@Yogi Way to miss the point. I wasn't comparing cars and guns, I was comparing laws regulating cars and guns. That's all I'm going to say to you. You've already told me in another discussion that you're going to refuse any evidence that doesn't agree with your narrow minded beliefs, so having a discussion with you is pointless.

@RedSky

1) I'm not implying that the US is more violent. I already pointed out that the US has lower violent crime rates than the US and UK despite the higher murder rate.


2) I'd say people in rural areas are most likely own guns for hunting and also self defense as there are no police patrols out in the country.

I also wouldn't blame the availability of guns to criminals on gun enthusiasts. Criminals generally don't legally buy their guns. One way to cut down on illegall gun sales is to charge the sellers as accomplices to the crimes committed with the weapons they sell illegally.


3) Maybe punishment was not the right word I should have chosen. My point is that to cut down on driving fatalities, the laws enacted didn't put any inconveniences on responsible drivers.

Your back of the envelope calculation isn't quite so clear cut. Sam Harris discusses this in his article.

It is also worth noting that relatively gun-free countries are not as peaceful as many think. Here are some recent crime data comparing the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Sweden. Although the U.S. has a higher rate of homicide, the problem of assaults in these other countries is much worse...

So, while the U.S. has many more murders, the U.K., Australia, and Sweden have much higher levels of assault. One might think that having a few more murders per 100,000 persons each year is still much worse than having many hundreds more assaults. Perhaps it is. (One could also argue, as several readers have, that differences in proportion are all we should care about.) But there should be no doubt that the term “assault” often conceals some extraordinary instances of physical and psychological suffering.

It's possible that the reason the US has lower assault, robbery and rape is that armed citizens are able to defend themselves from such crimes.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying the US should look to the UK and Australia on how to handle gun control. Both UK and Australia already had low murder and violent crime rates at the time of their "bans." After Australia's National Firearms Act and forced gun buyback, homicide fell by 9%, but assault went up 40% and rape went up 20%. In the years before the NFA, homicides had been on a steady decline, and a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found the NFA's impact on homicide was "relatively small."

After the UK's "gun ban" in 1997, gun crime actually increased [1] [2]. Gun crimes in 1997-1998 were 2,648. The Office for National Statistics shows that 5,507 firearm offenses were reported 2011-2012.


4) Yes cars do provide a benefit to society. Their regulation and restrictions are reasonable, and I already said I'm not opposed to any reasonable gun laws. But cars are the leading cause of accidental death each year. There are lots of things that can be done to make cars and drivers safer. Cars could be limited to 70 MPH. The national speed limit on highways is 70 MPH, why do you need a car capable of going faster? Cars can be fitted with a GPS and a "black box" that records your driving activities. Each year when you renew your inspection, the black box data is downloaded and analyzed. If it's discovered you've broken any traffic laws, you will be fined, and if it's determined you aren't a safe driver, your license is revoked. Prohibit personal sales of vehicles between individuals, because you can't know if the person your selling to is a safe driver or if their license is valid (see below about the "gun show exemption"). Sounds crazy, but those aren't nearly as bad as some of the things being proposed for new gun laws.

I doubt any of those would be acceptable to the majority of drivers, but it would make driving safer and save lives.

As for your suggestions "not yet tried."

- We already have rigorous background checks for purchasing firearms. They're done by the FBI's NICS, I don't know how it can be more rigorous.
- There is no "gun show exemption" or "loophole," that is more media buzzword BS. Private sale and transfer of anything (not just firearms) can not regulated by congress. It's another constitutional issue dealing with the regulation of commerce. It is still illegal for a person to sell a firearm to someone that they have reason to believe may not be legally able to own one. This is another issue that I'm not opposed to fixing though. It could be as simple as requiring the transaction to be witnessed by a licensed gun dealer and perform a background check.
- Assault weapons are already restricted. Real assault weapons that is, not what the media and lawmakers keep calling assault weapons. Once again I ask, why such fuss over the weapon type least used in crime? These "assault weapons" are expensive to acquire, and most criminals go for cheap, small caliber, concealable pistols and revolvers. [source] For more on what an assault weapon is and their use in crime, just head on over to this Wikipedia page.
- Restricting ammunition would be something that would effect responsible gun owners and likely have little effect on crime. Responsible gun owners are the ones that buy more ammo, go to gun ranges and practice.


5) You mean the steadily high murder rate that has been steadily declining for over two decades, by 50% since 1992? [source]

Too bad this series didn't get renewed.

http://videosift.com/search?q=walk+on+the+wild+side for many VS' picks!

yeah I always figured that if I won the lottery, my life would actually be sadder because it would be so much harder to figure out if my friends were genuinely my friends or they just wanted to mooch off the cash. same thing when it comes to finding a significant other.

our entire society is built around the idea that we don't have enough resources to go around for everyone to live comfortable lives and wanting for nothing. so we create a system by which attributes and skills that think are desirable are rewarded with more resources than those who don't.

which is fine, It was necessary for the time, but as our technology improves, we're going to have re-think many things. We're already at the point where the ability to clothe and feed everyone is rather mundane, in fact we have an obesity problem.

problem is, change is hard, people have a hard time letting go and adopting new ideas. People have become extremely wealthy off of the status quo so in their view, we should never change.

society as a whole is probably going to go through a major upheaval when we solve our energy problems and energy is cheap and renewable, but that is precisely why some people are going to not want it to happen.

"*promote1,2 - float a post at the top of the corresponding listing; renew queue time for queued/discarded videos"

1 may be performed by any member on their own post
2 requires 1 Power Point to use

Not sure why you're bringing up note 3, since it doesn't appear to apply, and note 1 doesn't say anything close to what you say it does.

If you look at my (limited) sift history, you can see that I USED to be able to promote my own posts... oh well.

I loved this show back in the day, Hammer cracks me up. Nice Danny Elfman theme too. From what I hear they didn't know if there were going to be renewed for a second season so they had the first season end like this. Check out the show if you can.

Tired of that $2.6 Million Program that Teaches Chinese Prostitutes to Drink?

by John Ransom


Liberty is about a lot of things; it’s a deep topic. But at its core liberty can be summed up in one simple and reciprocal concept. That concept is respect.

You know the 2010 last election was about many things, but it was mostly about respect.

It was about starting to restore the respect that people have in government, by getting the government to restore the respect that they show to you…by taking liberty seriously.

If you are like me, you think that many of our elected officials from both the right and the left truly believe that what they think of you is much more important than what you think of them.

If you’re like me you’re tired of a trillion dollars in so-called stimulus spending that went to mob-connected asphalt contractors rather than the pockets of working families who own businesses and pay taxes and do all the working and dreaming in this country.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of a $2.6 million program that teaches Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly while unemployment soars across the country.

If you’re like me, you're tired of an arrogant federal government which pays out $47 billion in fraudulent claims in Medicare every year while they lecture the rest of us about healthcare economics.

If you are like me, you’re tired of the US Postal service wasting $30 million on a program that pays 1100 employees to do nothing. Yes, today, the US Post Office sat 1100 employees in empty rooms, as they do every day, and literally paid them to do nothing. They can’t play cards; they can’t watch TV, in fact they can’t do anything at all. To the tune of $30 million per year.


Yet this very same federal government comes to us now and proposes to manage our healthcare, our retirement, the education of our children, the auto industry, the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, the mortgage industry and lectures the American people that they are under-regulated.

If you’re a middle American like me, from the grassroots, I bet you know someone who owns their own business; if you’re like me you probably know someone who has paid employees of that business on time every week, but hasn’t been able to pay themselves a dime. Yet these very same people who provide half the new jobs in our economy, who have lost money over the last few years, still owe the government tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. People wonder where our jobs have gone? They’ve been crushed by a system that doesn’t honor job creation; by a system that doesn’t honor liberty; a system that gives no respect.

And if you are like most of the voters I speak to, you are tired of insiders from Washington and Wall Street on both sides of the aisle, and their wasteful spending schemes that don’t even propose to solve the very issues facing Main Street and working families.

Let’s suppose global warming is real; I don’t think it is, but let’s say it's so for the sake of argument. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard-- which will cost American families $1800 per year-- please show me how it’s going to lower the earth’s temperature. They can’t because the Renewable Electricity Standard wasn’t created to combat global warming and it won’t lower the earth’s temperature.

Ok, so let’s suppose the issue is carbon emission; that carbon is really bad and we have to get it out of our atmosphere. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard is going to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. They can’t. It wasn’t designed to do that and it won’t do that.

The government doesn't write legislation with solutions in mind, but rather with power and control of your very lives. And it is inside of your lives where you will wrestle back that control.

I’m often reminded that it’s with readers just like you where many of the seminal events of our country happened. It’s in rooms just like you’re in right now that a small group of patriots in Massachusetts planned the Boston Tea Party; it’s in groups just like you are a part of today that was born the Mayflower Compact; it’s in the free association of our citizens, for the common good and with common respect, that the greatness and goodness of our country will always be found.

And as long as people like you, freely associate for the common good and meet in respect, our country will always remain both great and good.

But ordinary people are paying attention, actually reading the Constitution; people are actually asking questions about the 10th Amendment, asking: What kind of power does Washington really have over us?

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who have been awakened to that yet, that’s why readers like you are so important. Each individual reading this is so incredibly important because the job you have this year as a citizen has never, ever, ever been more important. The 2012 election is going to determine what it’s like to live in this country for a long time. It’s going to be people just like you, having conversation just like this, in rooms across America that are going to make a difference.

This is the chance to turn the tide. The chance we have today is to bury that last vestiges of big government in our country; to reclaim our liberty from a new deal and replace it with a true deal.

I’ve been very fortunate because over the last half dozen years I’ve been able to travel all around the country working with grassroots activists just like you. I understand, I think, better than elected officials, what makes the grassroots so special. It's you and your ability to communicate.

We have all these new tools available for citizens to communicate that just a few years ago we didn’t have. A few years ago readers wouldn’t have been as energized and as informed because we didn’t have the ability to communicate as we do now. We have been so fractured and fragmented all around the country and around the nation that we feel like we can’t do anything, that Washington is so big and out of touch that we can’t do anything.

In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now is the time we really do have the opportunity. For the first time in our history ordinary citizens have the ability to communicate with one another over the heads of the media in publications like Townhall. We are networked on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter that expose us to thousands of people for free.

But when I was growing up there were three TV stations and two newspapers in every town that decided what the news was. There were probably a dozen people in any town that picked our news for us.

Those days are over.

This election isn’t about voting for the next person standing in a long line of elites who will rule over us; it’s about what kind of country we want to be in the future.

It’s about preserving the American dream right here right now. Because when they mess with our liberty, they really mess with our ability to dream.

I believe that the ability to dream is worth handing down to our kids.

I believe that it’s our dreams that makes us the most dynamic country in the world.

It’s the dream that brings jobs and prosperity to the US.

It’s a dream that treats promises like they really matter.

And it’s the dreams that are the promise of America.

Because when politicians treat the promises they campaign on like they matter, when they are held accountable to those pledges-- by us-- we will restore the respect they owe us.

>> ^criticalthud:

2. mostly unrealistic. america is #1 energy hog and neither technology advancements nor more drilling here will solve that or feed that gluttonous thirst. we are dependent on foreign energy, which is partly why we have 450 military bases around the world. We need to reduce need, and to do that, we need to re-examine our role in the world as pure consumers.

Well said. There are number of things that would reduce the power consumption right away. Refine the stupid pollution control that favors higher consumption in vehicles (lower consumption = more pollution per gallon when it should be mileage vs pollution.. now you can make a car that goes 10MPG but "pollutes" less), invest in public transport, invest in renewal sources.. You got huge amounts of land empty that could be used for solar farming, long coastlines to harvest wave energy, enough thermal activity to take energy from there (allthou thinking that USA is drilling to the core frightens me, you people have never been could at moderation...).

It seems to be that the thinking goes: This (particular) renewable source is not enough so we don't do it at all. But step by step, it would start to play a major part in the big picture. And there's endless supplies of solar energy, 250 W/m2 in average taking cloud cover and sun angle in to account.

>> ^hpqp:

That "we renew our whole body" shtick has been around as long as it has been refuted: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2007-0
3-30-cell-lifetime_N.htm
Also, what the hell does "breathing manually" mean? With my hands?

I think what he meant is that we can control our breathing under our own cognition rather than involuntarily (which it normally does). That and blinking are involuntary functions that we can override "manually" through our own will and cognitive abilities.

That "we renew our whole body" shtick has been around as long as it has been refuted: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2007-03-30-cell-lifetime_N.htm

Also, what the hell does "breathing manually" mean? With my hands?

>> ^KnivesOut:

No, no, no, you were thinking of Rush Limbaugh saying he was going to move to Costa Rica because the Affordable Care Act was found to be constitutional.>> ^Mashiki:
Really? I seem to remember dozens of forum posts from liberals whining over the renewal of the patriot act. And I remember even more whining about if Bush won again. Of course nothing actually came of it. But to point out the obvious here, the liberal left does whine like small kids over things like this, especially when it benefits society as a whole, and voter ID laws do benefit everyone.


No pretty sure I'm not. Pretty sure I remember the last 10 years pretty well, especially the previous election minus Obama pretty good too.

Hey did you catch this, looks like those voter ID laws might just be a good idea after all.
http://ohio.mediatrackers.org/2012/08/17/voters-first-canvasser-arrested-for-submitting-fraudulent-petitions/

No, no, no, you were thinking of Rush Limbaugh saying he was going to move to Costa Rica because the Affordable Care Act was found to be constitutional.>> ^Mashiki:
Really? I seem to remember dozens of forum posts from liberals whining over the renewal of the patriot act. And I remember even more whining about if Bush won again. Of course nothing actually came of it. But to point out the obvious here, the liberal left does whine like small kids over things like this, especially when it benefits society as a whole, and voter ID laws do benefit everyone.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

>> ^Mashiki:
In other news, liberals everywhere who threatened to run to Canada, discover that Canada has a VoterID law already in place. Their world is shattered instantly.

I hate to sound so blatantly over-patriotic, but Americans who would run to another country just because a law got passed should (maybe) not be Americans.

Really? I seem to remember dozens of forum posts from liberals whining over the renewal of the patriot act. And I remember even more whining about if Bush won again. Of course nothing actually came of it. But to point out the obvious here, the liberal left does whine like small kids over things like this, especially when it benefits society as a whole, and voter ID laws do benefit everyone.

I actually got my Cobra insurance renewed last Wednesday. The assholes raised premiums ten dollars.
In reply to this comment by deathcow:
I would sure as shit have me some COBRA insurance immediately to stick it to them.

>> ^not_blankfist:

Hi everyone. This most definitely isn't blankfist.


How'r those ankles feelin' pardner? Hope the time away hasn't sullied your trousers more than ya can tolerate...What's yer take on this here "Rape" subject? Personally, I find jokes about raping women disagreeable and crude, a cheap attempt to appeal to a crowd I'd rather not be around.

I am also of the opinion that a sexual violation, if properly implemented can clear chakras, enliven digestion and overall constitution, and in some instances I would imagine initiate great renewal and calm in an individual receptive to the message.