The Smiley Smile Message Board

My hopes aren't high, but hey, I'll try. (Ooh, poetry!) I ask respectfully that people use this thread to discuss gun (or other weapons) ownership in whatever calm and reasonable way they see fit: the 2nd Amendment's original intent; whether original intent matters in a changing world across the centuries; whether it's an all-or-nothing question, as opposed to one that can see compromise; personal views and situations. I'd especially love to hear from people outside the U.S. The Real Beach Boy asked that politics be kept out of his thread dedicated to the innocent victims of the Oregon shooting, the most recent of a seemingly endless string of mass killings in the U.S. This thread, then, can be the place to discuss the politics of the relevant issues.

I can't control what anyone writes, but I'm asking politely for civilized, reasoned discussion. Strong opinions--radical opinions--are welcome. But to quote Joe Pesci's character Nicky in "Casino," "Be fuckin' nice."

Moved here from the "Umpqua Community College shooting today" thread:

If you guys feel as badly as you say you do about the recent shooting, why are you unwilling to to take steps to prevent this from happening again?

I'll kick it off with a little background on where I'm coming from on the issue (in case anyone cares).

I was born and raised in the upper Midwest (rural Minnesota), which is an area where gun ownership is not an issue at all: virtually every family I knew had guns. People would occasionally put guns in their lockers after a morning of hunting before school. It wasn't allowed, technically, but it happened, and nobody much cared or worried about it. My dad was a cop and a gun collector; I don't know how many guns he had (or has), but it had to be 15+. In his line of work, he faced gunpoint more than once, most often by people whose guns were legally acquired, but not always. I first shot at a range when I was 10 or so. My family has plenty of hunters, both bow and gun.

Since the late '90s, I've lived in a city that was then referred to famously as "Murderapolis" because of its then-escalation of gang violence. We had our own mass shooting a few years ago, when a disgruntled ex-employee killed about half a dozen people at his former place of work.

Sometimes I hold relatively extreme views--I usually believe in compromising, but that doesn't mean my personal views are always moderate--but on this issue I do consider myself very much in the middle. While I don't believe in some sanctity of the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights, I do think they were the best thing going at the time and have plenty of wisdom yet today. And of course, what's law is law. What's protected right is protected right. I don't believe every citizen in this country should be forced to turn in his or her guns--nor do I think 99% of self-described liberals think that, from what I know. Conversely, I don't think there should be as few restrictions as there are in some parts of the country to buy or own firearms. The variation between gun-show purchases and brick-and-mortar purchases seems to be one obvious place where there could at least be consistency, if nothing else.

It's true that criminals, by definition, don't mind breaking the law. But it seems logical to me that this reality is no reason to give up trying, to make it easy for the would-be criminal to go about his nefarious business and compensate by hoping the rest of the citizenry is also armed and ready to shoot back (quite possibly injuring or killing other innocents in the process). Further, plenty of mass killers have obtained their firearms legally. You can say "they would have gotten them anyway, on the black market," and maybe it's true. Or maybe not. But that isn't how they're getting them, on the whole.

If there were an easy solution that everyone would agree with, it would have been implemented long ago. I don't think there is. But I think if everyone would listen a little bit to others' concerns, take a deep breath, and stop being so paranoid about others' intentions (as if Other Party were dominated by some Illuminati intent on destroying the populace), maybe some progress could be made in reducing the number of innocent people killed by firearms.

Because one thing I think everyone would agree with is that the number--higher than most any other developed country in the world--is too high.

Great post(s) Captain, and I hope this brings about some civilized and fruitful conversation.

Firstly, I want to say that we have a serious problem in this country and it needs to be solved. No child should have to go to school afraid of getting shot. It's complete bullshit that it happens and it needs to end. No 9 year old girl doing homework in her bedroom should have to be afraid of a stray round popping through her window and killing her. It's complete bullshit that it happens and it needs to end.

ALL police should be forced to wear body cameras. This helps both the police and the citizens (far less fake complaints brought against police, and more accountability is put on the policemen themselves). Mental healthcare should be a number one priority in this country. Planned Parenthood type facilities for mental health should be put in every small and large city. We have sex education in school, we need mental health education. Panic, anxiety disorders, stress, paranoia, etc. Some kids are either too worried to admit it or have no idea they have a problem. There should be an easily accessible place for these kids to go to get help. Deeper background checks should be a norm, even mental health checks should be a prerequisite for owning a gun. Gun safety classes should be required for gun owners ever 3-5 years. Gun owners should be required to own gun-safes to hold their entire collection.

Also, the mindset of the modern American needs to be changed. Wanna know why scumbag networks like CNN blab the names of these killers? Because many Americans will eat it up because we're obsessed with this stuff. We can blame the networks for making these killers famous, but why are these networks doing it in the first place? Because many Americans give them the ratings they need to keep on truckin with their nonsense. Americans need to grow up. Instead of focussing on watching the world burn we need to focus on putting out the flames.

Secondly, I was a kid when my house was nearly broken into. My family lived in a really sketchy neighborhood and violence and vandalism were a norm. But on this night it became a disturbing reality. The door was being banged on, the doorhandle jiggling. Fortunately the group/gang left in their cars after my dad flicked on a bunch of lights. Needless to say, in a country full of guns and crime, I feel safer at night with a gun within easy access. This may seem foreign to many here, but in a country loaded to the teeth with guns, it does make sense to own one to feel safe* edit: want to add that this is solely my opinion. Not saying that everyone needs to own a gun to feel safe.

There are so many problems associated with why people kill. Aiming the blame solely on guns is fairly ignorant. That being said, being unwilling to accept that easy access to guns is part of the problem is also extremely ignorant. There are kids out there with the brain-chemistry/mindset that allows them to do wicked things. Sure, we should make it impossible for them to gain access to weapons, but we should also try to treat their mindset so bent on hurting others before they even think about picking up a weapon.

I'm very much in the same mindset of Luther. I'm in the middle of this debate, and I'm open for good reasoned solutions to this problem. Looking forward to hearing what others have to say.

Yeah, nutcase like the shooter don't need to own 15 guns. Limit the number and type of guns for sale. Most gun stores seemed more focused on man hunting than animal hunting. Bolt action and certain types of handguns are fine.

For us here in Australia the solution is breathtakingly simple.

Does anyone here know the obvious pros or cons associated with following Australia's lead here in America? I mean, given that there are 300+ million accessible firearms in the United States, I don't see the solution here being as breathtakingly simple...but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

Nobody wants to outright ban guns like conservatives like to claim, it just shouldn't be so easy to get one.  People in this country are able to buy guns over the internet or at gun shows without being subject to a background check which I think is very dangerous.  We need to stop being selfish and worrying about what happens to our precious shiny toys in the wake of a tragedy and think about ways we can better protect people.

I don't see how MORE regulations will fix the problem. There are already hefty penalties for crimes committed with guns and even then they don't deter criminals. There's also the small issue which few have seen fit to reconcile, that being the fact that the cities with the highest levels of gun control (New York, Detroit, Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles) are RIDDLED with gun-related crimes. You may think that an armed populace concerned with protecting itself won't do much to protect themselves and others from criminals but I guarantee you that playing into the criminal idea of a disarmed group of people (which is all the leftists/redcoats are doing) will also fail.

I'm aware that some think that this country could just become like their precious John Bull's Tyranny or STRAYA without any hitches but I can guarantee you it will not be that easy. See, the people who claim to be anti-gun are not really anti-gun. They're very PRO-gun; so pro-gun in fact that they would see no problem in allowing the monopoly on force - government (an entity which kills more people in one year than all criminals combined) - complete control over the guns. At the end of the day, it's not about gun control; it's about PEOPLE control. You infringe upon their right to defend themselves and they become more easily swayed and will subject themselves to any tyranny as long as it keeps them safe.

Oh, and the elephant in the room, perhaps?

I don't see any crocodile tears from the white suburbanites (and yes, it's mostly white suburbanites - you know, the people tripping over all of that illusory privilege) over gang violence in the cities. But when it comes to suburbia, you're all up in arms because someone dared besmirch you and violate your "NIMBY" rule. "You wanna kill each other in the cities? I'll catch it on the news." "You wanna kill each other in suburbia? OH, NOT IN MY BACK YARD!" Think about it.

America doesn't have a gun problem; America has a morality problem. Americans by and large are decadent, immoral, and degenerate. Americans have a lot of soul searching to do. And this is not liberal vs. conservative, left vs. right, white vs. black...it spans genders, races, religions, sexual orientations, political persuasions, and personal tastes.

Done!  If we want to "better protect people" -- the solution is easy.  Protect them.  Put a tank at every school.  Or whatever.  Done.  I'd sleep better, wouldn't you?

People need to start thinking logical about this stuff.  Stop with the agenda sh-t.  If a terrorist attacks us we protect the targets.  Planes, airports -- protected.  Sporting events -- protected.  Politicians -- protected.  Famous people hire security.  Hillbillies got rifles to protect their teenage daughters.

Listen, these imbeciles are going after some pretty soft targets -- just like those piece of sh-t terrorists.  But nobody ever fcking does anything -- why!!?!.  Think about why... seriously.  WHY?  They want the agenda?  That's all I can come up with.  We're PAWNS in moving their agenda.  Fill in the blank there....

Whether you want to go there or not, that's fine.  One step at a time.  But remember, all THEY are giving your kids at school are these stupid "Gun-Free Zone" signs.  Pretty sure that's the opposite of intelligent.  Those signs used to be funny to me, by the way.  But of course now they're screaming jewels of colossal ignorance that make me sick every time I see it.  I think there's even military locations/recruiting offices or whatever that have these stupid-signs.  Yeah.

Anyway... good luck with the "more regulation" band-aid approach.  Those make the Politician's buns tickle with glee.  And then be sure to add some more after the next incident.  And sleep well...

Really? You don't see how more detailed background checks would prevent disgruntled people from obtaining weapons to harm others with?

I've been to gun shows with my friend who is a huge gun enthusiast. He literally just signed some paper work and was allowed to walk away with a weapon and all the ammunition he could buy.


That's hardly unique to this situation. Should we just consider laws a lost cause entirely?


Right... why do you suppose they've had to create more gun control laws, then? Do you think people are committing more gun-related crimes because restrictions are greater.... like... just to spite the system or something?
What do you think the appropriate response is? Less gun control in these areas?

Psychology, yo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect)


Okay, I've thought about it. Here's your answer: white suburbanites aren't usually faced with violence of this nature. When something happens in their immediate area, they become aware of the situation first-hand. It's obviously going to have an effect on them. Hearing about things on the news isn't the same as actually experiencing it. There's no conspiracy here, it's just basic stuff.

Then you wouldn't want these decadent, immoral degenerates to have easy access to guns, would you?  ;)

Would I sleep better as a result of adding murder tools to a place where my children go to receive an education?
Would I sleep better as a result of creating an armed police force in schools?

Uh, let me get back to you on that one.


So... adding more regulations stops you from doing this how?
Okay, you've passed the test that says you're fit to carry a weapon. Now you can't use it or something... because you passed the test...?

Actually, it would be fascinating to find out what effect (if any) being armed has on the bystander effect.

From "4 Pro-Gun Arguments We're Sick of Hearing"
By Amanda Marcotte on Rolling Stone.com http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/4-pro-gun-arguments-were-sick-of-hearing-20151001

""The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

If you prefer pithy sayings to hard evidence, I can see why this would be convincing. But if you look at the real world, you'll find that far from being our only hope, good guys with guns are barely any help at all. No mass shootings in the past 30 years have been stopped by an armed civilian; in 1982, an armed civilian successfully killed a shooter, but it was only after he committed his crime.

It's not that there aren't enough guns, either. There are as many guns as people in this country, and fully a third of people are armed. Even when shootings happen in gun-happy places, where armed people are sure to be nearby, this vigilante scenario simply doesn't work. That's because pulling a gun out and shooting back in the chaos of a mass shooting just makes things worse, as was discovered when a would-be hero at the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords very nearly shot the wrong man. (The actual shooter was tackled by an elderly man.)

That's an interesting article, ORR.

I have been thinking about the results of weapons on the bystander effect, and this is the conclusion I have come to: having less people armed would mean there would be less diffusion of responsibility. If everyone has a gun, people will feel less like they need to intervene because they can safely assume other people present are also armed. If only a few people are armed, then you aren't able to safely make that assumption, and thus the diffusion of responsibility would be lessened.

Is football still played by the rules of 1905 ?

Are women still denied the vote ?

Is slavery still legal ?

No ? Then why do a small cadre of very, very stupid people (NRA, that's you) still insist in applying a 1791 ruling to events in 2015 ?  The 2nd Amendment doesn't, as many assume, provide for the right to bear arms - that's incidental - rather it provided for something the US desperately needed at the time, "a well-regulated militia". Irrespective of whether any such militia is still required (NRA, here's a clue - the US now has an army, navy and airforce), I'm thinking that going into a classroom and blowing away completely innocent people just because... well, just because, kinda strains the definition of "well-regulated".

Right on Andrew. You got it right there.

It's catch -22; if I lived in a country where everyone else had a gun, I'd feel a lot safer owning one myself.

Thank you Andrew!

More from Amanda Marcotte's article, echoing Andrew's thoughts:

4. "Second Amendment, baby."

Here's a good time to remind everyone that the Second Amendment was written by slaveholders before we had electricity, much less the kind of weaponry that would-be murderers can buy today. But sure, if you think it's that precious, we can compromise: If you love the Second Amendment that much, feel free to live in a powdered wig and sh*t in a chamberpot while trying to survive off what you can kill with an 18th century musket. In exchange, let those of us living in this century pass some laws so we can feel safe going to class, or the movies, or anywhere without worrying that some maladjusted man will try to get his revenge by raining death on random strangers.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/4-pro-gun-arguments-were-sick-of-hearing-20151001#ixzz3nfyLUVYk

America doesn't have a gun problem, it has a people problem. 

As The Real Beach Boy pointed out, some of the areas that have the strictest gun laws are also the most violent. 

If you restrict guns, the criminals will still find ways to obtain them.  Drugs are, for the most part illegal right?  And we still have a huge drug problem. 

There's a lack of accountability in the United States.  It's always somebody else's fault. 

If a guy shots up a school, it's the gun's fault.  If a career criminal dies while resisting his 20th arrest, it's the Police's fault.  If a child is failing math, it's the teacher's fault.  If somebody dies of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking, it's the cigarette company's fault.  If somebody is obese, it's McDonald's fault.  Some teenager shots up a high school, it must be the music he listens to.  And so on, and so on. 

Somewhere along the line, we've grown soft, and people stopped taking responsibility for their actions.  As an American in his mid 30s, I fear for the future of this country.  We're too soft on crime, too PC, and no responsible enough.  We need a culture change.  And disarming the law abiding, IMO, will not help. 

Yep.  I believe it starts at birth, KDS.  Actually before that -- or whenever they've decided it's ok to murder.  The American society has systematically, legally and categorically relieved ourselves of the most basic and natural of all responsibilities.  And it just rolls out from there.

And if you live in a country where you have abortion BUT don't have mass-shootings (yet) -- nobody cares.  America is different -- we represent an idea, one that pushes the boundaries.  So please, save it.

No, I don't...because people who have used guns to commit evil acts have in almost every case passed the checks. The background checks are only an excuse used by those who want further control of people who don't need it or desire it.


More laws have not made man more free. Regulating the economy has destroyed the economy. Regulating drugs has increased gang violence. Regulating guns has increased gun violence. You do the math.


Those laws have been created because of "good intentions." They still operate under the assumption that criminals will magically stop being criminals once the right laws are passed. Criminals are committing the crimes because they know that people aren't legally allowed to defend themselves in those areas. The appropriate response would be to stop playing into the hands of criminals and letting individuals defend themselves, especially in unsafe parts of the country. The ownership of guns, just like the ownership of drugs, does not create victims. When restrictions are put into place victims are created. If I lived in Chicago I would want a gun on me at all times, and not because I want to go around shooting people - because I would feel safer with a potential deterrent on my hip.


It's because white suburbanites are commonly pussies, first and foremost. Case in point, talk to law-abiding individuals who live in big cities, say, Philadelphia - I've met VERY few people who live in Philly (and we're talking the BAD parts of Philly, like West and North Philly) who wanted more gun control in those cities even with all the gang violence. No, they want the opportunity to defend themselves from those assholes. But the white suburbanites just don't care about that. They don't care about minorities having access to means of self-defense. All the gun control laws in the world and who ends up being disproportionately targeted AND more harshly sentenced on top of it? Minorities.

So progressive, I know.


It is why I want people who still possess a moral code to have easier access to them.


Comparing gun ownership to women being denied the vote or slavery is an apples and oranges comparison - gun ownership does not lead to a victim. If we're going to pick and choose what "ancient" rights should be done away with, we'd better be careful. I mean hey, stuff like freedom of speech, the right to be secure from unlawful searches and seizures, the right to face your accuser, and the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment are also so 1790s as well. Do they also have no place in modern, progressive PC society? A lot of politicians think so...and so do a lot of Americans. THAT is why the right to self-defense is important now, more than it has been in a LONG time.

Change your profile to the real Bob Ross. :afro

The world could use a few more happy little trees. :)

Reminds me of something I had to say to a buddy of mine.  The total opposite of a redneck, but still a guy who went from getting drunk and saying, "tomorrow, let's go to a gun range!" -- to getting drunk and saying, "but dude, they've banned them in Australia -- it's time we do that here!!"

He of course dropped the "it's not 1776 anymore -- it's different now" line of BS.  I said "I know.  And isn't it amazing how they knew -- way back then -- that this day would come?"

It's why they wrote it down.  And it's not for "hunting."   ::)  :lol

It's a people problem first and foremost. You don't hear of Canadians going off on killing sprees all that often, do you?

You got it.  When somebody gets stabbed, you don't hear anyone trying to ban knives. 

I wonder how many gun owners have joined this nation's well-regulated militia.

I think it would be more interesting to know how many NON-gun owners joined the militia.

They will eventually.  There's really only two natural human reactions to this -- ban it or beef up security.  Get rid of the problem or fight it.  But we're being denied one.  The quickest and easiest one.  Security.

Shouldn't that alert everyone, to just who you're getting into league with -- when you start entertaining and fantasizing their wholly unreasonable desire to "control it better."  At some point, shouldn't people begin to feel like they're being used?  Yes... probably to move the ball in the direction of banning.  But... isn't that's creepy?  Because that means they're fine with you getting killed (if need be) to move the ball in their direction.

Just me I suppose.  But I wouldn't feel good about myself by passing another law and watching politicians pat themselves on the back.  I don't get the whole acting, posturing and performing in play thing.  Not when we're supposed to be addressing reality.  That's NBC TV fantasy.

Wasn't there a mass shooting in Canada at a House of Commons?

The whole legal system in America is based on types of duties and defenses to defend oneself from deadly force.  Every state has a different set of laws. And the state statutory schemes were not set up by the boys (framers of the Constitution) in wigs who owned plantations.  The Model Penal Code was put together in the 1960's.

Especially when you have the "castle doctrine" as in a wo/man's home is "her/his castle."  The U.S. is at war.  The citizenry and some military and law enforcement have had their private information breached and in the hands of ISIS.  

Nice for Hillary to want to get guns off the menu while she's has 24/7 lifetime secret service patrols and told the guys in Benghazi to "stand down." Americans should not be told to "stand down."  It has been argued that the right to "keep arms...is a safeguard to liberty and the alternative to a standing 'well-regulated militia" is the people are trained to bear arms. T. Cooley, Constitutional limitations, General Principles of Constitutional Law, 281-282.

And from Cooley, Justice Story, " The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally...enable the people, to resist and triumph over them." (Meaning invaders such as terrorists.)

That kid (those shooters) are is among a whole class of disturbed kids who was/were not tracked in the schools, or post graduation.  Mental health facilities are being closed with dangerous persons are released every day, due to overcrowding, and these drugs that cause violence or suicidal tendencies so much so that the disclaimers are on TV! Every doctor who treated him/them should be called on the carpet to answer as to why there was no supervision and treatment.  Including the military doctors who or officials who booted him from basic training. These individuals should not be in the mainstream of society with risk factors for violence.  They will be locked up, now but it is too late for the victims.

Little story in point... the only time in my life that I've had a gun in my hand was about 30 years ago when I took one away from a 10 year old in school.  He brought it in for "show and tell" ( for his buddies who had dared him.) (It was his father's and I expect he maybe had a permit.) I  initially thought it was a toy after some of the kids in line told met that this kid "had a gun" - "a real one" and called the kid's bluff while I "got in his face" and told him to give it to me, which he did.  (It was dumb of me.) Very dumb.

It was never reported to the police.  The school swept It under the rug.  They wanted to create a false impression of "school safety."  A metal detector would have caught that.

So, if the people in authority aren't doing their jobs for several decades what is the reasonably foreseeable outcome? More dysfunction and more bad outcomes.

Sadly, churches and schools and every public event will need to have someone trained and on deck for the potential event of a shooting.  Bad and sick people will find a way to get a gun.  The normal law abiding citizens shouldn't be deprived of their Constitutional right to self-defense.  
These pastors and school officials need to get firearms training to defend the students and churchgoers.  The right to education and worship is being infringed upon.  Those are protected constitutional rights as well. It is more that the second amendment.  It crosses over into fourteenth amendment with privileges and immunities, and who are the "people of the several states" invoking the first, ninth and tenth, as they overlap.

Think we don't need protection from enemy aliens as contemplated by the framers of the Constitution? Two dates come to mind...9/11 and Boston Marathon 2013.  The anti 2nd amendment lobby are not going after the failure of health care who can report to the authorities if there is an imminent threat to the public and for responsibility prescribing medication.

And for the Army to follow up on a high-risk dischargee. Was he being treated at a VA? That would be interesting to know.  He could have had some rights to VA treatment. Or VA "mistreatment."

If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.  JMHO of course.  ;)

There are several points being made in this thread I'd like to comment on or challenge, but as I'm just quickly checking in on my phone, for now I want only to raise one: I see people expressing concern about guns being taken away, about some lobby coming to take them away, but I rarely see anyone (in this thread or elsewhere) actually suggesting that. (Yes, you can find outliers who suggest anything, but I'm talking mainstream.) so it seems to me that's just a conspiracy theory, right there with the Texans recently convinced that military exercises there were actually Obama coming to invade (and take their guns, of course). Which--surprise--didn't happen.

My point is, I don't see this as all or nothing.

And my questions are:
- do you think the status quo is unacceptable?
- do you agree that inconsistencies in regulation (e.g gun show loophole) should be addressed (without respect to the actual resolution for our purposes)?
- do you think any regulation is required / helpful?
- if yes to the last point, can you outline examples?

Captain, I agree that some type of regulation is needed like the 1990s assault weapons ban (who the f*** uses an uzi with a silencer or M16 with a 100 round drum for "fun")

Where do you think he learned or may have learned how to shoot an assault weapon?

Basic Training. For war.

I don't know if correlation necessarily implies causation in this case (and the ones who think I'm wrong will deny it until they're blue in the mouth); I don't think it's any real surprise that this has escalated under the millennial generation. America's descent into immorality and degeneracy snowballed under the baby boomers and under the millennials positively dwarfs that which occurred under the baby boomers.

People are being force-fed a diet of "tolerance" (a euphemism for "acceptance") at the expense of individual liberty. Gender no longer matters. People can have their bodies mutilated (or, indeed, just put on a dress and claim they've changed genders) and be afforded the idiotic label of "hero." Women have been sold the farce that being something other than successful nurturers is infinitely more desirable and that men are their mortal enemies. Men have been sold a similarly farcical notion that being softer and more feminine is infinitely more desirable and that women know best first and foremost. People are being conditioned to accept degeneracy or risk their lives or livelihoods. College campuses have become feminized social justice centers where everyone chooses to be offended and no one wants to be enlightened. Definitions have become fluid and change at random depending on the mental capacity of the individuals who chose to be offended. Children no longer are the products of their parents; they belong to "society" and society must do what it can to protect them from their parents.

In short, many people are raised to be confused and angry adult children who react violently to the slightest transgression and blame others for the genetic hands they've been dealt. The ones who violently act out are commonly millennials and I haven't seen a single case where these lawless thugs weren't somehow retarded or otherwise challenged in some way.

Should these behaviors or actions should be prohibited by government mandate? Progressives might say they should be encouraged and conservatives might say they should be prohibited. I'm in the middle. While many of these behaviors are inherently ridiculous and the product of bored adult children who have no idea how good they have it, they should not be prohibited. These behaviors should be dealt with in such a way where respect for the individual comes first and foremost. I'm not advocating throwing anyone in asylums or demanding them cast out of society. Nothing works like good old-fashioned ostracism. Let the chips fall where they may. In the end, people will surround themselves with like-minded individuals. The cultural Balkanization of today is not working. Sooner or later a crunch is going to happen. I hope I'm wrong.

Good thing I said 'all that often' and not 'never'.  ;D
No country is crime free but it does seem like every other month some nut with a gun goes on a rampage in the USA. People have to ask themselves - why?

MB - as between the U.S. and Canada, I think Canada is more transparent.  They are more forthcoming with the chemical safety (we call them MSDS workplace lists) and that kind of workplace policy seems to be across the board. 

They may be better at follow up and supervision of mentally dangerous individuals and tracking school kids who have big problems who are just "let loose" at 18 and get no adult services.  Parents have a high bar to get custody of an adult in a compromised medical condition.  I think the Canadians are not as lax as the U.S. JMHO  ;) 

Ephebiphobia: the inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterization of young people.

This is some of the craziest sh*t I've ever read. When did gender ever matter? Do you honestly think there's a fine, diving line between what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman? There isn't. Gender identity is a construct of society. It's the thing that says it's not okay for men to wear pink, but women should wear pink. It doesn't mean anything, it's just some arbitrary rules that people made up because people have to be separate, I guess.

People that actually have to change genders despite having to face judgement and ridicule from people for their decisions have immense courage. These people are not accepted, yet they try to lead a life that will make them happy. F*** everyone who makes their life harder just because they don't think it's normal. You should be happy you don't have to deal with that absolutely terrible situation. "The expense of individual liberty", my ass. You're the one criticizing these people for trying to lead their own life.

Why is it bad that women should desire something beyond what patriarchal norms tell them? Jesus, it's like you think they should be happy with their roles as soil waiting to be fertilized.

This stuff about colleges being "social justice centers" is utter bullshit. People go to college to get degrees, not so they can hang out and be politically correct together. I know what I'm talking about--I'm in college. Right now. God, this is absurd. I've noticed a real fear of education from some people. How is it you're blind to the connection between "enlightened minds" and "social justice"?

Oh, we got "retarded" in there at the end. Wonderful.

For Christ's sake, thank goodness for millennials actually looking outside of themselves and wanting to make things better for people, rather than sitting in their towers of judgement, casting aspersions upon people looking to be different.

As I made clear, I wasn't equating gun ownership with female sufferage or emancipation, rather I was pointing out that to apply a late 18th century ruling to an early 21st century situation - as the shitweasels and fuckwits of the NRA invariably do when their entirely imaginary "right to bear arms" is even vaguely threatened, bleating "2nd Amendment, 2nd Amendment" like a flock of lobotomised sheep - is certifiably insane. Said amendment was a late 1700s solution to a late 1700s problem. Freedom of speech - another widely abused right - is eternal. Again, the 2nd Amendment is nothing to do with self-defence nor any right to bear arms, and everything to do with the security of a fledgling nation. Does the US still have desperate need of a well-regulated militia or minutemen ? I'm thinking... not. One more point: exactly when did any of the latest murders have anything to do with self-defence ?

I can't speak to Australia's situation, only knowing the broadest of outlines. (I don't follow anything about Australia except their national team in basketball. And that just because, well, it's basketball and they have one.) But the primary "con" of a buyback program here is really obvious: too many people have, and want to have, guns. Whatever the inherent rightness or wrongness of that, when a critical mass of the population feels strongly about X Topic, the government has to either follow suit or at least fool people into thinking they're following suit. As it stands, nearly all incumbents favoring such a thing would be voted out at the public's earliest opportunity and, more drastically than that, some small (but large enough to be dangerous) fraction/faction of the American people would defend their right to bear arms by bearing arms. There would be immense civil unrest resulting in serious violence. From a policy standpoint, the rightness or wrongness of being armed or not is almost irrelevant in deciding whether to do a massive guns buyback: it simply could not happen without the public itself dramatically changing.

Further, the second amendment does indeed exist. It's controversial. It's worded so badly as to hint that maybe the founders hoped they could confuse everyone into thinking they got their way. (Wait, the founders were compromising their diverse ideologies? Fucking heresy!) So the only options are a judicial opinion that dramatically alters the current understanding of what the second amendment means--not going to happen in the Roberts court--or a new amendment to overturn the second, which is even less likely to happen for reasons partly outlined above.

This is a good point to say--again--that virtually nobody in this country is actually calling for that (despite fear-mongering comments otherwise). Changes to background checks, limits to ammunition purchases, or restrictions on types of weapons that can be owned are not remotely close to a full reversal of that right as currently interpreted.

Opinions, of course, change. Twenty years ago, gay marriage seemed absurd even to most supporters of gay rights. The past decade in particular was a true sea change on that topic, regardless of how one feels about the summer's results. (There's a thread for that.) So it's possible that there could be some turning point at which Americans begin, en masse, relinquishing their individual right to own firearms in the interest of a perceived greater safety or good.

But without that, a dramatic change is not going to happen.

Hope that at least partly answers (via one man's opinion) your good question, rab2591.

This idea is something we do hear proposed from time to time (ok, not usually with tanks  ;D ). But let's think about the cost--tax dollars, mind you--of that scenario. I very hasty Internet search--https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84--shows that a few years ago, there were about 135,000+ total schools in the USA (including public, private, and post-secondary institutions). I know of small towns that have no police force whatsoever because they haven't got the money, and I'm sure this is replicated in rural areas around the nation. So even hiring one full-time security guard--forget about any robust security program or force--would be prohibitively expensive. Of course, larger districts would require far bigger security forces. The poorest (urban) schools have the least ability to pay for such forces, and a big chunk of public school funding as I understand it usually comes from local property taxes. So the resulting funding would be inverse of the most likely need, with wealthy suburban districts well prepared for the very occasional school shooter, while the urban schools would be underfunded for the rampant gang violence (not to mention the very occasional school shooter). Rural districts would be similarly underfunded, if statistically less likely to have the problem (there being less kids and fewer gangs).

That's one challenge I have on that: who pays? It seems that the conservatives most typically behind a lack of gun controlling legislation are also low-tax types, and this would be expensive.

There's also the question of further arming the state to act against its citizens. Libertarian types would typically be wary of giving yet another opportunity for the state to use deadly force on the population. Of course, after successful acts of terrorism, nobody would question the actions the state would have taken. But here, we'd be talking about a wholly different situation, a situation where almost by definition the state's violence happens before the citizen's violence is carried out. The questions we see around the nation already about police violence would be worse.

Both of these points are made for purposes of discussion, not ideology.

First of all, I do think it's noteworthy that you also don't really hear about anyone trying to ban guns. It just rarely comes up. Enacting some sort of restrictions or regulations aren't the same as banning. Not even close.

But the substance of the matter seems to me obvious: knives are tools with numerous nonviolent uses; guns are tools with one use. You can't make dinner without a knife. But without a gun, you can do pretty much everything other than commit violence with a gun.

Of course, you can commit violence without a gun--such as with your example of a knife. But a knife-wielding criminal isn't going to kill a few dozen students or a dozen movie-goers before he's stopped.

I have to question that sentiment, Bubbly Waves. I think history would at least imply that it's not so much millenials in particular as young generations in general. There's a famous quote (probably falsely, I understand) attributed to W. Churchill along the lines of "if you're not a liberal at 25, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 35, you have no brain." Whoever said it and discounting the specifics, it seems that every generation undergoes the same basic shift. As people get older, get married, make babies, and obtain property, they tend to get more conservative. Presumably the emotional logic is, it's easy to share when you have nothing to share; the more you have (and the more mouths to feed), the harder that becomes to do. "I earned it, he didn't." That kind of thing.

Frankly I don't think millenials are different than anyone else in the big picture. There are the specifics of their time, of course. But they're dumb in the way young people tend to be dumb. They're smart in the way young people tend to be smart. Et cetera.

Sincerely,

A Very Late Gen-Xer
(aka, what was once the equivalent of a millenial, but now sometimes is sore in the morning for no apparent reason)

I don't disagree with you. You could substitute "millennials" for "young people" in my sentence, if you wish.

OK, then. I think we more or less agree. The young of every era have a fire for what they see as justice. Sometimes it's ill- or misinformed, sometimes it's right on. But they do tend to fight (once riled up).

Cool story guys... YOU WILL NEVER get out of this without facing reality. Another day another wasted life.
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/nthamerica/2015/10/06/boy-shoots-dead-8-year-old--over-puppy-.html

Is it so inaccurate? I'm a millennial. I've seen it firsthand. I'm criticizing my own generation.


Yes, there is absolutely a fine, dividing line between what being a man and being a woman means. Gender roles worked for thousands of years; it is only recently that this has been turned on its head. Whether we like it or not we have certain expectations based upon our genders. Turning that on its head has not worked; people who think they'll get ahead by only impressing themselves are kidding themselves.


People are due acceptance because they decide they want to change their gender? NO ONE is due acceptance for any reason. That's the fairest and most equality-minded deal anyone is ever going to get. It's "so terrible" to decide to "change" one's gender. Maybe I'm a smidge biased in this regard because I spent four years of my life in high school with one of those self-loathing jokers (in this case, a guy who looked 100% like a human male yet in his own twisted mind was packing a vagina) who seemed to have no problem calling me a blueboarder yet was ready to bring the whole world down if people dared jab back. And we *HAD* to be nice to him because something something misogyny (a guy bitching about misogyny is GOING to be laughed at in an all-boys Catholic school, by the way), something something transphobia, something something misgendering...you get the picture. He did end up changing his gender, of course; he also preferred women on top of it...so it's funny how "I" was the blueboarder in that regard. Interesting how that works. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I do not intend on being fooled twice.


I don't know what country you call home, but here in America and throughout Western civilization women have it better than just about anywhere else in the world. Women CAN be whatever they want to be in Western civilization. That's not oppression. Those who think women are oppressed in Western civilization should spend a year in Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia and tell me what they find. I bet they won't think the same way about "the evil patriarchy" afterwards.


I've been through private and community college. Safe words, triggers (and just about everything triggers some college students), "rape culture" (one of the damnedest things I've ever had the displeasure of entering into my brain in my life), and, everyone's current favorite, "allies." That was a goodly portion of the discourse. There IS a disturbing trend among some college students where they are unwilling to enlighten themselves, be enlightened, or broaden their horizons. Question their logic? "Triggered." Check out a woman walking past you on campus? "Rape." Tell a politically incorrect joke? "You're not an ally."

For people who hallucinate such enlightenment, open-mindedness, and, well, TOLERANCE, they're more backwards than conservatives. And when generally progressive comedians agree with that notion, we should be wondering just what in the hell is going on within college campuses, especially those funded by taxes. Ironic that the "trigger"-happy generation supports increased gun control.


What descriptor for murderous psychopaths with mental capacities akin to being up sh*t creek without a paddle will upset the least amount of people? I'm sure the families of the victims of said murderous psychopaths think a lot worse of them beyond the dreaded "R-word."


What in the hell have millennials done to make things better for people? Create #hashtag campaigns and call themselves "allies" to the social injustice of the day? Give me a break. So now we're all different? I thought everyone is just like everyone else regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or what have you. Isn't that what all of these attempts to make things better for people have been about? To open doors and foster discussion and friendship? I mean hey, I'm not saying they can't do what they want to do. People will look, people will scoff, and people will judge. It's human nature, sadly. You figure out a way to counteract or even better human nature and believe me, I'll be right there with you in support.


I'll start with your final question - murders are not examples of self-defense.

Said "late 18th century ruling" was derived, like much of Enlightenment and classical liberal thought (including the Constitution) from Magna Carta. Specifically, Section 61 of Magna Carta. The precedent was there long before it was written as part of the Bill of Rights.

The argument can be made that the "militia" is null and void since the United States has military forces, but the military does not answer to the public; they answer to the government. The "militia" exists separately from the military. The reasoning behind the individual right to keep and bear arms was that some of the Founders (James Madison in particular) saw a standing army that answers to the government as one of the greatest threats to the liberty of free individuals and a free state. Many of the Founders also understood and respected the fact that the greatest threat to liberty was government, hence the reasoning behind the Second Amendment. As sovereign, free individuals, we ALL (the Constitution says NOTHING about "Americans," remember) have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (both in the case of ourselves and that of others) against those who would dare attempt to usurp them. It is not a permission slip to go deer and duck hunting or pop off a few shots at beer cans or clay pigeons. It is a reminder to those who would attempt to usurp our liberties that free individuals will defend themselves by any means necessary from all enemies, foreign or domestic. The Founders understood above all that the greatest threats to liberty were domestic, not foreign; case in point, an eighteen-year struggle and revolution against John Bull himself - a "domestic" enemy.

Does the United States still have desperate need for the militia or minutemen? Probably not. The right to keep and bear arms existed before the United States and will exist afterwards. The Founders understood this, as did Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and writer of Magna Carta.

I have some problems with that, TRBB.

Specifically, it seems like on one hand you are saying that gender roles should not be challenged because they have "worked for thousands of years." It seems contradictory, then, to celebrate how women are treated in America or elsewhere in Western civilization as opposed to elsewhere in the world, which you also do. I say this seems contradictory because the reason women have better situations in the Western world is precisely because of challenges to those traditional gender roles that have worked for thousands of years. It's in those other places where women are subservient to men, have restricted rights and freedoms, etc., usually all while also being shown token reverence and protection. In the Western world that changed, but it changed mostly in recent centuries.

So it seems to me that the traditional roles either worked for thousands of years and thus women's situations in the West are a deviance, or that the relatively newly established rules are a superior evolution out of the traditional roles that, by definition, weren't acceptable.

I'm probably not expressing myself clearly: I just got up. But I hope you get my point: the reason women have it "so good" in the West is because the roles that existed for thousands of years weren't acceptable.

The obvious extension from that line of thinking (or actually even a standalone thought) is, if there are other flaws on how things are here and now, the fact that there are others who have it worse somewhere isn't really an adequate reason not to address those flaws here. If everyone on the block beats and cheats on his wife except one guy, but that one guy just cheats on her, doesn't she have the right to do something about the cheating (regardless of the beating and cheating elsewhere)?

OK, off to work. Hopefully I'll be more coherent upon my return.

Here's what I think. Those who commit these mass shootings are individuals whose minds have become twisted by unfortunate circumstances. They experience a lot of emotional pain and vilification before deciding to take a completely inept way to retain some kind of dignity and respect. These people exist. Shouldn't it be made as hard as possible for them to obtain guns? Restricting/banning guns would limit those mass shootings to those people who are extreamely zealous to make their revenge fantasy a reality and those who are members of gun clubs. The restriction of guns is the reason why in Germany these mass killings occur at most twice a decade and not every couple of months like in the US. It would also prevent kids inadvertently shooting their siblings or even their parents when they get hold of their parents' firearms which never happens over here. As guns appear pretty useless for self-defense anyway as some here have stated, banning guns is the only responsible thing to do, even at the expense of the gun producers' profits.

Oh, I get it -- you've been under the impression that 2nd Amendment is "imaginary."  Somehow I don't think correcting you is going to fix your opinion!   :-D

Sure -- there's a cost associated with protecting the schools.  This is the ONE job the government should be doing at all costs:  "protect the nation from enemies foreign and domestic."  A good President would set his personal beliefs (ideology) aside and do his job.  Get'er done.

Imagine his approval if he did that.  

Secondly, as a truly wise man said (me  :)) -- "the illusion of security is 96.8% of security."  Begs the question -- what illusion does this sign create:  "GUN FREE ZONE."  Maybe Andrew can answer that -- being he's the expert on what is "imaginary."

Lastly -- why are we even debating this?!!  :wall  Please -- can anyone answer that?  After Sandy Hook... It's not a fkcing debate, is it?  Basic responsibility.  It makes me want to PUKE MY BRAINS out, to think we have a US President willing to use little kids as pawns in his war against the US Constitution.

(http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/7/2/1372753024470/Barack-Obama-002.jpg)

Now, now... that's not true.  My ideology is better than yours... I'm smarter than you Bean Bag.  People's kids may have to get shot, so I can get this 2nd Amendment reversed... it's too important, my beliefs are.  Protecting the schools is not an option. (yeah it is) It's not.  Costs money.  I spent a trillion on nothing, with the stimulus... I can't spend money on this too.  I want to use these incidents to move my agenda... it's effective.  I'm gonna use this.  I. I. I. I.  Me. me. me. me!

It's not You. You. You. You.  I can't be you. you. you you. all the time Beenie baby.  I mean those days are over.  We tried it your way... (no we didn't) it didn't work.  It's me time.  Me. me. me.  I. I. I. I.  Besides, I have to act swiftly without Congress, before people get numb and I can't use this.  People are starting to get numb to this (no they're not!)  And if they get numb to this, how can I use it, understand?  That's my fear, that people get numb to this.  Gotta move.  The time is now.

The concept of self-defense includes the defense of others and property.  The response has to be proportional to the attack. It isn't reasonable to respond to someone coming at you with a broom, with a firearm. You get a broom or a hockey stick to repel the attacker.  And if someone comes at you with gun, you don't grab a fly swatter.

Every state is different as regards what kind of force you can respond with, and ties tort law to constitutional and criminal law.  The origins come from Roman law of "dominium" where any attack on family members was repelled "in kind."  It is the principe of "vim vi repellere licet." Or, it is permitted to repel force by force and that is found in the 6th century Digest of Justinian.  This argument is an over simplification of what is going on in the argument against the 2nd amendment.

Institutions have duties to defend others.  Property owners have a right to defend one's home, the persons in it and their property.  It is not a neat package.  It is messy and almost unweldly.  Make no mistake.  The U.S. Citizens and its first responders are under attack from foreign groups, who feel we should no longer conform to a standard that separates religion from government.  I'm not interested in a religion-based government telling me what to do any more that I want canon law from Rome to tell me my civil rights.  The Holy Father has jurisdiction over matters of religion and the Consitution runs the show for legal matters. We don't mix the two.

And while the NRA is extreme "lobbying" group, there is always a position that is moderate and reasonable. They represent a sector in society who have less "metro" high density population issues.

If people don't believe in the second amendment, they might be better off finding somewhere else to live.  Self defense, and the defense others empower the citizens to fight back, in the event of war, where the "militia" requires eyes, ears and bodies to maintain the freedoms of the country.  Our banking systems, aircraft, and computer systems have all been hacked.  Mass injuries have occurred in the name of revolution.  It is a comfort to know if I want to go and take firearms training to defend myself and others in my family and my home, I can.  The options are there.  

This is not a gender-based argument.  It is an individual rights argument.  The police and law enforcement can't be everywhere. JMHO

I don't deny that there have been evolving feelings and attitudes towards women in the last two thousand years of Western civilization. Say what one will about other civilizations but you can infer quite a lot about a civilization based upon how the women are treated. Yes, gender roles have worked for thousands of years in Western civilization - women's suffrage and classical feminism were just the icing on the cake; both were positive things at that time. I don't want to see Western civilization go back to the pre-civilized era.

The other reason women in Western civilization have it so good is because men just plain treat them better and can separate their religion from their behaviors for the most part. If living in a part of the world where most men would do anything to protect women equals patriarchy, then I'd say those fuckwits and shitweasels (to borrow AGD's terminology) should f*** off to the Third World since they're CLEARLY more progressive than we backwards denizens of Western civilization. Specifically, I'm referring to the minority of women who are little more than spiteful, hateful little children who make a mockery of the term "feminism" these days. They're in the same category as racial nationalists and radical religious groups. Feminism needs more Camille Paglias and fewer Anita Sarkeesians.


The only way to make it "as hard as possible" would be to ban them, and banning them won't solve the problem. No one has figured out a way to get rid of over three hundred million firearms. I know the more redcoat-minded among us think the U.S. can just pull an about face and become another UK or Australia or Germany and just magically solve the problem, except it's NOT that cut and dried. For people who claim to be so in touch with "reality" they're really holding onto a utopian notion when it comes to guns.

There's also the small notion that none of the redcoats have touched on and that is the simple fact that gun control is, in fact, racist. It has been used at various points in American history to disarm, pacify, and subjugate minority populations, specifically black Americans and Native Americans. I know much of the rest of the world looks at America as a bunch of racist hicks (ironic coming from people who predominantly live in countries that consist of almost totally racially homogeneous populations who probably haven't set eyes on a non-white person outside of television or the movies) yet opposition to gun control for specifically anti-racist reasons is a noble cause. The progressives will probably have more bile and outrage at this notion because I've just pointed out that they're not really "allies," but hey. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Well said.  There's the ultimate respect given to the People -- or With the People -- behind this Amendment.  Understanding our life is our own responsibility.  That's such a fundamental concept behind the notion of this Nation.  (hee-hee, notion of this nation...)  Eh-hmm, I digress...

And while we've be led to give up so many of our rights and responsibilities (usually) at the courtesy of the Democrat Party happy to relieve us of them -- this one is pretty clear.  Written down.  Black n' white.

And, what is so offensive about those bashing us over its existence, is that -- those who realize this concept are somehow the "lobotomized" ones, as Andrew succinctly put it.  The reality is exactly the opposite.

TRBB: thanks for clarifying your point.

Filledeplage: you're right that we're not really talking gender here, that's just a side convo that emerged.

To be fair, I was expanding on the morality problem I referenced in an earlier post. It's tangential to this conversation but it IS an avenue worth exploring.

No arguments from me on that.

More narrowly specific to this topic, I would be interested in your (or others') responses to a few questions I posed yesterday, around midday, regarding the definition of the violence issue and more specifically on what, if any, regulation you think is acceptable. Obviously I know your general position but if you would check out and answer those specific bullet (ooooh bad pun) points, I'd be interested.

I'll throw a monkey in the wrench and come out with this...I loathe the NRA. I think their pro-gun position is just a reason to get people to donate to them; also add to that the fact that the organization commonly supported gun control through most of its history (and would today if it was economically sound for them). Seriously...f*** the NRA. Gun Owners of America and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership actually know what they're talking about when they speak out against gun control. Those of you on the pro-gun side should consider them over the NRA.

You're dead-on re the NRA, in my opinion.

I had actually intended to address these in an earlier post, Luth. Thanks for the reminder.

I see the status quo as rather UNacceptable, to be honest. There are enough provisions in place that protect criminals at the expense of the law-abiding. Yeah, "good intentions," but good intentions never lead to good results when government is involved. I do think there should be a liberalization of gun regulations at the state levels; there is nothing in the Constitution that permits the federal government to regulate guns (no, not even your precious Commerce Clause or the General Welfare Clause), so all federal regulations need to cease. The Second Amendment is cut and dried - "shall not be infringed" means the federal government away from it and lets the states and/or the people handle it as per the Tenth Amendment. Inconsistencies in regulation should be handled at the state level. It's not the federal government's duty.

I think the regulations in place with regard to murder and crimes committed with guns are quite helpful. Owning a gun does not create a victim. How someone behaves when using said gun may or may not create a victim. If a victim results, then the perpetrator should absolutely be tried and convicted by a jury of his peers. The regulations that are helpful are already there. Adding more won't make it better. Removing the unhelpful and unconstitutional federal regulations may or may not make it better, but then the Constitution would have to be amended to allow the federal government the power to regulate guns and I do not see that happening.

In the case of the US, it would only be a first step. No, it's not a magical solution, but a step to a safer society - like those societies with gun control. (Of course there can't be 100% safety ever.)


Congratulations, you've successfully identified the next problem.


That's so nonsensical that there's no use arguing with someone who seriously belives THAT.

In this case, he's right, this president Obama. Because his "ideology" is based on reason, while yours is based on "Baw, dad, I can have guns, Ma's constitution says so!"

Ah, quoting me out of context and not considering the evidence provided to back it up, eh? You've proven yourself no longer worth my time. Shine on.

Yes, I think the definition fits.


I believe we've basically already had this conversation, so I won't go through it again in this thread about guns.


I don't recall ever saying that people are due acceptance. What I said was "[t]hese people are not accepted." You seriously call transgender people "jokers"....? Jeez, from the tale you've just told me, no wonder the guy had to build up defenses like that. Apparently everyone in his all-male Catholic school was pestering him and laughing at him. Him preferring women goes back to the gender roles thing: just because he identifies as a woman doesn't mean he's attracted to males. That's just what you think women should be because this idea has been force fed to you. This wasn't some elaborate hoax where someone underwent extreme surgery to prank you. Even then, you shouldn't let one experience with one person decide how you view an entire community. In a different context, I believe they call that "racism".


If sexual violence against women wasn't such a big problem on college campuses, I'm sure you wouldn't have to be burdened by "rape culture." I'm really sorry that other people being raped was an inconvenience for you, man.
Look at this sh*t, it's disgusting: http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/20/living/feat-rape-freshmen-women-new-study/ (http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/20/living/feat-rape-freshmen-women-new-study/).


Look, I don't have examples of millennials going and being superheroes or whatever. The fact about social media is: it's a start. Most people aren't even of an age or in a position to really accomplish change. Give it time--we'll see (whether positively or negatively). Also, please don't try to twist my words around. I never said everyone was the same. If everyone was like me, we would all be listening to music and not talking to each other. I also didn't say we're all different. Everyone is a person, but as a person, we're all individuals. I hope that's clear enough. ;D


I think I'm going to pursue psychology in school, so if I figure anything out, I'll hit you up.

 :-D my reason is not even debatable!  Those pesky rights!

I appreciate the response. I have a few follow-ups.
 - To be clear, then, you do think gun regulation is acceptable at the state level? (Not saying you support it; but you support a state's right to regulate.)
 - What makes you think the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause are my precious? That, if I were to add a comma, was worded by me just now as if I were Gollum. Am I Gollum? Or Smeagel, at least?
 - Do you think the adjective (well, adverb and adjective) "well regulated" in "well regulated militia" implies regulation on those militias (militae?), and, if so, would I be right in thinking you would accept that the authors meant for the states to "well regulate" the right to bear arms with respect to them?
 - What should I have for dinner?
 - Not in the interest of being a dick at all, but just a really serious question: is it really acceptable for a state--let's pick on Mississippi or something because, well, you know...--to choose not to regulate in any respect, and the federal government to let that go? Let's say a 4-year-old wants to buy a gun. Or a recently freed, but previously convicted, murderer. A guy who has a restraining order against him by the wife he abuses. Nothing? We leave that to Mississippi? I ask because the likely and entirely predictable results of that seem like a really steep price to pay for letting admittedly law-abiding citizens also avoid whatever administrative hassle may go along with enforcing those regulations in order to proceed exercising their 2nd amendment rights. You know doubt know I'm not especially ideological; I like to think I'm pragmatic (and I like to think that's a compliment). So I ask it in that spirit, not "you moron, this is obvious and you're dumb." To me, that's a situation with not much downside and a lot of upside.

Here end my questions for the moment.

Two-part answer. First and foremost, I see little value in the Constitution as a whole yet I'm clearly outnumbered in that regard, so technically under the Constitution regulation at the state level or even the county or city level is acceptable. The more decentralized the better. I probably wouldn't end up supporting said regulations but I'm willing to be surprised.


I wasn't referring to you in general with that remark; I was sort of speaking to the entire thread. Sometimes people like to abuse the General Welfare or Commerce Clauses in their prohibition arguments, and it does come up in the gun control debate.


The Second Amendment says nothing with regard to the states or the people being allowed to regulate the militia and/or the right to bear arms. All it does is lay out the federal government's responsibility in that regard; as I mentioned before, "shall not be infringed" leaves little to the imagination. The Tenth Amendment would, however, allow the states or the people to regulate the militia and/or the right to bear arms.


Sizzling fajitas.


Innocent until proven guilty must ALWAYS prevail. I'd question the thinking behind selling a four-year-old a gun (and the outcry over it might end up putting that business OUT of business). In the case of a freed, but previously convicted murderer, it's pretty cut and dried - has he not paid his debt to society by serving his time in prison? If you're a free man, you're a free man. You've paid your debt to society. There is no reason they should be stripped of their rights after having paid said debt. In the case of the restraining order, there are already hefty penalties in place for people who violate them. I'd dare argue that they should be more stringent (but ONLY at the state level) in the case of violations in general, with or without a deadly weapon.

Let's keep in mind that this is a job best left to the state, county, city, or, indeed, the people. They have that leeway under the Tenth Amendment.

What should the TRBB have for dinner? ;)

Thanks again. So far dinner was just three beers, but I'm sure I'll move on to food. And the idea of sizzling fajitas is being entertained.


But certainly "well regulated militia" requires a regulator, doesn't it? If not, what does the phrase mean? And if not the federal government, the states, or the people, who will legislate / execute that regulation? It is, per the Bill of Rights, necessary for the security of a free state and seemingly the reason the latter part of the amendment guarantees that right to bear arms not be infringed upon. (It seems to me, badly worded as it is, to guarantee that right not be infringed upon so that a well regulated militia be maintained to protect the state.)

That's his decision. He didn't ask, and I don't want to be rude by offering advice not requested. But I'm totally open to offering opinions if asked and provided with location, general tastes, and allergy information (if any).

I've been thinking about this.


(By the way, somewhat related, I still think you haven't answered what the "well regulated" part of "well regulated milita" might mean if not, well, regulated. But that's not what I've been thinking about.)

This is less practical than philosophical. But obviously, there are practical implications.

First, a presupposition: the likelihood of repeat offenses are a demonstrable reality, so failing to restrict legal access to firearms to, say, convicted violent criminals, will most likely result in more future offenses by said convicted criminals who have admittedly paid their debts to society. To clarify: I am not saying that a wannabe criminal can't possibly obtain a firearm illegally. Obviously. But certainly, a hurdle is a hurdle, and any hurdle does reduce the eventual "successes" of that wannabe repeat offender.

So assuming we can agree on that above paragraph (which might not be the case), am I right in thinking that your position is that the underlying rights and freedoms are actually more important than the practical results, if those results infringe on the ideal rights? In other words, it is better to await a likely future harm and then punish it than it is to infringe on rights in order to prevent the likely (but not certain) future harm?

I ask because this is a position I'd take in many of the post 9/11 terror activities, actually: warrantless government surveillance, arrests without charges, and so on. So it isn't a concept I steadfastly refuse, just one I approach cautiously. I don't want to allow government/police/military officials to stand in my home to ensure I don't commit a crime, because, after all, I might otherwise commit the crime. I reject that thinking. But I have generally felt differently with respect to previously convicted violent actors.

But where does it end? If a criminal has paid his debt to society then he is a free man again, is he not? We are not concerned with imagined behaviors; we are concerned with real ones.

I take by you asking that follow-up question that you don't disagree with my assessment of your position? My penultimate paragraph: "So assuming we ... future harm?" Is that a correct understanding? To put it another way, you might say "our rights are in an absolute sense more important than any potential outcomes of the consequences of those rights--though we [you] do believe that outcomes are better because of that absolute primacy of those rights." True?

(I actually have some follow-ups to your question, but first I want to make sure I understand you on the above.)

Halloween? Well, here's a ghost story for y'all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6uR1rZjKkM

One more thing about gun regulation and the right to defend yourself: Someone should research and count occasions where civilians managed to save their lives because they were carrying guns in the US and see if it outnumbers the occasions where people were killed because guns are freely accessible, like when children find their parents' gun and shoot them because they didn't know better. If it turns out that guns save more lives than they cost, no regulations should be installed. If it turns out that the number of lives saved is relatively marginal, regulations should be brought to effect.

This has been researched and quite extensively. The research shows that the claims of self-defense are typically untrue.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Other research shows that "for every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths" and "the mortality rate was 7 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns."

Interesting that it is a Harvard article and one nearly 20 years old.  And Harvard closed the other day for an attack threat. 

We aren't talking about a person who legitimately takes training at a police academy or similar training to learn how to handle a gun properly, as well as store it.

This is the lawless use of guns. There is a difference between "in the street" training and bona fide firearms training. 

That's true. Please feel free to link to a more up to date research study.

We aren't talking about a person who legitimately takes training at a police academy or similar training to learn how to handle a gun properly, as well as store it.


The page that I linked to explicitly talks about lawless use of gun but the person I was responding to was asking a question about self-defence and this is what the research expressly focuses on.

That is all conjecture and studies which are university based are often funded to procure an "outcome."

From your spelling of the word "defense" - it is reasonable to infer that you are not an American.  That is a core part of our Bill of Rights.  There is a movement afoot in this country whereby the citizenry should be "disarmed" just when we are dealing with a "clear and present danger."  It is a leftist agenda.

So all this pontificating about guns, does not address what our immediate needs are.  And I realize the risk, but it seems that guns are in the hands of outlaws rather than law-abiding citizens who, if properly trained can at least defend themselves and perhaps others. NYC has already been put on alert.

Exchanging ideas and information is great but all this hairsplitting is vexatious and it has a chilling effect on those with whom you don't agree.

You're interested in research.Great. Much research is not credible because it is "funded research with a outcome that is paid for, so it is skewed for the purchaser." Harvard is one of the worse offenders.

Fine, that you support your position, but some of us are interested in survival in a dangerous climate. And so long as we have that constitutional right, it is in place exactly at the right time to defend ourselves agains the clear and present danger that is Daesh whom we are now learning are into major drug dealing.  Armed with AK-47's and high and borderline psychotic. 

You gonna bring in a "negotiator" for a lunatic with a Kalashnikov?   You gonna talk nice to them and give them a job?

Often? Do you have a source to back up your claim that this often happens? And do you have any evidence to suggest that is the case here? If so, please demonstrate it.


The core part of your Bill of Rights is about the right of the country the form a militia who could carry arms, because there was no official military force. The second amendment is quite literally about militarized self-defence. And while I'm an American, I'm not from the United States.


It could not be a leftist agenda since leftism refers to an economic point of view and the issue of arms has nothing to do with who controls the means of production. Furthermore, I have said nothing about whether or not the citizenry should be disarmed. I have simply given the facts that illustrate that the claims that gun ownership provides self-defence is false. And apart from some unsubstantiated smoke being blown about the fact that this research could have been funded to procure an outcome, you have yet to demonstrate how what I have shown is untrue.


Quite honestly, you have offered this argument before in conversations with others on vaccination and you were unable to point to any credible source that proved your point. Obviously I'm not going to convince you on this matter but forgive me if I refuse to take these sorts of claims as anything other than groundless attempts to de-legitimize serious scholarship because it disagrees with a faulty premise. I'm afraid I can't waste my time any further on those sorts of diversions.

Credible to you?  I don't post to agree with you.  Posters post their own opinions.

Serious scholarship?

Pseudo scholarship is what a great deal of it is.

And much of it is business-driven and not the least bit scholarly, honest or transparent.  

The Second Amendment is to extend the militia to civilians, because the militia can't be everywhere. 

We have "citizens arrest" here.

Historically, it comes from Anglo Saxon law in medieval England.  Citizen arrest were a part of law enforcement support.

And it also goes to the Ninth Amendment under self preservation and the defense of others.

The far left's "arguments" are a mirage.  People have to buy into them, in order for them to exist.  When they look away, it just vanishes.  What DOES exist is the US Constitution.  Our Rights.  The truth.  We have the right to defend ourselves.

They can't get over that.

There are plenty of nations where they have it there way.  They demand that WE be like them.

This is insulting. I have personally known a great many university professors and researchers; I have been one; I've worked with many; I've got many among my family and friends. I've never known one to manipulate their research in order to derive a pre-determined outcome. Of course, there are hacks and frauds in every field, but to make a general statement, or to imply that this is usually the case or is the case often enough to be statistically significant at accredited universities should be backed up by evidence because I'm certain it's not the case. Respectable academic institutions and respectable academics take great care to maintain their research independence and integrity.

Ensuring that we always feel ourselves to have a "clear and present danger" is a rightist agenda. As soon as the cold war ended, the right started splashing about trying to awake a new danger, because it's a good distraction, and allows taxpayer funds to keep flowing to their industries.

More research (yay!) - conservatives have a more intense reaction to icky scary things than liberals. I think this is where much of the divide on things like the Paris thread, this thread, discussions about police violence, etc. is founded.

http://www.brietbart.com/big-government/2015/06/04/harvard-syracuse-researchers-caught-lying-to-boost-obama-climate-rules/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cas-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0

Believing any study before knowing who commissioned it and whether money or other inducement was exchanged is not prudent these days, I don't think.

It used to be that science was uninfluenced by money.  That is no longer true. And, maybe your family researchers are honest.  They are not all honest and their faked results damage us all as well as intellectual honesty.

Re: the Breitbart thing - the website seems to be down right now.
Re: the NYT, your link is dead, but I found the article anyway.
a) The article is about one individual
b) that individual is neither an academic, nor does he work for a university.

So, one guy who does not work at a university has done fraudulent work. This supports the idea that academia is corrupt? It has nothing to do with academia.

Seriously, you've got family in the military. Do you think it's right when one person in the military is reported to have raped or tortured someone so everyone in the military is smeared? Is that OK?

You are saying that the life's work of thousands of people, people who devote everything to their field, people who have given up lucrative jobs in private industry (and anyone with a Ph.D in STEM, finance or economics can get a very well-paying private position) to devote their lives to the furtherance of their field, is to be dismissed because of a few charlatans. It's not right.

I'll look further into it but I highly suspect it's misinformation. The whole story was generated by Steven Milloy who, if you want to talk about being funded to procure an income, you should look at the laundry list of people and corporate institutions who have been funding this man's disinformation schemes (including shilling for Big Tobacco and Big Oil) for decades:

http://scholarsandrogues.com/2007/11/28/we-berate-you-deride-a-look-at-steven-j-milloys-current-affiliates-and-backers/

Knowing who commissioned it is unimportant.
What is important is to look at the study itself, see how it was set up and whether variables are properly controlled for and a statistically significant sample was used, etc. If these things are off, the study is off, if not, it's not. Simple as that. Regardless of where the funding was derived.

Yes, I do, and I question everything. As should everyone.  Our food studies have been tainted by special interest groups.  Medications have had skewed testing.

There is a lot of academic dishonesty that has gone unchecked in academia since it has become incentivized with books, software, and other high tech products.  I've seen psychologists who wanted their testing accepted in a school district "suck up" to the "powers that be" to have their testing manuals accepted and implemented only to be discredited later as junk.    

As far as the military, they have fewer rights than an ordinary citizens. That is atrocious. That is why they need excellent private attorneys to counter those allegations.  Transparency and sunlight are key.  Otherwise some poor low ranked military person can get thrown under the bus. You must have seen that.  

http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/09/harvard-psychology-researcher-committed-fraud-u.s.-investigation-concludes

If you dig, to find fraud you will find it.  It is shocking.  So once the shock wears off, you have new skills that help you be a better consumer of products or of education.  

If you dig to find fraud in any field you will find it. To dismiss the work of thousands of people, tens of thousands, because you've found instances of charlatanism is not only thoughtless, insulting and unfair, it doesn't make sense.

Emily - that is why the new standard is "trust, but verify."  ;)

And, it is too bad that a few greedy and dishonest individuals have tainted their profession, and made it difficult for their peers, but that is the reality of the situation, so now, we have no recourse but to verify everything. 

I have no qualm with people verifying. One should.

Is that what you were doing when you posted as evidence the website of a man who believes that The Beatles were part of an illuminati conspiracy?

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,22609.msg539317.html#msg539317


You have yet to provide a credible example that has reaffirmed what you have claimed.

An example here. Imagine that I truly believe my product is beneficial in X ways. I think qualified research showing that my product is beneficial will be useful for marketing. I fund a research project, believing that the outcome will benefit me, because I believe in my product. The research does show that my product is beneficial. Yay! I was right!
I make sure the research gets reported where people will see it because it will benefit my sales. Someone sees that I funded the research. They conclude and write a smeary article somewhere that the research was manipulated to suit my ends. Was it? In my example, no.

Sometimes funding does come from someone who will benefit from the research. If it does, that does not mean that the research is corrupt.

But this is why the process of verifying the integrity of research should be to look at the research itself and how it was managed and carried out and written up. The source of the funds should not affect an evaluation of the value of research.

Ideally, research would be more often funded from a government-established fund so that researchers don't need to kowtow to industry for funding. But kowtow does not mean manipulate the ends. Usually it means, "I can't research exactly what I want because no one will pay for it. People in my field can see its long-term importance but there's no company that will profit from it right now so instead I will do this research on the safety of X breast implant material because a corporation wants this study done and the material is the same material I wanted to study, so I'll learn more about it, though not really what I feel is important to learn."
The kowtowing of respectable researchers at respectable universities very rarely takes the form of manipulating results. If someone openly did this at any of the universities I've had affiliations with, it would be considered grounds for loss of tenure, at least.

CSM - that is "your" extrapolation. 

The vaccine issues are independent of any Beatles issues. I drew no link as between the.  And there has been much vax research. That comes after a person is injured, usually. They want to find out why.

It may have been the first link that I hit.  I said nothing about the illuminati.  That is just conjecture on your part. 

What is?


You are the one on this very thread who is discrediting research not based on the research itself but where it comes from. How do you account for your double standard?



This, I think, was the only thing you linked to in that thread as evidence for your point after Loaf repeatedly asked for you to reinforce your claims.


There was no conjecture. What I wrote was exactly true.

Wait, so in this article, this was reported:

"Hauser's work in humans and monkeys probed the biological roots of cognition and morality. He was an especially popular professor among undergraduates, and his provocative ideas attracted many collaborators as well as frequent media attention. He was a prolific scientist, in recent years averaging about one peer-reviewed article per month. But his work fell under a cloud in 2007, when members of his laboratory brought concerns about his research conduct to Harvard officials, instigating a 3-year internal investigation.

In August 2010, The Boston Globe broke the news that Harvard had found Hauser solely responsible for eight instances of scientific misconduct. University officials confirmed the reports but did not provide further details. Harvard's silence left researchers studying animal cognition wondering which of Hauser's hundreds of published studies might be tainted. In the wake of the investigation, in 2010 Hauser announced he was taking a year's academic leave. In July 2011, he resigned his position at Harvard."

The university itself handled this exactly as it should... his colleagues reported him to university officials who investigated, outed him, and pushed him out. The university is losing one of its best-funded researchers because the integrity of research is more important to the university than the funding.
This is evidence of the integrity of university research, not the reverse.

Yes, and furthermore, even though the article mentions both federal funding and fraud, this is nevertheless not a case of a researcher being funded to procure a particular result. At least, that's not what this news article is suggesting.

Fille de Plage, honest question:
You've put up a few articles showing a few researchers have done corrupted work. One of them was not working for a university; the other was investigated and outed by his university.
You started by asserting that university research as a whole is not to be trusted.
As you look for evidence and find a smattering of articles about single instances, is there any point where you might think, "well, I've heard of a few really egregious instances and I've allowed it to affect my judgment of the whole lot, when maybe it turns out that these instances are not actually representative of the field. Maybe I should rethink."
Could you change your mind and think that, lacking substantial evidence that there's extensive corruption within university research, perhaps university researchers are actually honest people trying to do their job well as much as anyone else?
Or is it fixed that university researchers are as a whole corrupt, and regardless of evidence, your mind will not change on that?

OK - I get that point.  However, who was "minding the store" and verifying his work from the outset?

The job is to "verify" ahead of time, to vet the researchers.  And HR can make mistakes, but his colleagues should not have had that terrible burden to "out" him.  They were doing the job of whomever his supervisor was.  That is very unfair.

Harvard won't miss the dough.  They worry about their reputation and perception in the press.

Tenured professors don't have supervisors per se. They are the top of the research organization. As the executives at a corporation are the top of their org. It's up to their peers to review their work and report it to the board, if a corporation, or administration, if a university.

It is true that Harvard worries about their reputation. Universities live and die by reputation, which is why integrity is so important to them.
Financially, Harvard's had some tough years lately. They used to be able to operate solely off of their endowment, but there was a period, in the 90s I think perhaps ranging into the early 2000's, when their budget was more than the endowment could handle. But I think they've got that back under control.

After having seen many, both in case law, and matters of public safety and health, whether defective products or toys, that were defectively designed, my position is check things out.  And it doesn't mean they are all cheats, but now everyone needs to be prudent.    

It isn't fixed, but now, as a result of mostly personal injuries, that are unreported or under reported, such as the silicone breast implants, or drugs such as thalidomide that caused fetuses to be born missing limbs, and whose drugs and devices, came about as university and pharma industry research and vast budgets for promotion, it is the responsible thing to do.  

The question has to be asked.  Who funded the research? Are they independent?  Who stands to benefit?  

If it is neutrally funded and not product driven, then it is a different story.  

When the Gillette company does research on its own razors, should you ask?  Of course you should.

Did you ask these questions about the author of the article that Breitbart posted, who has been largely in the pocket of organizations with a vested interest in undermining science on global warming? If you did ask these questions, what made you decide to post the article? If you didn't, why the double standard?

CSM - thank you for that information about Breitbart. 

Which organizations have a vested interest in undermining the concept of global warming?

I will say that I think it's a shame that researchers at institutions that should be neutral, like universities, have to rely on private funding. Again, because universities rely on their reputations, universities and serious academics take integrity very seriously. Hints of corruption always create waves at universities and professors sneer intensely at other professors whom they suspect aren't entirely on the up-and-up. There's social, political and professional pressure to maintain your integrity and you will be fired and shunned if you are shown to have compromised it. But, yes, private funding can tempt those who have snuck through the cracks. I maintain that those are few.

You've mentioned that it used to be more trustworthy and that's because there used to be more public funding allowing people to become "hotshots" with no compromise.

To your specific scenario:
If the research was funded by Gillette and performed by Gillette employees, I would lean toward skepticism.
If the research was funded in part by Gillette and performed by Harvard tenured professors in their role as Harvard researchers, I would lean toward trusting the results but if the topic mattered to me for any particular reason, I would read the study and its peer reviews to validate the conditions.

You can read the article I linked to if you'd like. Also consider oil and petroleum corporations and trade associations, the coal industry, etc.

Also, I would like to put in my objection to this whole tangent (in which I have played a role) which I think only serves as a diversion from the initial response that I gave to Micha.

OK. I found the Breitbart article. It's here:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/04/harvard-syracuse-researchers-caught-lying-to-boost-obama-climate-rules/

The reason that this was only reported on Breitbart, then linked to by sites with similar political affiliations, is that the article is presenting bogus information. The gist of the article is that this statement, which quotes one of the researchers, is a lie:
“The EPA, which did not participate in the study or interact with its authors, Buonocore says, roundly welcomed its findings.”
The article supports this notion by establishing that:

"A July 8, 2014 email shows Lambert arranging a conference call with EPA staff to get EPA’s input on the study. One of the EPA staff involved was the contact person for agency’s Clean Power Plan cost-benefit analysis. A subsequent e-mail shows that the top EPA staffer on the Clean Power Plan cost-benefit analysis was added to the call.

A July 15, 2014 email from Driscoll to an EPA staffer boasts of “considerable interest” in their analysis from unnamed outside “groups.” One sentence after buttering up the EPA staffer, Driscoll asks her if they could have a phone call to discuss fundraising for a conference Driscoll is organizing. No appearance of attempted financial conflict there?

A November 7, 2014 e-mail from Lambert to EPA about the study reads, “We would like to follow back up with you by phone to discuss possible next steps in this analysis and what role you might be able to play.”

However, what the article fails to report is that the study was published on May 27, 2014, before these interactions took place. So, they were discussing how to make use of the results after they'd been found.

Here's a press release about the publication of the research: http://eng-cs.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Press-Release_Co-Benefits-Study-5.27.pdf

FilleDePlage, with all due respect, maybe your verification process would be better aimed at your sources that smear university researchers rather than university researchers. Our little unscientific study here has shown that the reports of corruption are more questionable than the research they are reporting of.

Frankly, I suspect that Breitbart was intentionally misleading its readers.

Thank you very much for that, Emily. That confirms my suspicions on the previous page that this article was nothing more than misinformation.

In red above is particularly egregious and manipulative. First, there's nothing wrong with soliciting funds for a conference. Second, he was doing it after he concluded and published his research. The slur by Breitbart.com is almost suable. The only way they avoid defamation is by putting it as a question rather than statement.

Ha! Sorry about the tangent CSM. My personal honor was at stake!

bump

Nothing to be sorry for -- like I said, I played a role in the tangent too.

Ultimately though it becomes difficult to combat something like that. Needless to say, one cannot credibly offer the position that they are in favour of verification while posting these kinds of articles as evidence. Let's be honest about what this is: an attempt to discredit a source because it offered up uncomfortable information. And what's remarkable is that it was being intimated that by linking to this information, I was bolstering a left wing agenda. But what do you call putting up an unverified article written by a shill for Big Oil that actively distorts the truth in order to combat this thus far not discredited research that the Harvard website posts?

CSM's response:

This has been researched and quite extensively. The research shows that the claims of self-defense are typically untrue.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Other research shows that "for every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths" and "the mortality rate was 7 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns."

rebump courtesy of Emily  :)

The EPA is an administrative agency branch of the government, subject to political manipulation. They have 15,000 people on the payroll. Their job is to protect the environment, and generally that includes the outdoors, and does nothing for indoor pollution, or those who get sick from cancer, etc. from indoor air quality.  So if poison from outdoors kills you, they might do something if it hits the press, and becomes high profile, they get involved.  

Several years ago, a group came up with this system called "cap and trade." It was devised to combat acid rain.  And I'm filtering it because I am not a scientist, there are "credits" given to energy companies, to use as currency to "pollute"  that I would compare to monopoly money for that board game.  Everyone seems to start out the same.  And, if there is an "energy company" who doesn't pollute they have have their monopoly money left over.  So the big polluters barter to purchase those credits. They may limit the total amount of emissions, as I understand the program, but those who pollute, get to keep doing it if they can buy the credits from another company.  Each energy company is not held to a uniform standard.  They can buy their way out of their emissions.

And,where was the EPA with inspection for the Diesel Volkswagens?  I am not giving the EPA one bit of cred, because this "clean diesel" (and I've driven VW diesels in the past, both in the States and Europe) because they haven't done their job. These VW diesels cars were in the US since 2009.  Where have they been? It took them 6 years to investigate? They have 15,000 "payroll patriots" who let this go for all that time?



 

I hope you're verifying your sources now, I would hate if you're slamming the EPA with the same sort of input you used to slam universities.
However, this is not to do with either gun control or the previous tangent. While I have no problem discussing the value of the EPA or whether they are corrupt or incompetent, it would probably be best to do it on another thread.

CSM's response:

This has been researched and quite extensively. The research shows that the claims of self-defense are typically untrue.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Other research shows that "for every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths" and "the mortality rate was 7 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns."

rebump courtesy of Emily  :)

Emily - you may not care for the sources. Not my problem. You don't agree and that is fine.  I've been involved on some level with higher ed for several decades and continue to be. And it is common knowledge now, with recent lawsuits about the nonfeasance of the EPA laxity.   

If EPA didn't investigate VW, there must be a reason. Six years with a "clean diesel" campaign and inspection stations all over the country, taking fees to inspect these cars annually.  I am not buying that. I suspect it is "undue influence."

That letter from Harvard was generated by a professional public relations firm, hired to minimize damage.  Interesting client list...

Universities are political organizations.  The state run universities rely on politicians to ensure programs for their different departments.  The state budgets tell how much goes for higher education.  They hire lobbyists and P.R. firms to advance their interests. Higher ed is a business.   

There was no damage to minimize. Harvard has that PR firm issue press releases regarding new publications all the time. It's standard.
There was no damage to minimize because the things that Breitbart was complaining about had not yet happened. And what they were complaining about (that a study's author discussed the results of a study after the fact with the body that would have a primary interest in the results and that the study's author would discuss with that body putting together a conference to discuss the results) is not wrong in any way.
Seriously, the fact that you don't view your news sources with the same skepticism that you view science should alert you to a bias. That article is a transparent unfounded hit-piece and yet you continue to look for ways, that don't exist, to imply there was some meat behind it. You need to rethink your approach to information gathering, unless you are consciously deciding to select information to support your preexisting views.
You lose credibility when you keep defending a discredited piece.

Emily - The conflicts of interest are blatant.  And running a "conference" can be an expensive proposition.  I recently attended a conference for continuing education where they flew one professor from Hawaii, and many others from all over the country.  Hotels, meals, cars, speaker fees...and on and on. 

It is naive to think there is no crossover or no undue influence.  And that Breibart site had the actual email chain.  Syracuse got $3.6 mil from the EPA.  Resources for the Future got $2 mil.  Harvard got $31 mil.  Are you kidding?  EPA gave "input" - and there is no conflict?  Follow the money.  It drives the policy.  

The "agenda" was to close coal fired plants.  It is called "checkbook science."

Topic FilledePlage thinks there's something wrong with an organization funding a study on issues that organization is responsible for moved to a new thread

The project was called "The Science and Policy Integration Project."  It is right in the linked emails.

CSM's response:

This has been researched and quite extensively. The research shows that the claims of self-defense are typically untrue.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Other research shows that "for every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths" and "the mortality rate was 7 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns."

rebump courtesy of Emily  :)

Old findings. 

The interesting link is that one that is current, looking at the pathway to jail and under-diagnosis of mental illness.   ;)

What I in fact can't get over is that many US citizen see their constitution as a holy scripture, given to them by a higher force to grant them holy rights. The fact that the US constitution exists does not mean that it is "the truth". It was written by a couple of intellectuals for the needs of their society at the time. This is the same nonsense as that Jews and Muslims aren't allowed to eat pork because 2500/1500 years ago when their holy scriptures were put down they didn't have fridges.



It's "their way", not "there way", Bean Bag. It's not like "Werewolf? There wolf, there castle".

The Constitution doesn't grant anyone rights and neither does government. Humans have inalienable rights that come from their creator. We're all individuals and we all own our bodies. As a result, we have a right to defend our bodies by any means necessary.

I agree more with Micha here. I recognize that at the nation's founding the ideas TRBB were said and that remains part of the national myth/narrative. But it presupposes a creator, a creator who grants rights, that we have properly understood what those rights are, and that we correctly discern the implications as we create our governments or laws.

I don't think any of those presuppositions is true.

I think people have developed morality through evolving society, with constant push and pull. Nothing was given us except by ourselves.

Well, therein lies this question - if there is no creator, do we not have rights? Are we not sentient beings?

Great questions indeed, which is why a (respectful) religion and ethics thread or board would be fun.

But short answer: yes, as generally agreed upon by society, but not in any grand, "from above" sense. And yes, we are.

So, TRBB, let's say you discovered there was no creator. Would you disregard the beliefs you used to hold and begin violating the rights you once thought people had?

We could end up at the conclusion that rights are objective and people have their own idea about what rights they have. On the self-defense matter I've heard "yeah, I have a right to defend myself by any means necessary," "well, only if I use equal force," "yeah, but I should retreat if I can," or "no, I should call the police."

This is why there will be no consensus. Of course, leaving it up to the democratic process won't do much better, either.

Nope. I respect the property of others.

Oh I absolutely agree there will never be literal consensus; but there never has been. And people who proclaim specific rights from a creator don't agree, either, whether on the rights or the creator who granted them (or to whom, or how). Instead throughout history, most people's rights (legally defined and religiously believed) tend to change more or less together. To me that strongly implies that religious beliefs aren't inherent and unchanging, but rather evolve with and to fit majority culture. There are always outliers with massive disagreement, and even more people with minor ones that are typically glossed over.

Re consensus, hence democracy. An idea nobody believes works well, but if not that, who decides on matters such as rights? God certainly doesn't speak in a clear voice to convince the masses.

So would you go as far to say that drugs like heroin and LSD should be made legal because everybody has the right to destroy his/her own body?

I would. And I know that's really problematic, but criminalizing them is really problematic as well. It's a difficult issue and when I say "I would" it should not be taken as facile. It's something I've thought about quite a bit, and I think the damage done by criminalization is more than the damage done by the drugs themselves. On top of that is the abridging of personal autonomy which I think should only happen when the benefits very clearly by far outweigh the drawbacks.

The drug question is really a very differenciated subject. Some drugs are illegal, others aren't. Alcohol is legal, though it causes many deaths each year through irresponsible use. Out of experience I know that it is possible to take alcohol as a drug in a responsible way. I can't claim that about cannabis, out of lack of experience. The reason I came up with the question is that I got acquainted yesterday with a young man who takes medicine because of his schizophrenia that made him hear voices and other auditorial hallucinations. He also mentioned frequent drug use, I asked him what he took, he said LSD, I asked whether he had heard voices before he ever took LSD, he answered no. Just like BW. My opinion is now it should stay illegal to sell LSD to people, because society has the duty to protect certain of its members from themselves using too dangerous drugs. Same goes for guns - they're just to dangerous for everybody to easily get them, even though everybody DOES have the right to defendhimself (even if it wasn't in the US constitution).

The intersection of individual liberty and the public good (protection from crime, national security, general health, shared economic interests)--even another's individual liberty--is a tricky one. The reality is that we don't live in separate vacuums, that our actions and inactions have consequences beyond ourselves (and thus infringe on others' lives, or liberties). Yet I'm a strong advocate of individual liberty, especially in theory and often in practice.

Satisfactory answers to specific policy proposals aren't easy to come by.

Micha - good point.  But I would say legalize everything -- then it puts those who push drugs out of business, and fills the jails to over 50% with people needing addiction treatment.  We wouldn't have those tunnels for drug transport.  It would collapse their economy.  And re-focus the effort towards treatment and not punishment.

Then, use those facilities, to provide substance abuse and education in a compassionate setting.  People who have what we call "diminished capacity to make a judgment," or get treatment when they are high as hell, need protection and not condemnation by society. Many don't realize that they are destroying their bodies because they are too high to appreciate the good judgment that is impaired.  

That's a good point - if taking a drug once can be life destroying, maybe that drug should be illegal. [eta: though lots of things legal and illegal can be life-destroying on the first try if not used correctly or in moderation. Driving, for instance. So I have to think about this.]
With regard to LSD, the thing is that schizophrenia, which is typically an inherited trait usually manifests at about the same age as one might be experimenting with drugs. And the effects of LSD have some commonality with schizophrenia, so if the two things coincide, it's easy for people to assume a causal link, while it may just be co-incidence.
I don't know, and scientists haven't identified a causal link. But if there is one, yeah, that should be taken into account.
I agree with you about the guns.

I agree with this, though the definition of "liberty" is too open to debate so I avoid the term.
I don't think it's sacrilege to interfere with personal autonomy, but I think a very high standard has to be met before it's done.

+1 - look! We agree!  :h5

Maybe it would be better to just criminalize selling the stuff. The drug user is a kind of victim more than a criminal. Here in Germany, if I'm not mistaken, it's legal to own a small amount of cannabis for own consumption, but if you are caught with more than a certain amount, you're treated as a dealer and are brought to the court. I think it is illegal to even own or take LSD, heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and the like.

Hi Micha - one of my brothers lived a year in Germany. (Hope you see the Touring Band while they tour Germany.)  The US has had a fake war on drugs.  I can't say it any more diplomatically. It is what it is. Drugs have been used as currency for decades.

De-criminalizing it, initially could collapse the drug economies of the countries who are predators as regards the US.  It would not cure addiction but it would likely stop drug-mules and the tunnels that have sprung up to transport these drugs that are killing our youth.  Then we could start to get a handle on recovery delivery services without fear of prison. 

Just treat it as a health problem, like a broken leg. No stigma. And save those talented young people whose gifts and intelligence are taken from us from drugs.

 

Well, I do have a ticket. They don't tour on their own, though, it's a big show with several other artists, 7 other acts all together, including OMD and the John Miles Electric Band, all being backed by a smyphony orchestra. I don't expect them to play for longer than half an hour. As the show is six days from now, I think it's too late to file Surf's Up as a request - I don't like any of the non-demo studio versions of it and want to hear it played by a symphonic orchestra!

Maybe not Surf's Up, just the more well-known hits, buts still a really great opportunity you have to hear them with a symphony.  I'm jealous. I've never seen them with a symphony, so, for me - something to look forward to! 

Have fun!  ;)

Another kid just killed herself because her dad just had to have a gun:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/30/georgia-6-year-old-dead-finds-gun-in-couch-cushion-fatally-shoots-herself/

According to the Centers For Disease Control’s "WONDER" database, 69 children under the age of 15 died from accidental gunshots in the US in 2013. How many saved their lives defending themselves with a gun that year? Thank GOD guns are restricted in my country. There will aways be loads of irresponsible people who own them if guns aren't restricted.

Ugh. Such a shame. I live in TX and so many parents think I'm awful because I won't let my daughter play at their houses if they have unsecured guns.

As you might guess, I think they are awful.

Good for you, and too bad if people don't like it. 

The key words are "unsecured" and you know the difference as a vet.  ;)

"Gun control" doesn't mean "we're going to take them away"... it means ensuring that only responsible people are allowed to have guns. Anyone who has any kind of a problem with that is a very dangerous idiot.

That concept of gun control is perfectly fine. 

But, there are very vocal groups who believe that "controlling" anything (ie. guns, violent TV shows, music with risque lyrics, fatty foods, soda, etc) means taking it away completely. 

Indeed I do, and insist upon it. A lot of people here have unlocked pistols at their bedside. They say with confidence "our kids know how much trouble they'll get it they mess with it." Not a high enough standard. I knew how much trouble I'd get if I messed with a lot of things when I was a kid; if I thought I could get away with it, I couldn't resist the challenge.

Violent TV shows, music with risque lyrics, fatty foods, soda can't kill you in the blink of an eye. An irresponsibly handled gun can. In my 46 years of life I've never beem in a situation where I could have used a gun. If I had one and encountered a situation in which I could use it, I'd probably be too stunned to make use of it. IMO guns should be restricted to people who have a good reason to have them, like policemen. At least I don't have a good reason to have one.


Are they afraid of their dreams or what? Is Texas known for hords of barbarians marauding people's houses at night?

Haha. No. They are caught up in what I call "the Great Fear."  It's a panic that the government, Islam, gay people, progressives, marauding hordes, feminists, someone is out to "destroy our way of life." In response to that panic they run out and buy more and more weapons because it makes them feel like they're doing something to protect themselves from the bogeyman.
It's a cult that 30% or so of Americans have joined in the last few decades. I'm sad to say it's got cels in Europe as well, though the gun-mania aspect has not taken hold there, it seems.

Not everyone has that luxury. Understandably people who live in areas where break ins and muggings are commonplace may feel safer if they could protect themselves. Also, I say this as someone who lives in a fairly good part of the UK.

Exactly, and if you life in a densely populated city, where crime and drug dealing is rampant, the US 2nd amendment provides a means of self-defense.  If you live in a low crime area, then it might be a different story, but no one can be assured of safety these days. 

Violent crime cuts across every region and social strata. It used to be in an agrarian context that everyone had a rifle, to defend against wild animals or intruders.  And, children were properly taught as part of their upbringing how to clean a rifle, load and shoot in the event of an emergency. 

There is so much pushback against eroding liberties, that it would be surprising if it was repealed.  It will be interesting to see exactly what happens with this Chicago situation excessive force with a police officer, where an investigation was unconscionably silenced for over a year to ensure the election of the incumbent mayor, a person close to the president.

 

Perhaps it's understandable on a visceral level, but what's not understandable is why people will continue to follow their intuition in the face of contrary evidence and fact, and why people seem to think when faced with a stressful situation they will perform differently from virtually all other people in the same situation (see posts earlier in this thread for evidence that arming one's self is not beneficial, but detrimental despite some people's inklings). Bringing more firearms into the scene is counter-productive. I guess we all like to imagine we're superheroes but some of us learn to keep that in the realm of fantasy.

"Exactly" only if you are a member of the Fear cult. Violent crime is at the lowest since the 1960s throughout the US, including in urban areas. "These days" one is a lot safer just about anywhere than one has been for decades, and yet the cult has people in fear of marauding hordes "these days."
Follow the money, FdP. Who's benefitting from the sales of weapons and who writes on the sites that ratchet up the fear in spite of the facts? Will your scrutiny be applied here?

Even National Review is telling people to cut it out:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427758/careful-panic-violent-crime-and-gun-crime-are-both-dropping-charles-c-w-cooke

In the face of facts, can Americans settle down, or will the constant fearful internet postings overwhelm the facts and cause people to continue their self-destructive panic?

You've basically posted a pro-gun article to illustrate your point; you know this, right? Charles C.W. Cooke is a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms.

"Over the last 25 years, we have seen a remarkable reduction in violent crime at the exact moment that the country has been flooded with firearms and has (generally) loosened the laws that govern their ownership and use. Did one cause the other? Frankly, I have no idea — and nor, in truth does anybody else. But I do know that things are improving and that we ought to be extremely careful before we conclude that the current regime has nothing at all to do with that improvement."

Yes, I've posted that article to illustrate my point that the big Fear is unfounded.
I don't agree with Mr. Cooke that we should ignore facts ("Did one cause the other? Frankly, I have no idea," well, I have an idea because I don't let my emotions and political preferences block my mind from absorbing information) when determining policy. That I don't agree with him on one thing does not deter me from agreeing with him on another, because my mind is flexible.

What you term "the Great Fear" is not completely unfounded; I don't think progressives, gays, or feminists pose any real threat short of being perpetually annoying in their constant desire for approval; they also don't carry guns for the most part so I've little reason to fear them (though I have plenty of inclination to endlessly ridicule them). I notice you don't mention multiculturalism in your blurb about "the Great Fear." Like it or not, that IS something to be feared.

Where did Mr. Cooke imply that facts should be ignored?

-Regarding multi-culturalism - if you are against multi-culturalism, you must be for the only alternative: an enforced uniculture. Ironically, since I expect the uniculture you support regards "freedom" to be part of the culture, it is against that culture to be against multiculturalism.
So what culture do you propose for the enforced uniculture? Yours, I expect. So many people want to dictate to the rest of the world what it should do and be. In my culture, we don't support dictatorships.
-I did not intend my list of panic-targets to be considered all-inclusive. It could go on.
-Regarding Mr. Cooke, he said (paraphrasing) that no one has any idea whether the quantity of firearms and "loosened" ownership and use restrictions have a link to the violent crime rate.
This is counter-factual.

I am a political libertarian and a cultural chauvinist. The West is the best. Anyone can be a Westerner if they want to be; who really wants to be a non-Westerner? Humans, as social animals, will organize alongside people with similar beliefs and culture. Would it be enforced? Not necessarily by a state; people can practice good old ostracism. Want to live in Western civilization and not assimilate into Western culture? Good luck. May the odds be ever in your favor. A free society cannot tolerate fifth columns because fifth columns are composed of people who do not value freedom. In the endeavor to preserve the most freedom for the most people, the people who do not value freedom will not be able to coexist in a libertarian social order. Call it a dictatorship if you wish. The people who don't value freedom are not going to be missed; they don't produce anything of value anyway. For the record, the same people who comprise said fifth columns come from nations that also do not tolerate fifth columns. How come they get to have all of the fun?

Liberty is not for the weak of stomach or the faint of heart. Very few truly desire liberty; those who hallucinate themselves as individuals who similarly desire liberty are of the persuasion that liberty does not go both ways.

How is his assertion counterfactual?

Hardly part of the fear cult.  I'm in a city, all my life. In my immediate area there were three women recently killed for drug money/goods to sell, in a short amount of time and I know the area well.  Most young women who have moved into the area have now bought dogs for protection after this cluster of murders so they can walk around at night.  Seeing these murders were a wake up call.

The murder rate has gone up, and the death rate for overdoses has gone up, especially with the fentanyl that has been found on autopsy. There is new legislation with regard penalties. Think the dealer has a gun?  You betcha.

With addiction comes crime. With drugs come weapons and dangerous individuals running the organizations. It is counterintuitive and not credible, to say that there is a decrease in violent crime. With gangs come violent crimes.  Guns.

If you doubt that violent crime has not gone up, go sit in a city courthouse and watch some arraignments to see for yourself that the crime rate has not gone down.  Crime that doesn't always hit the news.  And crime numbers that are manipulated to represent less crime in an area where people would not invest in the real estate.  There are many factors we don't know about. We only know what we are told.  

We didn't find out about this Chicago murder with the cop that happened on October 20, 2014 because of an election that was a highly contested one with the facts squashed and a payout made to a family before a trial ever took place. Over one year.  Because the mayor was the former chief to the prez.  This stuff is unheard of until this administration.  

Where there are drug arrests or police stops on the road, there are guns associated with the business.  And guns are routinely taken from students at school, but much has remained off the grid so the schools can maintain a false sense of security as their promote their schools to parents.  We won't ever know the real stats because they generally don't include schools where it is kept under wraps. There should be metal detectors in every public building in my view.  We have them in our courthouses and many public buildings.  

The fact of the matter is that "sales of firearms" generally cannot be tracked because many of them are not bought legitimately, nor registered, and are being manufactured outside of the US and sold on the black market.  It is virtual, like bitcoin, under the radar. One of the criticisms of bitcoin is that it was supposedly a currency for drugs.  Where there are drugs, there are guns.  We can only follow the money that is on paper, appropriated or reduced to writing in a contract.  As drugs have found a way into every nook and cranny of this country there are illegal off-the-grid guns which follow.  

That is reality not some analyst who has been paid to spin things one way or another.  

 

Multiculturalism is not a thing to be feared per se. It works in Switzerland for instance, where there are in fact people of four different languages living peacefully together. The reason is, they're all about equally rich. In Belgium, where the Flemish region is richer than the Wallonic region, it's much more difficult even between these. And then there's the immigrants from Arabic countries who are usually pretty poor and have much more difficulties to find a proper job. That provokes tension between those who "have it all" and those who have lttle chances of improving their lives.

I mean, in, say, New York, there's Christians and Jews, they don't have a lot of problems with each other, don't they? Because they're on the same social level or have people on all parts of the social ladder.


That's why so many Syrians try to get away from the place where ISIL threatens their liberty and their lives.

-Happily, your idea of Western civilization is a myth.
-"A free society cannot tolerate..." - oxymoron
-"The people who don't value freedom are not going to be missed; they don't produce anything of value anyway" - I wonder who you mean by "the people who don't value freedom" because if it includes whom I think you mean, this is counterfactual. Please tell me who "the people who.. value freedom" are and who "the people who don't value freedom" are. I mean, as far as being non-productive, income redistribution in the US en masse goes from liberals to conservatives, so..
-people do have an idea, based on actual information rather than wishes and fantasies.

-"If you doubt that violent crime has not gone up, go sit in a city courthouse and watch some arraignments to see for yourself that the crime rate has not gone down."       " In my immediate area there were three women recently killed for drug money/goods to sell"     - This kind of short term anecdotal evidence can be used to explain how someone feels, but it certainly can not be used as evidence regarding the crime rate.
-drug use has been declining for at least a decade
-"It is counterintuitive and not credible, to say that there is a decrease in violent crime"   "That is reality not some analyst who has been paid to spin things one way or another." Anti-intellectualism and a prevalent will to believe intuition over reason and evidence is perhaps the biggest problem in the US.


I'm sorry for the recent spate of violence in your neck of the woods, but it does not represent a trend. And putting more guns into the situation doesn't help.

You mention irresponsibly handled guns can kill in an instant.  This is true.  But, its not right to take away the right to own a gun if it's going to be used in a responsible manner.  Let's say you make guns illegal unless you're in law enforcement.  You can't believe that the criminals won't find ways to get them.  Then, the outlaws are unarmed and people aren't. 

In states such as Nevada, it's legal to carry a gun.  As a result, they have much less street crime because muggers don't know who is carrying. 

Also, if used in a irresponsible manner, you can easily wipe out a life, or lives, with an automobile.  Is anyone calling for them to be banned? 

Putting aside the fact that that historically does not happen (look at Australia, for example), how do you explain your double standard here when it comes to your other opinion on letting in refugees?


There have been laws created that make driving safer - call those laws car control, if you will. And, in fact, we should continue to support efforts to make driving safer. Furthermore, the analogy does not hold up. A gun's primary function is to inflict violence or at least threaten it. An automobile serves another purpose, which is transportation, which is its primary function. Obviously anything out there can kill you or hurt you, but those things are distinctly different from the objects that are designed to do so.

Emily - you were militarily trained to use a firearm.  That makes you an asset in your neighborhood, whether or not you keep one your home. If you ended up with one in your hands for whatever reason, you know how to unload it or use it for necessity to defend yourself or your family.

First, the "anecdotal" guns in schools are not in the mix.

Second, the "illegal" firearms which are coming from and manufactured outside the US for drug trafficking are not in the mix.

It skews any study.  And creates a false representation of what is really going on.  

School violence with guns does not become part of the court record, the local police database, or perhaps FBI database and that is why it is not reliable.  

Who ever thought a school massacre would ever happen in a place like Newtown, CT, in the most idyllic place in the world?

It is not commonplace but it does happen and schools need to be ready to defend the children and staff.  I think the administration should be trained for concealed carry.  You'd see this whole dynamic evaporate.  Or have armed security as part of the school staff.  No kid would dare bring a gun to school if they thought they would have to go through a metal detector manned by a cop.  It would serve as an instant deterrent.  We need to be universally-prepared for the change in crime climate and not buy into the propaganda that lulls its society into complacency and unpreparedness.  Just sayin' ;)  

Not sure how my stance on not letting in Syrian refugees has anything to do with gun laws.  But why do you want to let 10,000 non-citizens into the country when we have US citizens living on the streets?  We need to take care of our own. 

And I do find it amusing that people say that the 10,000 refugees shouldn't be lumped in with terrorists.  By that logic, the irresponsible gun owners shouldn't be lumped in with the responsible ones. 

We've discussed this before but you never responded. You have admitted before that a terrorist can find a way to enter the country whether by legitimate or non-legitimate means. Yet, you said, why make it easier for them? So my question to you was why make it easier for criminals to access guns by not placing restrictions on them?


There is enough wealth in the United States to take care of all of them and then some. And given the history of both US domestic and international policy, I'd say they have an enormous responsibility to do so.

I was trained. Happily, it's statistically incredibly unlikely that a situation will come up in my life that using that training will be necessary or advisable.

-"First, the "anecdotal" guns in schools are not in the mix.
Second, the "illegal" firearms which are coming from and manufactured outside the US for drug trafficking are not in the mix." - any proper analysis will take these into account.
-"Who ever thought a school massacre would ever happen in a place like Newtown, CT, in the most idyllic place in the world? " - Given that pretty much anyone can get a gun whenever they want, this doesn't surprise me. People with long-term mental health issues, shorter term breakdowns, etc. live everywhere. That someone in a meltdown state can get a gun so easily is stupid.

I am not opposed to having metal detectors in schools. I am opposed to having armed people in schools. I don't trust teachers, administrators or police officers to not have a melt down any more than I do anyone else.

KDS  - Ya got that right and start with our homeless vets.  I believe in a safe zone created where refugees can be safely housed and protected til this conflict (undeclared war) is resolved.  

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.  I don't feel that the US has any responsibility to assist these refugees.  If we have so much wealth, then it can be used to take care of US veterans who don't know when their next meal is coming.  

As for the guns v terror thing.  I fail to see the analogy of an object compared to people.  An object can be controlled, people cannot.  

I'm sure the countries in the continent who have the most to fear are Canada and Mexico being fearful of the illegal guns that are spreading from the US.

Most teachers I know keep their cool.  They would not be able to take the stress of the job otherwise.  Anyone can have a meltdown, but I can share that school police are a deterrent in high crime areas or high crime schools.  

The disconnect is that the courts have not become as involved with bona fide crime in the schools so that bullying can continue, and there is no judge to respond to.  This is just a principal trying to enforce a "code of discipline" which is a joke.  There are no consequences.  

It is really hard to expel a kid from school, even if they are violent.  Principals tell teachers to "handle their own problems" and teachers are there to teach and not to be cops. '

You must mean the Russian Kalashnikovs made in China?

The US manufactures more guns than any other country. Neither Mexico or Canada even rank. So yeah.

Even though the US essentially created the conditions that allowed for ISIS to form, as was predicted, and then proceeded to set-up and fund the groups in Syria that turned into ISIS in an effort to counter Assad?


What do you mean if? You deny the amount of wealth in the United States? Like I said, it's enough to take care of all of them and then some. The point is, those in power have a vested interest in not helping any of them. 

Maybe if government waste was greatly reduced.  But, sadly, that's not the case. 

Government waste is an issue - particularly when it comes to the amount spent on the military, subsidizing the wealthy elite, as well as the massive amount spent on a malfunctioning private health care system. But what's more, there is an enormous inequality in wealth since neo-liberal reforms were brought in in the 1970s, which radically decreased the amount that the wealthiest in the country were being taxed (this actually began as far back as Kennedy because escalated sharply in the following decade). Furthermore, there are major corporations in the United States that do not pay any taxes, which is outrageous.

Any response regarding responsibility for the instability of Syria?

If the US were to invest in the problem in Syria, I'd rather assist in taking out ISIS than bring the refugees here.  

We have been invested in that for years and the affect has been to radicalize these countries even more and increase the threat of terror.

We could always use the same solution we used to end the war in the Pacific 70 years ago. 

The military is our biggest and arguably most successful welfare program. Unfortunately, in recent decades, they've been increasingly diverting the welfare that used to go to the impoverished and undereducated to corporations. I do consider corporate welfare to be wasteful, but not welfare that helps people out of poverty.
It is a shame that many Americans will only approve of welfare if the recipient promises to die or kill for it if "ordered".

Oh la. You just figuratively threw a major bomb into this little chat.

That would never happen because those in power know for a fact that that would probably be the end of the world as we know it. Are you aware of what the nuclear proliferation has been since 1945?

Agreed with all of that.

Emily - what you said is shocking but true.  Having seen two "basic training" graduations there are stark differences as between and among the branches.  The Army graduation was massively large, and I was impressed that post-high school, that for many of the grads the military was about their only option to get a college education or some type of vocational training.  I was sort of taken back by how poor some of the families seemed but were as proud of their basic "graduate" as though it was a college graduation. 

The Coast Guard graduation was far more elite.  Especially the advanced training component.  Many were children of Coast Guard or other branch "brass" who had other options on the table for employment and education and this was an "adjunct" as a career path.  Interesting that in that class, the top graduate was a woman.   

The demographics of my Basic platoon were eye-opening and caused me to look into it further. The non-commissioned army is drawn out of the poorest and least educated segments of our population. The bases are also located in poorer regions, allowing the government to redistribute wealth directly through pay, but also through procurement.
The army is the biggest income redistribution tool we have.

Later, with a clearer mind, I'm adding: a lot of people very sensibly don't want to be "Westerners."

Well done guys, congrats on another mass shooting!

Lol are you for real? yes, congrats to the lucky contestants that got offed today. i mean, who cares, right?

Unfortunately there's a lot of deranged people who take out their frustrations in a grizzly fashion. It's gonna get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.

Blaming the entire American nation for a shooting, eh?

No just the guys that come in threads like this and crap on about rights etc...
I love your Country, I love mine the differences in policy is demonstrated and stark.

So you're blaming people in this thread for the shooting?

No way, just congratulating them on their stance. 355 mass shootings this year, well done! Its a sarcastic nod to the gun totting, Americana that is a myth. The land of the free.

18th of May - the FBI has not ruled out terrorism.  This appears to have the indicia of the Bataclan attack, orchestrated similarly.  This is not about the 2nd amendment.  They used "long guns" the new rhetoric, no mention of Kalashnikovs, and found IED's (pipe bombs.) 

Cities in the US have attacks from pressure cookers made by those who got hundreds of thousands of tax dollars for free college tuition and apartments, because they were refugees. These shooters used assault rifles.  That is not the 2nd amendment. 

The outlaws have the guns and "soft targets" now need to be armed.  Schools, churches, malls, sporting centers.  It is the new normal. 

God Bless America.

I'm sorry but the country you depict is not worth blessing or maintaining. If that's what it comes to: an armed citizenry constantly prepared for battle at schools, arenas, etc. then the American experiment has failed and it's time to shutter the place.

Wow yeah cool stuff, more guns to stop the guns! f***ed up logic 101.

Well, re-reading what you wrote I don't think that's what you actually wanted to say... :-D

Yes, devoted criminals will find ways to get them. But I question that the reason that there is less street criminality in some place lies in the criminals have to expect their victims to be armed. In countries where murderers have to fear death penalty there aren't less murders. And if the guy who holds you up can expect you have a gun too, he'll make damn sure he shoots you before you can pull your gun.



Exactly. And why make it easy for mentally unstable people to get guns? You can prevent those from reacting in a deadly way by making them having to make a considerate effort to get a deadly weapon.



And if you think this is throwing people with mental issues in the same bag with responsibly behaving people, you're plain wrong.



No, just those Americans who prevent gun restriction.



You're not seriously suggesting atom bombs, are you?

This is not a handgun debate.  This is organized terrorist activity.  And no one wants to have to carry a gun, but the reality of the situation, is that there is no safe haven on this earth right now. This is an attack on civilians and not a fair fight battle with trained warriors. 

It is the right of self-defense.

 

But the issues of terrorism and gun control are not mutually exclusive. The attack on Planned Parenthood the other day was an example of white Christian terrorism but it also came as a result of easy access to guns.

You still think that we argue for restriction of guns just to annoy you and leave you defenseless against terrorists, don't you? If you should ever encounter a terrorist attacking, I hope you won't, but if, your gun won't help you. You sit outside a restaurant, talk to a friend, a car stops, some guys come out with Kalashnikovs, they shoot you dead before you even know what's going on.

Micha - I don't take that the post personally.  It is the discussion of our law.  We have that right.  The "new" leftist Democratic party wants to take that away.  They won't even use the term "Kalashnikov" in the media now, and call them "long guns" - which connotes rifles or muskets which were used in the Revolutionary War.  It is all propaganda and smoke and mirrors, to advance a political party agenda.  

We don't live in a peaceful utopia.  

CSM - I am not condoning that attack.  And, my recall on the matter, is that those who are in opposition, hold prayer vigils, and lobby legislators. 

Only the mentally ill take matters into their own hands. The waters are muddied.

I think there is something to that but I also think that there are certain cultures or communities that encourage people to take these sorts of horrendous actions.

CSM - what I can share from personal teaching experience in Early Education is that we would often see young children who had serious and violent tendencies and would refer these children to get behavioral health assessments.  There are signs that a child has a serious problem and one of those is a complete lack of remorse when they hurt another child.  And kids get into scuffles all the time.  Or a child is on disconnect and doesn't socialize appropriately.  So they might have everything else in place academically but are held back socially, which hurts them more over time.  Or abuse, that creates the problem that would not ever be there. 

This is a deeper level, so you bring it to the proper person, and often get rebuffed, at that level with someone who says that, "Oh, they will outgrow it."  People don't outgrow behavioral illness and if unchecked, just simmers until it blows up. They are ticking time bombs. 

We have a bad track record on this, and why it is a great thing that focus is being called to it as a result of L & M.  De-stigmatize and get appropriate treatment, and most importantly, with dignity.   ;)

Yes, that's partly what I mean. But I don't think that's the full picture. For example, would you say that all those who are carrying out jihadist terrorism are simply suffering from behavioural health problems?

Absolutely not.  What we know now, is that the married couple (she was a Saudi bride that the husband found on a dating site, flew to SA and married her.) We don't know all the details yet. Now we know they were wearing GoPro cameras filming the event.  For what purpose?

Political ideology that involves violence, perhaps involves some kind of brainwashing...or some other mind control technique or pressure.  We don't know everything.  It clashes with our strong right to worship as we please, with the imposition of another religion, which is how the US became the US.  There are lines that are not blurry.  The culture, laws and religion are all integrated in other countries.  The US doesn't permit that crossover.  The lines are clear and enforced.  

It would be interesting if there was a profile that could be identified by behavioral health providers where traits might be identified as high-risk for being "swayed..."

This couple left a 6 month old baby.  What future does that child have going forward?

I wasn't talking about yesterday's incident because, like you say, we don't know all the details yet. I am referring to, say, the Paris attacks or 9/11.

I don't think it is simply brainwashing at work here - that term is a bit finicky anyway. People may have irrational beliefs or even rational beliefs that can be enhanced or transformed by particular communities. In many cases, those who carry out jihad style terrorism (which is heinous, must be condemned, and for which there is no excuse) are typically angered by what they see as the Western destruction of their lives, their homes, and/or the lives of their loved ones. But this anger is transformed into violence by particular groups and when these people join particular communities.

Similarly, there are a lot of communities online that foster (particularly in young white men) an irrational hatred of government, or women, or minorities, etc. People who are already a bit unstable join these communities, encourage each other, pass around a great deal of misinformation, and the consequence of this can be to again transform anger into violence.

In neither case is this acceptable. But there is a tendency here to view terrorism carried out by a Muslim as being a consequence of a culture (people will say, erroneously I think, that it is because of a backwards culture, for example) and Western terrorism or suicide missions are a consequence of an individual (a person with a mental illness). This, I think, is a prevailing false narrative that circulates on a grand scale.

+ a gazillion.

Yes, good capture - "enhanced or transformed" - from other influences. 

I take it you hold a graduate degree in said Logic?
NOT preparing yourself and NOT protecting yourself, sounds like a graduate-level course to me.

It is propaganda to claim that guns are useful for self protection. You are led to believe so by the gun lobby who want to keep selling their products in large quantities. Way more Americans get killed because guns are not restricted than through terrorist attacks. That is a fact. You have fallen to a lie from unscrupulous businessmen. The smoke and mirrors are on the other side of where you believe them to be. A political party agenda doesn't need to be wrong - you just assume so because the agenda comes from another party than the one you vote for (I assume you vote for the other one, I have no way of knowing you do, and yes, certainly you have the right to vote for the party you want).

The gun lobby I follow is the "Framers" lobby.  As in the "framers" of the US Constitution.  And, I strongly support better security in "soft targets." Schools, hospitals, nursing homes, stadia, theaters, etc. Metal detectors and cameras everywhere.  Defense of self; defense of others.

Those assault weapons were not bought legally as reported. That is utter folly and propaganda to advance the Dems agenda, to strip the citizenry of self-protection.  That attack was planned, and it is being reported that the SWAT teams were nearby because they knew something was imminent in that area, but not the exact building.  They still are trying to allege it is "workplace violence" or someone going "postal." It works better with their narrative.  The more they try to "manage" the event, the worse it is becoming because of the desire to know the truth.

You should not assume the party.  Many Democrats, unhappy with the leftist direction of the party, and who are much good company but equally suspicious of may of the old party Republicans who bring plenty of baggage and agendas of their own.  There is a low level of trust which is forcing the people to become more engaged in what is going on, and are getting info from twitter, yahoo and non traditional outlets.

It is why there is such an uprising for alternatives for leadership.  In the general election we can vote the "person" and not the "party."  So many Dems vote Republican and vice versa. Or who "change party" going into the election location and "change back" going out the door.  We also have registered Independents. And vote for candidates rather than partisanship or ideology of a party.  About 30% or more self-identify as Independents.  A Gallup poll taken in 2014 lists that at Independent number as high as 42%. 

Damn, don't use so many words I can't understand! ::) I'm kidding, but I'm not sure what "framer" and "going postal" means in this context, I'm afraid.


You mean in the latest mass shooting by this seemingly radicalised couple? That is actually besides my point - if you're a dedicated terrorist, you will take the effort to get yourself deadly weapons with or without gun restrictions, as would this couple and seemingly has.

My point is that a) guns are too dangerous for the general public to own and b) they are of no use for self defense. I wonder if any of the 14 victims owned a gun? If so, it didn't save them. If you say those 14 people would also be dead now if there were gun restrictions, I agree in this case, as it seems that this couple would have gotten their weapons anyway.

What I mean to say, it doesn't make you safer if you carry a gun - you may feel safer, but you aren't. It's basically like a security blanket, which makes you feel safer too though in fact you aren't. The gun owning Americans buy themselves this feeling of safety with the lives of all those people who get killed because of the lack of gun restriction. What DOES make you safer is when mentally instable people don't have an easy access to guns. As there's no telling who is suddenly going berzerk, the easiest way to achieve that is to restrict guns for the general public.

As I said, more Americans get killed by irresponsible gun handling than get killed by terrorists.

Micha - I am very sorry for not better explaining the "framers" - it means the drafters or writers of the US Constitution. The term "going postal" is a term that goes back to 1986 when there was a serious spike in workplace violence or workplace rage, and some in the post offices, hence the term "going postal." My bad.

Yes, any network will supply weaponry to its warriors, and make the path easy to carry out an attack. Why would they call attention to themselves by buying all that munition - just two people?  It makes no sense.   

Yes, the shooters home had 12 pipe bombs, 2,000 millimeter handgun rounds, 2,500 .223 caliber assault rifle rounds, and hundreds of tools to make additional explosive devices. That is from the LA Times.  The reported fact that they were purchased "legally" coming out of a federal agency, that can be politically manipulated,  is baloney. If the wife was radicalized, and given a K-I (fiance) visa, they didn't do their background check in a similar federal agency.

That is propaganda - and frankly, people want to "feel safer."  They don't want to feel they have a fly swatter when someone comes to attack with a gun.  That they have a chance to defend themselves and their children.   

Trained citizenry, including retired or ex military can certainly handle weapons.  And the Boston Bombers used "pressure cookers" which caused incredible damage, killing several and                                                                                           many losses of limbs.  So they can't ban them but they are IED's for mass damage. 

And, many of these "studies" are nothing more than "manufactured evidence" - in my opinion.  Unless you can afford to have a personal armed security agency protect you, then who will.  And that says nothing about all the home invasions with robbery as the goal.  So we have a double problem;  home invasions and terrorism.  Our homes are supposed to be our castles. 

So, sorry again about the terminology... ;)

No worries, I have this eerie ability of making it seem I'm really good in English... :wink Thank you for explaining.

Your English is excellent. I've only seen you ask about words that are specific to a microculture.

Thank you! :love

Maybe this makes you understand why I don't feel guns are good for the general public. Experiences from an American woman living in Germany.

https://youtu.be/3elDSe5RDgw?t=365

I've previously said, and continue to believe we should have tighter regulation around the sale of firearms in this country. I'm not a wholesale abolitionist, but certainly think there is a lot of room for improvement (as crime and accident statistics make clear to me). That said...

I don't like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/nyregion/suit-against-maker-of-gun-in-newtown-massacre-can-proceed-court-rules.html?_r=0

While I would argue that certain weapons--possibly or probably including that one--should be illegal, the reality is they aren't. I don't think it's a good use of our legal system to sue manufacturers for legally making and legally selling legal products. And in fact there is a law preventing lawsuits like this. It should have been dismissed, I think.

Justice, while an understandable goal, cannot be had. The directly guilty party is dead. The innocent dead cannot be unkilled.

My first instinct was to agree, but now I'm not sure. The link you posted didn't present the arguments of the plaintiffs really so I looked for an article that did and found this:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-newtown-gun-liability-nra-20150319-story.html

My question would be: if a toy turns out to be inherently dangerous and kids get injured, is it reasonable that the manufacturer might have some liability?
I'm not sure about the answer. I'd have some qualifications at the least, but I don't think it's so cut-and-dried.

Oh, I agree it's not quite cut-and-dried.

But even the marketing--while repulsive to me, actually--doesn't seem to be illegal. The past few decades of gun legislation and regulation have pushed the idea that weapons are acceptable, and not just for sport or hunting, but a (not remotely well regulated) militia. It's legal to buy those guns; so of course they'll be manufactured and sold, even though we can predict what will happen. I drink a lot. Someday I might die from something that could have been prevented had I not drunk so much. But it's not appropriate for the brewers to be sued for that.

To me, the real key to the article you linked was this: "It's a politically attractive argument for backers of gun control laws, but it's hard to see the courts finding liability here based on "negligent entrustment" because there is nothing negligent in the legal sale of a gun. And the killer was not the person who bought the weapon, but her son, a step removed from what a gun seller could reasonably expect."

I'm inclined to agree with you on the legality but I'm still not quite satisfied.
I think part of the purpose of the suit is to force a rethinking of the protection from liability for distributors of military-grade weapons and to shift the trend away from liberal laws and decisions concerning the distribution of military-grade weapons. I doubt they'll win, under current law, but I think they don't expect to. I think it's a political move and it's probably a political move that I support.
So I agree with the article and you on the law but, and this is a whole other philosophical question, I don't think I have a problem with using the courts to effect political change. And I agree with the plaintiffs on what the change should be.

I don't like the idea of suing people or companies to change law: it unfairly penalizes legal behavior retroactively (if they win). However, on a practical level, it's obviously the best way to bring and maintain visibility to the issue. So the tactic might be the best one. I just don't like it.

(And again, I support the idea of changing law/regulation on the issue.)

(https://boardgamegeek.com/camo/91562c4e22098f58b1876d7d3534a642a0c28f3c/687474703a2f2f73746f72652e6166612d6f6e6c696e652e6f72672f696d616765732f502f737469636b725f31373233302e6a7067)

Would Christina Grimmie still be alive if her murderer couldn't have gotten guns so easily?

Did her brother who overwhelmed the attacker carry a gun?

Micha - this is another horror show from Orlando where the much of the world visits for Disneyworld, Universal, or other theme parks.  And in the US right now there is a massive drug epidemic. 

Drugs and illegal guns go hand-in-hand, and come frequently, from outside the US, with criminals who are selling drugs and other contraband such as counterfeit handbags or clothing.  Who knows if it would have turned out differently?  This was a really bad weekend.

It's probably much easier to get a gun illegally in this country than legally. So, she unfortunately wouldn't have a different fate.

In Texas, I believe you must present a state-issued ID. That's it. So to me that sounds easier than getting a gun illegally. Obviously state laws vary, but in plenty of places, it's pretty fucking easy to get firearms legally.

And on top of it, one of the central reasons why it's easy to get guns illegally is because it's incredibly easy to get guns legally.

Tighter regulation would go a long way.  If you want a gun you should be able to:

1.  Provide a good reason why you need one
2.  Extensive background checks, including phone interviews with references
3.  Yearly inspections to keep track of the weapon

The fact that we can't even resurrect a ban on automatic weapons is embarrassing. 

In terms of guns, this is by and large untrue. According to a recent Newsweek article, "while criminals typically do not buy their guns at a store, all but a tiny fraction of the guns in circulation in the United States are first sold at retail by a gun dealer—including the guns that eventually end up in the hands of criminals."

On the other hand, a large majority of gun crimes committed in Canada and Mexico are committed with illegally smuggled guns from the United States.

You're ruining the narrative, CSM! They're criminals, rapists, drug dealers who are stealing our jobs (as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers?) and we need to build a wall! Who's gonna pay for it? MEXICO! Yee-fuckin-haw.

I'm a Brit, and I find America's gun problems to be very horrifying and absurd. Justice Scalia interpreted the 2nd Amendment in a really strange way. Although people argue 'guns don't kill people, people do', haven't most massacres' in America taken place by legally obtained guns? Obtaining a gun should be difficult, there needs to be a more rigorous background checks, and exams before you can buy a gun.

Mr. Big - oddly enough one of the reasons for the "arms right" comes from England, "An Englishman's home is his castle." It is known as the "castle doctrine." It also takes its roots from Rome, as well.

The concept was established in English law by Sir Edward Coke in "The Institutes of the Laws of England, in 1628.

"For a man's house is his castle et domus us clique best tutissimum refugium (and each man's home is his safest refuge.")

It is related to the crimes of trespass, intent to inflict serious bodily harm during the course of breaking and entering a home.

Just saw this article, relating to personal self-defense and I agree with their training program.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4011110-155/were-here-were-queer-were-packing

From The Salt Lake Tribune - We're here, we're queer, we're packing heat."

Last few paragraphs deal with clubs and theaters where the president of Stonewall Shooting Sports, a 6 year Army vet, describes how when he goes to a theater, he carries, looks for the exits, and is situationally aware.   ;)

We can talk about history, the fact that the 'founding fathers' imposed strict restrictions on gun ownership (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/country-s-founders-balanced-gun-237079),
the fact that in England and the US, women weren't allowed to own guns and in England the right was reserved for Protestants (http://www.historytoday.com/stephen-cooper/gun-control-right-bear-arms) and in the States for white men (above), and that in 17th century England the "Castle doctrine" could only apply to the very small portion of people who owned homes, all of which clarifies that these gun laws were tools to enforce the hegemonic power of one sector of the citizenry over another.
We could also discuss the obvious difference between weapons then and now and how automatic firing, rifling and expanding or exploding bullets have made it much easier to kill quickly (http://www.businessinsider.com/what-massacres-would-look-like-if-gunmen-used-18th-century-muskets-2013-4),

or we can talk about fools who think they're going to be heroes
(http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/texas-good-guy-with-a-gun-shoots-carjacking-victim-in-head-then-runs-away/
http://deadstate.org/combat-veterans-shoot-down-the-nra-good-guy-with-a-gun-is-based-on-a-fantasy-world/
https://psmag.com/the-pernicious-myth-of-the-good-guy-with-a-gun-3f5b4f0b157a#.frlrr3j6m),

but current reality is (https://www.thetrace.org/2015/12/gun-violence-stats-2015/,
https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/)

that people who want to ban Muslims (94 US deaths since 9/11   http://securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html). and let Americans buy guns (406,496 deaths in the US from gun violence from 2001-2013   http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/us/oregon-shooting-terrorism-gun-violence/) with the abandon that they have are letting their bigotry control their minds.

The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. The right of 49 people in Orlando to not be killed by an assault weapon is a pretty good legal principal IMO. The world looks on in horrow aat our gun violence. We see it in the comments in this thread.

Just because the Constitution has been warped into some horrific holy grail American right doesn't mean they got it right.

The fact that the NRA has the power to control Congress and stop common sense gun regulation is the loudest signal of how broken our system is.

I really don't give a sh*t what the founding fathers thought or meant. The here and now is that we have a major problem in our country and it's time to start fixing it! A definition of insanity is making the same mistake over and over and over.

ORR - The Castle Doctrine can extend to workplaces, or your car, where someone would cause you serious bodily harm or death.  It is a parent defending children from a person who breaks into the sanctity of a home to rob, rape, murder, commit arson or kidnap.  Most of these types of crimes are felonies.   

Most states have a form of the castle doctrine.  Some states require you to retreat, if possible.  They could not retreat in Orlando and had someone had a concealed carry, the shooter might not have visited such carnage.  They waited for 3 hours to blow their way in.  Now the FBI has taken the files from Orlando.  Is that transparent?  I don't think so. 

Are Americans supposed to surrender to a terrorist?  The Boston Marathon massacre, was caused by pressure cooker bombs "made in the kitchen of your mom." Did we outlaw them? 9/11 was caused by planes.  Are they outlawed?  The bombs in Brussels were home made with ingredients that are over-the-counter.  Were those banned?  I do agree that mass damage is done by these assault weapons but banning the right to defend oneself is not going to work. 

And, I am no big NRA defender.  There has to be a reasonable compromise.  There are plenty of entities like Big Pharma, the automakers, the insurance companies, and banks who have big influence in Congress besides the NRA.  Just sayin'.

Happy Fourth to those who celebrate and I like to remember that "America is the Land of the Free - Because of the Brave."  ;) 

Who was the brave? Squanto?

Smilin Ed - I was thinking about the American Veterans, living, disabled and deceased in the defense of the USA.

Well, we all have those, don't we?

A. More than 10000 children are killed or injured by firearms annually, most often by a gun in the home.

https://injury.research.chop.edu/violence-prevention-initiative/types-violence-involving-youth/gun-violence/gun-violence-facts-and#.V3qZ2_T3b7o

Hundreds of kids shoot people accidentally with household guns each year and approximately 50 will grow up having killed a family member or friend in his or her youth.
https://everytownresearch.org/notanaccident/

So people who keep guns in their homes for 'protection' are fools threatening their family's safety.

B. Regarding Orlando, there was armed security (15 years on the police force) at the club who exchanged fire with the gunman at the beginning of the massacre. Two officers showed up within minutes and exchanged fire with the gunman (http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/orlando-club-had-armed-security/).  The stuff you're hearing from Trump is not factual, as ever.
The idea that multiple armed drunk people would likely have reduced the quantity of deaths, and that nightclubs on a regular basis should be stocked with multiple armed drunk people is nuts.

C. Guns have caused 1,000,000s more deaths than pressure cookers or whatever household implement you want to name, or by planes. And those things have other uses so the analogy is wholly inaccurate.

100% agreed.

More horror. When will you stop and make a change!

I don't post in the Sandbox too often these days. 

Are we still blaming guns, not the criminals? 

We are.

OK, just making sure. 

Exactly - How many had limbs blown off by pressure cookers, at the Boston Marathon, and a item used for decades to prepare food?

Or, those killed, including an 8 year old?

One shooter who was taken out was an Army reservist.  Now, the hate speech rhetoric is being indentified as a catalyst to someone who is marginal and susceptible to act as a proxy to violent messages not unlike the remote caliphate soldiers. 

We're f***ed....

Well, there's two positions one can accept on this issue. One can accept the extraordinary amount of documentary evidence as provided in this thread, that guns are unique in their ability to cause harm, a harm that is in no way mitigated by the "protection" excuse since there is no evidence to support that. Or one can accept the "guns don't kill people" line which is derived from a propaganda campaign, largely designed and spun out by the weapons industry specifically to distract people away from that evidence.

It's mostly how people don't have the respect of life and common decency anymore. Just a f***ed up America these days. Presidential candidates from both parties can't solve sh*t.

I'm less inclined to blame the population. Propaganda is a hard thing to disentangle oneself from. The weapons industry have a vested interest in keeping the public confused on this issue and so they spend a lot of money to ensure that happens. The needless loss of life tends to not matter to major corporations when there is a great deal of money to be made.

I'm still more inclined to blame the people. 

And I agree with SmileBrian, as a society of people in general, we are f**ked.  I agree that the issues lie a lot more with lack of decency and respect. 

You are definitely right about the lack of ethics in that industry at times....   People have so much anger and guns are often their sick release. Everyone needs to learn to live with one another again instead of clinging to hateful groups and using firearms for bad stuff. I don't know the answers for this stuff anymore.

Well, perhaps, but the weapons industry and the NRA certainly disagree, hence the massive efforts to confuse the people.

I don't live in the United States but when I do I don't particularly notice a lack of decency and respect. In fact, I mostly encounter extraordinarily decent people just as I do here. I think it is the general decency of people that drives these massive campaigns to distort issues and drum up support for atrocious political campaigns. Otherwise there would be no need for them.

Sadly it's small groups of complete wackjobs full of hate.... :-\

It is but I think there is a reason why you see particular watckjobs arise with particular issues at particular times carrying out their issues in particular ways. I don't think it is because of some internal innate issue. Cultures create these antagonisms. The Holocaust didn't happen because Germans are inherently and innately anti-Semitic. Rather, it happened because a population was driven to madness by a massive propaganda campaign carried out by powerful people. In my view, if we are going to truly solve the problem we need to focus on these systems of power and these efforts at distortion rather than the targets of these campaigns.

I do agree that people like Al Sharpton have easily manipulated a good portion of poverty stricken African Americans to believe that the Police are the enemy. 

The police are not the enemy, no but the police are part of a system that has worked largely to repress African Americans. Nevertheless, actions like the ones carried out last night are heinous and should be condemned.

The demonization of people like Al Sharpton is, in my view, part of a propaganda campaign carried out largely by the mainstream media to distort that issue as well.