OMG - have you seen the news?

Dude, are you still getting your news from the TV? You're ON the internet.

 

Internet?
Sounds familiar, explain yourself.

 

The internet is a series of tubes that are used to pass around photos of naked women.

 

I used to watch it every morning with breakfast, so though now I do check the internet for it I only do it when I think to rather than it being part of my routine.

 

Depending on when you got up, you may have just been watching programs about cooking and antiques.

 

If the price of an original perfect condition 1845 Crunchley celestial globe that was found in someone's attic isn't news then I don't know what is.

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urrRcgB581w[/youtube]

Sometimes you were killed by a crazy shut-in, sometimes your dad's an actor, but so what?

 

Still waiting on a list of those pros you mentioned.

Can we get some quality control here? I wouldn't have paid ytzk any mind had I known he had I known he was dreadlocked. Perhaps include it as a CAPTCHA criteria.

Back to the discussion implied by Smuel's post, are there any good arguments against stricter gun control? Are there any good arguments that support private citizens owning firearms?

 

I think the home defense argument is a pretty strong one for private citizens owning firearms, if you have a gun at least you can put down hostile intruders quite quickly or deter them. In countries that don't let most people own a firearm - like the UK - if someone breaks into your house with an illegal gun or even a knife you're pretty much fucked (maybe literally) unless you keep some sort of weapon at your bedside; even then it's chancier. At the same time, intruders are likely able to acquire guns easier under the same laws - creating a catch 22 situation. I guess in the UK it isn't too hard to get a shotgun however - someone who I used to be friends with had his at 22 inches and got let off because he got it in his uncle's will.

As for arguments against stricter gun control, I've never been able to think of one; why the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was never renewed is beyond me. I'm not a crazy liberal type who believes that guns are the route of all evil, but relatively easy access to semi-automatic rifles that make it easy to rack up a large body count as was unfortunately the case in Newtown and Aurora recently seems like a very bad idea.

 

For the record, it was only a few protodredlocks.

Your ancestors called them dredlocks, you call them knots, I come from a place where they are one and the same.

P.S. Merry Solstice and a Happy Apocalypse, everyone! :hippy:

P.P.S.

That's what she said!

 

I just untangled my hair, if it could be called hair,i ended up with a rat made of almost half of my hair, however it is nice to be able to do cinematic headturns again!
Anyway, whatever y'all believe i wish you a happy solstice s'well, uncle Werozzi loves y'all and will be glad to walk among your corpses, you buncha epsilons!

 

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I think only the first half of what I put was fitting for the out of context quote, unless "getting something in your uncle's will" is some sort of newfangled term for some sort of horrible sexual activity? If not, it certainly sounds like it should be.

 

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Yes, please let's try to avoid writing nonsense like this.

As for gun control laws, there's a simple reason why they are useful. The argument against them is that requiring a license for gun ownership would only penalise honest law abiding citizens. However, if owning an unlicensed gun is illegal, it means the police can lock up anyone who is found with one. This effectively drastically lowers the bar for prosecution of the majority of gun crime - you don't need to prove someone used a weapon, just owning it is enough.

Of course, that's not actually going to prevent school shooting type cases, because those are committed by precisely the kind of person who will go to the trouble of obtaining a license beforehand, but it would make a massive dent in organised crime, which is where the real problem lies.

And I'm not above using the mass hysteria generated at times like these to push through a law that actually solves a different problem. You've got to work with the system.

 

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Hey! I'm pretty good about proofing my posts. It's either live with it or try and cover it up with the EDIT button. I'll just live with this one.

So there is a middle ground between being able to possess guns and have them all taken away? Good. I thought somebody was going to take away all the guns.

 

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I think that's about the third time I've seen you mention your place of employment today alone. Do you also bring it up with every stranger you meet on the street? :hippy:

P.S: I also work in education.

 

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What makes you think telling people to get a license to own guns will prevent organized crime, when one of the big things such organizations are known for is trafficking illegal firearms? They're already breaking the law because it's illegal to bring the weapons into the country in the first place, so I'm pretty sure they do lots of things regardless of what laws are against them. Probably things like drug trafficking, human smuggling, and laundering money.

Aside from that, the Sandy Hook shooting in particular was done with the shooter's mother's weapons - he never owned a gun himself, and didn't have a criminal history...until he stole his mother's guns and killed himself after the shooting.

I don't think a gun license is a bad idea. I really don't. The problem I'm seeing in this whole situation is that there are obviously people not getting the proper psychiatric or psychological treatment here, or really anywhere such violent crimes happen - when those people "break," they go to jail because there's apparently nothing else to be done.

And why has no one been talking about the mass school stabbings that happen so often in China? It's always the US with its guns, when stabbing is so much more horrifying.

*I've also just realized you may be speaking with a twinge of irony.

 

I think the thing is stabbings - whilst arguably more grisly - have a tendency to leave people alive more often than shootings. A knife-wielding maniac just isn't the same level of threat as a gun-wielding maniac, people can defend against someone awkwardly trying to stab them whereas if you're unarmed and someone has a gun all you can try and do is get out of the way. Crimes which result in more fatalities will have a higher profile than crimes which don't.

However as you rightly point out, America does seem to have more of a media spotlight internationally than other countries. A guy went on a shooting spree here three years ago killing 12 people but I doubt it was even heard about internationally unless you have a particular talent for rooting out morbid news.

 

Guns certainly have a higher profile than knives do when it comes to violent crime, and you're definitely right - I didn't know about the shooting you mentioned in the UK. What I know about stabbings is that getting stabbed hurts more, and it takes much longer to die - the worse the perpetrator is at their knifesmanship, or the more they want their victims to suffer, the more stabs it will take.

It really looks like all our media does is terrify us, while simultaneously getting other nations to hate just how melodramatic everything about us is. With TV shows like Honey Boo Boo on The Learning Channel(!), I can just about see what they think is wrong with us.

We really don't have higher murder rates than other developed countries. All access to guns has done is allow us to keep up with everyone else - the statistics related to this misinformation directly compare murder rates by the entire population of the countries involved, when different countries have different average ages and ethnic groups to consider than the US does. Countries with older average populations have less recorded violent crimes, because apparently older people are less statistically likely to kill other people. If the younger population, on par with the average age of people in the US is considered, the murder statistics even out. Even comparing racially causes things to balance - compare murders committed by European-Americans with people living in Europe, and the rates are pretty similar.

It even appears that, if I can trust the wikipedia sources I just checked, the US isn't even the highest rated country for intentional homicide, or murder by firearm.

 

I was curious enough to check.

I took the first 30 countries from the list of countries by Human Development Index and assigned each its intentional homicide rate from an appropriate list.



Turns out the United States actually do stand out in a negative way.

 

The median age for most of the countries in the top ten is over 40, except for Australia (which seems like it, given your table, is full of quite non-violent people). Violent crime statistics tend to lower with increased median age, and so the only way to meaningfully compare the crime rates is to compare the age groups in the countries most likely to commit crimes, i.e. people under 35. That, and ethnic differences need to be taken into account.

Without an even playing field, a lot of things can look pretty bad.