I'm not really concerned if someone is an addict or a criminal. I'm simply concerned with the repercussions of hard drugs being made readily available for anyone to use. The prohibition did increase crime, sure, but the availability of liquor since then has caused far more deaths and ruined many more lives. Hell, in 2010, alcohol killed almost as many people in the U.S. as guns did. Tobacco causes more than 5 million deaths worldwide each year. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it isn't harmful. The widespread availability of liquor and tobacco has caused more damage than the entire war on drugs.

As for education, I don't think that's the root of the problem. Everyone knows that smoking is unhealthy and that alcohol is addictive and that driving while drunk is incredibly dangerous. The problem isn't lack of awareness. The problem is apathy. People know these things yet do them anyway because they just don't care. The momentary relief/pleasure derived from liquor and cigarettes is more important to them. If all drugs were legalized, I have no doubt that more people would use them because they'd be easier to get and people don't really care about the downsides.

Your "refutations" are, for the most part, self-defeating, so I will allow others to do their own research and come to their own conclusions rather than addressing each one. Suffice it to say that gun-control, in the U.S. at least, starts as an anti-minority measure (not unlike the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty") and spurs on a "dark economy" (or "underground economy"), not unlike what (eventually) felled the Soviet Union. It's not dissimilar to what's going on in Puerto Rico and, to some extent, the Bay Area (except NorCal doesn't have the feds all over them like Puerto Rico does, so violent crime is high in PR and low in Mendocino).

Is it purely a "coincidence" that Puerto Rico has a higher murder rate than almost anywhere else in the U.S, while citing as many as 50%+ of the people on "public assistance," is an epicenter on the "war on drugs" and has about the strictest gun control laws of anywhere in the U.S.?

But don't worry! Here's some good news!
"They found that a country like Luxembourg, which bans all guns has a murder rate that is 9 times higher than Germany, where there are 30,000 guns per 100,000 people. They also cited a study by the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, which studied 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and it failed to find one gun control initiative that worked. . . . The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, conceded that the results they found in their report was not what they expected to find."

I guess they didn't account for the fact that outlaws don't really care about laws! The nerve of some people...

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.)

The depressing part is, you don't even need a War on Drugs to turn the Police State dial to 11, as can be seen by the Robocop-ification of various police forces in Western Europe (where drug problems are relatively mild compared to the USA).

On the other hand, in some places they still manage to have a decent Police force. So it's hard, but possible.

It shouldn't be surprising that it is the people running the war on drugs who will resist logic the most, concerning this issue.

These are people who have spent their entire careers with a single minded focus on demonizing all drugs. When you confront Michael Botticelli with logic and facts, you are telling him that his purpose and his accomplishments have been misguided and are against the public interest. Put yourself in that man's shoes and tell me you wouldn't resist that message with all your strength, even if your own common sense is rebelling against you.

Well here's something to think about, since the uselessness of answering these questions which seem so important to yourself, these issues which would simply tend to correct themselves should dumb assess who light-upon them who can't seem to figure it out actually DO something with all their frustration.

There are other more pressing fundamental issues to consider when you think about how real "CHANGE" could come overnight if both fanatics dems and repubs could get their heads out of their own assess.

Most of these issues you are so passionate about and continually abuse the meaningless, "one-team-against-the-other" argument for, are simply diversions to keep you inebriated with (by design) while the rapists and abusers of culture, politics and special interests, military and police, and corporate oligarchies fuck you from behind without lube.

For instance: THIS video offering after 30 hours in the queue has garnered 6 votes. It speaks to one of the many fundamental ass-fucks being perpetrated on the American People and one insidious presidential cunt republican and one equally as sinister mountebank currently in office has created the framework for this egregious violation of rights and culture, but nobody seems to give a fuck.

INSTEAD, people that continually paste these kind of trite news-bobble sound bites of worthless information pitting one party against another seem to be absolutely clueless as to the mechanics of the insidious mechanism keeping them in a state of unconscious somnambulatry hypnotic drunkenness while the entire time, not utilizing the power they have to alter the course of the destiny of the planet-Instead that wasted energy is used to jack off at the mouth.

Simple fix for the so-called drug problem as it relates to criminal cartels (like the FBI, LIKE the CIA, like the "cabal who control government."???

Legalized marijuana, heroin, cocaine, while at the same time criminalizing the machine set-in-place to quote/unquote, "fight the war on drugs"..Fight the war on terrorism", etc. There is no goddamn war except the one for your mind,and from reading this horseshit on this particular post, it seems that more than a few people here have had their minds hi-jacked already.

It's up to you to wake-the-fuck-up. Republicans are no better or worse than democrats, because both are complicit in the hijacking of your lives, your livelihoods, and the work and sweat and blood of your lives as you toil incessantly to continue to promulgate their diseased programs of slavery of both your bodies and minds.

Any and all retort to similar diatribes of my own are predictably met with derision and defensiveness, and a SHITLOAD of passive-aggression in the form of convoluted and meaningless banter.

I fucking detest this charade of pitting conservatives against liberals, one "party" against another.

The only party that exists is the one behind closed doors as they laugh at people like yourselves.

Good job NatGeo. A state legalizes drugs so they've gone off the deepend and need to be scared into coming back and re-instituting the War on Drugs I suppose. Bullshit lying scarepiece.

Capitalism didn't write the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Government did. And it was Andrew Jackson who signed it into law, and he was the first Democratic president who believed in the power of popular votes. Also a huge racist. But if you want to blame capitalism for the ills of majority rule and statism, knock yourself out.

And I do find it amusing that you can mention Stalin in one sentence and then claim statism has done far more good than harm. I believe a basic knowledge of human government through history would easily disprove that assertion.

I think what's more apt is that statism tries to reform its past failings. Marriage shouldn't even be a government issue, in my opinion, gay or otherwise. I don't know you well enough, but I assume when the forty-year war on drugs finally ends in the US you'd chock that up to "See? In the long run government works!"

Even though it causes the very problems the people beg it to fix. Government is a sick cult.

It's like I'm psychic...amazing what 90 seconds of searching can find:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/justice/new-mexico-search-lawsuit/

"Hildalgo County K-9 officer did inform me that he had dealt with Mr. Eckert on a previous case and stated that Mr. Eckert was known to insert drugs into his anal cavity and had been caught in Hidalgo County with drugs in his anal cavity," the affidavit said.

I am not a fan of the "War on Drugs"...

I'm also not a fan of sensationalist news stories and the people that perpetuate them.

Forfeiture laws in the US originally intended confiscated assets to be used for public coffers to help fund things like public education, but the war on drugs initiated the trend of sending these assets directly to coffers of law enforcement, who stand to gain from investing in confiscating more assets.

Um, Ok, then go ahead and stop them.


Whoever controls the government, controls everyone else.
The problem with plutocracy: the plutocrats rule over you.
The problem with monarchy: the monarch rules over you.
The problem with 'democracy:' the mob (the supposed "majority") rules over you.
The problem with republics: the "people's representatives" rule over you.
The problem with dictatorships: the dictator rules over you.
The 'problem' with anarchy: no one rules over you.

So if you think you can take over the government and rule over everyone else, go ahead, try. Let me know how it goes.


Most (granted not all) so-called crime has more to do with law enforcement than with 'criminals.' Don't believe me? Check out this recently sifted video about the enforcement of the so-called war on drugs.

@blankfist, your post is a perfect example of how things in real life are complex.

The point is people really DON'T know best how to run their own lives. People are stupid, short-sighted and often willfully ignorant.

Most of the time, I'm good with that. Freedom to fuck up and all that.

Yes, adults of sound mind should be able to choose their own medical treatment. No, they shouldn't be allowed use prayer to treat their kids.

War on drugs? Pointless and ultimately immoral.
Seat belt laws? Bloody good idea that has saved thousands of lives.

Ultimately, I'm not willing to condemn little Jimmy to a slow agonising death just because his parents were fucking morons.

@ChaosEngine, again, I don't entirely disagree with you. I think allowing the law to protect the rights of the individual makes total sense. Whether that individual is a minor or adult.

Where we definitely will have our disagreement is, as you mentioned, to the extent of the laws' reach.

I think laws should protect the minority, not impose the majority's will. I also believe children should have a voice in their personal choices that supersedes the will of the parents or the will of society.

I understand a seven-year-old child who was homeschooled that God will cure his cancer may not be the most qualified mind to make complex medical decisions, but, in the end, we either give people control over their lives or we pretend to know best.

Just because you and I don't believe God will cure little Jimmy's cancer doesn't mean we should have a right to tell little Jimmy he has to go to the hospital and receive care. Otherwise we end up with these kinds of stories.

The war on drugs is a perfect example of the majority, or community, knowing best how we should all run our lives. So was prohibition in the States. So are seatbelt laws, soda bans, sin taxes, prostitution bans, Tennessee's baggy pants law, bans on rain collection, fines for muddy tires, gambling laws, private establishment smoking bans, and even NJ going as far as to ban hugs in a middle school.

People know best how to run their own lives. Families at least have an interest in the well-being of their members. But the community doesn't always make the best legislative decisions when trying to do good.

you are sounding more and more like an anarchist.
you didnt click the link i shared did you?
it explained in basic form the type of anarchy i subscribe to.

which leads us further into the rabbit hole of governments role.
which by your response it appears i need to describe a tad further.

so lets change the question from:
"what is governments role?"
to
"what,if at all,is the FEDERAL governments role"?

which of course we can refer to the federalist papers or the articles of confederacy.
one is a great argument in regards to what federal powers should be the other was an absolute failure and needed to be discarded.(too much anarchy lol)

that argument is still going on today.
well,between people like you and i,not from the political class.

i agree with your position.
i may word mine differently but our views are in alignment for the most part.

what i do find interesting is how a person with a more right leaning ideology will point to the government and say "there..thats the problem"
while someone from a more left leaning will point to corporations as the main culprit.

you need to understand i point to both.
hence my "plutocracy" argument.
so while you are correct that a corporation cannot throw you in jail,they can and DO influence our legislation (in the form of alec,lobbyists,campaign funding) to enact laws which may make anything their competitors do "illegal" or keep them out of the market completely.or make anything they do "legal".both governments and corporations do this for their own survival and self-interest.

the war on drugs and the private prison system come to mind.since weed is becoming more and more acceptable "illegal" immigrants will become the new fodder for the prison.

in my humble opinion most people all want the same things in regards to a civilized society.
fairness,justice and truth.

now how we get there is the REAL discussion (like you and i are having right now).

i agree the federal government should have limited powers but i recognize government DOES play a role.i believe in the inherent moral goodness of people.that if pressed,most people will do the right thing.

this is why i think that governments should be more localized.we could use the "states rights" argument but i would take it further into townships,local communities and municipalities.

for this to even have a chance this country would have to shake off its induced apathetic coma and participate and become informed.

no easy task.
in fact,what both you and i are suggesting is no easy task.
but worthy..so very very worthy.

active citizenship basically.

when we consider the utter failures of:
our political class.
the outright betrayal of our intellectual class who have decided to serve privilege and power at the neglect of justice and truth for their own personal advancement,
and the venal corporate class.

which all have served,wittingly or unwittingly, to create the corporate totalatarian surveillance state we now find ourselves living in.
there can be ONLY one recourse:

we,as citizens,have to demand a better way.
not through a political system that is dysfunctional and broken and only serves the corporate state while giving meaningless and vapid rhetoric to the people.

nor can this be achieved by violent uprising,which would only serve to give the state the reason to perpetrate even greater violence.

we cannot rely on our academic class which has sold itself for the betterment of its own hubris and self-aggrandizing.

even the fourth estate,which has been hamstrung so completely due to its desire for access to power,it has been enslaved by the very power it was meant to watchdog.

the institutions that existed 50 years ago to put pressure on the levers of power are gone,destroyed and crushed or outright abandoned.

when we look at american history.the ACTUAL history we find that never,not ONCE,did the american government EVER give something to the people.those rights and privileges were hard fought for by social movements.
in fact,america had the longest and bloodiest of labor movements on the planet.
the woman sufferagists.
the liberty party in its stance against slavery.
the civil rights movement.

it is the social movements which put pressure,by way of fear,on the political class.

we have seen the tea party rise and get consumed by the republican political class.

we saw occupy rise up to be crushed in a coordinated effort by the state.this was obama that did this yet little was ever spoken about it.

power is petrified of peoples movements.

there will be another movement.
i do not know when or how it will manifest.
i just hope it will not be violent.

because that is the only way to combat the power structures we are being subjected to today.
civil disobedience.
and i aim to misbehave.

this starts exactly how you and i are talking.
it is the conversation which sparks the idea which ignites a passion which turns into a burning flame.

i am a radical.
a dissident.
but radical times call for radical thinking.

you and i both want fairness,justice and truth.
everybody does.
some of our philosophy overlaps,other parts do not.
we discuss the parts that do not overlap to better understand each other.
this forms a bond of empathy and understanding.
which makes it far more harder to demonize each other in terms of the political class and propaganda corporate tv.

the power elite do not want me to understand you,nor you to empathize with me.
that does not serve their interests.
fear and division serve their interests.
hyper-nationalistic xenophobia serves their interests.

i aim to disappoint them.

now go watch that video i posted for ya.
when ya got time of course lol.

maybe it will help if i share the people i admire.
chomsky,zinn,hedges,watts,harvey,roy,
just some of the people who have influenced me greatly.

anyways.
loving this conversation.
i am in 3 other debates with highly educated people.
nowhere near as polite and awesome as you.
then again..i am kicking the crap out of them.
arrogance really annoys me,makes me vulgar and beligerent.
peace brother man.