Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

Lower than the serial killer class of clowns?

Well, I had it drycleaned....when are you taking me out?

No, opportunity is not the same as evidence, but is an important part of making a case.

I'm pretty sure there was body camera evidence of him saying he was going to kill the guy during the chase (maybe a different case), but none of the shooting or aftermath from any officer's body camera. This is the uselessness of a camera they control, it should be always on, live streamed to a secured server, not with an on off switch and no backup.

Remember, the only evidence we know of that he's a drug dealer came from the same suspicious search. Once the cop has opportunity to plant evidence, the case is blown because it's reasonable to think they might have, so any conviction is out.

Once he shoots, there's no reason he should have anything else to do with the case (unless he was alone, but that's not the case here). Allowing the shooter to be the investigator is a clear conflict of interest and allows a suspect to investigate himself and tamper with evidence. Normal procedure would be for him to let others take over immediately and surrender his gun pending investigation....so there is no legitimate reason for the killer to be in the car.........

Edit: and how to explain he cop DNA on the gun but not the victim's? It makes no sense unless it's the cop's gun never touched by the victim and placed afterwards, otherwise it would at a minimum have his blood on it and logically his sweat and fingerprints inside and out.

The cops had reason to search, on camera, but not the shooter with his body cam turned off.

Newt
I do go to bed hatting you but then I think of you in that yellow dress then all is well.


Having a clear opportunity to plant evidence is not the same as planting evidence.

When was his body camera on? When was it turn off? You are making a reach that he turned it off to "plant a gun" . If this happened then yes I would have more suspicion towards the cop.

Other than facts you are speculating , pure conjecture of a planting of a gun. That does not hold up in court..

Ok

Black guy shoots me - a white drug dealer -- then plants a gun in my car .. but only evidence is a bystander showing the killer messing around in his back seat then goes to my dead body in the car and later a gun is "found" ... But no one see this planting -- DNA of only the black shooter found on the planted gun.

Yes in this case you might be convicted of planting a gun.. Or some other that would suggest that you planted the gun.

..........Only because there is no reason for the killer to be in the car...............


The cop had reason -- to search for weapons/ drugs / paperwork of the car etc. So not quite apples to apples.

Ah, the only track off The Wall I ever liked. It's always bothered me that early Floyd is killer and all of those junior high / high school The Wall worshippers (who did not listen to early Floyd) really put me off on the Floyd until I got into bands that I consider even better than Floyd - like Faust and CAN, and once my head was straight for real psychedelic music of the late 60's & early 70's - went back into the Floyd catalog and found out how great they were before The (fucking) Wall. Check out Live at Pompeii if you're a Floyd fan and never seen it.

If anyone is looking for a serial killer I think I found him.

I find it much more sad that people are willing to delude themselves with placating mythos that can't stand the slightest critical examinations than I find the fact that there's almost certainly no god(s) by any definition. Lack of a supreme being is not a scary thing to me in the least, but a capricious, judgmental, incomprehensible, vengeful god ready to cast immortal souls into hell for eternity over small rule infractions is horrifying.

Reality is scary. I get why people would hide their heads under the safety blanket of religion(s), I just disagree that it's any more useful against reality than hiding under a sheet is against home invaders. It might make you feel better because you can't see them, but that's all (unless they are as dumb as the bugblatter beast of Traal, who thinks if you can't see it, it can't see you).

I feel bad for your uncle, who it sounds like believes in god out of a fear instilled in him as a child. Consciously, it sounds like he understands it's an irrational belief, but fear makes people do irrational things all the time. Fear is the mind killer.

The War on Black people / War on drugs satisfies the needs of too many americans who profit and wish to continue the implementation of New Jim Crow. Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy worked, but private prisons, drug treatment centers, police departments, DEA and a host of other entrenched institutions would be laying off 100's of thousands of employees the moment real legalization and treatment initiatives become standard nationwide. Simply put the cure is a profit and job killer and the free market can't have that.

He's a Derek, and Dereks don't run.
*quality bad movie. Pairs well with Killer Clowns.

Fuck. I can barely type right now as I'm breaking down in tears begging the people in the video to help the poor little boy.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck... this breaks my goddamned heart and is so horrifying to watch...

I'm so afraid of this kind of thing happening to my boys, but as much as is rips my heart out to see it, the message cannot be stated enough that drowning is a silent, unnoticeable killer, not like in the movies, and everyone should be aware to keep their eyes peeled for this kind of situation always, but especially when there's no lifeguard on duty.


fuck.

Do you want cereal killers? 'cause this is how you get cereal killers

Killer Whales -ARE- dolphins.

Man, I'm so sad the studio killers is over. They made some of the best music of this kind and the videos were always spectacular.

It almost pained me to sift it, because I'm an Avs fan and the old rivalry is still there for me a little bit.

But this transcended my bias on that pretty easily. Young kid, hero in his first NHL callup, Russian connection like so many of your team's greats (Fedorov and the all-Russian line were killer back in the peak days of Wings/Avs rivalry), happening in one of the final days at the Joe, plus this weird statistical quirk added in -- enough to make me jump up and be a Wings fan when I saw it!

Here's hoping that both of our teams pull off rebuilds ASAP and stop being cellar-dwellers. Young kids like this are probably key to that!

Oddly, I also thought that it was one of the least scary books that King has written. I read a lot of King when I was younger and some of his stuff terrified me, especially some of the short stories.
But IT was almost more fantasy than horror.

Making your antagonist a creepy killer clown is almost redundant, as I'm pretty sure that ALL clowns are creepy and evil...

or in the case of Insane Clown Posse, fucking stupid