You should have kept reading. My last paragraph clearly stated that reducing poverty is going to have a much larger impact on crime than gun control ever would.

BTW, you don't need to travel to a different state to obtain a gun in D.C. Like I said before, most crime-related guns are obtained illegally. There are plenty of people willing to sell you (or give you) guns under the table. Just like drugs or even alcohol during the prohibition. The legality of banned products is completely irrelevant and doesn't prevent someone from obtaining them.

Where are the statistics that prove that gun control makes you safer? D.C. has very strict gun control and it has the highest crime rate in the country. Conversely, Vermont has very lax gun control and it has the lowest crime rate in the country. What this proves (at least in the U.S.) is that gun laws don't necessarily make any meaningful impact on crime rates. Even if guns were outright banned in every state, guns wouldn't magically disappear. Most gun-related crimes involve illegally-obtained guns anyway. If criminals can't obtain guns legally (which is already statistically unlikely), they'll just obtain them illegally.

In order for gun control to be effective, it would need to be rigidly enforced. The government would need to actively search for and confiscate/destroy every gun it could find and make sure that guns aren't smuggled into the country. The war on drugs has shown that such tactics are costly and ineffective.

If you want to reduce crime, reduce poverty. Unlike guns, poverty has a direct and irrefutable correlation with crime. A reduction in poverty is GUARANTEED to result in a reduction of crime.

@newt boy: Out of curiosity, what jobs (outside of the military) are more dangerous than being a cop? There are certainly hazardous jobs out there, like repairing electric lines, but those are mostly predictable. With sufficient preparation and training, risks can be calculated and minimized. Being a cop, on the other hand, forces you to deal with completely unpredictable situations. A routine traffic stop can be a harmless affair or it can end with you being shot or stabbed to death. Cops bear the burden of risk when dealing with the public. Civilians can generally assume that cops aren't going to try to kill them. Cops can't make that same assumption. Their position of authority and responsibility to enforce the law puts them in an inherently antagonistic position. People don't like being told what to do and they definitely don't like being punished for not doing it. It's no surprise then that cops tend to be wary and defensive when doing their job. Some cops (the minority) simply take this too far and try to neutralize perceived threats before they become actual threats.

The ideal solution is to have all cops wear cameras while on duty. That way, there's objective footage of all their interactions, violent or otherwise. If Darren Wilson had been wearing a camera, the whole Brown debacle could have been avoided or at least minimized.

I'm curious as to what constitutes self-defense in a case like this. Janay was clearly charging Rice in the second video. Would Rice's reaction qualify as self-defense if he had waited until she actually landed an attack first? Or is self-defense not applicable to men when the attacker is female? If the attacker had been male, would there have been any controversy whatsoever or would people have simply laughed and said "Hah, what kind of idiot attacks a professional football player?"

Apparently they were having a heated argument and Rice spat on Janay, which triggered the charge by Janay. Does spitting on someone constitute physical assault? Before they entered the elevator, Janay slapped Rice. Does that constitute physical assault?

Chaucer, don't be a misogynist. There's NEVER any justification for hitting a woman. It doesn't matter if she's slapping you, punching you, charging you, strangling you, stabbing you or shooting at you. There's no such thing as self-defense when the victim is a man and the attacker is a woman. Clearly women pose no threat to men so there's no need to respond to their physical attacks. Take it like a man and then beg for forgiveness when she's finished with you.

This isn't even remotely the dumbest thing ever said in church.

Sometimes a little common sense goes a long way. Are you legally obligated to tell your name to a cop? Nope. Would the situation have escalated if the guy had simply told them his name? Most likely not. They would have had a conversation and then left. No handcuffs, no tazing, no arrest. The cops certainly weren't justified in their actions but again, does it really make sense to antagonize someone who can taze/shoot/arrest you? Especially when it can be avoided with minimal effort?

As a father, he should have taken the most reasonable course of action, even if it isn't one that he's legally obligated to take. Sometimes it just makes more sense to swallow your pride and move on. Seems like he was more interested in getting hits on Youtube.

I'm surprised there haven't been any gun control advocates in here demanding that uzis be banned.

In the vast majority of cases, stun guns are used to immobilize people who pose a physical threat to themselves or others. It's pretty rare that someone who is civil and compliant gets tased. If that happens, the cops responsible should be punished appropriately. However, the misuse of stun guns doesn't make the devices inherently bad. They are a very effective way of neutralizing a threat in a non-lethal manner.

As far as I can tell, those studies on Wikipedia don't compare wages on a per job basis. They make generalized comparisons based on industry which is overly broad. We need studies that compare wages between men and women in the same positions.

I've worked in the games industry for over 7 years in teams that had several female devs and I've never encountered any of the issues you describe. I'm not saying that they can never happen but it's faulty to assume that every woman in the industry experiences discrimination and harassment. For example, one of the lead programmers at Double Fine is a woman and she seems pretty happy with her job.

As for why the fields of science and engineering are dominated by men, that's a complex issue. The fact that they are dominated by men might be enough to dissuade most women, as people generally don't like to be the minority. However, that will never change unless more women try. It's not like a ton of women try to become scientists or engineers and then quit because of harassment and discrimination. Most women don't even attempt to become scientists or engineers in the first place.

draak13 is completely right. There's not enough objective data to establish how wide the pay gap actually is. Comparing by industry or education level is too broad to be useful. For example, in the videogame industry, the wage disparity between positions is pretty large. Based on my experience, women tend to be artists while men tend to be programmers. Good programmers are harder to find than good artists and as such, they get paid more. If you were to look at statistics regarding wage disparity between genders in the videogame industry, there would be large disparity because women are simply doing jobs that pay less (regardless of your gender).

The Yale study is interesting but it's only one study. We need more data to establish trends.

ohmagaawwddddd.... ohmagaawwwddd... jesus chrrrriiiissssttttttt....

Sorry, was hard to focus on the brutality with the annoying narration.

I for one welcome our robot overlords. If anything, we need to make the transition ourselves. Being organic is pretty lame. Firstly, we are extremely high maintenance. You have to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, pee and poop on a regular basis. Exercise and a balanced diet are also necessary if you want to delay health issues. Our bodies are incredibly frail and can break in so many ways. Once they do break, they are incredibly hard to repair. Then there's aging. When we're born, we're effectively useless. It takes over two decades of training just to turn us into productive members of society. But after that point, our bodies deteriorate and eventually shut down irrecoverably. All the knowledge and skills we've accumulated throughout our lives disappear just like that. Speaking of knowledge and skills, it takes way too long for us to learn stuff. Becoming a master in any given skill shouldn't take years of practice. It should take a quick download.

The sooner we figure out how to digitize our minds and transfer them into robotic bodies, the better.

I'm not really concerned if someone is an addict or a criminal. I'm simply concerned with the repercussions of hard drugs being made readily available for anyone to use. The prohibition did increase crime, sure, but the availability of liquor since then has caused far more deaths and ruined many more lives. Hell, in 2010, alcohol killed almost as many people in the U.S. as guns did. Tobacco causes more than 5 million deaths worldwide each year. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it isn't harmful. The widespread availability of liquor and tobacco has caused more damage than the entire war on drugs.

As for education, I don't think that's the root of the problem. Everyone knows that smoking is unhealthy and that alcohol is addictive and that driving while drunk is incredibly dangerous. The problem isn't lack of awareness. The problem is apathy. People know these things yet do them anyway because they just don't care. The momentary relief/pleasure derived from liquor and cigarettes is more important to them. If all drugs were legalized, I have no doubt that more people would use them because they'd be easier to get and people don't really care about the downsides.

My point is that even with regulation, alcohol and cigarettes are causing plenty of harm to society. Check the statistics for drunk driving incidents and health issues caused by smoking. If alcohol and cigarettes were banned, they would be harder to obtain and therefore the harm they cause would be decreased.

Conversely, if you legalize hard drugs like cocaine and heroin (which are scientifically proven to be detrimental to your health and livelihood in general), the usage of said drugs and their destructive effects will only increase. Marijuana is irrelevant to this argument, as it isn't addictive and its effects aren't harmful. If you only want to legalize marijuana and not heroin, cocaine, PCP, meth, LSD, etc, I'm in full agreement.

Regulation will never be completely effective, as people will often ignore laws if they really want something (see the current drug situation). But by banning something, you at least make it slightly harder to obtain. It's a tricky situation with no perfect solution. By banning something, you are empowering the criminals who can supply it. But by making something legal and easily obtained, you are also promoting its use. Sure, the government makes a lot of money from liquor and cigarette taxes but those two products have ruined many lives in the process.