@ChaosEngine

Did you even read the article I linked? It makes a pretty strong case that at the time the wording was intended to imply every citizen's responsibility as well as right for "collective self-defense," as in everyone should own a gun so they can help out in the event of an invasion.

In other words, you're flat out wrong when you say the 2nd amendment wasn't about self-defense--that's precisely what it was about. It wasn't about personal (i.e. individual) self-defense at the time of its inception but it has since been found to include that meaning because the idea that people should keep guns at home but only use them to defend against foreign attackers and not domestic ones, such as a home invader, was found to be patently absurd. And yes, eventually militias faded away, but the idea that citizens have a right to own firearms for sport or protection--whether it be from wildlife or other humans--had already been legally established for a long time.

I'm not sure why your tone is so dismissive in this thread. You live in New Zealand, am I correct? Yes, you're right, you're quite lucky to live in a country where your government protects you from growing your own food by throwing all those dangerous gardeners in prison.

Look, New Zealand has a shit-ton of guns (about one for every four people) as well and people own them for a variety of reasons, from sport to self-defense. You have a lower crime rate, which can be attributed to a variety of factors but not conclusively to the strict gun laws, as people in New Zealand do in fact still commit crimes with guns.

So... what's the point you're trying to make?

So i watched a lot more PoPo Running Man challenge vids and these are a few that were fun to watch.

New Zealand PoPo https://youtu.be/8HOtvWsR_VQ
Miami PoPo https://youtu.be/BusmB726_tU
Detroit PoPo https://youtu.be/_gkbfBpcAtg
Scotland PoPo https://youtu.be/EweqJWCya4M
Samoa PoPo https://youtu.be/bgLrejHDJI8
Bloomington, Minnesota PoPo https://youtu.be/HYLcioudtwQ
North Charleston, South Carolina PoPo https://youtu.be/VTM7amVcBsA

Aww, now I'm all hurt because some prick with a high opinion of himself doesn't want to talk to me anymore... /sadface

re: the "private" comment, you don't get to write the rules when you decide to take your snipes out of public view. I never agreed to keep confidences for you, and you're even more of a fool than I had you pegged for, and that's saying something, if you thought I would.

By the way, it's "your", not "you're". One would have thought an English master such as yourself would get that. They probably should have double checked those test results.

And the icing on the cake:

Sook: English from 14thC, Scottish from 19thC. From Old English sūcan ‎(“to suck”). See suck.

sook ‎(plural sooks)

(Scotland, rare) Familiar name for a calf.
(US dialectal) Familiar name for a cow.
(Newfoundland) A cow or sheep.
(Australia, New Zealand) A poddy calf.

So yeah, it's English, and you sure do suck... = D

It's been fun, toodles!

New Zealand and Australia, the new 'Murica.

New Zealand having fewer gun deaths than America I'm pretty sure has less to do with gun laws than the fact it's almost entirely populated by New Zealanders.

Ever try to piss off a Kiwi without resorting to getting them drunk first?

Virtually impossible.

Lol. No agenda.

I'm not American, so I have little exposure to American politics (only news snippets). I have an interest in it though, and take notes where I can.

I asked because there are hardly any politicians (or people in general) that won't support the rights they like and deny the ones they don't. And America's constitution is such a strong document, it's hard not to trip up on things like free speech, firearms, non-interference from the government, etc.

It is possible to enact sensible gun control without banning assault weapons. Look to New Zealand for perfectly sensible gun laws that allow assault weapons. They have a lower homicide rate, and lower homicide by firearm rate than Australia.

I just looked up his policies (google neatly summarised it for me - thank you google god). He's got some things that I think are great. Universal health care is the best.

Like I said in what you didn't quote, in that case, that's fucked up. The video seems to make it sound like she came out of virtually nowhere to win at New Zealand, either that or I wasn't listening too hard.

I'm in...New Zealand...or Bora Bora.
Oh...I guess either of the 2 final choices are fine with me.

Now, it would be interesting to see this experiment attempted in any senate or house of reps, state or federal. I would bet no one would go anywhere.

Because New Zealand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvhPtHMrUwg

3:00 "do you think this conversation is happening in any other country?"

FFS, does anyone really think that the US has a monopoly on political conversation?

The same conversation (well, a less retarded version of it anyway) is happening in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And that's just in English. There are political debates in Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Portugal. Hell, I bet no talks about anything ELSE in Greece!

New Zealand stoners only poop once a week though.

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

@newtboy - It's so hard to get into New Zealand.

I would hazard a guess that she's not actually a student in this class (possibly not even at the school), but is, at best, 'auditing' the class, and more likely just sitting in on a lecture that's open to all students (and maybe the public) because he's got all those replica skulls there as a presentation, which makes this look like it's not a normal class presentation. I sat in on a number of 'classes' like this when I was 12-13, and even was allowed (indeed encouraged) to participate in the discussions...but I knew more about science than this woman did even at that age, so it's not as outrageous as it sounds.

If I'm wrong, and that is really the level of education required to be a science student at Berkeley these days, we are totally screwed as a nation and the only smart move left is to move to New Zealand. Actually, that's a good move no matter what!

I saw this happen on the Milford Track in New Zealand in the 80's. Amazing to see.