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Policeman scared of mouse

wildlifexteam1 (Member Profile)

How the Gun Industry Sells Self-Defense | The New Yorker

MilkmanDan says...

To me, that seems like a very rational stance on concealed carry.

A clear, logical list of rules that must be followed, which are (it sounds) fairly and universally applied (at least in Texas).

I'm enough of a "gun nut" (even though I don't actually own any guns or currently reside in the US) that I wouldn't want to see ALL of those rules applied to ownership of rifles and shotguns that are used for hunting or pest control / other utility on a farm.

Taking a class, test, and range test are good requirements. Not having felony convictions is another goodrequirement. But beyond that, for hunting/farm owners, it seems like many more requirements could just be misapplied to deny ownership to whoever the state deems "undesirable".

I tend to think that the NRA stance that any control or limits whatsoever are unconstitutional is very counterproductive for legitimate owners of hunting / farm firearms, as well as CCW people like yourself.

Mordhaus said:

One other thing, just so people don't think I am an NRA gun nut supporter, I personally wouldn't care if they made anyone who wanted to even own a gun go through the above steps to be allowed to do it. The Texas ones anyway, the may carry states allow the government or police to just say "screw you" and that isn't fair gun control.

Introducing FarmBot Genesis

newtboy says...

As a person who actually grows much of my own produce, I can say definitively that many of their numbers are WAY off. They require one to pay one's self $100 per month for produce shopping to come up with their $1400 per year 'savings', but claim 5 minutes a day for 'harvest time'...good luck with that if you're not living on just lettuce and cauliflower...peas and beans will take 3 times that. They claim $6 for seeds, but the seeds I buy are over $3 per packet, so that's only 2 vegetables at a time...not much variety. I also note they have no cost for soil, the bed, fertilizers, pest control methods/time, disease control, etc. They also arbitrarily put the maintenance time at :30 min per month...that doesn't seem really realistic for an outdoor robot. Keep in mind that a single break down can mean the loss of an entire crop, depending on how it malfunctions. They also don't give an expected lifespan...or guarantee/warranty, so there's little way to know yet if it will last a single season, much less the 4-5 they say it takes to pay off.

It would have made much more sense to me if they had compared it to growing a home garden by hand, as that's what it's replacing, not the grocery store.

Don't get me wrong, I love this idea and would take one in a second if someone offered, I just don't see it as cost effective at $3-4K. Once the bugs are worked out so it lasts 10 years and the DIY cost is down to $1K(+-), then I'll think they have something pretty good that could also save people money. Being totally open source, I have hope that it will evolve quickly and be clearly viable in the near future. The time is coming when I won't be able to do the home farming I do today...it would be great to have a metallic yard slave to take over for me when that time comes.

eoe said:

@newtboy: Seems they thought of this argument. They put quite a bit of effort in refuting this.

Monsanto, America's Monster

bcglorf says...

@newtboy,
Some, (very few) still grow grain using old school methods, some even using old school grains (thank goodness, we will have them to thank for still having grains when/if the Monsanto grains fail). It's not even 99%, but it is 'most'.

If you count your numbers by production it's probably more than 99% fall under your idea of 'industrial'. If you want to count old school methods as no chemicals for pest control and harvesting by hand then you need 20 some old school farms to match the quantity of food produced on one thousand acre family farm.

Clearly, natural farming takes more effort, and costs the consumer more, but does not require major ecological mitigation, so if you count ALL costs involved, it's not that much more expensive.
Can you explain the ecological mitigation costs you imagine are associated with farming a thousand acres of grain by hand versus using modern equipment and some round-up? The round-up breaks down within days of application and the equipment doesn't impact the land any more than having 20 some people marching through on foot. For bonus points include the ecological foot print of everybody required to work the land in both scenarios. Including that makes it glaringly obvious that the efficiency of what you class 'industrial' farming techniques is on the whole much better on the planet. Of course, it shouldn't be a surprise producing double and triple the amount of food from the same land with a fraction of the manpower means less overall demand on the environment.

As for the propaganda in the vid, you claimed I misrepresented the Manhattan presentation, I quoted the video verbatim. I'm not interested in doing the same for every point they ran. The video is propaganda of the purest form and I stand by that.

Richardson Total pest control

Australia's Gun Control Program

Kofi says...

It was a confiscation policy. All guns that were banned HAD to be handed in. This was easily enforced by our mandatory gun registration laws in most states (except in Tasmania where the massacre that trigger this scheme occurred). People could hand in any gun they wanted even if it wasn't banned. I am not sure if there was compensation involved.

One stupid outcome was that many antique and rare guns were destroyed rather than rendered inopporeable or transferred to museums etc. My neighbour handed in a very valuable double barrell shotgun that was destroyed despite it being legal. He didn't want it anymore and like manny citizens took advantage of the amnesty to dispose of it.

You can still own pump action and semi-auto guns. You just need a special license for them. To get the license you need an especially good reason to need such weapons. There are strict regulations surrounding their storage and use. That said, my brother got a job as a pest controller for a class D license which enabled him to have grenade launchers if he wanted.

tl:dr - Australians have a very sensible approach to guns. You didn't see any whining about self protection in this vid did you?

Pest control battles 10 foot tall beehive from "Hell"

oritteropo says...

I think you have about 2 pixels of the blocked label on the LHS of your screenshot. Click "turn on the lights" and it will go back to the right hand side and be visible... or at least it does for me (http://videosift.com/video/Pest-control-battles-10-foot-beehive-from-Hell?style=light)
>> ^Raveni:

>> ^siftbot:
I do. On the right-hand side of the video. My computer vision tells me it's what you humans call "blue".>> ^doogle:
@siftbot but I don't see the label "Blocked" there.


That's strange, the only "blue" thing that I see on the right-hand side of the video is an advertisement. Sifty, where did you get your eyeshine? I need a better doc.
http://db.tt/WnuZPJoS

Pest control battles 10 foot tall beehive from "Hell"

Pest control battles 10 foot tall beehive from "Hell"

Cutest Owl Ever?

Rewriting the NRA

RedSky says...

@GeeSussFreeK

I didn't say GDP, I said GDP per capita. Both Finland and the US have roughly the same GDP per capita.

My assertion is that crimes are more likely to be committed by criminals who are empowered by guns. Suicide has nothing to do with this and that's why I didn't address it.

Murder rates are the only universally comparable measure when you consider various violent offenses are classified differently and with varying degrees of tolerance in difference countries.

I think it would hardly be a stretch to assert that guns allow criminals and delinquents to dish out far more death per violent incident - being a reason why crime is average/above average, but murder (especially by firearms) is astronomical.

Either way, I want to address murder singlehandedly as I think it's certainly still an important (and far less finnicky) topic to argue in and of itself, not crime generally.

Crimes again are classified and reported to varying degrees in different countries.

Again, I want to point out that my argument isn't about gun legislation but about gun ownership rates. I have no doubt that if you were to ban guns immediately in one state, there'll not be a chasm of a decline in gun murder rates. Arguments that look at gun laws ignore the blatant fact that US borders are very porous as far as I understand, and that even then, gun laws take years, decades perhaps to have meaningful effects on ownership rates and as a result, general availability at above minimal cost to criminals. Looking at the wikipedia page for California's gun laws, the only meaningful law I see is a 2005 ban in San Fransisco on all firearms and ammunition. Something like this would take at least a decade to have any meaningful effect though, I'm sure I would agree with you here when I say that smuggling guns into simply a city of all places (not a country with customs, or even a state) and selling them on the black market would hardly be difficult - where surrounding areas have no such ban.

I agree that no legislation will prevent a determined terrorist or capable individual from inflicting massive damage if nuclear weapons were readily available and manufactured in large amounts in one area of the world. A concerted and enforced gun ban on the other hand (with restrictions for hunting in some areas, target shooting, and potentially eased laws for protection in remote areas with low police presence) would do a great deal to reduce availability and reduce the incidence of gun murder by petty criminals which makes up the majority of gun deaths in the US.

Take for example our legislation in Australia. There's nothing exceptional about it, I'm just most familiar with it:

"State laws govern the possession and use of firearms in Australia. These laws were largely aligned under the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms. Anyone wishing to possess or use a firearm must have a Firearms Licence and, with some exceptions, be over the age of 18. Owners must have secure storage for their firearms.

Before someone can buy a firearm, he or she must obtain a Permit To Acquire. The first permit has a mandatory 28-day delay before it is first issued. In some states (e.g. Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales), this is waived for second and subsequent firearms of the same class. For each firearm a "Genuine Reason" must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not accepted as a reason for issuing a licence, even though it may be legal under certain circumstances to use a legally held firearm for self-defense.[2]

Each firearm in Australia must be registered to the owner by serial number. Some states allow an owner to store or borrow another person's registered firearm of the same category.
"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

There is a very good reason why this has led to a 5.2% ownership rate among citizens and a murder rate by guns of between 29% and 19% that of the US per capita depending on which numbers you use from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

If you want to come back to saying that people simply murder in different ways, then look at purely the murder rate - the number goes up just slightly to 35% (the rate of murder per capita in Australia of that in the US).

Gun laws aren't punishment. Just like nuclear weapon bans aren't punishment. Or Sarin Gas bans. They're good policy.

Just like making everyone buy basic health insurance to reduce risk among consumers and lower prices, where the poorest are subsidised. If you insist on using analogies, I think this compares incredibly well to a gun ban which makes allowance for recreation and hunting (and at least in my view, allowances of 'for protection' licenses in remote areas with limited quantity and strict restriction to avoid smuggling).

Just like the compulsory third party car insurance we have here, that ensures that if you are at fault and damage another car, the innocent party is guaranteed to have their car repaired.

What I hope you understand coming from a libertarian position (and this is repeating the first thing I said in this whole discussion to blankfist) is that libertarianism is not a flat and universal position on individual rights. You, just like anyone I would imagine, have limits to how far you go with individual rights. You recognize the validity of a system of laws to limit the impact of one's individual's actions on another, and the retribution they should receive for violating it. You simply draw the metaphorical line on rights further right on the ideological spectrum than I do.

Therefore you can't simply justify gun ownership by claiming individual rights and the notion that everyone's entitled to them as they are not presumed guilty. You have to consider whether it does harm in society or not, just like the rest of us.

I hope I've laid out a pretty convincing arguments based on the statistics (speculative of course, I have neither the time nor resources to do a rigorous analysis controlling for a multitude of variables) that gun ownership does lead to more (gun) murders. If we were taking about a 10-20% difference, sure it would be debatable, but we're talking about a 2 to 3 fold increase. Let's not kid around about what causes this.

If you think that individual rights are so incredibly important that they trump this palpably gargantuan increase in death (and suffering) then that is certainly a position you can take, but let's be honest about this if that's the position you want to take.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think they are. I think the opportunities for self defense, the willingness to use a gun of most people, the willingness of normal and ration people to risk death for losing their property are small. The sheer empowerment and impetus a gun (easily available from a nearby store at a price anyone can pay) can give a criminal on the other hand is huge.

---

Just a quick recap on things I didn't cover.

If you want to demonstrate guns are less devastating than drugs then kindly provide data to support this. If you are referencing the drug war or even if you are not, this is totally irrelevant to the question I posed to you.

Comparing guns to drugs and referencing the opium war is just not a good analogy. Colonialism. Colonialism. Colonialism.

Yes cars kill people, so do airplanes. So do pretzels. In fact, just about everything kills people (although yes car accidents are far more significant than pretzels). We do have a plethora of legislation that increases car safety. Guns are of course unique in that supposedly (if you would believe people in the US), more guns and LESS gun legislation protects you from the more guns you now have and so on. Let's look at this objectionably just as I compared the benefits to defenders versus aggressors for gun ownership. Cars provide an obvious benefit and are fundamental to commerce and modern life (unlike guns 99.9% of the time for private defenders of civil liberty). More legislation and safety requirements can obviously reduce death rates. To me it seems pretty obvious how to proceed here.

Like, food is, like, free.

Raccoon Wreaks Havoc on Kitchen

NordlichReiter says...

There is only a couple of ways to deal with that. Smash it with the cupcake pan. Or call animal control... they will either take it away... or kill it.

If you got this problem, and do not want it to be killed, then you should call animal control... not pest control.

Homemade Squirrel Catapult

BicycleRepairMan says...

In England, it's now legall to kill all grey squirells. Only grey ones. They're vermin here. We like Red Squirells. Grey is bad

Well, I never said anything about killing animals, There are several cases where killing an animal isnt unethical: For food, for ending suffering, for pest control, however, hurting animals, just for the fun of it, is immoral. No, I'm not a PETA member, vegetarian or anything, and I'm not the kind of "they are cute, therefore more valuable" etc, I would say the exact same thing about treating rats like this. Animal cruelty for amusement is deeply unethical by my standards.

And frankly, some people here needs to grow up and get some respect for living creatures. Maybe spend a day or week in the wild or something. Anyone who has learned to respect animals would see this as unethical.

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