>> ^dannym3141:
But relating gun laws to OVERALL violent crime? You might as well compare the flavour of my next ice cream to the distance between 2 planets.
In the UK, we have very strict gun laws, and WITHOUT LOOKING UP STATISTICS by my knowledge of recent news, we have a very, very, very lower rate of gun-crime than, for example, the US which has lax gun laws.


Correlation is not causation, however it is relevant. Guns can act as a deterrent to any kind of crime because a criminal who knows he is surrounded by armed civilians is deterred just as much as a criminal who is surrounded by cops. This is why you need to look at overall statistics, not just gun-related incidents. If restricting guns just causes people to murder with knives instead, it hasn't accomplished anything.

The school shootings are a red herring because they account for a minuscule portion of the overall murder rate but 99% of the media coverage. Media have deceived you, and you need to go look at actual statistics.

see http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#Right-To-Carry%20Laws
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

>> ^sirex:
"If half the students at Virginia tech were armed, Cho would not have gotten far."

-- i was going to say why this is a bunch of bull, but i think on reflection it's meant to be so.


No, it's completely serious. I suspect the reason you decided not to say why it was a bunch of bull was because you couldn't think of a reason, and then you rationalized it by thinking of it as satire.

"If half the students at Virginia tech were armed, Cho would not have gotten far."


-- i was going to say why this is a bunch of bull, but i think on reflection it's meant to be so.

> Guns are not a deterrent to violence, they are a threat and cause of greater violence. Guns were created for one purpose alone - killing. Shotguns weren't invented for skeet shooting, and hand guns weren't invented for target practice. Just because someone uses one for those purposes does not change what it is.


Among countries, there is no strong correlation between gun control and violent crime. There are countries with strict gun control and high violent crime (the UK), and countries with lax gun control and lower violent crime (Canada).

Most handgun wounds are nonlethal. You can aim for the arms or the legs to disable a criminal enough to stop him from doing whatever he was doing. If half the students at Virginia tech were armed, Cho would not have gotten far.

Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. Between 1987 and 1996, its homicide rate decreased by 36%.

If no civilian is armed, no civilian has a good chance of stopping an armed criminal. If a criminal knows he is surrounded by armed civilians, that is just as good a deterrent as being surrounded by cops.

Although guns may assist outlaws, guns also assist citizens in apprehending those outlaws. Prohibition of ANY kind of small object is extremely difficult to enforce, and determined criminals could obtain them on the black market regardless of their illegality (just as they can obtain crack even though it has been illegal for 80 years with billions of dollars spent on attempted enforcement).

There are costs and benefits of civilian gun ownership, and which outweighs the other is not clear. However prohibition of said guns is as futile as the drug war.

It is odd that fundies like Huckabee support the NRA even though their hero preached absolute nonresistance and nonviolence. (e.g. Matthew 5:33-48)

Ochen horoshi serial. Ya iskal Engliski klip no ne nashol. Nu cho anni moshayt paslushuayt pesnu togda.

>> ^Krupo:
This guy makes me so angry. How can you get admitted to the bar and yet still be so stupid???

Actually there have been several attempts to disbar him, or at least threats. He's got quite the history of teeing people off, often former supporters.

I've actually gone through a series of psychological journals looking at studies on this, along with some meta-studies, and the answer isn't very clear, as there are often contradictory studies. The general consensus seems to be, violent video games increase aggression in the short term. The long term affects aren't clear (longitudinal studies take a lot more time and effort than sticking a kid in a room and having him play counter strike for 2 hours). The key word here is aggression, and not violence. I'm fairly certain I remember reading a study saying the aggression levels were comparable to other competitive activities. Those that are already aggressive seemed to react more strongly to violent video games, meaning they were much more aggressive than other children.

My personal view on the matter is that these people play violent video games because it feeds their compulsion. That doesn't mean I think all people who play violent video games do it for that reason. I think it's just one symptom and there are generally a lot of other signs. Of course so far there has been no indication this person played video games, or that he "disturbed" before the event. The only clue to a reason why so far has been that he stopped taking his medication. And depending on exactly what it is and what its for, that can be enough. As far as the guy responsible for Virginia tech Cho, played counter strike in high school, I don't think there were any indications he played after that. He also wrote violent stories and quoted Shakespeare passages. So I'd say by the Thompson line of reasoning writing and Shakespeare cause people to be violent as well. I think people like Thompson are just looking for something easy to place the blame on. Something more identifiable as a target rather than something more abstract such as mental illness or societal forces.

Turns out that, from the results of a search of his dorm room, Cho, in fact, did not own any video games in college.

Fuck 'em.

Petri is the best. He is, IMHO, the kind of guy which contributes to make better games and pushes this into art. I'm an unconditional fan.

Check Kenta Cho's works too.

Reminds me of Cho vs. Smokey

Well, without the accent symbols it's always difficult to interpret Vietnamese, particularly if misspelled... "Cho" could mean "dog" or "for" when used with a subject (as in "this is for you"). "Cai" could mean "spicy" or "of them/these/those" when used in conjunction with a quantity (as in "three of those pancakes"). As for "Thang nguc lon" I'm at a loss.

Tại sao Choggie biết nội tiên Việt? Có biết đọc không?

Defiantly cool, -this thrifty viet-mate is probl'y getting job offers bic-tye....
(Cho cai!! Steve Job, Thang nguc lon!!)

anyone care to translate????

pretty sure its not

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“I'm scared...
Your first name isn't Cho, right?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“so, you hung a dead raven in a tree and now you're sending me photos of it? is this a threat of some sort?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“Oh, and by that you mean the accidental destruction of a raven's cells?

No, I assure you this was on purpose.

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“corvid necrosis?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“http://static.flickr.com/47/111188187_3ad910c24c_m.jpg<strong>”<strong>”<stro
ng>”<strong>”<strong>”

I'm scared...
Your first name isn't Cho, right?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“so, you hung a dead raven in a tree and now you're sending me photos of it? is this a threat of some sort?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“Oh, and by that you mean the accidental destruction of a raven's cells?

No, I assure you this was on purpose.

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“corvid necrosis?

In reply to your comment:
<strong>“http://static.flickr.com/47/111188187_3ad910c24c_m.jpg<strong>”<strong>”<stro
ng>”<strong>”

By the way... Cho had no video games... Jeez what can they blame now?

jack thompson doesnt deserve air time. this guy is beyond me. twisting a tragedy to his own political agenda like this even when its been found that cho had no such videogames in his possession. please stfu and die jack thompson

This is from Harry Shearer in the Huffington Post:

Not so easy is the answer to the question: what is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho's self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullsh*t over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherf***er? Cho's pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from--in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it's easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live.