Well I think we'll both be letting Brazil do whatever it wants by default but Brazil's violence problem largely stems from the complex social issues that either define or often come along with being a third world nation like massive wealth inequality, extreme poverty, and incredibly corrupt government. Anyone in the social sciences will tell you that those are all key drivers of violence in society. Therefore, using Brazil as a testing ground for US policy isn't terribly enlightening because we'd have to figure out a way to control for all of those huge issues. This is why comparisons to other first world nations are used for stuff like this because they all have (pretty much by definition) similar levels of these issues.
"Hahaha! Okay, you've shown that I don't know what I'm talking about so I'm making a lame excuse and looking for some other place to pedal my ignorance"
Or how about we implement the solution the rest of the first world has successfully done rather than struggle with complex issues that the first world has yet to figure out solutions to?
Nice circumstantial bullshit. My friends in London think our right wing conspiratorial "no-go" zones are retarded but just like your post that's not proof of anything except their opinions,
"I will observe, the immediate response was to try and silence my post so it wouldn't be noticed. https://pjmedia.com/trending/g... [pjmedia.com]
Something of a pattern amongst the left."
Oh please, get off your cross. Everyone in here gets modded down for reasons not inline with Slashdot's suggested mod usage. You're not so special that the evil Left targets you special and the same thing happens to them.
Now I'm not going to tell you that Obama is perfection incarnate but he certainly didn't do some of the things you said he did and other things you're leaving out of their proper context.
"Obama was an inexperienced community organizer". Why on earth do conservatives always bring up him being a community organizer on a list of negatives? Community organizing is just getting people active in our democratic process.
"massively added to the federal debt" This was done in the context in one of the worst depressions this country has had (one which he inherited). Not only did tax revenues drop massively which he couldn't possibly have any control over but he also encouraged increased spending in the Keynesian model to help combat the depression. And now look where we are, the economy is finally looking vaguely healthy again and all Trump can do is crow about and take credit for the growth Obama created.
"caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs" Job growth happened throughout Obama's presidency.
"and saddled us with healthcare reform that by its own architects was unworkable" I'm not a huge Obama Care fan as it fails to address any of the under-riding problems our healthcare system has (it's still twice as expensive per person as those evil socialist's medical systems) but with an extra 20 million people with health insurance out of the blue it is certainly "working" in that context.
"deliberate disingenuous"? No, I completely agree that those scenarios are in fact very different. That doesnt change the fact that by the time the cops arrived the confrontation would have been over and there really wouldnt have been anything to charge him with. Nudging your holster hip someone's way and giving them a wink isn't exactly illegal.
Jesus, I can't believe you just said that. You just told me that if we cherry pick our data then we look great. Of course that's the fucking case. If you did that with any country you could make them look light years better.
No one formally educated in the social sciences would compare the current United States to a third world nation in the manner that xonservatives want them compared in terms of gun violence. I know this because I'm formally educated in the social sciences. If you like I will type up an explanation but I'm not wasting my time searching for an authoritative source to site on that claim.
Wake the fuck up? How you about you learn about the world.
Your nice list of things do certainly happen in first world countries (except no go zones, that's a myth) but you're showing your ignorance of just how much safer it is in every other first world country. Our homicide rate is around 5 times the average for first world countries and we are several full points higher then the next closest country. After that, crime rates are all very comparable throughout the first world so nothing on that list is happening to such a degree as to make it a problem on par with our out of control homicide rates. Basically, you're just as likely to have something painful happen to you in other first world nations but you are way less likely to be killed.
After that, sure I'm not crazy about the incredibly few free speech restrictions a number of first world nations have but if you some how think that makes them horribly oppressive countries you don't really understand what that means.
Do you not understand what that phrase means? When comparing us to other countries on social issues the social sciences universally regard other first world countries as generally the best candidates as they are the most like us. There is little to no debate about this among people who are well educated and in the social sciences,
" Correlation is not causation."
Wow, thanks for that bit of insight-fullness. A high degree of correlation does strongly suggest causation though.
"Even 4-5 times more of remarkably rare is still rare."
Sure and no one is saying you have violence like some third world nations but it also means that there is a major problem given that every other first world nation experiences such a drastically lower rate. It's not as if we happen to be top of the list by.1% percapita. We're multiple full percentage points higher. Those percentage points add up to a shit ton of dead people.
" Homicide rates in states that have laxer gun laws are low as compared to states/cities with stronger gun laws."
Stricter gun laws in this country aren't that much different from the lax ones. Lax or strict they still allow for the mass ownership of most guns so comparing among US states will of course yield similar results. Furthermore, we have no real borders in this country so regional gun laws just aren't going to effect gun violence rates all that much.
"Then why is London becoming more violent than NYC?"
Congratulations, you can name one city in a country that has had strict gun control for over half a century that is recently having a spike in violence. These spikes happen in major urban areas.
" seem because there are other factors that can predict violence better than the prevalence of a tool. "
By comparing among first world nations pretty much all the major causes of violence in society that the social sciences recognize like poverty and the like are controlled for by default because first world nations are similar societies in these contexts. Guns really do stand out as a glaring issue when looking at the data.
My comments have nothing to do with the effectiveness of gun free zones in contexts like that. I was only attempting the dispel the retarded myth that people believe that gun free zones create some sort of magical wall that keeps all guns out. No one believes that.
"Sure, that's scary. And if they do that, you can call the police and make their lives harder. But you know what's even more scary? Anyone could be carrying a concealed firearm. You could justify just being scared all the time, if you wanted."
Sure but the odds are pretty remote aside from the most dangerous of places in America and if I live in fear of that I might as well live in fear of all of the other things that could kill me on a daily basis. Furthermore, if the weapon is concealed in a context like I experienced then they are clearly not trying to intimidate me with it which suggests a some what more stable personality. Also, in regards to calling the cops in a scenario like that, please visit your own comments on how far away cops are.
Well if we slide into third world status it will then become meaningful to compare us to other third world countries. As of right now I don't think (and the social sciences generally agree with me here) that comparing the US to third world countries on social problems like this is meaningful.
I do consider your point here of what is basically "fear of government" as a legitimate point against increased gun control. It's a sediment voiced by many of the founding fathers and is generally recognized by people knowledgeable on the subject as the real reason for the second amendment. The part that's hard is which is worth more, our safety from each other or from our government and people are just going to come to different conclusions on that. Personally, given that I feel that first world Democracies so far have a fairly high success rate in terms of not sliding into authoritarianism, I'd rather have laws that defend society against the devil we know then the one that might never exist.
I do feel though that leaving the issue to the states would work out just as well as other regional bans like DC's, which is to say not well at all. Our states all have completely open boarders so guns will just come right on over from the nearest state with looser laws.
"Your motives for disarming the public have nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with establishing a totalitarian society. "
Oh Jesus Christ, now you're just going over the deep end. Virtually all of the rest of the first world has stricter gun control laws then us and still have vibrant, open democracies with regular crime rates at roughly the same level as ours. There is a very obvious solution to our high homicide and gun violence rates sitting right in front of us in almost every other first world nation. Meanwhile, no one currently has any good ideas on how to solve the opiate problem our country is having.
You're just being stupid and choosing to demonize some one with claims that you have zero supporting evidence for. At this point if all you have is deflection and name calling I'm wasting my time talking to you.
No because we are not a third world nation with underpaid cops and massively corrupt government.
Furthermore, just take a look at every first world nation with stricter gun control laws then us. Yes, they also have occasional problems with corrupt police like we do but their gun violence and homicide rates remain incredibly low compared to ours.
No, the only "liberal health care solution" we've tried in this country is one first proposed by large numbers of significant conservatives in the 90's. More people have healthcare under the Affirmative Care Act (which is what I'm assuming you're alluding to) which is certainly a good thing but it completely fails to address our systems under-riding problems, the biggest of which is that our system is now and was before, massively too expensive relative to what countries with socialized medicine get for half the money.
Oh, gunfacts.org! I bet they're completely unbiased with a name like that!
Their "fact's" are blatantly fabricated. Here are the world's homicide rates by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . Every other first world nation with more restrictive gun control to our own has a lower homicide rate.
That's just genius, you're comparing our gun violence problem with that of a third world country.
It's a third world country with high levels of corruption in government, massive poverty, and massive wealth inequality. The only thing that would be surprising is if it didn't have a higher homicide rate than ours.
Relative to other countries that are actually similar to our own (other first world countries), our homicide rate is on average 5 times higher then any other with stricter gun control laws. Even the next closest is multiple full percentage points lower then us. That is a meaningful comparison.
You might as well be saying "No it's not important that the US middle class has been shrinking for the last half century because it's still bigger then a third world country's!". No shit it is, this comparison is just as stupid.
I find your concern for people with opiate problems highly suspect as there is absolutely no reason that both issues can't be discussed in the public sphere. Either you're a complete idiot or you're a scum bag whose trying to deflect attention away from a topic you don't want discussed by using the opiate crisis as an excuse.
"so instead of targeting guns, maybe we should get to the bottom of whats driving homicide. Banning sudafed sure as fuck didnt stop the use of meth. All it did was make it a real PITA for me when I actually need the shit. I have to get my ass to a pharacist between the hours of 9am and 8pm. If something comes up outside this time I have to deal with the problem until then."
We know severally limiting guns works because we can see it working in every other first world nation. As for finding what's driving homicide, we generally know that already, those problems are just very hard to fix like large scale wealth inequality.
"Something has changed in the last 30 years that makes people massively more likely to commit homicide than in previous decades. "
This couldn't be farther from the truth. Homicide rates have been pretty consistently dropping for the last thirty years https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... . News media sensationalism is what is at a thirty year high....and the rest of your post is predicated on your misunderstanding of this part of modern US history so that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I think we'll both be letting Brazil do whatever it wants by default but Brazil's violence problem largely stems from the complex social issues that either define or often come along with being a third world nation like massive wealth inequality, extreme poverty, and incredibly corrupt government. Anyone in the social sciences will tell you that those are all key drivers of violence in society. Therefore, using Brazil as a testing ground for US policy isn't terribly enlightening because we'd have to figure out a way to control for all of those huge issues. This is why comparisons to other first world nations are used for stuff like this because they all have (pretty much by definition) similar levels of these issues.
"Hahaha! Okay, you've shown that I don't know what I'm talking about so I'm making a lame excuse and looking for some other place to pedal my ignorance"
Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought.
Or how about we implement the solution the rest of the first world has successfully done rather than struggle with complex issues that the first world has yet to figure out solutions to?
Nice circumstantial bullshit. My friends in London think our right wing conspiratorial "no-go" zones are retarded but just like your post that's not proof of anything except their opinions,
"I will observe, the immediate response was to try and silence my post so it wouldn't be noticed.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/g... [pjmedia.com]
Something of a pattern amongst the left."
Oh please, get off your cross. Everyone in here gets modded down for reasons not inline with Slashdot's suggested mod usage. You're not so special that the evil Left targets you special and the same thing happens to them.
Now I'm not going to tell you that Obama is perfection incarnate but he certainly didn't do some of the things you said he did and other things you're leaving out of their proper context.
"Obama was an inexperienced community organizer". Why on earth do conservatives always bring up him being a community organizer on a list of negatives? Community organizing is just getting people active in our democratic process.
"massively added to the federal debt" This was done in the context in one of the worst depressions this country has had (one which he inherited). Not only did tax revenues drop massively which he couldn't possibly have any control over but he also encouraged increased spending in the Keynesian model to help combat the depression. And now look where we are, the economy is finally looking vaguely healthy again and all Trump can do is crow about and take credit for the growth Obama created.
"caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs" Job growth happened throughout Obama's presidency.
"and saddled us with healthcare reform that by its own architects was unworkable" I'm not a huge Obama Care fan as it fails to address any of the under-riding problems our healthcare system has (it's still twice as expensive per person as those evil socialist's medical systems) but with an extra 20 million people with health insurance out of the blue it is certainly "working" in that context.
Every country is like that. The United States is not some crazy anomaly in how our violent crime is proportioned.
"deliberate disingenuous"? No, I completely agree that those scenarios are in fact very different. That doesnt change the fact that by the time the cops arrived the confrontation would have been over and there really wouldnt have been anything to charge him with. Nudging your holster hip someone's way and giving them a wink isn't exactly illegal.
Jesus, I can't believe you just said that. You just told me that if we cherry pick our data then we look great. Of course that's the fucking case. If you did that with any country you could make them look light years better.
Wow, I've seen willfully delusional people before but you take the cake sir.
I guess all those people clamoring to get into our country are doing so because of the weather, right?
No one formally educated in the social sciences would compare the current United States to a third world nation in the manner that xonservatives want them compared in terms of gun violence. I know this because I'm formally educated in the social sciences. If you like I will type up an explanation but I'm not wasting my time searching for an authoritative source to site on that claim.
Wake the fuck up? How you about you learn about the world.
Your nice list of things do certainly happen in first world countries (except no go zones, that's a myth) but you're showing your ignorance of just how much safer it is in every other first world country. Our homicide rate is around 5 times the average for first world countries and we are several full points higher then the next closest country. After that, crime rates are all very comparable throughout the first world so nothing on that list is happening to such a degree as to make it a problem on par with our out of control homicide rates. Basically, you're just as likely to have something painful happen to you in other first world nations but you are way less likely to be killed.
After that, sure I'm not crazy about the incredibly few free speech restrictions a number of first world nations have but if you some how think that makes them horribly oppressive countries you don't really understand what that means.
"Apples and oranges"
Do you not understand what that phrase means? When comparing us to other countries on social issues the social sciences universally regard other first world countries as generally the best candidates as they are the most like us. There is little to no debate about this among people who are well educated and in the social sciences,
" Correlation is not causation."
Wow, thanks for that bit of insight-fullness. A high degree of correlation does strongly suggest causation though.
"Even 4-5 times more of remarkably rare is still rare."
Sure and no one is saying you have violence like some third world nations but it also means that there is a major problem given that every other first world nation experiences such a drastically lower rate. It's not as if we happen to be top of the list by .1% percapita. We're multiple full percentage points higher. Those percentage points add up to a shit ton of dead people.
" Homicide rates in states that have laxer gun laws are low as compared to states/cities with stronger gun laws."
Stricter gun laws in this country aren't that much different from the lax ones. Lax or strict they still allow for the mass ownership of most guns so comparing among US states will of course yield similar results. Furthermore, we have no real borders in this country so regional gun laws just aren't going to effect gun violence rates all that much.
"Then why is London becoming more violent than NYC?"
Congratulations, you can name one city in a country that has had strict gun control for over half a century that is recently having a spike in violence. These spikes happen in major urban areas.
" seem because there are other factors that can predict violence better than the prevalence of a tool. "
By comparing among first world nations pretty much all the major causes of violence in society that the social sciences recognize like poverty and the like are controlled for by default because first world nations are similar societies in these contexts. Guns really do stand out as a glaring issue when looking at the data.
My comments have nothing to do with the effectiveness of gun free zones in contexts like that. I was only attempting the dispel the retarded myth that people believe that gun free zones create some sort of magical wall that keeps all guns out. No one believes that.
"Sure, that's scary. And if they do that, you can call the police and make their lives harder. But you know what's even more scary? Anyone could be carrying a concealed firearm. You could justify just being scared all the time, if you wanted."
Sure but the odds are pretty remote aside from the most dangerous of places in America and if I live in fear of that I might as well live in fear of all of the other things that could kill me on a daily basis. Furthermore, if the weapon is concealed in a context like I experienced then they are clearly not trying to intimidate me with it which suggests a some what more stable personality. Also, in regards to calling the cops in a scenario like that, please visit your own comments on how far away cops are.
Well if we slide into third world status it will then become meaningful to compare us to other third world countries. As of right now I don't think (and the social sciences generally agree with me here) that comparing the US to third world countries on social problems like this is meaningful.
I do consider your point here of what is basically "fear of government" as a legitimate point against increased gun control. It's a sediment voiced by many of the founding fathers and is generally recognized by people knowledgeable on the subject as the real reason for the second amendment. The part that's hard is which is worth more, our safety from each other or from our government and people are just going to come to different conclusions on that. Personally, given that I feel that first world Democracies so far have a fairly high success rate in terms of not sliding into authoritarianism, I'd rather have laws that defend society against the devil we know then the one that might never exist.
I do feel though that leaving the issue to the states would work out just as well as other regional bans like DC's, which is to say not well at all. Our states all have completely open boarders so guns will just come right on over from the nearest state with looser laws.
"Your motives for disarming the public have nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with establishing a totalitarian society. "
Oh Jesus Christ, now you're just going over the deep end. Virtually all of the rest of the first world has stricter gun control laws then us and still have vibrant, open democracies with regular crime rates at roughly the same level as ours. There is a very obvious solution to our high homicide and gun violence rates sitting right in front of us in almost every other first world nation. Meanwhile, no one currently has any good ideas on how to solve the opiate problem our country is having.
You're just being stupid and choosing to demonize some one with claims that you have zero supporting evidence for. At this point if all you have is deflection and name calling I'm wasting my time talking to you.
No because we are not a third world nation with underpaid cops and massively corrupt government.
Furthermore, just take a look at every first world nation with stricter gun control laws then us. Yes, they also have occasional problems with corrupt police like we do but their gun violence and homicide rates remain incredibly low compared to ours.
No, the only "liberal health care solution" we've tried in this country is one first proposed by large numbers of significant conservatives in the 90's. More people have healthcare under the Affirmative Care Act (which is what I'm assuming you're alluding to) which is certainly a good thing but it completely fails to address our systems under-riding problems, the biggest of which is that our system is now and was before, massively too expensive relative to what countries with socialized medicine get for half the money.
Oh, gunfacts.org! I bet they're completely unbiased with a name like that!
Their "fact's" are blatantly fabricated. Here are the world's homicide rates by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . Every other first world nation with more restrictive gun control to our own has a lower homicide rate.
For now our middle class is big enough so we don't have the necessary poverty yet to really be a third world country.
That's just genius, you're comparing our gun violence problem with that of a third world country.
It's a third world country with high levels of corruption in government, massive poverty, and massive wealth inequality. The only thing that would be surprising is if it didn't have a higher homicide rate than ours.
Relative to other countries that are actually similar to our own (other first world countries), our homicide rate is on average 5 times higher then any other with stricter gun control laws. Even the next closest is multiple full percentage points lower then us. That is a meaningful comparison.
You might as well be saying "No it's not important that the US middle class has been shrinking for the last half century because it's still bigger then a third world country's!". No shit it is, this comparison is just as stupid.
Great, underpaid third world cups sell their guns. What's your point?
I find your concern for people with opiate problems highly suspect as there is absolutely no reason that both issues can't be discussed in the public sphere. Either you're a complete idiot or you're a scum bag whose trying to deflect attention away from a topic you don't want discussed by using the opiate crisis as an excuse.
"so instead of targeting guns, maybe we should get to the bottom of whats driving homicide. Banning sudafed sure as fuck didnt stop the use of meth. All it did was make it a real PITA for me when I actually need the shit. I have to get my ass to a pharacist between the hours of 9am and 8pm. If something comes up outside this time I have to deal with the problem until then."
We know severally limiting guns works because we can see it working in every other first world nation. As for finding what's driving homicide, we generally know that already, those problems are just very hard to fix like large scale wealth inequality.
"Something has changed in the last 30 years that makes people massively more likely to commit homicide than in previous decades. "
This couldn't be farther from the truth. Homicide rates have been pretty consistently dropping for the last thirty years https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... . News media sensationalism is what is at a thirty year high. ...and the rest of your post is predicated on your misunderstanding of this part of modern US history so that's it.