"How many "bad apples" must there be until it's understood that there's no such thing as a "good cop." Real "gun control" would mean disarming police." -- Trancecoach

There is -no- number that could prove such a claim. Unless you prove that each and every individual cop is "bad". Due to my wife's affliction (schizoaffective disorder), we deal with cops anywhere from one to five times a year. And they show up under a wide variety of impressions, depending on what her condition was at the time. Sometimes it's claims of a prowler or intruder, sometimes it's claims of domestic violence, sometimes it's me, calling for help to keep her safe from herself.

This has got to be one of the worst types of situations for any cop...they have no idea what they'll be walking into. And in 10 years, we have yet to see a single cop who was less than wonderful, both with her, and with me.

It's going to take one hell of a lot more than stories of -other- cops behaving badly to change my mind about the guys who have helped me keep her safe and happy. Frankly, I think your ideology is showing.

Not true, and that's why I posted the actual definition, rather than my personal feeling on what the word means. Then we can all start from the ACTUAL definition(s) rather than just making some up and arguing about it.

Your second paragraph/sentence makes no sense at all to me, and sounds like a disjointed red herring/straw man/bad attempt at creating a false argument you can shoot down....but it's so all over the place it's unfollowable.

You continue to confuse feminism with Feminism, and also continue to paint all Feminists in the worst possible light based on a few overboard examples rather than describing the normal, average Feminist.
For instance, many Feminists see pornography and prostitution as empowering and taking control of their own sexuality, and it was actually prudish anti-feminist men who tried to censor it in the courts.

In fact, there ARE many people in the civilized world who still think women don't deserve the same rights as men in many areas, and insist they are unable to perform tasks men can perform, must be coddled and subservient, and are lesser beings based purely on gender, despite all evidence to the contrary.

It's only because of this continuing misunderstanding on your part that you claim anyone said anything like "The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank... "...you are again confusing feminist with Feminist, and using the wrong one. We don't have Feminist advocacy to thank, we do however have feminist advocacy to thank for the advancements in women's rights...it's what the word means.


It doesn't sound at all like you 'appreciate the attempt at consensus building', or even understood my point, since you continue to conflate feminism with Feminism. I can't be certain, but it seems you are doing that intentionally in order to argue a moot point.



EDIT:sorry, I thought I quoted you @gorillaman, so I'll cut and paste....

gorillaman said:
Everyone has a different definition of feminism; that is to some extent the problem. Rather, this is the final bulwark to which its advocates retreat when their main arguments have been punctured and deflated.

"But surely," says the distorter of domestic violence and rape statistics - says the agitator who runs dissenting professors off campus - says the censor of allegedly harmful pornography - says the fascist who criminalises prostitution or BDSM - says the conspiracy theorist who sees systemic sexism in places it couldn't possibly exist, like science and silicon valley (and videogaming, and science fiction) - says the proponent of patriarchy theory in societies in which men are routinely sacrificed to war, to dangerous jobs, to extreme poverty; whose genitals are mutilated; whose children, houses and paychecks can be taken away essentially at the whim of their partners; for whom there is vanishingly little support in the event of domestic abuse or homelessness; who are assumed to be rapists and wife-beaters and paedophiles; and who are told, throughout all of this, that it is their privilege - "I'm just claiming that women have rights. How can you disagree with that?"

The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank and to which there is actually anyone in the civilised world who objects, is a laughable and insulting one.

Still, I'm sure we all appreciate the attempt at consensus building.

Everyone has a different definition of feminism; that is to some extent the problem. Rather, this is the final bulwark to which its advocates retreat when their main arguments have been punctured and deflated.

"But surely," says the distorter of domestic violence and rape statistics - says the agitator who runs dissenting professors off campus - says the censor of allegedly harmful pornography - says the fascist who criminalises prostitution or BDSM - says the conspiracy theorist who sees systemic sexism in places it couldn't possibly exist, like science and silicon valley (and videogaming, and science fiction) - says the proponent of patriarchy theory in societies in which men are routinely sacrificed to war, to dangerous jobs, to extreme poverty; whose genitals are mutilated; whose children, houses and paychecks can be taken away essentially at the whim of their partners; for whom there is vanishingly little support in the event of domestic abuse or homelessness; who are assumed to be rapists and wife-beaters and paedophiles; and who are told, throughout all of this, that it is their privilege - "I'm just claiming that women have rights. How can you disagree with that?"

The implication, in any event, that this is somehow a novel position, for which we have feminist advocacy to thank and to which there is actually anyone in the civilised world who objects, is a laughable and insulting one.

Still, I'm sure we all appreciate the attempt at consensus building.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'mayweather, rousey, fight, domestic, violence, espy' to 'floyd mayweather, ronda rousey, best fighter, domestic violence, espy' - edited by xxovercastxx

She's saying he's been charged several times with domestic violence for beating women.

Actually Lucky you are way off base. Domestic violence is equal-opportunity. Knox (2012) notes that women and men batter each other with relatively equal frequency. Where the domestic violence diverges is that men go much further physically and hurt women more severely. By ignoring the first part due to the level of violence some men typically display, we minimize abuse in general. No abuse is okay-abuse.

Not to mention that women abuse children quite often too...which imo is sadder than any abuse inflicted on an adult. But that's a slightly different topic.

A funny note is that in America women shoot men per ratio far more than in other countries. It is actually laughable in a disturbing kind of way...but that's 'Merica for you.

I understand your train of thought, but I tend to disagree with your assessment.

Despite the [horrible] interviewer's attempt to put the term "separate but equal" into Ronda's mouth, she is not pretending that domestic violence is commonly an equal-opportunity offense. It's not a matter of someone actively making a decision to segregate women as the victims and men as the perpetrators of domestic violence, but it is a fact of nature that in domestic violence it's almost exclusively men who beat women. She simply doesn't want to contribute in the social consciousness to the acceptance or disregard of women accepting beatings from men.

That's a very different situation than a sporting organization deciding to create a separate company with a different name and different rules to corral and promote all their women independently from the rest of their male-only "real" organization. UFC is probably the only sports organization that puts women on the same plane as their male counterparts and even features their fights as the main event above male bouts (at least in Ronda's case).

It's l OK to whoop you kid in front of a crowd as long as they are protesting against cops.

In this stupid society she would be in jail for domestic violence assault.

You're right. It is about context. But this video distorts the context.

Manhattan has a population of almost 1.8 million people. If you don't live in a major metropolitan area, please try to wrap your head around that number first. That's not all of NYC, that's just Manhattan.

When the director of this video said "The biggest ingredients for this to happen is tons of people, passing by and mixing with tons of other people. Its a numbers game. Eventually you run into an asshole..." he wasn't joking.

Higher density population increases the chance of seeing or experiencing things that are unpleasant. If you sat on your porch in bumfuck whogivesashitville long enough, you will eventually see some unpleasant things. It just happens faster where there are more people. And the culture IS different in cities then it is in rural areas. People are more used to being constantly near each other and interacting.

I'm not excusing the behavior of some of the assholes in this video. What I am really saying is that, at worst this video is a bullshit grab for money. At best it's a failed attempt to help women or educate/change the culture to be less misogynistic.

"Did you actually watch the video?" Yes. Did you notice this was two minutes out of 10 hours?

Misogyny exists. Harassment exists. Abuse exists. Domestic violence exists. Rape exists. We should all work to end it. This video just muddies the water on all those issues in what I think is a clear money grab.

/cynical

You're right, I don't have any specific numbers on how many abused spouses don't press charges, even after calling the cops during an incident. My suspicions are based mostly on what I've heard and read over the years on the subject, I have heard on occasion that this is a problem in abusive relationships, but I cannot point you to a source. I make no claims to being an expert, I'm just another schmuck on the internet with an opinion.
Although now that I think about it, I do remember a Freakonomics podcast that mentioned this issue and how some states were looking at instituting policies where prosecution would proceed even if the victim dropped the charges.
http://freakonomics.com/tag/domestic-violence/

You seem to think that eliminating guns will somehow eliminate mass shootings. However, there is zero correlation to the number of legal gun ownerships with the number of homicides. In fact, here are some statistics for you:

At present, a little more than half of all Americans own the sum total of about 320 million guns, 36% of which are handguns, but fewer than 100,000 of these guns are used in violent crimes. And, as it happens, where gun ownership per capita increases, violent crime is known to decrease. In other words, Caucasians tend to own more guns than African Americans, middle aged folks own more guns than young people, wealthy people own more guns than poor people, rural families own more guns than urbanites --> But the exact opposite is true for violent behavior (i.e., African Americans tend to be more violent than Caucasians, young people more violent than middle aged people, poor people more violent than wealthy people, and urbanites more violent than rural people). So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least. This is, in large part, due to the cultural divide in the U.S. around gun ownership whereby most gun owners own guns for recreational sports (including the Southern Caucasian rural hunting culture, the likes of which aren't found in Australia or the UK or Europe, etc.); and about half of gun owners own guns for self-defense (usually as the result of living in a dangerous environment). Most of the widespread gun ownership in the U.S. predates any gun control legislation and gun ownership tends to generally rise as a response to an increase in violent crime (not the other way around).

There were about 350,000 crimes in 2009 in which a gun was present (but may not have been used), 24% of robberies, 5% of assaults, and about 66% of homicides. By contrast, guns are used as self-defense as many as 2 and a half million times every year (according to criminologist Gary Kleck at Florida State University), thereby decreasing the potential loss of life or property (i.e., those with guns are less likely to be injured in a violent crime than those who use another defensive strategy or simply comply).

Interestingly, violent crimes tend to decrease in those areas where there have been highly publicized instances of victims arming themselves or defending themselves against violent criminals. (In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home, whereas only 9% of home burglaries in the U.S. occur when people are in the home, presumably as a result of criminals' fear of being shot by the homeowner.) In short, gun ownership reduces the likelihood of harm.

So, for example, Boston has the strictest gun control and the most school shootings. The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings. The worst mass homicide in a school in the U.S. took place in Michigan in 1927, killing 38 children. The perpetrator used (illegal) bombs, not guns in this case.

1/3 of legal gun owners obtain their guns (a total of about 200,000 guns) privately, outside the reach of government regulation. So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed.

Out of a sample of 943 felon handgun owners, 44% had obtained the gun privately, 32% stole it, 9% rented/borrowed it, and 16% bought it from a retailer. (Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. Stricter legislation would likely therefore change the statistics of how felon handgun owners obtain the gun towards less legal, more violent ways.) Less than 3% obtain guns on the 'black market' (probably due, in part, to how many legal guns are already easily obtained).

600,000 guns are stolen every year and millions of guns circulate among criminals (outside the reach of the regulators), so the elimination of all new handgun purchases/sales, the guns would still be in the hands of the criminals (and few others).

The common gun controls have been shown to have no effect on the reduction of violent crime, however, according to the Dept. of Justice, states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate. A 2003 CDC report found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced gun violence. This conclusion was echoed in an exhaustive National Academy of Sciences study a year later.

General gun ownership has no net positive effect on total violence rates.

Of almost 200,000 CCP holders in Florida, only 8 were revoked as a result of a crime.

The high-water mark of mass killings in the U.S. was back in 1929, and has not increased since then. In fact, it's declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. The murder rate and violent crime in the U.S. is less than half of what it was in the late 1980s (the reason for which is most certainly multimodal and multifaceted).

Regarding Gun-Free Zones, many mass shooters select their venues because there are signs there explicitly banning concealed handguns (i.e., where the likelihood is higher that interference will be minimal). "With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns," says John Lott.

In any case, do we have any evidence to believe that the regulators (presumably the police in this instance) will be competent, honest, righteous, just, and moral enough to take away the guns from private citizens, when a study has shown that private owners are convicted of firearms violations at the same rate as police officers? How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns? Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns? Does this then not presume that "gun control" is essentially an aim for only the government (i.e., the centralized political elite and their minions) to have guns at the exclusion of everyone else? Is the government so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward thinking as to ensure that the intentions of gun control legislation go exactly as planned?

From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary. Do they really want to deprive those who are culturally acclimatized to gun-ownership, who may be less fortunate than they are, to have the means to protect themselves (e.g., women who carry guns to protect themselves from assault or rape)? Sounds more like a lack of empathy and understanding of those realities to me.

There are many generational issues worth mentioning here. For example, the rise in gun ownership coincided with the war on drugs and the war on poverty. There are also nearly 24 million combat veterans living in the U.S. and they constitute a significant proportion of the U.S.' prison population as a result of sex offenses or violent crime. Male combat veterans are four times as likely to engage violent crime as non-veteran men; and are 4.4 times more likely to have abused a spouse/partner, and 6.4 times more likely to suffer from PTSD, and 2-3 times more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, unemployment, divorce/separation. Vietnam veterans with PTSD tend to have higher rates of childhood abuse (26%) than Vietnam veterans without PTSD (7%). Iraq/Afghanistan vets are 75% more likely to die in car crashes. Sex crimes by active duty soldiers have tripled since 2003. In 2007, 700,000 U.S. children had at least one parent in a warzone. In a July 2010 report, child abuse in Army families was 3 times higher if a parent was deployed in combat. From 2001 - 2011, alcohol use associated with domestic violence in Army families increased by 54%, and child abuse increased by 40%. What effect do you think that's going to have, regardless of "gun controls?"
("The War Comes Home" or as William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies said, "A spear is a stick sharpened at both ends.")

In addition, families in the U.S. continue to break down. Single parent households have a high correlation to violence among children. In 1965, 93% of all American births were to married women. Today, 41% of all births are to unmarried women (a rate that rises to 53% for women under the age of 30). By age 30, 1/3 of American women have spent time as a single mother (a rate that is halved in European countries like France, Sweden, & Germany). Less than 9% of married couples are in poverty, but more than 40% of single-parent families are in poverty. Much of child poverty would be ameliorated if parents were marrying at 1970s rates. 85% of incarcerated youth grew up without fathers.

Since the implementation of the war on drugs, there's a drug arrest in the U.S. every 19 seconds, 82% of which were for possession alone (destroying homes and families in the process). The Dept. of Justice says that illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities, many of which have direct ties to Mexican drug cartels in at least 230 American cities. The drug control spending, however, has grown by 69.7% over the past 9 years. The criminal justice system is so overburdened as a result that nearly four out of every ten murders, and six out of every ten rapes, and nine out of ten burglaries go unsolved (and 90% of the "solved" cases are the result of plea-bargains, resulting in non-definitive guilt). Only 8.5% of federal prisoners have committed violent offenses. 75% of Detroit's state budget can be traced back to the war on drugs.

Point being, a government program is unlikely to solve any issues with regards to guns and the whole notion of gun control legislation is severely misguided in light of all that I've pointed out above. In fact, a lot of the violence is the direct or indirect result of government programs (war on drugs and the war on poverty).

(And, you'll note, I made no mention of the recent spike in the polypharmacy medicating of a significant proportion of American children -- including most of the "school shooters" -- the combinations of which have not been studied, but have -- at least in part -- been correlated to homicidal and/or suicidal behaviors.)

I'm afraid you can lump me in the same group. I don't understand why it is offensive to tell women to smile. I'm also in the same boat as others here in that i have literally never, in my existence, heard a male tell a woman to smile in any way that wasn't contextual. Thirdly, i'm struggling to imagine a way in which the directive to "Smile!" is offensive.

You say "stop making it about YOU!" yet you're speaking about a video that is trying to personalise an issue. I hate to even get involved in this argument, because i believe modern day feminism is more about finding an issue than it is about correcting any number of issues that really exist and need attention (ie. wage inequality).

I think you'd serve the cause a lot better if you tried to understand why people make those comments instead of chastising them for making it. You're missing an opportunity to explain the problem better - you've engaged people, people are interested and talking about it. Now is the time to explain it so that those who don't understand can understand. And if you can present it in a believable way, you will convince me.

However if you stand there, fold your arms and say "ugh, guys!" then i'm going to insist that you're behaving in a sexist way.

In my upbringing, i was subject to women abusing their advantageous legal position when it comes to custody of children and such (i was the child). I was witness to women who claimed abuse when there was no abuse, and thankfully only saw a very small effect of what can happen when such false accusations are made. I've seen a close male relative go through divorces in which he made his best attempt to share the assets of the divorce, whilst the female partner did what they could to claw as much profit as possible, eventually taking a completely unfair share (all of it) in one case.

However, i am rational enough to understand that not all people are like that, and that my experiences are not common. If i was given the opportunity to campaign about father's rights, i'd do it clearly and in a way that people could empathise and sympathise with. I wouldn't generalise and i certainly wouldn't tell them not to personalise, because empathy is all about being able to personalise an issue.

If men are arguing with the point, perhaps the point is not being explained well enough. And if it keeps happening, perhaps that's an even stronger message. I wouldn't argue with videos that campaign against domestic violence - which i also haven't seen happen! - and that's because the campaign is well presented so that i am able to grasp the problem.

I don't understand why what this video refers to is a female issue. Add to that the fact that i have never seen it happen with such frequency that it was notably a female-only issue.

Until i am able to understand why this is specifically a female issue, i'm afraid i will consider this video to be sexist in that it addresses a universal issue as a solely female problem.

Hi lucky, I noticed something interesting that I wanted to mention to you....this video http://videosift.com/video/Chopper-Reid-Australian-Hitman-Anti-Domestic-Violence-Ad is still in my unsifted folder after 2 days and almost 10 hours. I did promote it so I expected it might stay in there for an extra 3 hours, but it's there after all this time. Is that supposed to happen?

The logic of the man is allowed to beat the woman, but the only recourse for the woman is to go to the man controlled court is severely flawed. I don't doubt that there is more reported domestic violence in Western civilization. I also firmly believe that men and women should be treated equally and not have one subjugated by the other (unless agreed upon).

Beliefs like these change and can change rapidly (within a generation or lifetime) especially in a war torn country. See Afghanistan as an example.

What Patrick talks about is a real problem and men are primarily the instigators of this violence, though of course not all of it. There was domestic violence in my home and we did stay in some of those shelters that Patrick described. They were safe but they are not a long term solution. What I've learned is that ultimately, the woman has to choose to leave the situation and this can be a very difficult decision for them to make.

For instance, some may have been conditioned over the course of many years of psychological abuse to believe they are worthless and incapable of making it on their own. They may believe that they actually deserve the abuse. Of course, there are also the financial considerations, especially if there are children involved and the woman has no means of making a decent wage. There are many factors which may converge to keep the victim from making the right decision.