" At present, a little more than half of all Americans own the sum total of about 320 million guns, 36% of which are handguns, but fewer than 100,000 of these guns are used in violent crimes."

Per year. You don't cite your source, but this is looks to me to be an underestimate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey there are half about half a million people claiming to be victim of a gun related crime over the course of a year. I remember being a victim of a gun crime in America (the perp was an British-born and educated woman) where the police said that they weren't going to follow things up because they were too busy with more serious crimes and they weren't confident of successful prosecution, they didn't even bother to look at the bullets or interview the perpetrator. I'd be surprised if it was even officially reported for crime statistic purposes.

"So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least."

You didn't discuss the confounding variables.

But nevertheless, nobody is saying that owning guns makes you intrinsically more criminal. The argument here seems to be that criminals or those with criminal intent will find it much easier to acquire firearms when there are hundreds of millions of them distributed in various degrees of security across the US.

And those that have firearms, who are basically normal and moral people, may find themselves in a situation where their firearm is used, even in error, and causes harm - a situation obviously avoided in the absence of firearms and something that isn't necessarily included in crime statistics.

"In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home"

Yes, but here's a fun fact. I've been burgled a few times, all but one of those times I was at home when it happened. You know what the burglar was armed with? Nothing. Do you know what happened when I confronted him with a wooden weapon? He pretended he knew someone that lived there and when that fell through he ran away. When the police apprehended him, there wasn't any consideration that he might be armed with a gun and the police merely put handcuffs on him and he walked to the police car. He swore and made some idle and non-specific threats, according to the police, but that's it. In any event, this isn't extraordinary. There are still too many burglaries that do involve violence, of course.
Many burglaries in Britain are actually vehicle crimes, with opportunity thrown in. That is: The primary purpose of the burglary is to acquire car keys (this is often the easiest way to steal modern vehicles), but they may grab whatever else is valuable and easy too.

"The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings."

What impact did it have on gun prevalence? Not really enough to stop the sentence 'guns are prevalent in the US' from being true....

" So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed."

I missed the part where you provided the reasoning that connects your evidence to this conclusion.

"Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. "

This is silly. Guns don't get manufactured and then 32% of them get stolen from the manufacturers warehouse. They get bought and some get subsequently stolen. If there were less guns made and sold there would be less guns available for felons to acquire them privately, less places to steal them or buy stolen ones on the black market, less opportunity for renting or purchasing from a retailer. Thus - less felons with guns.

If times got tough, and I thought robbing a convenience store was a way out of a situation I was in - I would not be able to acquire a firearm without putting myself in considerable danger that outweighs the benefits to the degree that pretending to have a gun is a better strategy. I have 'black market contacts' so I might be able to work my way to someone with a gun, but I really don't want to get into business with someone that deals guns because they are near universally bad news.

" states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate."

Almost all States have such laws, making the comparison pretty meaningless.

"In fact, it's {number of mass shootings} declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. "

I think 'most dead in one incident' is a poor measure. I think total dead over a reasonable time period is probably better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
The UK appears once. It is approx. 1/5 the population of the US. The US manages to have five incidents in the top 10.

Statistics can be fun, though, huh?

" In any case, do we have any evidence to believe that the regulators (presumably the police in this instance) will be competent, honest, righteous, just, and moral enough to take away the guns from private citizens"

You've done a lot of hard work to show that most gun owners are law-abiding and non-violent. As such, the police won't go door to door, citizens will go to the police.

"How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns?"

The same way they remove contraband from other recalcitrants. I expect most of them will ask, demand, threaten and then use force - but as usual there will be examples where it won't be pretty.

"Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns?"

That's how it typically goes down here in the UK, yes.

"Does this then not presume that "gun control" is essentially an aim for only the government (i.e., the centralized political elite and their minions) to have guns at the exclusion of everyone else?"

The military has had access to weapons the citizenry is not permitted to for some considerable time. Banning most handguns etc., would just be adding to the list.

"Is the government so reliable, honest, moral, virtuous, and forward thinking as to ensure that the intentions of gun control legislation go exactly as planned?"

No, but on the other hand, can the same unreliable, dishonest, immoral and unvirtuous government ensure that allowing general access to firearms will go exactly as planned?

You see, you talk the talk of sociological examination, but you seem to have neglected any form of critical reflection.

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary

"From a sociological perspective, it's interesting to note that those in favor of gun control tend to live in relatively safe and wealthy neighborhoods where the danger posed by violent crime is far less than in those neighborhoods where gun ownership is believed to be more acceptable if not necessary"

On the other hand, I've been mugged erm, 6 times? I've been violently assaulted without attempts to rob another half dozen or so. I don't tend to hang around in the sorts of places middle class WASPs would loiter, shall we say. I'm glad most of the people that cross my path are not armed, and have little to no idea how to get a gun.

You don't source this assertion as far as I saw - but you'll have to do better than 'it's interesting' in your analysis, I'm afraid.

No formatting, because too much typing already.

If what you say is true, he probably knows that this value is meant to represent the average. Nevertheless, some people actually believe that this really means every 7 seconds every day, which is the myth he tries to debunk in this video, not the study (if there is one) that people apparently misinterpreted.

To be sure, it does not take "studies" and "experts" to "prove" that smog turns healthy breathable air into unhealthy unbreathable air.

But, again, the consensus among proponents of man-made global warming pretty much all agree that the cause is greenhouse gases. And the consensus is also that cattle accounts for the main source of greenhouse gases. I honestly don't see how anyone concerned with man-made global warming can ignore this and, therefore, not be vegetarian (i.e., be congruent in their behaviors and beliefs).

I recommend reading "Hot Talk, Cold Science", endorsed by respected physicist the late Frederick Seitz, William Harper professor of Physics at Princeton, Richard Lindzen, meteorologist at MIT, written by physicist Fred Singer.

If you want to know where Prof. Singer is coming from, read this (and skeptics are not "deniers"- that's just a slur).

But before you freak out, let me restate, it matters not; clean air is good either way; do things that contribute to clean air (like end the state -- > good luck with that!).

(Better to read and have these discussions with actual working climate scientists than to bother with Internet pundits either way.)

There is also "consensus" as to the three types of "deniers." If anyone calls me a "denier," I'd be curious as to which of the three types of "deniers" you think I belong to (as indicated in the Singer article linked above). And you can then give me your scientific explanations as to why my stance is not valid.

This is something worth keeping in mind (from Singer):

"I have concluded that we can accomplish very little with convinced warmistas and probably even less with true deniers. So we just make our measurements, perfect our theories, publish our work, and hope that in time the truth will out."

The warmistas matter as much as the deniers. And the bottomline remains: what are you going to do about it anyway? As has been shown over and over, your "votes" don't count for much (or anything at all). So, what are you going to do about this (other than fume and get your panties in a twist on videosift)? The same is true with the "deniers." And the skeptics (i.e., true scientists).

Science also doesn't work by consensus. No real scientist will say otherwise. You either prove/falsify some hypothesis or you don't. You don't determine the truth in science by "consensus." Scientific consensus, as has been said, is itself unscientific.

There is no "consensus" on the acceleration speed of falling objects. There is no "consensus" on whether the Earth is orbiting the sun. There is no "consensus" on water being made up of H2O. These you can measure and find out for yourself. (In fact, Galileo had less than 5% "consensus" on whether the Earth orbits the sun at the time of his experiments. Facts matter. "Consensus?" Not so much.)

But,

“If the science were as certain as climate activists pretend, then there would be precisely one climate model, and it would be in agreement with measured data. As it happens, climate modelers have constructed literally dozens of climate models. What they all have in common is a failure to represent reality, and a failure to agree with the other models. As the models have increasingly diverged from the data, the climate clique have nevertheless grown increasingly confident—from cocky in 2001 (66% certainty in IPCC’s Third Assessment Report) to downright arrogant in 2013 (95% certainty in the Fifth Assessment Report).”

Still, this does not in any way equate "denial" of man-made global warming or whatever other "climate change." That is simply an unfounded conflation made up by the propagandists which so many here take on as gospel.

And it still does not let anyone "off the hook" about actually doing something that matters if you care about it so much.

Let me know if anyone finds any "errors" in the science of the NGIPCC articles and studies that I posted above.

Ah yes, unfortunately this is unlikely to be a discussion that will change any minds. I understand the sets of beliefs and logical connections that would lead an intelligent person to oppose abortion, which I respect as a perfectly valid position for such a person to maintain. It would be truly monstrous to give such a person no choice in whether or not to undergo an abortion.

My own beliefs and logic, which naturally I feel are equally valid, lead me to a different overall conclusion, but I nevertheless feel it would certainly be no less monstrous to give a person with beliefs similar to my own no choice in whether or not to undergo an abortion.

@shveddy

I don't buy his overstretched ticking time bomb analogy or the idea of a point of no return. Countless people have predicted peak oil, global resource wars and the like for decades with none of significance eventuating.

Historically this argument would have been even more credible looking around the baby boomer growth of post WWII, because relative population growth was much higher and families were much larger even in developed countries.

Nevertheless, (taking food as an example) agricultural yields multiplied while (taking the US as an example) agricultural employment fell from ~35% in 1900 to <3% today.

Again, pre-GFC, both general food and oil prices were reaching near historic highs. We've since seen moves towards expanding oil/gas supply through fraking and more aggressive and widespread use of GM to enhance yields as well as purely enhancing supply in response to high prices. Both have stayed more or less flat since 08.

The point is, it will be a gradual change, one that society will respond to automatically through price rises, and incentives to create more efficient use of the resources that are available.

Also as far as how to achieve a reduced population as you alluded to, people don't respond to vague global threats that don't immediately impact them currently. Like global warming. Anything other than financial incentives or legal coercion won't have an impact.

(Preserving the stream)

Will edit later...not worth....

Oh, coward, liar, and felon (admitted)...still.

Can run from the truth here, but nevertheless....

The person that pulls out is clearly portrayed as being at fault. He apologizes for his error, in the fictional scenario where they get to talk before the impact.
One of the human biases is the feeling of self-perfection at certain tasks. It directs it glare at the attitude 'I can travel at or just above the speed limit with impunity as I won't make mistakes.' This advert shows that even if we assume you are perfect, we can't assume all other drivers are perfect - it is a known fact that other people are regularly at fault for road incidents, even if you are not.
Nevertheless even if you drive well, an accident could find you as someone else might make an error you perfect driver you.

One should be cautious when approaching a junction with a vehicle at it, and driving at or above the speed limit shows, to me, a lack of due care and attention.

Because he was travelling a little over the speed limit rather than the more sensible just under it given the road conditions (vehicle approaching a side junction), this meant that once the man had pulled out - the man on the major road travelled maybe an extra 4 metres before even beginning to apply the brakes. In total his braking distance was probably 15-20 metres longer.

The consequence of these factors (slower initial speed and greater distance to stop in) is that speed of impact difference is greater than the 10mph variance in speed of travel. So the impact energies would be considerably less had the initial speed been a mere 10mph slower, even if an impact remains unavoidable.

Hopefully the advert will increase the number of people who will realize they can't trust other drivers completely, and may slow and have their feet ready to hit the brake in the event that somebody pulls out/stops suddenly/unexpectedly reverses/changes lane. And in their cases this may considerably reduce the amount of energy during impacts.

The advert shows both drivers as eminently human. It does not demonize the person at fault for the crash happening, nor does it demonize the person who was travelling over the limit. It just portrays two people showing regret for their part in the consequences.

Nevertheless I think we can all agree to blame the kicker.

Most of these are the same reason, and none are really arguments against the viewer's existence so much as what we think of as their conventional physical presence. Descartes, who was a half-wit, nevertheless managed to make a convincing argument for existence, even if he did pussy out of exploring some of the dimensions of his experiment in order to pursue his religious agenda.

The idea of simulated reality is pretty difficult to dispute. Of the many simulated universes we reasonably expect to be eventually created, what are the chances of finding ourselves in the single original 'real' reality? What's amusing is this doesn't really have any significant consequences for the way we live.

Yes, probably in that case you would not be intuiting, but inferring. That is perhaps one of the funny things about intuition. Once you do understand those concepts, have you 'lost' your ability to intuit about such things?

That may account for why so many people (dare I say) fear science. As you say though, looked at another way, by learning and deeply internalizing the previously unintuitive concepts, you develop a more complex and Truer form of intuition. A person, however, who cannot or will not put forth the effort to internalize unintuitive concepts is condemned to live in a world governed by strange principles they do not understand. I can see how that may be a disturbing and frightening way to live.

The easy way out, of course, is to say, "it is god's will that the world works this way, and god's will is unknowable." I can see the comfort that can be found in that, and even a glimmer of wisdom there, so I should make the disclaimer that I don't believe this is a bad thing *when applied with intelligence and thoughtfulness.*

Naturally, it doesn't have to be 'god' either. It could simply be an acceptance that some things are beyond what can be truly understood in a single lifetime. Personally, I try to find some sort of a balance--particularly because I'm an engineer and sometimes I just have to accept that something works without really understanding how. For instance, I rely a good deal on quantum mechanical phenomena that I only understand in the crudest sense, and I just have to be satisfied that I can, without any genuine intuitive understanding, mechanically manipulate symbols on a page and create something that nevertheless works. Attempting to intuit on that level (though it may be fun as an exercise), is beyond me personally, and properly in the realm of academia. It's why I have so much respect for this guy and his silly spinning wheel.

As for things like existential questions of the soul and free will and all that? Well, I'm already way too far off topic, and I only got this far because of the couple glasses of wine I had with dinner.

In response to a question posed above about this being number 1, there is something about watching people who are very good at their jobs working that I find appealing. I'm not sure why, really. Another example would be the Spanish bricklayer video a week or so back.

Calm down man, I realise that he hadn't outright condemned this in public, but let's face it, the likelihood that he had nothing to do with it is slim. And if you aren't used to audience-catching video titles by now, then where have you been?

Nevertheless, thank you for pointing out the facts so others don't get misled

I would also say *skillful because he does something no one else can. It is a different skill set than say rapping or driving, but epic nevertheless.

Personally (American, btw), I find a lot of things that technically may be the same phonetically, I nonetheless pronounce slightly differently depending on the spelling. For instance, the 'f' sound in, say, philanthropic, I pronounce slightly differently. It's not something I could put into writing really, but when spelled with a "ph" I hold that sound slightly longer, it's a little breathier, and don't press my teeth against my lip so much or so abruptly, as I would were it spelled with an 'f.' A linguist would probably have a better vocabulary to describe this, but it's also the same for 'c' when it makes an 's' sound. There are many other examples as well. Another, off the top of my head is "can't." Were it spelled with an 'k', the 'a' sound would be more abrupt than when I pronounce it's proper spelling. "Ake" I would pronounce slightly differencly from "ache". It's subtle, but the 'ch' sound does make it in there.

Maybe this is just me, and all things being equal, I would prefer simplified spellings, but I nevertheless pronounce things with a subtle difference depending on how they're spelled.

Who the hell said I would do something like that? You really take some assumptions, don't you?

I didn't say what the cop did was proper. I'm saying he did what he did because he didn't want to take the time to arrest this tourist. The cop probably has also seen his share of auto accidents involving stupid speeders.
Nevertheless, he should have just arrested the guy instead of being foul.

I'm not cowering in any bunker. You guys who think 'it couldn't happen here' are really wishful-thinkers. There is a very thin line between civilization and chaos. Nevertheless, have you ever heard of a home invasion robbery? Happens every day....but not to you, right?