Shocking.

scary.

murrica

Thanks for the good questions.

a) yes
b) yes
c) no
d) yes
e) n/a

If you exclude suicide, the USA doesn't have a staggering rate of gun deaths. It is high compared to some other western countries, but on a world rate it is still very low.

When looking at public health (which is the reason for reducing gun violence) you need to be pragmatic. What will actually give a good outcome for public health? In this case there are about a half a dozen things that kill and maim US citizens at much higher rates than firearms do.

E.g. you are much more likely to be killed in a car crash than murdered by someone with a firearm. Cars by accident kill more people in the USA each year than firearms do on purpose. That's some scary shit right there. Think about that for a second, cars are more dangerous than firearms and people are not even trying to kill themselves or someone else with one. So as an example, you'd be better off trying to fix this first.

Or fix the suicide rate in the US. People aren't in a happy place there.

Obesity kills more people. Doctor malpractice kills more people. Etc. But these are hard issues to tackle that will cost billions or trillions. The low hanging fruit is firearms.

Free health care and mental health care, a better social security system, and various other means would all have magnificent outcomes on everyday life in the USA. But again, they cost a lot and require a paradigm shift.

Have you ever encountered interpersonal violence against you (i.e. had someone attack you)? Or have you maybe worked in a job where you often come into contact with people who have been attacked? I find people change their mind after they realize that they were only ever one wrong turn away from some crazy bastard who wanted to hurt them badly.

No sir.
I even mentioned one group in America that never adopted petroleum...Amish...and I would counter your assertion with the fact that most people on earth don't live using oil, they're too poor, not too fortunate. 20-30 years ago, most Chinese had never been in a car or a commercial store bigger than a local vegetable stand.

Both customers and non customers are the victims.
Using (or selling) a product that clearly pollutes the air, land, and sea is immoral.

Yes, it's like our business is predicated on rebuilding wrecked cars overnight which we do by using massive amounts of meth. Sure, our products are death traps, sure, we lied about both our business practices and the safety of our product, sure, our teeth and brains are mush....but our business has been successful and allowed us to have 10 kids (8 on welfare, two adopted out), and if we quit using meth they'll starve and fight over scraps. That's proof meth is good and moral and you're mistaken to think otherwise. Duh.

Yes, we overpopulated, outpacing the planet's ability to support us by far...but instead of coming to terms with that and changing, many think we should just wring the juice out of the planet harder and have more kids. I think those people are narcissistic morons, we don't need more little yous. Sadly, we are well beyond the tipping point, even if no more people are ever born, those alive are enough to finish the biosphere's destruction. Guaranteed if they think like you seem to.

Um, really? Complete collapse of the food web isn't catastrophic?
Wars over hundreds of millions or billions of refugees aren't catastrophic? (odd because the same people who think that are incensed over thousands of Syrians, Africans, and or South and Central American refugees migrating)
Massive food shortage isn't catastrophic?
Loss of most farm land and hundreds of major cities to the sea isn't catastrophic?
Loss of corals, where >25% of ocean species live, and other miniscule organisms that are the base of the ocean food web isn't catastrophic?
Loss of well over 1/2 the producers of O2, and organisms that capture carbon, isn't catastrophic?
Eventual clouds of hydrogen sulfide from the ocean covering the land, poisoning 99%+ of all life isn't catastrophic?
Runaway greenhouse cycles making the planet uninhabitable for thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of years isn't catastrophic?
Loss of access to water for billions of people isn't catastrophic?
I think you aren't paying attention to the outcomes here, and may be thinking only of the scenarios estimated for 2030-2050 which themselves are pretty scary, not the unavoidable planetary disaster that comes after the feedback loops are all fully in play. Try looking more long term....and note that every estimate of how fast the cycles collapse/reverse has been vastly under estimated....as two out of hundreds of examples, Greenland is melting faster than it was estimated to melt in 2075....far worse, frozen methane too.

You can reject the science, that doesn't make it wrong. It only makes you the ass who knowingly gambles with the planet's ability to support humans or other higher life forms based on nothing more than denial.

Edit: We are at approximately 1C rise from pre industrial records today, expected to be 1.5C in as little as 11 years. Even the IPCC (typically extremely conservative in their estimates) states that a 2C rise will trigger feedbacks that could exceed 12C. Many are already in full effect, like glacial melting, methane hydrate melting, peat burning, diatom collapse, coral collapse, forest fires, etc. It takes an average of 25 years for what we emit today to be absorbed (assuming the historical absorption cycles remain intact, which they aren't). That means we are likely well past the tipping point where natural cycles take over no matter what we do, and what we're doing is increasing emissions.

Damn soldiers, you scary!

When I was in Belgium a couple of years ago, I visited a farm where they're still pulling WW1 iron out of the ground on a daily basis. "The Iron Harvest" it's called. Finding WW1 shells is so common that farmers in the area just collect them and put them at the end of their roads for the disposal guys to pick up.

The truly scary part is that somewhere in Belgium, there's about 87,000 kilos of high explosives, which was supposed to be used to blow an enormous hole in the German trenches became lost when the Brits had to fall back. To this day, no one knows where the explosives are. In 1955, lightning hit a similar "lost mine" and pretty much leveled an otherwise dull field of vegetables.

Article about these lost mines here: https://simonjoneshistorian.com/2017/05/01/lost-mines-of-messines/

Damn, nature, you scary

Damn, airplanes, you scary.

I haven't seen any of his stuff but, I trust your judgment.

New babies can be scary.

Yes, but I'm not under the delusion that anyone would pay to read my ramblings. Funny enough, my first job was at a publishing company, editing text books when I was 13.

I broke my back....twice....and had partial paralysis for years. Norco gave me opioid induced hypersensitivity, which increased my pain levels insanely. Getting off them was scary, but decreased my pain levels from a daily minimum of 6/10 (equivalent to putting a nail through your foot, which I've done more than once) to a normal maximum of 5/10 (equivalent to putting a nail 1/2 inch into your foot, which I do a few times a year)....but now I'm pushing 50 with no recent work record besides "house husband".
Also, I cannot sell myself to save my life....and no one's clamoring to buy/rent me.

There is a complete disconnect with people who view Politicians like they view religion. This is a scary phenomena.

I'm starting to see the strange and twisted reality of these people. I don't understand it, but I see it. They vote against their own interests as they worship. Completely blinded.

If they want to vote for a party, sure, do so with informed minds, but I don't think they even understand. They vote blindly for their representatives, like they vote for their deities.

... And that's a chilling thought.

That must be so scary for the trucker. At first, I was thinking, that's a really long (and tall) ramp, but I'm clearly not a physics professor, as he nearly went up the entire length. This must be part of the reason why truck weight limits exist; so engineers can calculate things like maximum truck ramp pitch and length.

Scary stuff huh? Science I mean. Just take a seat up on the porch. We'll just work around you.

Like another lemonade?

Holy crap. My family and I did a Euro vacation a few years ago and we stayed in the town of Grindelwald while we were in Switzerland. I think we rode the same trail as in the video in the summer, just on what were called trottibikes; basically giant scooters. It was scary and fun as hell.

https://www.jungfrau.ch/en-gb/grindelwaldfirst/trottibike-scooter/

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That is very scary.