I think having her head turned the wrong way gives similar results.

So instead of warning people about appropriate behaviour in different social contexts, we should let people make blunders that can cost them significantly. LOL

The witnesses? The only witness that vaguely supports this that I've seen is an anonymous witness cited in the Daily Caller. Not credible journalism even by USA standards. The known witnesses are Dorian Johnson (altercation at the car, shooting as he ran away, he got hit, turned around put his hands up and stumbled forwards before the shooting began again), James McKnight (more or less the same as Johnson), Michael Brady (altercation at car, shooting, then as Brown was halfway towards falling to the ground more shots), Piaget Crenshaw (shots fired as he ran away with hands up, turned with hands up, more firing). Those accounts aren't too far from the Police account really. Is it reasonable to conclude deadly force is required in the timeframe of the shooting? What does police protocol say? One step? Two? When can you be sure it's not charging but belligerence, drunkenness, or injury? I'm sure America are the experts in these cases by now and have explicit and clear guidelines for semi-autonomous itinerant armed police officers and when they can and cannot open fire. Surely it isn't just 'if you harbour any fear, kill or otherwise incapacitate the citizen you are trying to apprehend'?

There is also TheePharoah who tweeted it from the scene and said ' JUST SAW SOMEONE DIE OMFG....no reason! He was running!', but you know, its not clear he can provide further useful information assuming he was interviewed.

In the United States there is still a high prevalence of firearms, even in areas with some slightly more stringent restrictions. France is not the US is not Germany is not Spain is not Norway. They are more different from one another than Florida and Colorado are. Nevertheless it is possible to compare the countries. Comparing US drug policy with Columbia on its own may be foolish, but when you compare it to all the countries of Europe you are getting a better idea of what works and what doesn't. If decriminalization works in every European country it would be unusual if America was so different it would make things worse. On the other hand, you have been trying to compare Spanish speaking Caribbean islands with mainland USA, so I think you are hoist on your own petard there, I'm afraid.

Having established that a large amount of spree killings (seemingly most) are with legally acquired weapons, it stands to reason that reducing the availability of legally ownable weapons would reduce the frequency of spree killings. As well as this reasoning it also seems to be empirically supported.
Contrary to exactly your point, the legal status of guns does seem to have an impact on certain uses. For instance, few people in the UK use guns for self-defence, because its rarely legal to carry guns for that purpose, even most criminals avoid them.

Right, but this type of setup (both players have the same pair) there are two opportunities for it to happen every time, and they are equivalent in terms of calling it a bad beat. And besides, the question was "figure the odds of one of these two men winning with a flush", which is what I did rather than, say, 'What are the odds of Connor Drinan losing to a flush in this circumstance?'

In poker (except peculiar varieties) the suits are not ranked. They might use the ranks if they are drawing cards from a deck as way to determine who starts as dealer, for example, but not as part of hand strength. There is an alternative order, CHaSeD, which is ascending alphabetical order, but that is not standard in poker circles for any purpose.

Incidentally - if both men have the same pair as one another, then both men cannot get a flush.

Yes it's a coincidence. That's the most likely outcome from trying to draw conclusions from the position of a single data point. I'm not sure if you think that the culture of a Spanish speaking Caribbean colony a thousand miles from the mainland is representative of the US as a whole, but that seems a strange position to take.

In any event, you have shifted the discussion from spree killers to killers in general. The video here is about a guy who might have stopped a spree killer (but almost certainly didn't), and did shoot a mentally ill person. You raise European comparisons, so let's do that. Let's look at Europe's recent spree killers (from wiki)
Borel, Eric, 1995, legal weapons stolen from family
Leibacher, Friedrich Heinz, 2001, legal weapons
Bogdanovič, Ljubiša, 2013, legal I believe
Izquierdo, 1990, legal I think
Radosavljević, Nikola, 2007, legal
Zavistonovičius, Leonardas, 1998, legal
Durn, Richard, 2002, legal
Harman, Ľubomír, 2010, legal
There's the top 8 by deaths (excl. the UK ones already mentioned). All using legally held weapons. There may be a pattern emerging here...

Can anyone figure the odds of one of these two men winning with a flush

There are 1,712,304 possible boards. 1,637,884 result in a tie. 74,420 of them result in one of them winning. There is a winner 4.34% of the time which is a probability of approximately 1 in 25 or 24:1 against.

So this isn't an incredibly bad beat even for poker, this scenario has played out countless times, and I bet it happened at other times in this tournament (if we count more than just Aces v Aces). It just feels bad given the stakes, which are pretty high for most pro high stakes poker players. Imagine instead this. You hold KcKs and your opponent goes all-in so you call. He curses (hoping you'd fold) Pokerstove tells me KK against two random cards wins 82% of the time. However he turns over Kd2c. This is a 95% chance of winning. The flop comes: Jh 4d 8s. Your probability of winning is now 99.7%. Then comes 2s - it's OK you still have over 95% chance of winning, unless...2d.

One advert need not use all psychological tactics. I don't think they are using guilt here, though some may feel guilty watching it. The primary drive here is humanising other races and demonizing the voice in your head that argues otherwise. I think trying to add positive reinforcement, without being transparent to the point of undermining your point, within a 90 second window while also getting across your main message is a bit more of a challenge than you might realize.

" 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.

Further data points: Anders Breivik was unable to purchase weapons on the black market, and utilised legally obtainable weapons instead. If he was unable to obtain them legally, he might not have been able to obtain them at all.

Hungerford, 1987 (legally owned weapons)
Monkseaton, 1989 (legally owned gun stolen by family member)
Dunblane, 96 (legally owned)
Further tightening of gun control esp of handguns
Cumbria, 2010 (legally owned weapons)

Doesn't saying that a 14 billion brain cell error is significant because its the size of a baboon's brain, just after telling us that size is not the important factor? It is a small error, given how difficult it is to count billions of brain cells and the earliest decent methods used to get in the ball park. This seems to me like asking 'How many people were killed by lightning last year?' hearing the answer 'About 100?' and saying 'No! That's a myth, it's only 86.', and defending this on the basis that 14 people's lives are very important.

He posted the 'sharpen up my axe' comment in quotes and posted a link to a youtube video to the piece of music it was from.