5-1 / 1213-5-93-6242


6-0 / 1175-6-106-6237

You seem to think that eliminating guns will somehow eliminate mass shootings. However, there is zero correlation to the number of legal gun ownerships with the number of homicides. In fact, here are some statistics for you:

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. And, as it happens, where gun ownership per capita increases, violent crime is known to decrease. In other words, Caucasians tend to own more guns than African Americans, middle aged folks own more guns than young people, wealthy people own more guns than poor people, rural families own more guns than urbanites --> But the exact opposite is true for violent behavior (i.e., African Americans tend to be more violent than Caucasians, young people more violent than middle aged people, poor people more violent than wealthy people, and urbanites more violent than rural people). So gun ownership tends increase where violence is the least. This is, in large part, due to the cultural divide in the U.S. around gun ownership whereby most gun owners own guns for recreational sports (including the Southern Caucasian rural hunting culture, the likes of which aren't found in Australia or the UK or Europe, etc.); and about half of gun owners own guns for self-defense (usually as the result of living in a dangerous environment). Most of the widespread gun ownership in the U.S. predates any gun control legislation and gun ownership tends to generally rise as a response to an increase in violent crime (not the other way around).

There were about 350,000 crimes in 2009 in which a gun was present (but may not have been used), 24% of robberies, 5% of assaults, and about 66% of homicides. By contrast, guns are used as self-defense as many as 2 and a half million times every year (according to criminologist Gary Kleck at Florida State University), thereby decreasing the potential loss of life or property (i.e., those with guns are less likely to be injured in a violent crime than those who use another defensive strategy or simply comply).

Interestingly, violent crimes tend to decrease in those areas where there have been highly publicized instances of victims arming themselves or defending themselves against violent criminals. (In the UK, where guns are virtually banned, 43% of home burglaries occur when people are in the home, whereas only 9% of home burglaries in the U.S. occur when people are in the home, presumably as a result of criminals' fear of being shot by the homeowner.) In short, gun ownership reduces the likelihood of harm.

So, for example, Boston has the strictest gun control and the most school shootings. The federal ban on assault weapons from '94-'04 did not impact amount and severity of school shootings. The worst mass homicide in a school in the U.S. took place in Michigan in 1927, killing 38 children. The perpetrator used (illegal) bombs, not guns in this case.

1/3 of legal gun owners obtain their guns (a total of about 200,000 guns) privately, outside the reach of government regulation. So, it's likely that gun-related crimes will increase if the general population is unarmed.

Out of a sample of 943 felon handgun owners, 44% had obtained the gun privately, 32% stole it, 9% rented/borrowed it, and 16% bought it from a retailer. (Note retail gun sales is the only area that gun control legislation can affect, since existing laws have failed to control for illegal activity. Stricter legislation would likely therefore change the statistics of how felon handgun owners obtain the gun towards less legal, more violent ways.) Less than 3% obtain guns on the 'black market' (probably due, in part, to how many legal guns are already easily obtained).

600,000 guns are stolen every year and millions of guns circulate among criminals (outside the reach of the regulators), so the elimination of all new handgun purchases/sales, the guns would still be in the hands of the criminals (and few others).

The common gun controls have been shown to have no effect on the reduction of violent crime, however, according to the Dept. of Justice, states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate and a 46% lower robbery rate. A 2003 CDC report found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced gun violence. This conclusion was echoed in an exhaustive National Academy of Sciences study a year later.

General gun ownership has no net positive effect on total violence rates.

Of almost 200,000 CCP holders in Florida, only 8 were revoked as a result of a crime.

The high-water mark of mass killings in the U.S. was back in 1929, and has not increased since then. In fact, it's declined from 42 incidents in 1990 to 26 from 2000-2012. Until recently, the worst school shootings took place in the UK or Germany. The murder rate and violent crime in the U.S. is less than half of what it was in the late 1980s (the reason for which is most certainly multimodal and multifaceted).

Regarding Gun-Free Zones, many mass shooters select their venues because there are signs there explicitly banning concealed handguns (i.e., where the likelihood is higher that interference will be minimal). "With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns," says John Lott.

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, when a study has shown that private owners are convicted of firearms violations at the same rate as police officers? How will you enforce the regulation and/or remove the guns from those who resist turning over their guns? Do the police not need guns to get those with the guns to turn over their guns? 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? 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?

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. Do they really want to deprive those who are culturally acclimatized to gun-ownership, who may be less fortunate than they are, to have the means to protect themselves (e.g., women who carry guns to protect themselves from assault or rape)? Sounds more like a lack of empathy and understanding of those realities to me.

There are many generational issues worth mentioning here. For example, the rise in gun ownership coincided with the war on drugs and the war on poverty. There are also nearly 24 million combat veterans living in the U.S. and they constitute a significant proportion of the U.S.' prison population as a result of sex offenses or violent crime. Male combat veterans are four times as likely to engage violent crime as non-veteran men; and are 4.4 times more likely to have abused a spouse/partner, and 6.4 times more likely to suffer from PTSD, and 2-3 times more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, unemployment, divorce/separation. Vietnam veterans with PTSD tend to have higher rates of childhood abuse (26%) than Vietnam veterans without PTSD (7%). Iraq/Afghanistan vets are 75% more likely to die in car crashes. Sex crimes by active duty soldiers have tripled since 2003. In 2007, 700,000 U.S. children had at least one parent in a warzone. In a July 2010 report, child abuse in Army families was 3 times higher if a parent was deployed in combat. From 2001 - 2011, alcohol use associated with domestic violence in Army families increased by 54%, and child abuse increased by 40%. What effect do you think that's going to have, regardless of "gun controls?"
("The War Comes Home" or as William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies said, "A spear is a stick sharpened at both ends.")

In addition, families in the U.S. continue to break down. Single parent households have a high correlation to violence among children. In 1965, 93% of all American births were to married women. Today, 41% of all births are to unmarried women (a rate that rises to 53% for women under the age of 30). By age 30, 1/3 of American women have spent time as a single mother (a rate that is halved in European countries like France, Sweden, & Germany). Less than 9% of married couples are in poverty, but more than 40% of single-parent families are in poverty. Much of child poverty would be ameliorated if parents were marrying at 1970s rates. 85% of incarcerated youth grew up without fathers.

Since the implementation of the war on drugs, there's a drug arrest in the U.S. every 19 seconds, 82% of which were for possession alone (destroying homes and families in the process). The Dept. of Justice says that illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities, many of which have direct ties to Mexican drug cartels in at least 230 American cities. The drug control spending, however, has grown by 69.7% over the past 9 years. The criminal justice system is so overburdened as a result that nearly four out of every ten murders, and six out of every ten rapes, and nine out of ten burglaries go unsolved (and 90% of the "solved" cases are the result of plea-bargains, resulting in non-definitive guilt). Only 8.5% of federal prisoners have committed violent offenses. 75% of Detroit's state budget can be traced back to the war on drugs.

Point being, a government program is unlikely to solve any issues with regards to guns and the whole notion of gun control legislation is severely misguided in light of all that I've pointed out above. In fact, a lot of the violence is the direct or indirect result of government programs (war on drugs and the war on poverty).

(And, you'll note, I made no mention of the recent spike in the polypharmacy medicating of a significant proportion of American children -- including most of the "school shooters" -- the combinations of which have not been studied, but have -- at least in part -- been correlated to homicidal and/or suicidal behaviors.)

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Congratulations! Your video, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Net Neutrality, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

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Was telling ya last night about the WOMAD show I saw back in 93' at the polo fields, Rage against the machine wasn't there as I had thought, but here was the line-up, part of it, because they had 3 stages with a few local acts as well...

http://www.last.fm/festival/676819+WOMAD

The one I wish I would have been at is this one....unfortunately I was living in Portland at the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Freedom_Concert

Awesome, so spot on. I found the house music scene in around 93 in the San Francisco bay area. The following ten years were the best time of my life. So many parties and so much dancing. Such great memories.

"it's not just a sound. It's not just a music. it's a culture. It's a way of dancing"
*promote the memories

12/31/93... the show I decided not to go to...
.."I'll see them next time they come to town."
regret

That's why it's so great to adhere to science. Science is just the combined efforts of anyone who is inclined to understand stuff better. It looks at things and with a lack of bias only the mathematical can provide says what the likelihood of something is.

It's how the facts are then "spun" where the bullshit creeps in.

We've known for years that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, it's not even in question any more. We know it's bad but we keep doing it. We have the money to change it but it sits in the corporate sector bank accounts because a few would rather be richer than creosote for the duration of their life than to spread richness upon the world for the lives of those to follow.

Those to follow are me, you, your kids perhaps.

("Creosote" is a pun that my grandma uses - 93 years old - and i've seen Terry Pratchett use it as well. Creosus was very rich, creosote is a rich black tarry substance)

You know what?
Samuel L Jackson does kinda look like Laurence Fishburne. They've also played some similar roles (Morpheus, Mace Windu?)

Guess what else? Elijah Wood looks a bit like Tobey Maguire.

And Summer Glau looks like Olivia Wilde.

And Reese Witherspoon looks like ... well, pretty much every hollywood blond apparently.

People look like other people, and funnily enough, a huge defining factor in your look is your skin tone. I personally have often been compared with a young Harrison Ford*..... Billy Dee Williams.... not so much....

*not actually true.

No, it's not the autobahn, and that's why the speed limits are ~100kph. If it was the autobahn they would (and should) be higher.

But people drive at or around the speed limit. That is reality.

I'm not some insane person who thinks we should be able to drive at whatever speed we like, but I would like to see a more reasoned debate on this. I 100% agree that there are plenty of roads in NZ that should have a lower limit*, but as I said earlier, why aren't the cops speed checking those roads?

And on the flip side, there are plenty of roads that are perfectly safe to drive on at 110kph, but it is politically unpalatable to admit that.

* After my xmas holiday, I drove home over danseys pass. There are signs at the entrance: 4wd only, no boats, no caravans.... 100kph speed limit... insanity.

Congratulations! Your dedication to keeping VideoSift clear of baddies has earned you your "Ban Police" Level 93 Badge!

Every jail has a tuning room, nanrod.

Know your Supreme Court Rulings?
In April of 2012 the "high" court decided that jails may perform suspicionless strip searches on new inmates regardless of the gravity of their alleged offenses. As one justice put it, "[p]eople detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals." As evidence for that claim, the majority invoked 9/11. "One of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93."

King County is a corrupt shitbox and ranks with the worst municipalities whose "law enforcement" take incredible license with her citizenry. Seattle after all, is one of the epicenters of G-Summit protests having an educated, frustrated, and passionate 18-45 yr-old demographic who are very vocal and way less organized and the cops have to have some practice heads to smash-in.

These voyeur cunts with cameras in a room that can be monitored while someone disrobes?? Bunch of sick, pathetic fucks.

*promote
93 years ago this month. On my birthday.

Happy birthday to me!

I bought a Russian SKS, a double barrel Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun and a glock 9mm at 2 gunshows locally few years back no questions asked.

but private sale between citizens are fine here. If I want to sell my neighbor my tv, my baseball bat, my RC Helicopter, my car, my gun collection, etc I have every right to sell whatever I wish that I own.

I can also barter for goods if I wish, If I no longer need the shotgun, but I'm out of a job and need food and I can use the gun to aquire a butchered pig/cow from local butcher I can do that as well.

course its simple in south east and everyone owns a gun, heck my 93 year old grandmother owns a .410 shotgun she keeps loaded by her bed. Course her husband, my grandfather, passed away before I was born, was a prison guard that walked inmates to "old sparky" in Florida long ago.

I'm not too concerned about the privacy implications:

1) Don't use your real google account; make a new one with no "friends", false name and other data. I'm sure this removes some of the "features", but probably nothing you can't live without if you're concerned about privacy issues. In the meantime, feel good about yourself for "stickin' it to the man" and making google's advertising database think that all of your browsing history/etc. is being done by a 93-year-old woman from Abu Dhabhi named "Beverly Knickerbocker".

2) If you're extremely concerned about google knowing what you're looking at 24/7 because of the camera on the device, I'd be happy to sell you a small piece of electrical tape "digital privacy filtration screen 2.0" for the low-low price of $10.

*edit* -- I don't want one of these things myself, but I'm not vehemently opposed to their existence. With some sort of firmware update that puts a configurable open-source "OS" on them that allows you to control exactly what comes in and what goes out, might be more interesting. But in the meantime, it isn't privacy concerns (or even worrying about looking like a dork -- totally lost cause there) that make Glass a non-sale to me. It's simply that I don't think I'd get much positive use out of them, particularly compared to cost.

*further edit* That was a fun rant you linked to @dag. I think he needs to relax a little. Or maybe just get out ... less? When you see pretentious douchebags everywhere, maybe the solution is staying home?