BTW, you can own Bombs/RPGs/Missiles/etc.

Just fill out a form4 to get one transferred to you from a current owner, or a form1 if you wish to make a new one.

If you get a class 7 firearms license, and make sure to make whatever you make available for sale to LEO/military, then you can also make new automatic weapons for yourself (usually by converting semi auto to auto).

You can also own tanks and fighter planes.
There are clubs where folks hang out and drive around in their tanks, and fly around in their fighters, and shoot heavy weapons, etc.

Granted, the expense and paperwork of all of these makes them something only wealthy/organized people can afford. And realistically, anyone who has the cash to play with these sorts of things has his ducks in a row to begin with. (eg. An automatic rifle runs around the 20'000 usd range.) With a median individual income of around 26k per year, practically everyone in the U.S. can't afford such items (or is unwilling to).

Things called NFA items (rockets/artillery/etc) are registered, but not denied. Since AFAIK the mid 1930's, only a dozen NFA item owners have been convicted of a serious crime, and none of those crimes involved any NFA item. Only one shooting involved an automatic weapon, and it was committed by a police officer that lost his mind.

Other than a periodic flashy event like Fla, practically every gun crime is committed by cheap pistols. Crime and lack of wealth go hand in hand. Poor people are less likely to be educated, less likely to be from a stable well adjusted home, more likely to grow up in a strife ridden neighborhood, and less likely to be able to afford more than a cheap pistol. This is why you never hear about rockets/tanks/etc regarding crime - if the typical criminal could afford them, he wouldn't have to be a criminal. Realistically speaking, the U.S. is wealthy as a nation, but as individuals, people are not that well off. Majority of the country lives hand to mouth. TBH, that's the real problem. That's not to do with exceptions/unicorns like Fla - only with the most common/likely case.

As a side note, Swiss civilians are more heavily armed than U.S. civilians. But as a people they have their heads on straighter, so gun attacks are rare.

-scheherazade

Lawrence Wilkerson's dismissive comments about self defense are very disrespectful to people who have had to resort to self defense. He wouldn't say things like that had he been unfortunate enough to have had such a personal experience. (As one parent of a Fla victim said - his child would have given anything for a firearm at the time of the event.)

Re. 2nd amendment, yes, it's not for pure self defense. The reasoning is provided within the text. The government is denied legal powers over gun ownership ('shall not be infringed') in order to preserve the ability of the people to form a civilian paramilitary intended to face [presumably invading] foreign militaries in combat ('militia').

It's important to remember that the U.S. is a republic - so the citizens are literally the state (not in abstract, but actually so). As such, there is very little distinction between self defense and state defense - given that self and state are one.

Personally, I believe any preventative law is a moral non-starter. Conceptually they rely on doling out punishment via rights-denial to all people, because some subset might do harm. Punishment should be reserved for those that trespass on others - violating their domain (body/posessions/etc). Punishment should not be preemptive, simply to satiate the fears/imaginations of persons not affected by those punished. Simply, there should be no laws against private activities among consenting individuals. Folks don't have to like what other folks do, and they don't have to be liked either. It's enough to just leave one another alone in peace.

Re. Fla, the guilty party is dead. People should not abuse government to commit 3rd party trespass onto innocent disliked demographics (gun owners) just to lash out. Going after groups of people out of fear or dislike is unjustified.







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As an aside, the focus on "assault rifles" makes gun control advocates appear not sincere, and rather knee-jerk/emotional. Practically all gun killings utilize pistols.

There are only around 400 or so total rifle deaths per year (for all kinds of rifles combined) - which is almost as many as the people who die each year by falling out of bed (ever considered a bed to be deadly? With 300 million people, even low likelihood events must still happen reasonably often. It's important to keep in mind the likelihood, and not simply the totals.).

Around 10'000 people die each day out of all causes. Realistically, rifles of all sorts, especially assault rifles, are not consequential enough to merit special attention - given the vast ocean of far more deadly things to worry about.

If they were calling for a ban+confiscation of all pistols, with a search of every home and facility in the U.S., then I'd consider the advocates to be at least making sense regarding the objective of reducing gun related death.

Also, since sidearms have less utility in a military application, a pistol ban is less anti-2nd-amendment than an assault rifle ban.







As a technical point, ar15s are not actually assault rifles - they just look like one (m4/m16).
Assault rifles are named after the German Sturm Gewehr (storm rifle). It's a rifle that splits the difference between a sub-machinegun (automatic+pistol ammo) and a battle rifle (uses normal rifle/hunting ammo).

- SMG is easy to control in automatic, but has limited damage. (historical example : ppsh-41)

- Battle rifles do lots of damage, but are hard to control (lots of recoil, using full power hunting ammo). (historical example : AVT-40)

- An 'assault rifle' uses something called an 'intermediate cartridge'. It's a shrunken down, weaker version of hunting ammo. A non-high-power rifle round, that keeps recoil in check when shooting automatic. It's stronger than a pistol, but weaker than a normal rifle. But that weakness makes it controllable in automatic fire. (historical example : StG-44)

- The ar15 has no automatic fire. This defeats the purpose of using weak ammo (automatic controlability). So in effect, it's just a weak normal rifle. (The M4/M16 have automatic, so they can make use of the weak ammo to manage recoil - and they happen to look the same).

Practically speaking, a semi-auto hunting rifle is more lethal. A Remington 7400 with box mag is a world deadlier than an ar15. An M1A looks like a hunting rifle, and is likewise deadlier than an ar15. Neither are viewed as evil or dangerous.

You can also get hunting rifles that shoot intermediate cartridges (eg. Ruger Mini14). The lethality is identical to an ar15, but because it doesn't look black and scary, no one complains.

In practice, what makes the ar15 scary is its appearance. The pistol grip, the adjustable stock, the muzzle device, the black color, all are visual identifiers, and those visuals have become politically more important than what it actually does.

You can see the lack of firearms awareness in the proposed laws - proposed bans focus on those visual features. No pistol grips, no adjustable stocks, etc. Basically a listing of ancillary features that evoke scary appearance, and nothing to do with the core capabilities of a firearm.

What has made the ar15 the most popular rifle in the country, is that it has very good ergonomics, and is very friendly to new shooters. The low recoil doesn't scare new shooters away, and the great customizability makes it like a gun version of a tuner-car.

I think its massive success, popularity, and widespread adoption, have made it the most likely candidate to be used in a shooting. It's cursed to be on-hand whenever events like Fla happen.

-scheherazade

the "brain" itself will be ~$30K min. you need lenses, batteries/power supplies, drives to record to, viewfinders, cables, etc. on top of that. a steadicam rig will cost $50K+ too. the famous zeiss lens kubrick used (borrowed from NASA) cost over $23M (adjusted for inflation).

professional cameras are expensive. alexa and red are super cheap in comparison to traditional film camera set ups.

I'm not quite sure what is"vegan food" but from experience if you give yourself two to three weeks to adjust to a plant based diet you will do yourself a world of good and salads taste amazing after you make the adjustment.

Personally i base my eating habits on my personal health and thus believe a plant based diet is the best way to go (as personal experience has shown me)

However i eat meat these days cuz its what's prepared around the house. However im in poorer health since (cholesterol shot through the roof and i gained back a ton of weight i had lost) ive went from plant based to animal products and more processed foods.

For me diet is all about my health. A friend said the vegans he knows have the worst most unhealthy diets hes ever seen.

I guess being vegan is all about "animal cruelty". I had been under the delusion it was about ones personal health.

I'd eat you and your baby in a heart beat if it meant survival for me. But the fact is almost nobody on this planet is currently in that situation, probably never will, and the more people that become vegan, the less likely that is to happen as well.

So yes, people that have made a conscious decision to not do cruel things while they are unnecessary are superior. Just like in the way you don't go around murdering people for shoes right now, even though in the apocalypse you would, makes you a superior person compared with some thug that does that now. You would probably steal food from people that need it, but you aren't doing that now, so you're definitely superior to people that do steal unnecessarily now too. But you don't see anyone telling people who don't steal to get off their high horses.....

There is no humor because the situation is so serious, not because it's puncturing a balloon of superiority. Or do you think that people who opposed concentration camps where simply doing so to feel superior too?
The other thing that makes it totally not funny is because I've heard this ignorant and false stereotype stuff so many times it makes my eyes roll. Vegans are as a diverse group of people as can possibly be, with the only thing in common is their compassion for animals, and care of the environment.

I'm also not a lion or a chimp, I don't copy their other behaviors like throwing poo or licking my own ass, so I don't see why I'd copy their carnivorous behavior either. It's a good thing I have a frontal lobe and can use reason to make decisions based on my understanding of the consequences.

Also while I would eat meat for survival, I would not be eating it for the taste. It sounds to me like you're under the impression that vegans are like ex-heroin addicts, always being tempted by that next hit. It's not like that all, taste buds adjust dramatically over time, in fact they adjust second to second - eat an apple after a swig of soft drink. It'll taste sour. Yet do it before, and the apple is sweet. I honestly find the thought of meat revolting now, just like you would if you had to eat something like a dog or rat. I feel the same way about milk the way you do about drinking human breast milk. I'm not just saying this to be dramatic or superior, I'm saying it to give you an example how easily your taste buds are influenced.

There are some schools like this in Germany as well. Usually children that have issues like attention deficit disorder or do not fit into a normal school (problem child) will attend to such a "Forest school" (Waldschule). There are studies that it benefits development as the change in scenery from the busy city life helps the children adjust. It is definitely not very common and children still need to attend regular classes.

To say it has a flair of "anti science" is a bit far fetched as these schools often teach a lot about the local flora and fauna, do stuff like looking at water samples under a microscope or take earth probes. Sure it is not super scientific, it probably compares to what most kids would do as boy scouts - except it's part of the school's education program. For some kids this approach is better at fueling their scientific curiosity than in a regular school environment where they have many other issues to deal with.

The care is owned and driven by Takeshi Kimura, a wealthy property developer who also owns a Ferrari F50, Enzo, 458 Speciale, McLaren P1, Porsche 911 GT3RS, and a Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo (at least according to the internet), so I'm fairly confident it's not a kit car. The F40 suspension is height-adjustable, so they probably set it as high as possible for the snow sequences.

Go vegan instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9nNa81dSoY
IT'S EASY! Just take a few weeks to get informed, don't jump into it. Read the books suggested below.

Vegetarian is a nice thing to do, but it should be really be only a stepping stone on your path to fully plant based diet. Plant foods are hearty delicious foods like pizza, burgers, lentil shepherds pies, pastas. You just swap out one or two ingredients that are from an animal origin, add more spices/herbs and you have a filling & healthy meal. You can stuff your face, and lose weight, lose the type 2 diabetes and heart disease as well. It's win win.

What many vegetarians don't know is that the milk and dairy industries are often more cruel, than farms that just use animals for meat, and often they are also intertwined. For example, for a cow to produce milk, it must be pregnant. Where do all of the offspring go? Veal if they are male. Or they become milking cows if they are female - destined to be constantly impregnated for their short 4-5 year lives until they die of exhaustion, or can no longer produce milk from exhaustion, and turned then eventually into meat. There are plenty of videos online where a cow gives birth and the calf is dragged away by it's hind legs. They both cry out to each other for days until they're voices give out.
Also cows milk GIVES people osteoporosis because it siphons out calcium from your bones, since it is so acidic. If you measure the amount of calcium in a glass of milk, let someone drink it, and then measure the calcium in their urine, then the urine contains more calcium than what went in. And it's being leeched from the bones.

It's a similar story for chickens. Male chicks get thrown into a grinder ALIVE. Because they're no use if they can't lay eggs.


The toxic waste produced the by milk and egg industries (animal poo etc) destroys environments.

The antibiotics used to keep all of those animals of course ends up in the environment and it will eventually make a super bug which medicine cannot kill.

The job loss portion seems silly, since anyone farming animals is capable of farming plants like rice, potatoes, wheat and grains etc. Those are some seriously nutrient and energy dense foods, and very efficiently produced, and very healthy. Carbs have just gotten a bad reputation thanks the Atkins people. And well we know that Atkins died of a heart attack, he had a history of heart attacks infact. He died overweight.

It is much easier just to go "cold turkey" for 3 or 4 weeks, and become completely plant based since it means your taste buds will adjust and you'll never crave animal products again. Everyone wins, the planet, your health both physical and mental, and of course the animals.

There are plenty off great books with recipes that are familiar and hearty that can help people get started, it's easier than you think. Books such as:
The Starch Solution, Dr. John McDougall.
Negative Calorie Effect, Dr Neal Barnard.
Power Foods for the Brain, Dr Neal Barnard.
Engine #2 Diet, Rip Esselstyn.

I imagine that's probably a very socially well adjusted and friendly chimp, but throughout the video I couldn't help thinking it might not be a good idea to intentionally piss off an animal that may not consider chewing off your face an unreasonable response to pissing it off.

With cameras everywhere, we ALL have to adjust. Have you ever watched yourself in a drunken moment captured by your friends? Not pretty.

If this cop was 8 years in service i doubt this was the first time he has ever been spit on.

Not saying the child was an angel, and maybe he deserved it. But this is basically vigilante justice - sth which especially the police WILL FINALLY have to adjust to now that cameras are everywhere.

The police are so used to getting away with cerain things that they basically have to relearn their profession (which, again might be hard after 8 years, but is that a valid defense ?).

Christ....

Odd how Republicans always scream about "redistribution of wealth", but are fine with the fact that most employers no longer pay living wages the way they used to. They are fine if it's some rich guy taking his wealth generated by his employees' hard work for himself, but god forbid that the government take anything to help those that rich guy is leaving behind. Over half the people who work for Walmart qualify food stamps (only about 30% actually take it), despite the fact Walmart's profits are so high it could pay them all living wages, give them benefits, higher more, give more hours, and still make a huge profit while not raising prices... but it's the people needing food stamps that are bad, not the people who own and operate the company and take so much from their workers.

The one true small government candidate that the Republicans had was Rand Paul, and they rejected him for big government, tough talk, candidates that capitalize on their fears... most of which are fairly unjustified. Americans aren't lining up on the streets to get the sort of jobs that they accuse Mexican's of coming here to take. Our own actions of telling Muslims how to live is the reason they want to kill us, leave them alone and govern themselves... stop preemptively attacking... you know be more Christ like who wouldn't support such things...

And as @oritteropo basically noted, Reagan was far to the left what today's Republican party is. Reagan wouldn't even get through the Primary process. Fox News, Rush and all of them would be ripping him a new asshole for not being "conservative enough". Obama is far closer to Reagan style politics and economics than most today's primary candidates. McCain once upon a time was close to Reagan, but he swung to the right to appeal to the extreme right base, and then added an idiot running mate. Had he ran down the center as he used to be, and got a centralist running mate, he would have had a chance of winning... though Obama sort of captured a hope for progressive change that never came, he turned out to be a Democrat in Name Only and was closer to a Reagan Republican than a true progressive.

Let's also not forget that Congress controls the purse strings and the US economic outlook (at least to what degree the government can, since the rest is in the hands of investors and business owners). Congress has been obstructionist for the last 6 years, and haven't allowed ANY of Obama's policies through, any of his attempts to help fix the economy. Want to blame somebody in the government for the mess, blame Congress, not Obama... if they attempted his stuff, then yes it would be his fault, but they haven't tried a single one of them. You can't say no to trying something, then when what you did instead doesn't work blame the person you said no to.

For the price of the F35 program so far, a plane that only barely passed some of it's flight tests, the rest still failing, we could have bought every homeless person a $600,000 home.... in this area a $150,000 home is very nice (good 3 bedroom home, nice safe neighborhood with good schools), let alone what $600,000 would get you... for the price of it this year, we could fund the school lunch program for 24 years. Now to be fair, I haven't fully vetted those two "facts" myself, but what I have vetted, is for the price of the war in Iraq from 2001 to 2011, we paid more than NASA's entire history, even after adjusting for inflation. It's all a question of priorities. Republican's don't care how much the military costs the taxpayer, but suggestions to help the people being left behind as the rich take more and more for themselves (redistributing the wealth generated by their workers to themselves, rather than their workers) and suddenly they start screaming bloody murder.

Every time a Republican opens their mouth and spouts such things like this video I hate their gullibility... and all too often they talk about their faith and Christ... and I've already covered how the Republican views are 100% opposed to the teachings of Christ and it's why I first lost faith in God as he'd be screaming at them and trying to convict them that their views are wrong were he real. Don't just trust the first few Google results you see, as they filter their results to appeal to you and your views. Don't listen to the echo chamber. Learn to truly vet sources and understand what is actually going on. Don't parrot claims about a "liberal media" or whatever, when over 95% of the news sources out there are controlled by the same 5 companies, none of which have an incentive on letting people know just how bad they are being fucked by the business interests in this country... supporting gay marriage, supporting a minimum level of help isn't liberal, it's being a decent person... being against equal rights under the law because somebody sins differently than you, or not wanting to help somebody because they aren't working 80-100 hours a week is being a heartless asshole. But feel free to keep living in your echo chamber of stupidity, "You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity."

I don't know if I'm more impressed they tied knots or that they tried it out and decided to adjust the ends.

I'll cover IUD's first. While there is some evidence that the older style copper ParaGard might have a slightly increase in preventing a fertilized egg from implanting, the evidence for the Mirena. Here are two medical journals documenting as such:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4018277
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/13625180903519885
If those are too much reading, they are summarized in http://videosift.com/video/Myths-About-IUDs

Remember Google gives personalized search results. No two people get the same results, even when signed out of Google... More details at http://videosift.com/video/There-are-no-regular-results-on-Google-anymore

I'd also agree that there are many things America gets right. Overall it's a good country.

And I think I started out by pointing out it isn't about guns, or just about guns.

Now I'm not sure what you mean assigning attributes to the right. I was pointing out policies that are consistent with the conservative right, Republican platform positions that are not pro-life.

The Death Penalty. This is a typically Republican strong stance position. And has been at various times part of the party's official platform. The Democrat party official position supports the death penalty too, after a DNA testing and post-conviction review. The point isn't wither or not the Death Penalty is right or wrong, I'd personally argue it's wrong, it's the claim of being pro-life while supporting the death penalty. There can be no way to reconcile those two positions.

One needs only to look at how Bush and the present day regime of Republicans in Washington think of handling issues in the Middle East to see what that they support a strong military and an interventionist doctrine (http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Republican_Party_War_+_Peace.htm). One of the key factors of the Bush Doctrine is preemptive strikes. While one normally wouldn't cite Wikipedia, I'll let their page on the Bush Doctrine and their references clear things up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine. Heck Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize largely just because he wasn't Bush... sadly he did little to lower US involvement in the Middle East, a situation we should have left alone ages ago. Again the Democrats aren't as peace loving as they should be, and generally the most peace loving people in Congress tend to be Libertarians (who object more to the expense of war than war itself, and love pointing out how the war in Iraq from 2001 to 2011 cost more than NASA's entire history to that point, even after adjusting for inflation (https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)) and Libertarian leaning Republicans like Ron Paul, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus (http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/). Again, war isn't pro-life, it is perhaps one of the most anti-life things one can support short of supporting murder itself.

It's also Republicans, aka the right, that are trying to undo the Affordable Health Care Act, a program that ironically enough is modeled after the ones they tried to pass twice under Bush Sr and once under Clinton as to oppose Democrat plans to push for a Single Payer system. Prior to the passing of Obamacare, the US was spending nearly twice as much on healthcare as a percentage of it's GDP than the next nation, and getting only the 37th best results . Just listen to the crowd at the September 12 2008 Republican debate that chant over and over "let him die" as a solution to a guy who needs medical care but elected not to buy private insurance. These same people are the one's who claim to be pro-life. Affordable health care should be a right, as it is in every civilized nation but the US. Obamacare is far from ideal, but much better than the previous policy of only those with good jobs could afford health care everyone else, die or go bankrupt, driving the costs of healthcare up more. One can't say they are pro-life and oppose affordable healthcare, including for services you don't support such as IUDs (it doesn't matter that I object to our overly huge military budget that is much bigger than the next several nations combined, so it shouldn't matter if some medical services such as IUDs are supported), as quality of life matters as much as being alive.

Related to guns however is the Republican stance on stand your ground. Watch Fox News and how they defend the use of guns, or how mass shootings would be avoided if people were carrying concealed weapons and could stop the shooters... again escalating things to a death penalty. Now in the case of a mass shooter, ideally you want to take them down alive, but if death is the only option, then I personally don't object. However stand your ground typically expands to home invasion, where criminals typically aren't looking kill, just rob the place. Here they defend the homeowner's right to shoot to kill (I've been in firearm safety classes, generally the aim is to aim for the center of mass, which will likely result in death, but the odds of making a shot at the legs to impede the crooks is very low, so if you shoot you have to assume it is to kill). This position is contrary to the pro-life stance. All life is equal... which could get into a whole other argument about how they don't value immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, people who just want to improve their lives by moving to what they hope is a better country that will allow for a better opportunity for them and their families, but the Republicans are fighting hard to stop them from improving their lives here just because an accident of birth made them born in another country than the US... heck just look at the way Republicans lined the buses of refugee children fleeing war and gang torn areas of Latin America and they shouted at the children.... children... to go home that nobody wanted them. That isn't a pro-life statement, to tell a child that nobody wants them. The pro-life position would be to want to nurture and protect the children fleeing a dangerous area... We should be moving to a world without borders, as that is the pro-life position, to realize we are all humans, and that we all must share this world, and that we should do all we can to protect one another and this world and all that inhabits it (except mosquitoes, roaches, most parasites, etc... lol)

As to high poverty rates, the Republican policy of trickle down economics helps drive that. Helps spread the ever growing income and wealth gaps in the US. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40% of the US population (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/31/bernie-s/sanders-says-walmart-heirs-own-more-wealth-bottom-/). Now true, some could argue it isn't trickle down economic that is causing the growing wealth and income gaps, but the correlation is very strong, and one is hard pressed to find any other causative points beyond the rich paying less and less to their workers while taking more and more for themselves while the government eases the tax burden on the rich more and more.

Overall I think it's clear that the people who vote Republican because they are "pro-life" are hypocrites given the party's positions in key issues that aren't pro-life. I'm sure many, especially those on the right would disagree. They'd argue the death penalty is needed to discourage others from killing and therefore protects life, and that preemptive strikes ala the Bush Doctrine keep another 9/11 from happening (although the counter to that is fairly easily that we make more extremist the more we use those strikes). So one's mileage may very. For me, I think they are hypocritical saying they are pro-life if they don't value that life as much as their own after they are born.

From Facebook comments:
"so crazy... totally gets hit by a hawk. you can hear impact and clearly see the wing cover the lens if you watch on youtubeslow.com... just adjust the slow motion filters to 70 and 1000+"