Extreme squirrel-manning looks fun, but also a bit more suicidal than I'm comfortable with. I'd actually try that version though.

He's confused, that's not how the Syrian Suicide Squad works.

Clearly the principal was wrong, he didn't grow up, he's still not a grown man. Grown men don't laugh about having been disgustingly abusive children, especially when it's actually their job to stop abuses.
Maybe the next kid will put the .45 in the bully's mouth before their own. What is there to lose when you've been abused to the point of suicide?

To be fair, correlation of gun ownership to gun violence isn't exactly clear cut either. No country has quite as many guns per capita as America, but there are countries with relatively high gun ownership that don't have the same problem with gun violence. Clearly it's a complex issue...

but maybe media is to blame somewhat. The news media. I wonder if the reporting was minimised - i.e. no images of the killer, no details about the killer, just reporting of the incident, the victims etc and then, as callous as this perhaps sounds, on to the next story. The families of the victims aren't helped by the frenzy or speculation and I really think it only encourages the next would-be murderer. It gives an opportunity to have a discussion about gun control (except it comes across as opportunistic...) but America's gun violence problem is larger than mass shootings. To me, it's as much about the stickups that go wrong, the fact every police officer can make a poor decision and end up killing somebody, its about lil timmy accidentally shooting his best friend, its about suicides... not just about tragedies that dominate the news. Oh, and games have fuck all to do with any of it

You did say he didn't provide peer reviewed evidence, which was in there.

I'm calling the quora article non peer reviewed and off topic at best, and somewhat intentionally misleading, but not necessarily intentionally factually incorrect....but clearly written poorly and with bias. Many of the charts were unlabeled as to what country the stats are from, much less the data source, and the conclusions they drew were questionable.

The others, unavailable without paying...I'll read them if you pay. ;-)

Suicide is homicide, and counts since it's a crime. I had that argument with my brother about school killings last week.

I agree, that was horrible data (within 15%?!), and disingenuous to say "similar magnitude"...I wouldn't have said that, but I didn't write it. Still, the data is telling if imprecise.

It's impossible to be definitive about societal changes with so many factors involved, but the clear correlation is there if not proof of causation. Had they claimed certitude, you would know they're liars. The theory of psychohistory is far from complete, so predicting exactly what drives the actions of societies is still a guessing game at best..

Yes, if, as it seems, those other studies have to average the data over multiple years to make decades long slopes to make their point, but individual year data contradicts it, or intentionally not focus on firearm deaths and/or injuries when discussing efficacy of firearm laws, they're not being fully honest, outright liar might be a bit far....or not.

Comparing different cultures, especially Australia to Nz (or Canada to US) is often meaningless. When your culture doesn't produce a problem, legislation isn't needed to solve it. Talking about Canada to address the USA's gun problem is just time wasting, not useful. We aren't going to become them, so their solutions (not being violent nuts) won't work here. Nice if it would, but how do you legislate sanity into a culture?

I didn't dismiss it. I stated what he provided and implied it was inadequate.

I literally just wrote that there are opposing papers. I hope you don't think putting opposing papers up is some sort of "gotcha" moment.

"Are you calling them liars?"

No. Are you calling the authors of the papers I've put up liars? I'm sure you can see how silly a question that is now it's put back at you.

"We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%"

I haven't been talking about suicide - but if you must then yes, it dropped the suicide by firearm rate. I never contended otherwise.

"The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%]"

43% variance is large. The reality is the data isn't very good (as multiple studies have pointed out) and it makes it very hard to measure, analyse, and draw appropriate conclusions.

"NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved."

Note the language, "seems to have". They aren't affirming that it has because they probably can't back it up with solid data.

"The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings"

Again, non-concrete affirmations. The same data sets as analysed by multiple other studies points to no change in the rate. Are any of them liars? I doubt it.

I believe the McPhedron paper is one of the most important, illustrating that some of the key legislative changes had no effect when comparing it to our closest cultural neighbour who didn't legislate the same changes (and maintained a lower overall average homicide rate and lower average homicide by firearm rate for the last 20 years).

As I already wrote, it's a contentious issue and there are opposing papers on this topic.

Snopes included excerpts from at least two peer reviewed studies directly on topic that seem to contradict your contention....why dismiss it offhand?

In a peer-reviewed paper published by American Law and Economics Review in 2012, researchers Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University found that in the decade following the NFA, firearm homicides (both suicides and intentional killings) in Australia had dropped significantly:

In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth (and nearly halved the number of gun-owning households). Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%].

Similarly, Dr. David Hemenway and Mary Vriniotis of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found in 2011 that the NFA had been “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved”:

For Australia, the NFA seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved. While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.

The NFA also seems to have reduced firearm homicide outside of mass shootings, as well as firearm suicide. In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4). In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33)

Additional evidence strongly suggests that the buyback causally reduced firearm deaths. First, the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback. Second, firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.

Are you calling them liars?

So, when Sony made their deal to hand over the film rights to Spider-Man, they retained the villains? Heh, I guess they nearly have enough to make a Sinister Six movie and try to reproduce the magic of Suicide Squad.

Woah. . . I just did some googling and not only was Sony planning a Sinister Six movie, but Suicide Squad was profitable. fml

Oh....disabled, pedophile, and cop.
Do they have triple protective custody in prison?
I foresee a jailhouse suicide...he knows what he's in for in prison, a decade of solitary or being raped to death.

While I agree with the broad strokes of your argument, positing that life is soooo much better in Japan completely overlooks the sky-high suicide rate there (consistently one of the top countries in the world).

Life may be less desperate, but obviously there are serious underlying issues.

The US government's blind support of massive corporations certainly is a factor. Allowing them to triple the cost of insulin over the past decade or so in spite of the fact that manufacturing costs are stable or even falling is part of what causes patients like the above to ration their supply.

I also found out recently that all financially motivated crime in the US (theft, auto crime, robbery etc.) as a total cost is less than half of the wage theft practiced by big corporations (short-changing vacation time and paychecks mostly). In fact the #1 type of wage theft is underpaying minimum-wage workers, which alone accounts for more than all of the typical "crimes" combined.

If that doesn't lead to homicidal rage, I don't know what does.

At around 7:40 where she talks about suicide rates among men vs. attempted suicide rates among women I would say she totally nailed a problem I've always had with these issues. Why do people feel the need to treat this like a contest?

You could argue that the issues that hold men down are generally caused by the same issues feminists are fighting for.

One of the biggest issues affecting men is suicide, especially in younger males. And one of the primary drivers of this is "macho" culture; the idea that it's not "manly" to ask for emotional help.

The other issue I hear about is fathers rights (a court will almost always side with a mother in a custody dispute). Again, this is caused by the idea that the woman should be looking after the children.

The irony is that the fundamental difference between men's issues and women's issues is actually the fundamental similarity: both are caused by societal structures that dictate the role of men and women.

The difference is that historically (and let's be honest, even today), men hold the power and make the rules.

Did you actually watch the video? Where were white people being blamed?

Also, if the majority of gun homicides are among blacks and suicides are among white people, what fucking difference does that make? They're all still dead and the cause of death was a gunshot.

I like how he mentioned the inability of the CDC, due to regulations, to gather a comprehensive database on gun violence. As that seems to be an oft to ignored law. Undo that law, let the CDC gather all the various data points into one set, and then let that set be used for analysis. A gun used to commit a robbery, rape or other violent crime? That needs to be reported to the CDC database, along with any details known such as gun source, legality etc. A gunshot victim gets treated at a hospital or clinic, that gets reported to the CDC database along with cause, which in most cases is accidental. Suicide by gun, homicide by gun, mass shooting, all get put into that database. That data then can be used by all sides to support their cause, perhaps it will show that many of the proposed regulations would have little effect. I suspect, however, the fact that the gun lobby fights so hard to prevent the CDC from gathering the data for others to use, means they fear it will be far less favorable to their side.

I personally would be happy enough for now though for this step to be taken. So that we aren't making choices based on incomplete data and conjuncture.

I personally support the right to own a gun for hunting and self-defense. I'm not sure how an AR-15 or something like that would be useful in either case, short of an unrealistic scenario of a zombie apocalypse... and before the right-wingnuts suggest self-defense of in case of a military invasion, or from some odd right-wing fantasy of our own military, let me remind you of how well even better weapons and training worked out for the Branch Davidians. Admittedly, a military invasion scenario of either type is more likely than a zombie or otherwise apocalypse, but exceedingly low... Now if Trump gets us into WW3, and we lose power for years, and it becomes survival of the fittest, then there may be an argument, the solution to that, of course, is don't get the world into that situation with idiots like him at the wheel.