You're just going to keep arguing so I don't see the point of this. But I'll rebut some things.

You go and tell the family it doesn't matter that their son died.

My mother was choked and raped in my parents bed by an intruder when I was not yet 3 years old. The defensive wounds on her body were said by the authorities to be from her struggling until the very end.

Also I live with a trained UFC fighter, who was a champion in Southern California. I asked him this and you fight until you black out, you do not stop because you're getting choked, if anything it makes you more desperate.

You keep citing the Legal right to something as if that matters to me. It doesn't, I'm stating unequivocally that what they did was wrong, it doesn't matter what the law says. Just because a law says you can do something does not make it a just law.

It is their laws, it is the laws of the state. The police are a part of that state and they are sent by the owners of the state to enforce those laws. We do not have a democracy in the US anymore. This is like defending the SS because Hitler told them what to do, they have no defense.

We're done here, we will never agree because we have lived completely different lives. I understand that and I hope you do as well.

I just wrote the following in a PM, as part of a much longer message. Thought it belonged here:

But if more energy was spent by you guys who say "I've never seen this, I don't know what you are talking about, prove it, say it differently, convince me" ... well, if instead you just said -- Huh. How about that. Look how this stuff is affecting these women. Why IS it that the men they encounter feel it is okay to intrude on their lives this way, when they are just walking down the street? Where do these guys get the idea that this is okay? Why do they get offended when the women don't respond? What WOULD it feel like if it were me, 4-5-9 times a day being told -- smile, nice ass, hey pretty lady, when all I am trying to do is go buy a pint of milk for my morning coffee? Yeah, I don't do that, you could say. These guys are clearly out of line. But how am I like that, in smaller ways, you could ask?

Maybe when you don't listen and insist that this video has to be softened into being palatable to you. Maybe that is how you are like those other guys.

These women are straight forward and very very clear. And yet you say they aren't. Why is that?

@bcglorf
how come it always take you 4-5 posts to get an idea across that i can relate to?
its frustrating.

dont know how you got i feel america is some kind of 'special" place.
again i seem to have failed in conveying how wretched i think my government has been for the past few decades.

irregardless...
not american eh?
interesting.....
so you think america should play the global police?
and what exactly gives us that right?
because we have the bigger guns? bigger military?

since it cant be on moral grounds it HAS to be military might.

and america only likes to play with those countries it wants/covets/desires in order to perpetuate this global hegemony thing is has going on.

god you are confusing.
on the one hand you wish to see injustice brought to its knees and are willing to make a deal with the devil to do it.

yet on the other hand you reference history as if you have a semblance of understanding and if THAT is the case then you KNOW nothing is a delineated black vs white dynamic.
nothing is ever as simple or easy as it appears.

so you choose to use american military might to crush the religious zealots and in doing so create more...
but your argument appears to be:if we use drones LESS jihadists will be created and this is a good thing.

no.
it..is ..not.

you cant have it both ways.
you cant have your justice with zero (or less) consequences.
there will ALWAYS be consequences.

do you allow a country to work their problems out (as horrific as it can become).
OR do you go in and possibly extend the suffering of normal folk?

how long?
how long do you think it morally right to intrude on another country and most likely extend conflict,while feeding the rage and resentment creating even more fanatics and zealots who only desire is to bring the suffering to your your door?

and here is what really blows me away.
you are utterly oblivious to just how arrogant your statements are.
yes they are coming from a moral outrage.
yes they are coming from a reaction to horror.
but it is still arrogant all the same.

who are you?
who are you to dictate to anyone how or what they should do?

are there homeless in your country?
are there people starving?
is there injustice?
horrors?

or is it only the countries populated by brown people where the injustices warrant violence?
should america come to your country and clean house there as well?

hell,you wanted us in syria and now pakistan.
any other country you want us to drone?
specific people?

or is it a specific religion?
you seem awfully unsure of those muslim folk.
isreal has been doing all kinds of nasty things to the palestinians for the past 80 yrs.
how come no mention of america droning them?

are you starting to see why your argument makes no sense to me?
it is illogical.

because at the end of the day the poor and less fortunate will always pay the price.
how high a price are you willing to pay for seeing a wrong righted?
does it matter that those people you wept for and were outraged for paid an even higher price?

violence begets violence.
if history taught you anything it had to be that equation.

and a drone strike is violence.
it is intimidation.
it is assasination.
and it is wrong.
without a declaration of war passed by congress and no accountability it is wrong.

i will not make a deal with the devil to get justice today.
because when payment comes due the injustices wrought will tower over everything.
i know you disagree with me.
know that i am ok with that.

The slingshot does "hit harder" i.e. impart more momentum into the target and thus more likely to knock you down.
Intuitively this seems like it would therefore cause the most damage and for several 100 years this was the prevailing logic with muskets and cannonballs.

So much so in fact that when Charles Whitworth first introduced his rifle it was dismissed by the British army partly for having too small of a bullet. Whitworth used a smaller more stable round for its increased range and accuracy/stability (though there were also concerns about "muzzle fouling" and slower reload time).
It was believed at the time that the larger (slower) much less accurate bullets from the Enfield were more effective at actually injuring enemy soldiers, but history later demonstrated that speed and penetration can have just as much (if not more) effect on soft bodies than sheer mass and momentum.

Simply put, that large slingshot round would likely knock you to the floor in the same was as an MMA fighter landing a roundhouse square in your guts would. It might even penetrate the skin a bit and embed itself in you. What it won't do however is travel through your soft tissues at high velocity and create a large "temporary cavity" which is how most firearms do their real damage.

The 9mm etc. don't carry as much overall energy as the slingshot, but they do deliver it to a soft target much more effectively (that is to say lethally). A much more informative test would have been to fire them into ballistic clay, this would have highlighted the differences between speed, momentum and penetration much more clearly. The slingshot would leave a massive dint, the bullets would leave tunnels.

That said, the point they are making does stand to some extent. If you used that slingshot on someone that was trying to shoot you there is a good chance you'd knock them down (or at least stop them taking an aimed shot back for a few seconds). Hell you might even hospitalise them with a good shot!

It's not fair to say that the slingshot is a more "powerful" weapon but I think they did clearly demonstrate that it's a viable alternative under some circumstances. In fact for defending yourself in your own home etc. it might even be better!

Little/no risk of collateral damage (unless you miss really badly)
Very cheap
Would put most people on the floor with one good hit
No firearms licence or background checks needed
More difficult for a child to misuse (Most kids would lack the strength)
Enemy wouldn't expect it
Much less likely to kill
etc. etc.

Hell I'd get one myself if UK law wouldn't fk me over for using it.
It's illegal here to use a weapon specifically intended or kept for defense. i.e. if you grab a random object like a chair and beat up an intruder that's ok, if you have a baseball bat etc. by your bedside for expressly this purpose then it's not.
Handy then that one of my broken computer chairs happens to contain a loose 1ft long iron bar. Naturally I'd never even consider using such a thing violently, but who knows what might come to hand when faced with an intruder

(Seriously though, as broken furniture its a viable means of defence, if I kept it by my bedside as a "weapon" I'd be breaking the letter of the law by using it. Fucking stupid!)

@JiggaJonson

i dont mean to intrude on you and @blankfist passive aggressive slapfest but are you implying that ones metaphysical beliefs disqualifies them from having an opinion in regards to forms of government?

what if that persons beliefs were more in line with mainstream religious theology?
like say:christianity,judaism,muslim.

what about american indians?
would THEY be disqualified as well?
were you aware that their theology is strongly based on shamanistic practices?

or is it just those who hold a belief so far removed from your understanding as to be relegated to the stupid/crazy pile?
and therefore disqualified from holding an opinion on...well..anything.

the point you make is really no point at all but rather just a passive aggressive swipe at @blankfist.

and you wonder why he is not engaging with you.

There is a reason it's not 'that simple', it's supposed to be difficult for the powers that be to find a reason to intrude on your 'castle', even when they're scared.
I am hopeful that at least SOME will force them to articulate their specific reason for 'exigent circumstances' and hold their feet to the fire when they don't have one in most cases. In the specific instances where they knew or thought they knew where the suspect was (not when they had no idea) it made sense to evacuate surrounding houses, but not at gunpoint, and there was no reason whatsoever for the police to enter and search the home(s) when they suspected the suspect was trapped and totally surrounded in a neighbors yard, just none.
In the instances alluded to in the description, they'll have a hard time making the case for imminent danger or destruction of evidence, when they didn't know where he was or what he was doing they couldn't possibly have had evidence of either.

This women entered the room clearly believing the bullshit from the right that 'NAZI LIBERALS WANT TO FORCEFULLY TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY!!!!' She got rolled. No need to mention the fact that a women with a gun in her home is more likely to die from that gun than kill an intruder, or that under the proposed laws the woman in her story would still be able to legally own a shotgun.

And that photoshop, lol. Craptastic! looks like it was done by someone with little skill or thrown together in five minutes.

You think that is opinion and not fact?

A gun bought for self protection from unknown intruders is used to kill you? Isn't that the exact opposite result the gun owner intended?

Okay. If you say that is "opinion." I'd say that that is your "opinion."

Meanwhile in Georgia: Police said a Georgia mother hiding with her children shot an intruder five times after he chased them in their own home Friday afternoon, CBS affiliate WGCL-TV reports. [r
ead full story]

Benefits:
1. If a government did decide to crush it's citizens by way of direct physical means, then the citizens would have a marginally increased chance of defending themselves against small task forces.

2. If someone without invitation enters your home lacking any degree of friendly intentions, then having a small remote control sized devise to 'turn them off' could be beneficial to yourself and your loved ones, provided you knew how to use it safely and could analyze a situations quickly and calmly enough while rationally determining when to and when not to act with said device.

As a general statement about the item and not the skill or mentality of using the item, I think guns are a very effective, reliable, strategically advantageous and intelligently engineered tool for destroying a target from range while increasing your level of safety as best one can.

.. and it is for this core reason above while combined with others that I think civilians should not have them for a reason as illegitimately justified as 'I want one'.
Combine the high degree of effectiveness of the tool, while noting what the single effectiveness is (i.e. quick ranged destruction), with mental instabilities and you have a potentially negative and hard to control situation. Arming more people to act as defenders only further pushes the negative potential to higher levels as they are also subject to fluctuations of rational thought.

For those who want to 'shoot down' this above statement as a curable and treatable problem of mental health, you are inherently and naturally wrong. Emotions are not rational thought, they are effective survival mechanisms precisely because they can easily blind us to some logical thought processes that could otherwise get in the way of us doing what seemingly needs to be done, depending on which emotion is in question and any circumstantial details of the specific situation.
Emotions evolved over a long period of time and subsequently are not geared beneficially for all the challenges we face in this modern world, the result is byproduct effects.

In regards to my 1st stated benefit, if someone genuinely thinks that because they have a tool that can spit out 600 rounds of lead a minute with an effective accuracy range of 800 meters, that this is going to give them a realistically decent chance of going head to head and holding their own against an army of people who are just like themselves (i.e. standard human attributes) with the difference of this activity being the life they have dedicated themselves to professionally for years.. then that pro-gun human is grossly delusional.
The previous point doesn't even begin to touch on the sheer difference of resources in terms of quantity let alone quality, in that if you actually managed to hold your own for long enough, you would get bombed into oblivion without ever having a clue it was going to happen until at best a second or 2 before it occurred.

Re my 2nd stated benefit, if the intruder has already gained access to your house before you have your tool in hand and aimed at them, then there is as reasonable a chance they could get to you before you can defend yourself, at which point that tool could then potentially be used against you or you loved ones.

PS: crap, that was meant to be a short post.

You're just being facetious. "They're demons that much be purged by fire raaah raaah".

That's nice.

It doesn't have much to do with academic achievements, it's just about being able to maintain a healthy living. Having guns freely available is outdated; it's turning the US into the wild west, and civilization has moved on from there. Get with the times.

I wouldn't want to be in society where just anyone and everyone had a gun on them. Much less a high school or college - fuck those people are all retarded, I don't want them to have a gun.

I'm all for having a weapon in your home to protect yourself from intruders; it's your home, so it's outside of everyone else's "realm of protection", but in the public space minimizing weapons is a good thing. There will still be violent muggings - you have to avoid the places where these things happen, not go in brazenly with a gun - but less people on both sides will be killed outright, because the weapons that make kills easy aren't readily available.

Denmark's muslims aren't mistreated, they're coddled. We have muslim gangs and shit, that I would love to quash, but I don't want to go in there guns blazing. If I see a big group of "suspicious people", I just turn away and go some other way. And in general I just avoid the places that they roam in.

How do you mean "average as high"? Salary? Violence? I think you accidentally a word.

I think we have to wonder how much control the director actually has. I'm betting that the MONEY behind the film, which has the eventual final say on everything, has a slightly different interest in the final project - different than say, the amazing artists who create the awesomeness.

Hence you have people's financial expectations intruding upon the work of art. As a result, you get some degree of a movie designed to appeal to a very broad audience. And much of that audience is just fine with more stunts or CGI, and less plot or character development.

Such an intimate moment. I feel like I'm intruding.

@shinyblurry

I never said Ryan was an intellectual lightweight. Are you projecting your own fears again? Ryan is Palin lite in the sense that the Romney campaign knows it is losing so once again, they're making a risky gamble. Just like Palin was a gamble.

I also never said big gov't was the solution. Again, you seem to be projecting. Besides, it's funny how selective the right is about big gov't. they don't seem to mind a obscenely large military budget and they don't seem to mind gov't intruding on reproductive rights and issues of sexual orientation.

Gov't efficiency has nothing to do with size alone. big gov't can be inefficient and so can small. just because you cut the size of gov't doesn't magically make it efficient. on the other end of the spectrum, you've got a gov't that doesn't have the resources to do what they need to do..hence inefficiency and people get pissed when needed services are cut. Instead of this knee jerk, one-trick pony of small gov't. Efficient gov't actually has to do with compromise, and intelligence. Two things the right doesn't seem to be interested in.

your problems with big gov't has nothing to do with actual efficiency, it's about ideology.

That's the problem with Romney's campaign:

Romney: I'm running on my business experience, but we can't discuss my business experience. I'm also picking a VP that is notable only because of his budget...a budget I disagree with.

Ryan is a desparate attempt to rally the tea party. Problem is, the tea party isn't as big as they think they are. add to that Romney and his VP pick have this pesky effect of rallying the independents and women and moderates against them.

Doubling down and going further right isn't going to win the election. It didn't last time.

a curious striation
in the bone
teeth marks wouldn't
do this alone
was he well done
when he was served
did you taste
the little boy
after you sampled
the hor d'ourves?
a carving knife
the very thing
to plate him up
next to the asparagus
a life most delicious,
he went well with
dijon vinegrate.

edit: wrote this verse after we were talking about tulpas, thought I'd show it to you. Totally forgot about it

a tulpa born of brooding
a shadow light eluding
a sound that keeps intruding
as you're hiding and colluding