Your video, House Robbery In Suburbia Goes Terribly Wrong., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, World's clumsiest failed robbery attempt - CO Vape Store, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Cowboy thwarts robbery in Mexican butcher shop, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 365 Badge!

Your video, Robbery Stopped With Swords, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 162 Badge!

I can't help but agree that the Jail systems in the US are a HUGE problem!! Jails should NEVER be a for profit business.

Hitting quotas for prisoners is the most disgusting thing I can think of when it comes to crime.

I guess, the biggest question here is the reasoning behind the Sting operation. Is this to fight a car robbery streak, or is this to fill quotas. That's a good thing the public should be asking - because that matters, and makes a huge difference.

I think there are 3 real issues with 3D printed guns that are genuinely new dangers worth being concerned about.

1. They completely avoid background checks.

2. They're untraceable to a gun seller.

3. They could lead to relatively inexpensive and unregistered fully automatic weapons.

It does seem that plastic guns are not worth worrying about because they're so terrible. But, metal shaping CNC Mills aren't that expensive and can do a decent job of printing guns at home.

I can't really buy the argument that no one will be interested in printing out machine guns because of the existing criminal penalties. If someone is planning a murder or bank robbery or terrorist attack, they're already expecting a life sentence if they're caught. And, even if they plan to get away with it, a gun that can do the job really well, has no history to trace, and can be destroyed or disposed of right after could just make the crime easier to get away with.

Short of looking at the cbc's coverge yourself I'm not sure how I can do much more to represent them. Here's a link to a podcast series they ran:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/boushie/

The victim was Colten Boushie and the farmer was Gerald Stanley, googling that and grabbing the CBC results will show you pretty quickly what their coverage looked like overall.

The case ended with a not-guilty verdict and the farmer is home now. Now, the only witnesses that were sober that day were the farmer and his son. What's worse 3 of the witnesses all changed their stories in court from what they originally told police because they 'didn't want to get into trouble'. With such poor witness testimony and no other evidence of malicious intent on the farmers part it's not much of a surprise that the defence's characterisation of a robbery that led to a tragic and fatal accident was considered credible.

Despite that, Canada's Indigenous services minister responded immediately to the verdict saying;
"We all have more to do to improve justice & fairness for Indigenous Canadians."

And our justice minister tweeted:
"My thoughts are with the family of Colton Boushie tonight. I truly feel your pain and I hear all of your voices. As a country we can and must do better - I am committed to working everyday to ensure justice for all Canadians."

As though the outcome was somehow dictated by race. This victimhood mentality just ignore the underlying real problem of horrible conditions on reserve. The judicial system didn't racially undermine the case, the real problem is a lot more complex than that and is being ignored because it's easier and more popular to ignore the root causes and just echo platitudes about how everything bad that happens down the road is racial too.

Mostly the trouble depends on where you work and how publicly you make your statement. I'd mostly get called a racist, but working for a partially publicly funded place if I was vocal enough losing your job or being told to apologise and be quiet are real possibilities.

The not allowed to talk about it applies much more heavily to anyone in the media. A recent example would be an aboriginal man that was recently shot by a white farmer. The narrative on the national CBC media made a big deal about rampant racism in the region against aboriginals. In their coverage of local opinion it was even more one sided, as they described two sides, the grieving family of the deceased and their supporters, and then the racists who sided with the farmer because they hated aboriginal people. They very slowly, reluctantly and buried deep under a lot of disclaimers released more information on the case.

The young man that was killed was in a truck with 4 of his friends, and their story was that they got a flat tire and pulled into the yard to seek help with repairs. The CBC ran that much right away. They were much more reluctant to include that the RCMP had been called BEFORE the truck got onto that farm because they had been trying to steal a truck from a neighbouring farm already beforehand. It wasn't until during the trial that even more came out, and CBC again reluctantly included details from the friends that where with the victim. All the occupants of the vehicle had been drinking very heavily all afternoon. They admitted to 'checking cars' at the earlier neighbouring farm. They admitted to using the butt end of a rifle to try and break the windows of the truck at the neighbouring farm, but the stock broke off the gun. It was found at the neighbouring farm by police. Upon arriving at the final farm, they admitted trying to start up an ATV and going through and unlocked vehicle there as well, but disagreed on who was doing which. The trial even included text messages from the night before wondering if one of the friends would be able to "go on missions" tomorrow because they were hiding from police after a liquor store robbery. The farmer also mentioned being scared about what could happen the day of the shooting because he thought back to a story he'd been told about 2 farmers being killed on their yards a few years before he'd moved into the area. Only 1 media outlet in the country, and in 1 article checked out that the identity of one of those killers back then turned out to be the victims uncle. I had to go back looking for the original article from when those murders took place to be sure that the current news article wasn't just sensationalising things.

Now of course none of that means you want to see somebody getting killed over property theft. None of that means racism in any way shape or form is justified. However, when there was a rampant run of rural crime across the area and farmers were getting more and more fed up and nervous about their safety something bad was eventually going to happen. It's a tragedy, but our media was absolutely terrified of covering the full story because listing the facts I just laid out is considered racist. Your blaming the victim. My listing of the above facts is not supposed to be done without including many times more explanations and reasons that this was the white man's fault.

Ultimately, the absolute failure to talk openly about things in Canada is getting people killed. We absolutely need to be clear that stealing doesn't deserve a death penalty. We ALSO need to tell a group of young adults that were going farm to farm, with a loaded rifle, raging drunk, stealing and breaking into vehicles that doing that was a BAD idea and one of the reasons is that doing so might get you shot by someone that doesn't know if your going to hurt them or not. I really believe if the kids had been white that would have been the narrative, but because of race it wasn't. It just makes things worse and inspires more risky and dangerous decisions from people in the future and more people will continue to get hurt.

@newtboy

That's always the way with these people.

Trump's "tough on crime" really means he's tough on street-level crime and minorities. Billionaire bankers stealing from the poor are A-OK with him!

You know what the biggest type of economic crime in America is? At over double all other property crimes combined (auto crime, burglary, larceny, and robbery).

It's wage theft, where wealthy employers simply refuse to pay their employees at the level required by law or contract. The biggest proportion of wage theft is refusing to meet minimum wage standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

The only stupid thing they did was they repeated the robbery on the SAME stretch of road, essentially returning to the same store and robbing a different aisle.

While I agree with the broad strokes of your argument, positing that life is soooo much better in Japan completely overlooks the sky-high suicide rate there (consistently one of the top countries in the world).

Life may be less desperate, but obviously there are serious underlying issues.

The US government's blind support of massive corporations certainly is a factor. Allowing them to triple the cost of insulin over the past decade or so in spite of the fact that manufacturing costs are stable or even falling is part of what causes patients like the above to ration their supply.

I also found out recently that all financially motivated crime in the US (theft, auto crime, robbery etc.) as a total cost is less than half of the wage theft practiced by big corporations (short-changing vacation time and paychecks mostly). In fact the #1 type of wage theft is underpaying minimum-wage workers, which alone accounts for more than all of the typical "crimes" combined.

If that doesn't lead to homicidal rage, I don't know what does.

I like how he mentioned the inability of the CDC, due to regulations, to gather a comprehensive database on gun violence. As that seems to be an oft to ignored law. Undo that law, let the CDC gather all the various data points into one set, and then let that set be used for analysis. A gun used to commit a robbery, rape or other violent crime? That needs to be reported to the CDC database, along with any details known such as gun source, legality etc. A gunshot victim gets treated at a hospital or clinic, that gets reported to the CDC database along with cause, which in most cases is accidental. Suicide by gun, homicide by gun, mass shooting, all get put into that database. That data then can be used by all sides to support their cause, perhaps it will show that many of the proposed regulations would have little effect. I suspect, however, the fact that the gun lobby fights so hard to prevent the CDC from gathering the data for others to use, means they fear it will be far less favorable to their side.

I personally would be happy enough for now though for this step to be taken. So that we aren't making choices based on incomplete data and conjuncture.

I personally support the right to own a gun for hunting and self-defense. I'm not sure how an AR-15 or something like that would be useful in either case, short of an unrealistic scenario of a zombie apocalypse... and before the right-wingnuts suggest self-defense of in case of a military invasion, or from some odd right-wing fantasy of our own military, let me remind you of how well even better weapons and training worked out for the Branch Davidians. Admittedly, a military invasion scenario of either type is more likely than a zombie or otherwise apocalypse, but exceedingly low... Now if Trump gets us into WW3, and we lose power for years, and it becomes survival of the fittest, then there may be an argument, the solution to that, of course, is don't get the world into that situation with idiots like him at the wheel.

I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
------------------------------------------------------------------



Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade