point of the 9th amendment was to try to alleviate those concerns.
Of course, when government power was being greatly expanded to allow New Deal legislation, the Supreme Court decided that law that violated different rights deserved different levels of scrutiny - and guess which rights ended up triggering 'strict scrutiny' in Footnote Four?
So yes, it's a perfectly valid interpretation of legal history to say that the net effect of the Bill of Rights was to reduced the overall scope of rights held by Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
Kindly point out where I was defending it.
Without some clear distancing language (e.g. the legislature thought that...) one can't tell the difference between a mere statement of fact and an endorsement - English is funny that way. That's why I kept saying 'you seem to be suggesting' - I want you to make your position clearer.
I stated how it came about, to the best of my knowledge.
And I'm trying to point out that men leaving their wives and children on a whim was never a large fraction of divorces, but it did make a good boogyman. Or to use your terminology, there are probably more sluts than dicks (or maybe roughly the same number), but for some reason legally we not only favor sluts but are also willing to disfavor all men for the actions of the dicks.
This occurred because the men were suddenly free from the expenses of the family, whereas the women were forced to take on the financial burden of raising the children.
Exactly, this is after men no longer had default custody of the children after a divorce and people were trying to put financial responsibility back on his shoulders. I'm sorry if my extremely brief overview missed some of the twists and turns between the old common-law system and the one we have today.
But how is this a defense of ' "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families'? The fact you quoted was true no matter who initiated the divorce or for what reason.
And again, you seem to be suggesting that the bad behavior of those men justified the unfairness to all men. I'm suggesting that the number of 'dad abandons family on a whim' phenomena was blown out of proportion by the unfortunate victims of those cases, bigots, and people who saw a political advantage to be gained, and that even if it was true it wouldn't justify a wholesale shift in legal responsibility.
the father almost always profited and the mother almost always became impoverished
And the mother almost always got to raise the children and the father did not. I agree that both were unfair, but at least they weren't both unfair in the same direction, as they are tending toward now.
The legal system for child support came about because plenty of "real fathers" were only too willing to abandon their families when the going got rough or a more winsome piece of ass drifted on by.
What revisionist twaddle. Child support after a divorce came about because originally fathers kept the children and got both the benefits of custody and the responsibility to support them. Then we decided that children belong with their mothers, but financial responsibility should stay with the fathers.
The 'deadbeat dad' narrative came about as a way to defend this clearly unfair system, and the fact the fathers (quite reasonably) feel more responsible for children that they are allowed to be the fathers of, rather than kids they aren't allowed to see.
The problem the GP describes, with cuckolds paying child support for kids that aren't theirs, stems from the same sexist urge. In most cases a DNA test can only give a man responsibility (even if they were underage and she wasn't, even if he was unconscious) but not remove it (he was married to her at the time and waited until the child was six months old, he 'acted like a father').
And as a side note, it's incredibly crass of you to try to justify the ill treatment of some men by pointing out the bad behavior of other men.
A stolen GM plant? Monsanto's going to be pissed ... wait, you meant cars?
Yep. It was definitely racism, which is a thing only white people ever do.
I was alluding to a particular kind of racist action during a particular period of one country's history. I realize you're too triggered to understand that, but when you stop hyperventilating please try again.
As we all know, OJ Simpson was perfectly innocent and certainly didn't kill anybody ever.
I would be shocked if OJ Simpson committed 10% of the homicides committed by black men that day, let alone over long enough time to draw conclusions about the broader societal effects.
The guy just screamed "innocent". Black people certainly didn't celebrate when one of their own was found not guilty. It was evil white people tricking you into believing that. Darn those white people.
You have issue that I am ill-equipped to deal with. Seek help, for good of yourself and those around you.
If a law is just 90% of the time, then a case should be dismissed 10% of the time.
We tried that. What was interesting is that the 10% of homicides were always white men accused of murdering black men. I forget why, but that became unpopular.
The courts often say that the bills should have been more specific.
Yes, the courts are a bureaucratic system designed to interpret the law and determine how it applies to certain cases. If the law isn't clear, or contradicts other law, then courts throw it out.
You seem to think that the Justice System should always dispense justice - but it can't, because 'justice' is an opinion, not a fact. This judge would end up throwing all the dark-skinned people in prison, that judge will do the reverse. He'll send women to jail for driving while female, she'll never send a woman to prison. It would be absolute chaos, with with no way to tell if you 'really' broke a law, and no definitive way to change it.
So we're better off with some bad laws, clearly spelled out and evenly enforced, even if it's not always fair. We can understand the legal consequences of our actions, and have an unambiguous path to change those laws.
If new higher paying jobs don't srping up
Why wouldn't they? The robots need to be manufactured and maintained, and the money not spent on that is a cost savings, which should lead to lower prices - which leads to more sales and thus more jobs, or people spending what they save on other things and thus more jobs.
Yes you can poke some holes in that reductionist example
Empty space doesn't count as a hole unless there's substance around it - which this argument doesn't have. Just the fact that money appears and disappears when convenient to your argument, but never the reverse, make it absurd. Grandma needed the money, but never spent it? Taxes didn't affect anything until Kanes 'rescues' people by giving them back they money he took from them? Nobody else will ever buy a candle at any price???
Has your physics teacher ever mentioned the frictionless surface, or the massless point. These don't exist either.
Yes, but they do follow the (relevant) laws of physics, they're just idealized. Your story has several economic equivalents of immovable objects - bounce a ball off of one and you've violated the conservation of momentum, so you simply can't use them.
there are different nash equilubria in economines and you can through no fault of your own end up in a lousy one.
And the same thing is true of good ones. The hard part is predicting which one you're headed for - our track record on that is abominable.
As we become more productive with robots one can either go to an economy where fewer people are employed and fewer people buy the now cheaper goods while wealth concentrates into the few people wiht enough capital to buy these expensive robots, or you could consider an increasingly socialist econonmy where we the increasing cheapness of goods lets us lead more procutive happy lives or lives with more leisure.
I'd list a dozen alternatives, but I'll stick with 'false dichotomy'.
Yes you can quibble, but if you extrapolate to infinite cheapness clearly I'm right.
No, you're not. If things were infinitely cheap then for a trivial amount one of the rich people could fund an endowment that would give every human being in existence all they'll ever need forever. You think they'd all turn down a chance at that kind of legacy?
I don't know what to make of this. The GP is talking about heat pumps, which heat more efficiently than burning fuel and both heat and cool at about the same efficiency, and the fact that on average people need more heating than cooling due to temperature differences where people live usually being larger where it's cold.
125* in the American south in a heat wave noon day sun and, what, 25* in northern Canada on average
The American South has never gotten that hot, while it's 10* in Iowa (not Canada) right now. And that's the point - on a record-setting 115* day in Georgia they're pushing a 40* temperature difference, while a -5* day in Iowa (happens most years) it's twice that - and because of the way temperature gradients work, that means 4 times the energy required to keep up with heat flow.
A hot place, near lethal for many activities, is 100*f ... How do you achieve insulation cheaply from 125* ambient air and a 100* human body?
Healthy people can get along (uncomfortably) even at 134* (US record high in Death Valley) if they limit their activity and have plenty of water, while I don't think a blanket is going to do much for you at -45* (record cold at same location), let alone a place that gets really cold.
It's a *lot* more efficient to heat something by one degree than to cool it by one degree same amount.
No. Weirdly enough, it's pretty much the same.
Heating is typically pushing 100% efficiency...
Sure. But for the same amount of energy you can pump several times as much heat in or out.
That might sound like it's breaking the laws of thermodynamics, but because the efficiency of a heat engine can't exceed the ratio of the temperatures it's working with, there's no 'free' energy.
Yes to both.
If that is true, where are the brownouts and rolling blackouts in cold climates? They are prevalent in urban centers in the high heat of the summer, but entirely absent in cold climates.
Why would natural gas furnaces cause brownouts?
Sorry, I suggest simply to check some statistics, or wikipedia
What a good idea! Here's some people citing solid data ... looks like the US rate is below average and median - weird.
Well, maybe they're biased. I'll check the wiki's List of countries by intentional homicide rate, sort by rate, and ... 108 of 218, and still 21 away from Somalia, which isn't even counting civil war deaths.
after meticulously answering your every statement with facts ... the insults came AFTER the intelligent arguments
Except you haven't answered the vast majority of my statements - on rate of fire, Australian mass shootings, the correlation between gun ownership and homicide - all of them were just never mentioned again after I made a rebuttal. On the other hand, every post you've made has brought up irrelevant things that are unrelated to anything I've mentioned - court cases, mass shootings, self-defense - that's all you making a straw-man, which you still couldn't defend properly.
So from my perspective you have (by omission) conceded nearly every argument you've put forward, while desperately trying to come up with something I can't rebut with a single sentence or link. So even though I'm not pro-gun, this discussion has just solidified my belief that pro-gun people have reasonable (if not entirely convincing) arguments, and gun control advocates (at least the ones here) are just responding to their gut reactions and don't have reasonable arguments.
Where's it going to come from indeed... the same people who can't imagine how a working law and order system could possibly keep illegal guns to a minimum need to ASK how a broken DOWN law and order system could possibly SUCCEED in keeping them out ?
At least that a reasonable misunderstanding of the point I was making.
So to clarify my first point, I do believe that in peacetime the number of guns can be reduced (by say, 95%), my point about drugs was about who still manages to get them - people who don't care about breaking the law, or who are desperate. So the remaining 5% of the guns will be in the hands of career criminals and other dangerous people, not hunters and old people on isolated farms. So it's plausible that even a fairly effective gun ban might not even lower gun crime that much.
So if we reduce civilian gun ownership by 95% (and I have to assume you advocate this in every country) where do the gun come from in wartime (say a second US civil war)? Military and law enforcement in the country need them, foreign ones are state-owned and controlled, so you can't count on them getting smuggled in. And even if every civilian-owned firearm on earth found its way to the US quickly that would barely get the rate up to the current world average, let alone the US's rate, let alone the even higher rate that would occur if they had all the guns they have now and were importing more. On top of that people who are gun owners now would instead have to pay inflated wartime prices while the economy has collapsed to get their hands on one. But you don't think any of this will affect availability? They'll just ... "FIND them"?
Aristotle proved the slippery-slope argument was a fallacy around teh same time he first wrote down the six laws of logic.
You might have heard of him, but you clearly didn't read Aristotle. This might be more your speed, and they have a whole section on "non-fallacious usage".
If you can't figure that out, you're too dumb to have opinions. Please remain in your mother's basement for ever, ESPECIALLY on election days. Thank you.
Oh, and cut your internet. Self-quarantining the stupid is the single greatest contribution you could ever hope to make to mankind.
So you're down to mindless insults. I think I'll call this a victory. :)
I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here. ... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.
But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?
The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.
Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nut straw-man.
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Rate of fire.
They're the same - they're semi-automatics. (Unless you're saying 'hunting rifle' means bolt-action. Or you're talking about ones modified to emulate fully-automatic behavior, but as you've mentioned even the NRA seems to be OK banning/regulating those.)
Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban
And they've halved in the US over the last 20 years, while civilian gun ownership has gone up 50%. All that tells me is that even if they're related other factors are far more important.
there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted
Which is irrelevant - ten people dying is terrible, but does it matter if they got shot or someone drove a truck into a parade?
But lets check the List of massacres in Australia to be sure - Monash, Hectorville, Hunt family, Logan ... wha?
A gun is a horrible, horrible tool for self defense ... Bruce Schneier
Again, that's not something I've made a claim about. But at least you've sort-of mentioned a source, even if it isn't an actual citation.
And these facts ... They won't go away because they are inconvenient or don't fit your personal narrative of how things work.
Same to you.
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That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
Care to back that up with something?
Nobody increased pilot's licenses until ONLY airline employees and fighter-pilots could qualify
Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
In no other country with a license-to-own-a-gun scheme has this happened ... Why do people fear something that has absolutely never happened to anything, ever - on the basis of fallacious reasoning?
But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
if a civil war creates a need they will FIND them
No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?
In the country that probably has the highest crime rate after third world countries like Somalia?
So not only are you wrong, but since you made it up you knew it was likely wrong before you said it, and don't care. Sad.
The US's homicide rate is below both the average and median for all countries. It's probably the worst of the first-world, but nowhere near third-word rates.
You cannot use states within the USA to compare - that er... insane. They are all in the same gun culture, and the same permissive over-all gun law system.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The whole reason we have constant arguments about this in the US is that we have vast differences in culture - many people have grown up with guns all around them, others haven't seen a gun fire except on TV or in the movies. Some cities essentially banned all guns until recently, other places have tried to make gun ownership mandatory.
If you want to do a comparison you have to do so with other COUNTRIES.
As my third link did...
And before you say "But Switzerland"
France, Greece, Belgium, ...
an AR-15 serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSES WHATSOEVER. ... But in Canada 'gun' means 'hunting rifle'.
Without looking anything up, name a functional difference between the two relevant to that distinction.
But it is one that is actually fairly EASY to reduce and WILL have a positive impact.
Because you say so.
the US 2nd circuit appeals
You do realize that they get overruled all the time, right? Don't throw a party until the Supreme Court has its say. And even that's just a political victory, it wouldn't mean you're right.
Just make ownership contingent on a proficiency test to prove you know how to use a gun safely, and can actually aim.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, but remember I was in this to defend people who are pro-gun against a load of nonsense several posts ago. I can understand how people who value their hunting/self-reliant culture aren't willing to compromise with legislation supported by people who clearly know less about guns than even I do, groups that make use scary made-up terms like 'weapon of war' and 'assault weapon' to sway people, and politicians that run around screaming 'ban guns' every campaign and then claim they just want 'common sense gun control' that look like the first step in the process of banning them.
I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns
I've never claimed that - I was just trying to keep my claim about sources more conservative.
But let's address YOUR claims then:
Followed by two paragraphs that in no way address any of the arguments I'm trying to defend (which aren't mine, by the way - I was just pointing out the nonsense in quantaman's post).
So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT. ... Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT.
30 seconds of Googling (none completely unbiased, but they have actual numbers and citations, unlike some people):
Washington Post: Zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws
Washington Examiner: No, states with higher gun ownership don't have more gun murders
Crime Research: COMPARING MURDER RATES AND GUN OWNERSHIP ACROSS COUNTRIES
It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used...
Scaring people off is self defense, even if you never draw your weapon.
Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal"
Who's for that?
Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
For the most part, yes.
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
The point being made, was that the gun-rights activists would choose to cut 1 million from welfare, but gladly endorse 100 million in prisons.
It wasn't clear that this was a hypothetical, but I still don't think the libertarian-leaning, 'small-government', pro-gun type of conservatives want to spend more money on much of anything.
But anyway, looking at the numbers, the federal government has about 10% of the nation's prisoners, so you're ignoring the other 90%.
Yes, but now you have to include state and local budgets into the mix as well. This was just a quick, order-of-magnitude estimate.
These are the people who vote for 3-strikes laws, who vote for 10-20-life. Who scream for marijuana criminalization. ... Too bad for the ones who made the choice of their tent-mates then.
Every political group has to ally with other groups it doesn't completely agree with, that's how politics works. Do you think that communists like working with pro-globalization neo-liberals in the Democratic party?
I think this particular sub-group would be fine with married gay marijuana farmers living next door as long as they didn't have to fight gun-control legislation every election cycle.
Nope, it makes them HYPOCRITES. Was that hard for you to grasp?
The fact that you think all conservatives are a homogeneous mass of group-thinkers make them hypocrites?
Wanting to cut $1M off welfare and spend $100M more on prisons doesn't make one in favor of a small government.
The US federal budget for prisons is less than $10 billion while the budget for entitlements is 2.33 trillion, basically prisons are rounding error in the kind of thing that they'd like to cut.
But hey, you pulled some numbers out of your backside - totally convincing! /s
Nope, those conservatives want a huge government in involved in every aspect of people's lives. Telling people who they can sleep with, what services they can get from a doctor, and all that.
You do realize that those are Evangelical/social conservatives, not pro-business/small government conservatives, right? They don't even overlap that much.
Massive, invasive authoritarian fascist government. Gun rights activists are as much fascists as the fascists who grabbed guns in the '30s.
Hyperbolic fear-mongering at its most absurd. "Less government intrusion" is literally a cornerstone of their political philosophy, but in your mind that makes them fascists.
The USA have the highest per capita gun related crime rate of the world
This appears to be both false and irrelevant. I couldn't find a source for all 'gun-related crime' across countries but even with more guns than people, the US's firearm-related homicide rate doesn't even make the top 10. And even if it was, it's possible that guns reduce crime while at the same time the crimes that do occur are more likely to involve guns.
(and the highest kill rate by toddlers (ab)using a gun).
So a country that has more than three times as many X per capita as nearly every other country has more accidents related to X? Who would have thought! Is it possible that countries with more boats have more toddler deaths in boating accidents? Let's find out!
But since none of this has anything to do with your claims about authoritarianism and tyranny (or your ... 'creative' definition of a 'fact'), I guess you concede those points?
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. ... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
So you're presenting an ... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...
I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.
...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing
Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.
One of the strongest arguments against adding the Bill of Rights to the Constitution was that by calling out specific rights people would be justified in treating those rights differently than ones that didn't make the list. The whole point of the 9th amendment was to try to alleviate those concerns.
Of course, when government power was being greatly expanded to allow New Deal legislation, the Supreme Court decided that law that violated different rights deserved different levels of scrutiny - and guess which rights ended up triggering 'strict scrutiny' in Footnote Four?
So yes, it's a perfectly valid interpretation of legal history to say that the net effect of the Bill of Rights was to reduced the overall scope of rights held by Americans.
They can't consent, either, so it is rape.
Don't be silly; it's not rape when a Muslim does it! /s