You do realize, don't you, that most modern western nations do not even come close to banning firearms altogether and still they don't come close to the US history of gun violence and mass shootings. I'm sure part of it is just cultural but mostly it's just due to a collection of rules and regulations that restrict what kind of weapons can be owned, how they can be used, and stringent checks on the people who want to acquire them. Check out this article for some info about gun ownership in Canada.

http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/13/news/how-us-gun-laws-stack-canadas-wake-florida-shooting

"Clinton’s debating performance is formidable because it combines her intelligence with a sincerity and level of conviction that often seem absent in other forums."

Sweet Zombie Jesus. SINCERITY!?!? I had to turn the debate off 1/2 way through because people bold faced lying to me really pisses me off, and it's all she did, lie about Sanders, his record, and his plans. She looked incredibly desperate and quite Trump like to me....willing to make up or twist anything to attack any 'threat'. That's not a character trait I want in a president.

Her position that if one doesn't vote against anything and everything the NRA is in favor of, one is an NRA shill, is disgustingly disingenuous. He voted against a bill that would make the entire industry culpable for any misuse of their product....meaning they could prosecute the manufacturer and gun store if someone uses a gun for anything illegal....and I'm damn glad he did. That's a TERRIBLE way to try to curtail gun violence, and was an irrational and obvious slap at the gun industry, and would set a disastrous precedent...imagine if the auto industry had to defend itself against charges every time someone had an accident, and had to pay every time someone is found to be guilty of any infraction....now extend that to every industry. Sanders saw the implications of that kind of over reach and didn't vote for it. Boo hoo.
Her constant misrepresentation of his national medical plan, actually stating that he'll make tens of thousands of people LOSE their insurance and cost $15 trillion while knowing that his plan gets EVERYONE 'insured' for 1/2 the cost by removing the insurance industry that supplies nothing is just plain insulting to anyone able to follow along. If you can understand that simple set of facts, you should be pissed at Hillary for lying to your face, because you KNOW she understands it...she's not dumb.
I certainly didn't see her 'crushing' Sanders on any single point...maybe I need to watch the rest of it, did it turn around 180deg at the end? (I doubt it).

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

"Access to guns" certainly plays a role, but I'm not convinced that it is even the biggest factor. In web researching gun violence rates and mass shooting rates by country *per capita*, I've found that the US isn't really as much of a "wild west" / lawless nation as the media portrays it.

For example:
http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/348197-obama-said-mass-shootings-dont-happen-in-advanced-countries-like-in-us-one-chart-proves-him-wrong/
has interesting data. It is *clearly* biased / written with an "agenda", and there are other problems with it (small countries with one or two incidents rule the top of the chart), but it is interesting nonetheless.

I think culture has as big or bigger impact as anything else.


As to your final paragraph, I'm hesitant to paint all "terrorists and mass-shooters" with the "pathetic little shit" brush. I think the tendency to dismiss them in that way when trying to delve deeper into the questions of *why* does us a disservice in terms of preventing and/or limiting those people and incidents.

It's sorta like examining Hitler. Went about as evil and wrong as a human being has ever gone, and so we often want to just leave it at that. But I think that there have probably been plenty of garden-variety non-famous people who have been as evil and wrong as Hitler, but simply didn't have the unique level of power and opportunity to, uh, "sink to his depths".

Idk man. I'm out looking in too, but my list of problems guns are a good solution for stops pretty short after "killing something you want dead". I mean, cars and knives can do that pretty good too, but I've not seen many getting to work or chopping vegetables with their automatic. Well, unless its an automatic transmission car, which I gather are quite popular state side. Gun, automatic gun I meant. Also I guess technically the vegetable chopping thing is _possible_ with a firearm. I digress.

When used as self defence I think they might sometimes have uses if you are prepared and have it ready. My problem is that the only person who knows for sure that they are going to be in a gun point robbery/rape/[insert crime] situation on any given day is the guy doing the robbing/raping/[insert crime]ing. I mean, is the aim to get the point where every man woman and child is so strapped to the nines that mutually assured destruction is guaranteed? Excuse me from taking it the logical extreme, but I don't think it's entirely fallacious.

They are fun? I've shot some guns. It was fun. I didn't need to own them mind. Hunting aint for me, but evidently some people enjoy it...but I guess I'm not sure how strident I would be in defence of my hobby if it involved the use of a machine that has been streamlined by war to be the most efficient man-portable tool for taking life that we can conceive.

So yeah, I certainly think your right that is more to gun violence than gun ownership. Clearly there are countries with relatively high levels of gun ownership with comparatively little gun violence. (altho the US still has almost twice as many guns per person than the next nearest...so yah). I just struggle to understand exactly what reason there is for having quite so many of them given that everybody else seems to be doing mostly ok without them. What exactly are these problems the Americans should be using their guns as a solution for? Can knives and cars, which according to gun advocates are at least as lethal, perhaps be leveraged in creative ways to be the solution to the problems for which apparently only guns can currently solve?

I don't know if the right's stance on gun control is the hypocrisy I'd point out about their so called "pro-life" stance, but I'll get to the hypocrisy in a moment.

It is odd how after every mass shooting here, which means we get to hear it a lot, the political right always jumps on the "oh no, they are trying to take our guns away", "if guns kill people, why don't they try to ban cars which kill more people" and other memes when nobody is talking about banning guns or forcing everyone to register all the guns they own, let alone take guns away. Closing the gun show loophole (and all such laws proposed that would close it still left open the ability to pass guns to family members without a license or registration), allow the CDC to track gun violence... these aren't unreasonable requests. Even exempting the gun industry from the same liability laws we hold nearly every other industry to (with a huge notable exception to fracking... hmm... another one the right loves) seems fairly reasonable, though I guess I can semi see the concerns... of course said concerns go back to the fact that nearly anyone can get a gun quickly and easily. 30+ homicides a day, 50+ gun related suicides every day, 40+ accidental deaths every day, hundreds treated for gun assault injuries every day, thousands of crimes committed at gun point from rape to robbery and burglary, and the list goes on and on... I support one's right to own guns, including hand guns, but we need to admit there is a gun violence problem. And it isn't a heart problem, if Cain had a gun he'd have used a gun, a rock is what was available to him at the supposed moment of action. And it isn't a lack of Jesus problem as over 78% of people in the US general population and other far more democratic, first word, advanced economy, fully free will, countries like the Netherlands have far more Atheists than us, but have far less gun violence... less violence overall. It's not a video game problem, as those games are popular outside the US, and again no correlative rise in violence. (And yes, the UK violence rate is higher, but it isn't an apples for apples correlation, they define far more things into their national violent crime rates than we do, when all things are equaled out, they have a much smaller one.) So it's time that the right just admit there is an issue with guns and violence in this country.

But as I said, we don't need to point to the rights stance on guns to prove they aren't actually pro-life. Just point to the fact they are the ones who are most in support of the death penalty. Just point to the fact they are the most pro-war and are the loudest war hawks, despite the fact Jesus said "blessed are the peacemakers" I guess they figure that means forcing everyone to the US's will, since somehow God anointed the US with special privilege above all other nations (after all the Bible mentions the eagle rising against the bear, which must be the US rising against the Soviets). Point out that they support stand your ground, somebody taking your nice new TV, stand your ground and turn that crime into a death penalty there in your home... of course Jesus said if somebody takes your coat to give your shirt too, not that I'm sure He was meaning to freely let people take all your stuff, but I can guarantee He wouldn't have been pro-stand your ground. They don't support having guaranteed affordable health care, or having government assistance for the needy and the poor. Apparently that life only matters while in the womb, the quality of life after that doesn't matter, and if they can make it worse for the child then they don't care, so long as their taxes don't help the child.

They aren't by any stretch of the imagination pro-life. They are anti-abortion. I think abortion is far from ideal, and should be a last option. The best option is the same thing that the women not having abortions have, affordable health care. Access to contraceptive options like IUDs (which don't stop fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterus which they try to claim) and the pill... and it doesn't matter if the pill itself is cheap, the doctor visit to get them and follow ups need to be affordable too... somehow the right really likes to blame women and hold them accountable for the pregnancy, when in fact it's the guy who should be blamed. If they don't want a pregnancy, then he should wrap it as soon as it comes out of the pants. No playing "just the tip" or anything else like that. Then dispose of properly, and ideally, don't rely on it as the sole method of birth control. So guarantee all people, including women, access to affordable health care. Give them their free choice of birth control and I'd say encourage the use of the IUD which has an amazingly low failure rate compared to other birth control methods... that is if she's going to use a contraceptive on her end. Don't make it a crime to have a miscarriage... which is some of the most asinine law proposals ever created... and rape is rape, no such thing as "legitimate" rape, I don't care if the Bible is into punishing women for being rape victims (a virgin not betrothed has to marry the rapist and he has to pay her father 50 shackles of silver for the father's loss or property and the couple may never divorce, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 or if she's in a city and betrothed then she has to be put to death Deuteronomy 22:23-24, a passage defended because it says "because she cried not", but how often do people ignore crimes or say they didn't see anything, heck people film others raping a passed out girl, so "because she cried not" is a poor excuse).

TLDR: The right are far from being pro-life far beyond gun control, they support war, they support the death penalty, they support stand your ground, they are against the government helping the needy and the poor, and are against a truly affordable health care policy that would largely eliminate the need for abortions in the first place.

One reason for the lack of data is a 1996 bill that stipulated that no CDC funding could be used to advocate or promote gun control. This was vague enough to ensure that research into the effects of gun violence has never been funded since.

America's problem is not guns, it's the awful social situation that rampant capitalism and consumerism has landed it in. Same as drugs aren't the reason why large communities of black people are stuck in the same cycle of drugs/gangs/violence/death. It's not because of the drugs, or the people themselves, it is because they are pretty much abandoned by society.

Guns are just a means to an end, and an easy one at that. They are an easy answer when you want to cause violence to someone else, or yourself.

The fact that so many people want to cause violence to others or themselves is what needs to be looked at.

I've visited many parts of the US and the people have generally struck me as friendly and polite to a fault. People will just strike up a conversation with you as if you were a long lost relative. I've had people sit with me on a public bus well past their stop just to make sure I got off at the right place. At it's heart, it's a great country. But the flip side is that currently, it's built on basic inequity and inequality. I was in LA when Katrina hit, and watching what happened was freaking unreal for me as a person who lives in an area prone to cyclones. When we get hit, the entire community bands together and takes care of each other. When New Orleans got hit, it was post apocalypse dog eat dog.

Getting rid of guns in the US won't stop inequality, it won't stop senseless accidents and it won't stop violence. The UK has had strict regulations on guns for years and *surprise* has a very high rate of knife crime. Australia introduced tough gun legislation after the massacre at Port Arthur massacre, but we didn't really have serious violence problems before that so while people claim that bans on semi-autos etc "worked", it's very hard to quantify going from "very little gun violence" to "very little gun violence" as much of a shift... It's a core difference in the social fabric of countries.

People who completely focus on banning the gun are neglecting to look at the bigger picture, and are often doing so deliberately because the bigger picture is far harder to solve. Same as the war on drugs. Regulate guns, sure, enforce safety and bring in high penalties for misuse or allowing your weapon to be misused. But banning them won't fix anything.

I don't really mind the video, thinking twice before owning a firearm is a good thing. But I think it misses the point.

You're probably right that a lot of these incidents could have been avoided if the gun owners were taking proper care of their firearm.

However, the folks interested in acquiring a weapon were doing so "for protection." They were not trained in safe handling of a weapon. They weren't even enthusiasts.

In instances of gun violence, it is rarely the people (enthusiasts/hobbyists) that take firearm safety seriously who are committing acts of violence, but people who haven't learned to be disciplined about these weapons. And to be honest these disciplined users are a far smaller fraction of gun owners than should be.

Guns do not necessarily have to be dangerous when cared for and respected properly. This requires diligence--which too many gun owners lack.

The folks who entered the shop looking for a weapon to protect themselves learned that the idea they had that owning a gun would improve their safety was a false one. That is all. It doesn't mean that you, are a dangerous gun owner, or that your guns should be taken away from you. Some folks just aren't ready for that responsibility.

Tobacco: 229875
Alcohol: 65678
Drunk Driving: 22204
Drug Abuse: 16423
Prescription Drug Overdose: 9852
..........
Gun related: 8,561


Dishonest use of numbers. the "gun related" tallys the number of people killed by gun violence ie people shot and killed intentionally by other people, it does not include suicide (about 20k dead a year) or accidental shootings (about 700 dead a year)

Secondly, lets look at these other causes of death: Lets see, all of these, except drunk driving, is people KILLING THEMSELVES, unintentionally. Theres a pretty big difference. Drunk driving is ILLEGAL, and nobody is arguing that it would be a good idea to have more of it. And you know, its not like we're trying to get more people killed by tobacco, for instance, in fact, lots of people are working on trying to lower the number of deaths from all these other things, but just because more people die from alcohol or tobacco use, ten to fifteen thousand murder by guns a year doesnt really count??

Secondly, people are on the whole not actually working to get guns BANNED, but to implement restrictions, perhaps in the same way owning and driving a car has its restrictions. Cars, you see, are not banned. But there are RESTRICTIONS. Does anyone feel there arent enough cars around?. No. But there are restrictions. You need a drivers license. you need to follow some traffic rules. Similar things could be implemented for guns. It would be a start.
Another place to start is gun CULTURE, which is probably the intent of this video, changing people minds about guns.

Heres a challenge to your statistics: The number of people SAVED by guns. We always hear of the elusive situation of a bad criminal breaking in to kill your family, but luckily dads an NRA member and chases the bad guy away with a trusty old gun. How often does shit like that ever actually happen?

"States United to Prevent Gun Violence." SUP, GuV?

This is a parody? Perhaps...

But... I grew up in Huntington Beach, in that narcissistic white drug culture. I am a product of this... parody? LMFAO. The white "elders" winking and nodding. So HILARIOUS. That video footage -- I know those locations, and I also know from experience and reputation that gun violence between not just whites and whites has occurred right around the location this footage was filmed. PCH, main, the pier -- fucking hell. Mostly a cool if not overcrowded touristy area -- but, it can erupt into random acts of violence. There's a freaking MMA gym on every other corner; TESTOSTERONE INSPIRED, X-GAME/MMA SPONSORED RICH ASSHOLE CENTRAL. There is a problem and it's overly meta with all of your weird perspectives outside my white ghetto.

All of the cool downtown areas of socal have this tendency though. Some of it racial between not just white people -- the Mexican girls who beat the Vietnamese girl to death in downtown Santa Ana not too many years ago, just because she photo bombed them. It's all a part of the same problem really, and not just white culture, but it still remains one side of the dice of random youth violence in the county.

The propaganda machine will say this is an all time low, but I can't ignore the fact that I grew up right there in that video and know it all first hand! And that's what news is about. Not an agenda. It's getting it right. It's funny because it's true. NOT parody -- unless treating white people like they treat the rest of people is considered "parody". That's the only parody I witnessed in this video, which is pretty incidental to me.

...Yes, using a gun for violence is almost always illegal. Somehow you still seem to think having one prevents this violence more often than it creates it, even though your own statistics show it's 50 times more likely to be used illegally than in a legal, but violent way. What was your point?
Abortion doesn't kill a single child, blastocysts are not children, neither are embryos. As someone who usually sounds libertarian, how can you support forcing one person to support another 'person' (since you insist it's a person, I'm not conceding that it is) both financially and physically, completely against the first person's will and wishes?!? I say if the thing can survive on it's own, fine, let it. If not, it has no right to force someone else to incubate it, and neither does anyone else. (Thank you supreme court).
I do agree with your final statement however. Go figure.
EDIT: My issue is it gives no hint what it means by "Measures to prevent gun violence" (some people say arming everyone is the best measure) and also that it both tries to shame us for trying to solve the problem with politicians and instructs us to do our part by writing our politicians...WHAT?!?

Boo hoo hoo.

98+% of gun violence is from illegal gun use.

Abortion kills more children then every statistic listed if this filth film.

Abortion kills more children than ALL murders in the USA.

Guns are not the problem. Morality is.

There already are reasonable restrictions.

(I can't really ask to be exempt from laws that don't even exist. But I can ask for those new laws to not be written.)

Consider this.
Maybe /you/ are not special.
Maybe /you/ are not in this world to do with other people's lives how /you/ see fit.
Maybe /you/ should take the very advice you would give to violent offenders, and just leave people in peace.


Yes, this country has clusterfuckish problems.
But guns are not the cause.

We have a very high percentage of uneducated people. For example, my high school, in one of the nicest areas of the entire country, with the super easy U.S. curriculum, with the super relaxed and curved U.S. grading policy, 30% of kids that entered never graduated. And that's one of the better examples in the country.

The problem isn't even the education system. It's cultural. Kids show up to socialize, and smart kids get made fun of. Often they have no parental pressure to perform either. No amount of money can fix that kind of schooling, because it's not a schooling problem.

They don't just miss out on an education that helps them obtain gainful employment. The concepts of empathy and solidarity are essentially omitted.

There is a proverbial horde out there, many under strong financial pressures. Having the same consumer impulses that most people here have, they resort to augmenting their incomes with questionable activities.

The median *individual* income in the U.S. is around 26k / year. Half the population makes less than that... The cheapest unassisted rent in my area is ~800/month. Go to new york, and you could be paying 1600/month each with 3 other people for a rat hole. After water, electricity, food, fuel, you'd be wiped out. Any emergency (broken down car, medical expenses, whatever), and you are in the hole.

The nice areas you see on TV are a minority. Most of the country is a po-dunk shit hole, full of people that get desperate the moment things go bad. Which leads to restricted activities, and that tends to lead to violent encounters.

We have a very high percentage of arrested/jailed people.
When you're arrested, even if not convicted, you're not acceptable by a large proportion of jobs. The police even call your employer right away to let them know you've been arrested. You are essentially marked.

Like I said, 1 in 18 men are in the system. That's a LOT of people. Other than those on parole, they aren't working. Those that are working aren't making much money (on account of the undereducation and arrest record), and will likely be back in the system.

BTW, more than half of them are in jail for an activity that never even involved another person.
Most are there for harmless stuff.

Once these people do get out of jail, if they weren't already under financial pressure, they likely now are, and will stand a good chance at reinforcing the problem population.

(eg. Person with their life more or less in order goes to jail for having a bag of drugs, then they get out, can't get a job, and they need to resort to sketchy crap to make ends meet. Maybe get into violence, but often just return to jail.)

But, it's not by accident. Our jails are for-profit, with people in government making money from the jailing industry. Either by campaign contributions, lobbying, or by having financial stake in the companies.

The most self-serving thing the government can do, is keep the problem going, and tell people that they should rely on the government to fix it by getting tough. Then the govies make money on the jailing side, and they reinforce their public mandate.

The jailing companies themselves put inmates to work making cheap goods (ever bought a t-shirt that was made in the U.S.? It was probably inmate labor.), and then 'charge the inmates rent', effectively paying them a penny a day. Modern slavery.

All along the way, the taxpayers are paying the bills, and it's just a giant trough to feed from.

I hope you can imagine why I'm averse to making more ways to jail people that aren't being a problem.

It's also why I'm inclined to make drugs legal (pretty much try Portugal's approach). So as to bring that trade into the light, and end the gangster turf wars (which are a high proportion of the gun violence).

A lot of this could be fixed long-term by social engineering, using media to elevate the prestige of education and productivity. But we know that that is not going to happen when there is no money to be made on it.

-scheherazade