Want to cut down the number of deaths by firearms? Stop tolerating shit like this:

"Shane Patrick Boyle, a founder of Zine Fest Houston, died on March 18 after his GoFundMe campaign to pay for insulin came up $50 short. Alec Raeshawn Smith, age 26, was found dead in his apartment on June 27. He was rationing his insulin after he aged out of his parent’s insurance coverage."

After everything is said and done, desperation/poverty is what should be looked at the hardest. Nothing makes people go apeshit as much as intolerable living conditions.

Universal background checks, bans on high cap mags, etc -- that's just doctoring around the edges. Get the Works Progress Administration going again. And while you're at it, revive the CCC and the PWA as well.

Aside from atrocious working hours and societal pressures, life in Japan is a lot less desperate than in most other countries. The low unemployment alone does wonders.

I don't think anyone suggests that civilian disarmament encourages tyranny, merely that civilian armament discourages tyranny.



In any case, there are a variety of applications that aren't "fighting hitler".

No country goes on forever without some domestic strife. Could be domestic war, could be economic collapse, could be the government scapegoating "your kind", could be a weather disaster, could be whatever.
In such an unlikely event, if you happen to be around at the time, you may wish to guard your family, food, fuel, etc.

Note that these events affect a LOT of people when they do happen (as in millions at a time).
Even though they are less frequent than a random shooting, the sheer quantity of people makes them significant.

Eg. The last Houston destruction by hurricane was in 1979 (38 years ago). That's not so infrequent, in a city of 2.3 million people (ish).
That's an upper bound of 60'000 people affected per year on average.
Either way, it's a lot of people that need to guard their homes from looters, etc.
Granted not everyone is on a destroyed street - but you see what I mean.

There have been plenty of disasters and riots in the last few decades where you wouldn't want to be caught helpless - just in case.

That's also a commentary on society. During the Fukushima disaster, nobody was looting or robbing, or whatever. Japan has a better behaved society.

-scheherazade

Lol, I read "imaginary Hiller" (and assumed you meant Hillary). My bad.



We have reasonable laws already.
Most things people ask for either already exist (and anti-gunners just don't know because they don't have to follow those laws), or only screw collectors and sportsmen while not doing anything to reduce risk (which I already covered, I assume you read the earlier part, eg California compliant AR15, etc).



Nobody expects to need to form a militia.
Nobody expects the country to go to hell.

The seat belt analogy is about preparedness for unlikely events.
Like, you don't "need" flood insurance in Houston - unless you do.

Owning a gun also hurts nobody.
By definition, ownership is not a harm.

Almost all guns will never be used to do any harm.
The very statement that "guns are all about hurting other people" is a non-empirical assertion.

Just shy of every last gun owner doesn't imagine themselves as Bruce Willis. Asserting that they do is a straw man.


You remind me of Republicans that complain that Black people are welfare queens (so they can redirect money out of welfare). Or Republicans that complain that Trans people are pedophiles in hiding (so they can pander to religious zelot voters). Creating a straw man and then getting mad about the straw man (rather than the real people) is self serving.


* Only the rarest few people think they are Roy Rogers. That is a straw man that does not apply to just shy of every gun owner.
* You don't need a gun for home defense... unless you do.
* Differences in likelihood of death armed vs unarmed is happenstance.
(Doesn't matter either way. Googled some likelihoods : http://www.theblaze.com/news/2013/02/15/how-likely-are-you-to-die-from-gun-violence-this-interesting-chart-puts-it-in-perspective/
You'd have to suffer death 350'000 times before you're at a 50/50 chance of your next death being by firearms.)
[EDIT, math error. Should say 17'000 years lived to reach a 50/50 chance of death by firearms in the next year]
* Technically, even 1 vote gets someone elected. You don't control who is on the ballot.



NRA and NSSF are on life support. They have to fight the influence of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, most major newspapers. They are way outclassed. Current events don't help either.
The "big bad NRA" rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. As is the rhetoric that the NRA only represents the industry.

-sceherazade

The woman was arrested. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-viral-Snapchat-shooting-gun-charged-12245421.php

There was another video of the women in the car taking shots out the window with some semi auto uzi type looking gun. Guessing it won't be long till they are apprehended. Lots of pics of her.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/houston-videos-snapchat-shooting-guns-reddit-12232466.php?ipid=houstonhomepage#photo-14233085

Your video, Houston Cop To Rescuers-"We've Had Enough", 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, Time lapse of flood waters rising in Houston, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I think it was right on the rails. I live in Houston, was fortunate to have come through Harvey with little damage, and spent hours helping folks get out of the small boats that were rescuing people from their water filled homes. The reporting from the various news agencies was on TV pretty much 24/7. But they don't get it... sure, people outside of the situation want to know what's going on, but some of the most inane, redundant, pointless and heartless questions in the world come out of the mouths of these reporters who feel they need to just keep on talking. On more than one occasion, we had to tell reporters to get the fuck out of the way so we could do our work instead of pausing to allow them to conduct an interview. In a situation like this, where people have lost EVERYTHING they own except for the clothes they have on, and have spent hours scared, cold and not knowing if anyone is coming to rescue them, how the fuck can anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size think it's a story that wants to be retold in front of a camera? We helped little kids out of boats, with their parents coming along a few boats behind, and reporters walking up to these shivering, scared kids to ask them about any pets they might have left behind or been unable to rescue - to get them to cry. That's inhuman. If it were me, I would've shoved that microphone down that stupid woman's throat. This isn't reporting, it sensationalizing. But I guess we wouldn't expect less from CNN. These people aren't reporters our journalists, they are pond scum.

Sorry, but you missed the point imo. Confederates were NOT real Americans, they were real traitors to America who renounced their citizenship and fought to destroy the Union....largely to protect their rights to own people.

I'm not for whitewashing history, but I do think all statues and other monuments celebrating the insurrection should go...because I'm a patriot and would never celebrate our enemies.
Funny enough, Robert E Lee agreed there should be no monuments, he knew they breed hatred on both sides.

As an American, it is pretty easy to say they were wrong, and I'm from Houston and I'm actually related to Lee through two separate lines. That changes nothing. Treason is wrong, period.

You have got to be kidding me! That's some old bullshit, turning public roads into toll roads. How do you get to own one, because it sounds like a sweet plum.

I grew up in Houston, and that traffic was insane in the early 80's and only got worse. More than once I rode my bike completely across town, +-15 miles, faster than my mom could drive.
I love where I live. Rush hour means slowing down to near the speed limit...we simply don't have traffic except at accidents and road work. It's bliss.

I live about 5 miles inside the city limits, just enough to get taxed good and proper. I told my wife that once she retires from UT we are moving out asap. I'd move now but the traffic is horrible and they keep trying to fix it by adding more buses and screwing around with light rail that only goes to a few places in the city. That and turning roads we already paid for into toll roads.

It's not on par with really bad traffic like in New York or LA, but for a town this size it is brutal. Traffic in Houston moves better than it does here.

I think this is a normal occurrence in Texas in the early summer when grass and tree pollen (especially mesquite, it puts out visible clouds of pollen) are thick and thunderstorms happen almost daily. I had a horrible time with allergies growing up in Houston.

I used to drive between San Antone and Houston a lot and whenever I saw the La Grange exit on I-10 I had to throw in this cassette, it became a ritual.

Always made sure to stop to eat at Grumpys in Flatonia, good food there.

I live in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately for my Bahn and Pho addictions, Austin is sort of a high priced area for Vietnamese food. Back in the 90's, you could could get it cheap and plentiful in the few locations that served it; now with the foodies and all the transplants there are tons of places, but they are all expensive.

Houston is still pretty cheap because it is saturated, so when I am down there I can score good, reasonably priced Vietnamese food.

@newtboy,

No, it's about law. Warren Jeffries people did all that, on a smaller scale. They weren't their own country, even though they got away with it for decades. Law.

Forgive my lack of familiarity with him, but your telling me he (on a smaller scale than Texas), stopped paying taxes, and instead collecting them. Started up his own legal and justice system. He created his own borders within which the police would not dare set foot because it would be a death sentence for them. And after he'd done all this the US military itself failed to remove him as well?

Or are you meaning not just scale, but severity and all the other rather meaningful extremes of sovereignty that the Taliban and Al Qaida achieved? It's the same then in the sense that me punching you is violent just me killing ten people is violent, but in another sense they are nothing alike...

No, but they couldn't indiscriminately bomb Houston and any large gatherings either....not even if Spencer might be there. The first American civilian they kill will start a war...a real, legitimate war.

Your not embracing the analogy. Spencer's terrorists are still killing American civilians every week, outside of Texas borders. The American military is just corrupt enough that as long as its democrats/republicans dying,(whomever we choose to not be in power) they let it slide because it shows the need for the military to 'protect' the country.

You need to take a harder look at Pakistani politics to see just how powerful Al Qaida and the Taliban's control over the tribal areas has been.

More over, all of the above definitions of state within a state violence and jihad doesn't require war as the response to acts of war. To invade Afghanistan to prevent another 9/11 is dubious at best. Even the Kissinger's of the world wouldn't count the value of that trade off, losing a couple thousand Americans to an attack each decade or so is 'acceptable' loses.
Call it the price of freedom and carry on. The real trick was that if the Taliban and Al Qaida were so tight with Pakistan's military and intelligence services, how concerned should America be that the Pakistani proxies in their tribal regions and Afghanistan are so keen to target Americans. That lead directly to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being a big enough concern with that pairing that maybe it was time to tell Pakistan they had to end their little dance with terrorists hitting Americans and they had better make a choice who they are going to side with in the Jihad that was already being waged for 2 decades.