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If it seems like every week, there's another terrorist attack – well, you're not wrong. According to one crowdsourcing map, there have been over 500 attacks around the world since the start of 2017, with over 3,500 fatalities. For a period in 2016, ISIS-initiated attacks were occurring, on average, every 84 hours.
Despite improvements in methods and coordination among law enforcement agencies over the past 25 years, they're still hamstrung in a number of ways. With large public gatherings of people becoming more attractive targets for terrorists, what are the best strategies moving forward?
[...] But despite huge budgets and the presence of thousands of added security personnel, it's virtually impossible to prevent a determined terrorist, or guarantee absolute safety. While security efforts for events like the Olympic Games have escalated, terrorists today no longer wait for major events that draw global interest.
[...] The odds are in favor of terrorists. All they have to do is succeed once, no matter how many times they try. For public safety professionals to be fully successful, they have to prevent 100 percent of the terror attempts. It's a number to aspire to, but even the most experienced countries fighting terror – such as Israel and the U.K. – can't measure up to this standard.
[...] These days, it's necessary to consider any place where crowds congregate as vulnerable "soft targets" for the attackers. To better prepare for securing soft targets (and this isn't to say threats against "hard targets," like planes, buildings and infrastructure, have diminished) law enforcement agencies must improve coordination among one another, whether it's via intelligence, information sharing and training. And then there's the need for deconfliction, which refers to avoiding self-defeating behavior – from interagency rivalries and poor communication to insufficient coordination – by people who are on the same side.
[...] Given that there is no way to guarantee complete safety, and that the threat assessment expects more attacks, there are two more elements that ought to receive more attention: community resilience and community policing.
https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-better-protect-crowds-from-terrorism-78443
[Related]:
1996 Atlanta Olympic Games: https://www.britannica.com/event/Atlanta-Olympic-Games-bombing-of-1996
Secure Airport Design: https://skift.com/2016/07/04/how-smart-airport-design-can-make-spaces-more-secure/
Do you agree with this assessment of the security situation ? What do you think could be done to mitigate the effects of such asymmetric warfare ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cellocgw on Sunday June 04 2017, @09:39PM (70 children)
What utter nonsense. A well-armed public will only lead to in incredible number of false shootings, bystanders killed, and oh yes successful suicides.
The correct way to deal with terrorism involves a long game. Ignore the attacks. Stop fear-mongering. Use police, not military, to track down and prosecute offenders. Educate the world and raise them out of the ignorance which leads to hatred.
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @09:49PM
use police????? the same police who have been warned repeatedly about the Manchester bomber and ignored it because they felt it wouldn't be PC to lock him up/deport him, all the while lefties continue defending these fucking people because muh "racial profiling". in my book if you're a muslim living in a western country, and you travel to the middle east, you should be marked as a terrorist automatically and your passport revoked as soon as you board the plane.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:06PM (5 children)
"What utter nonsense. A well-armed public will only lead to in incredible number of false shootings, bystanders killed, and oh yes successful suicides.
The correct way to deal with terrorism involves a long game. Ignore the attacks. Stop fear-mongering. Use police, not military, to track down and prosecute offenders. Educate the world and raise them out of the ignorance which leads to hatred."
.
.
.
The nonsense is yours, mister know-it-all.
You are a good example of a person who is educated yet clueless.
Ignore the attacks ? That is easy to say, until you or someone you love is killed in the attacks.
You won't find it so easy to ignore then.
The authorities prefer people like you, because you are a passive victim instead of a person who is ready willing
and able to take responsibility for your own welfare. So you will be a victim for the authorities as well as a victim
for anyone else.
You claim to be a physicist and a cellist. I'd bet big money you wouldn't survive 2 weeks if civilization collapsed and
you needed to depend on your own skills to survive.
To everyone else : don't take this twit's advice. If your life and the lives of those you love are precious to you, be proactive
and take responsibility for your own safety. Depending on others for safety is a losing strategy, as anyone who has dealt with
serious business will tell you.
Your last words in a terrorist situation will probably be : "Please don't". In case your higher education doesn't help you
understand this, that's not a winning strategy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:57PM (3 children)
Absolutely. It's insane that we waste resources on stuff that's less deadly and pervasive. We should be dedicating our resources to the really dangerous stuff" Like heart disease, automobile accidents and being struck by lightning.
Your panic at an ill-trained, very small group of people shows your cowardice. You're more likely to die slipping in your bathtub and hitting your head than being killed by a terrorist. You're more likely to die getting t-boned by a texting moron, too.
Look at the evidence and statistics. Deaths from terrorist acts are much lower than they were in the 1970s than they are now.
I won't live in fear of a minor (miniscule) threat, especially when panicking as you are doing gives those who would curtail our civil liberties some cover to try and do so.
So take your fear and go live in a bunker out in the woods somewhere. The adults have work to do.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @01:27AM (2 children)
Statistics surrounding terrorism are highly suspect (subject to all kinds of reporting bias), but, no matter how twisted they are, injury by terrorist has to be far far down the list of likely ways to die or even be hurt - like: people winning $100K+ in lotteries far outnumber those even injured by terrorists.
I'm not advocating denial of their existence, but ignoring their presence in daily life would go a long way toward stealing their power. Any time I pass airport security I think how great a victory the terrorists have already won... such damage done to Western society for a span of decades for so little investment.
When we can get back to how the British handled the IRA bombs and so many other things: "Keep Calm and Carry On" - that's the true victory. No matter where they come from, there will always be another nut with a bomb, or sarin gas, or whatever, but in the big picture they do so little real damage that restructuring everyone's lives in a vain attempt to 100% stop them is a waste of everyone's time and effort. Leave them at 99.999% stopped (where they are today) and quit making everybody undress on the way to the body scanner, please.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:32AM
In america you have more chance of dying while detained by ICE [cnn.com] than you do of dying at the hands of a syrian terrorist.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @06:28AM
Accidents stay the same rate approximately over time. While these Muslim terrorists increase by permanent residence, illegal entry and breeding. So it will increase and every Muslim member will passively support those that carry out any acts of violence. Accidents don't make new accidents, Muslim ones does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:17PM
So you are proposing anarchy and civil war and self justice as the solution. God where do idiots like you come from?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:10PM (41 children)
Switzerland has one of the laxest gun ownership laws in the world and gun ownership there is extremely high [smallarmssurvey.org] yet, they have one of the lowest homicide rates [unodc.org] in the world.
This is indisputable evidence that gun ownership does not correlate to increased gun violence. One of reality's well-known liberal biases I guess.
And yet we have college educated western second generation immigrants running off to join ISIS. Education certainly didn't help them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:50PM (2 children)
That's definitely not indisputable evidence, that's an outlier. Switzerland is very different from most other countries, for example, they vote on basically everything including whether or not a person should receive citizenship and they have a culture that has peace as deeply embedded as violence is in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:44AM (1 child)
So a clear-cut example in which gun ownership does not lead to gun violence is not indisputable evidence evidence that gun ownership does not lead to gun violence?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:01AM
It's an outlier. As with any complex issue, you can't take what happens in one culture and assume it applies to others.
They also have much lower rates of both violence and suicide in general than the US.
Bottom line is that the more guns you've got the more likely it it's that the violent elements will have and use them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday June 05 2017, @12:29AM (24 children)
So, one country proves what? Is the US the outlier? Rwanda, South Africa, Syria all have guns galore, and, oh, yes, lots of deaths.
Switzerland shows how far the US has to go to qualify as "civilized"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Touché) by oakgrove on Monday June 05 2017, @01:06AM (9 children)
Subtract the gun violence perpetrated by non-whites and the US is one of the safest countries in the world. Ahead of many European countries including places like Finland.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday June 05 2017, @03:18AM (1 child)
So, those bullets, fired by those "non-whites": do they only kill "non-whites", or are "whites" just as dead, after being shot?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:45PM
Take a look at the weekly crime statistics for Chicago, the majority of the violent deaths as black-on-black.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @06:30AM (5 children)
Is there any source on that? sounds interesting.
(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Monday June 05 2017, @09:15AM (4 children)
It's tough to find all the numbers since the doj has a habit of lumping Hispanics in as white but according to this [fbi.gov], in 2013 non-hispanic and whites of a non-determinant ethnicity (which actually overinflates the real number) committed 2,473 murders with a population (in 2012) of 197,243,423 [wikipedia.org] for a rate of about 1.25 per 100,000. According to this [wikipedia.org], the 2013 murder rate in Findland was 1.66 per 100,000.
Hopefully I got all the numbers right as I'm tablet posting in bed.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 05 2017, @11:20AM (3 children)
Those numbers speaks volumes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:56PM (2 children)
I know, right?
That works out to 99.998% of whites who are not murderers. That's pretty good, right?
Ooops, my bad, its actually 99.998% of non-whites.
For whites it is 99.999%.
HUGE difference, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:44PM (1 child)
You are a fucking idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:37PM
Do you feel better now?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday June 05 2017, @09:01AM
Where did you get that from?
1. subtract the crimes perpetrated by a third of the population in a European country, and suddenly that country is one of the safest in the world.
2. Is "gun violence" the one thing that makes things unsafe in the USA?
You'd have no worries about knives, or just about a group without weapons ganging up on you?
3. Safe for whom?
4. Wouldn't this be a reason to regulate guns?
You're arguing that guns end up in the hands of the wrong people.... the obvious fix to that is to prevent that from happening as much as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
That there is no inherent correlation between gun ownership and gun violence.
The logical extrapolation is that, rather than addressing the very beneficial practice of gun ownership, you should be addressing the problem with violence and irresponsible attitudes towards guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:04AM
The question is whether or not we're better served by having such free access to it or not and both Australia and the UK are better data points as you can compare just the effect of firearms without changes in the culture.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @02:08AM (11 children)
In the US most gun violence happens where guns are prohibited.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:42AM (10 children)
Lol, that doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Do you think all the gang shootings happen in gun-free zones?
Or all the shootings in commission of crimes?
Or all the suicides?
Hell, not even a majority of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones - shooters don't pick easy targets, they pick targets that are connected to their rage, typically "going postal" where they work.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @07:00AM (2 children)
You obviously haven't done any research.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:59PM
Are you seriously trying to convince us that robbery and gang shootings happen in gun-free zones?
REALLY?
OK. Give us ONE citation, even a half-assed practically made up citation from a super biased pro-gun website.
Go ahead.
You can't. Because not even the nuttiest gun nuts are that stupid.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:13PM
Another day, another workplace mass shooting in a full-gun zone. [foxnews.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @01:41PM (6 children)
Technically guns aren't prohibited in NYC or Chicago but mhajicek is practically correct in general.
You can draw a nice graph of "amount of gun control" vs "amount of gun violence" and they correlate pretty strongly.
For example its virtually impossible to legally own or buy a gun in Chicago its extremely heavily controlled for 3 million or so Chicago residents and crime rates are spectacular.
Yet you go north to Wisconsin with twice as many people where guns are about as easy to buy off the shelf (and conceal carry) as popcorn and despite there being about twice as many people, WI has a murder rate about a thousand times lower, and even lower if you exclude the slum areas of Milwaukee.
Generally speaking as advice to foreigners visiting the USA if its impossible to legally purchase guns and ammo where you're visiting, then its a dangerous as hell place to be and you should GTFO as rapidly as possible, but if the local walmart has bricks of .22 LR ammo on the shelves next to the soup cans and you can cash and carry firearms from the gun store down the street, then its basically a zero crime area and you probably don't have to lock your doors etc.
Its generally a truism in the USA that if the police have to enforce weird gun control laws then its a very dangerous and violent location but if there are no gun laws then the police do nothing all day but issue speeding tickets and spend all night chasing meth/alcohol users and the occasional domestic dispute (also usually alcohol inspired)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:33PM (5 children)
Lolwut? Wisconsin has twice the population density of Chicago or NYC?
More alt-facts, eh?
You can draw a nice graph of population density vs amount of gun violence they correlate even more strongly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:05PM (4 children)
Yeah, I hypothesis that:
Population Density causes crime, including gun violence.
Gun violence induces people to "do something" which causes gun restrictions, which generally don't help much.
This would account for the high correlations observed, as well as removing any causal relationship with regard to laws affecting rates of violence (either way). Then again, it is merely my working hypothesis, and I don't have the money or time to do testing.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @03:26PM (2 children)
If you want to make a "new urbanist" really cry, instead of all this gun foolishness just solve the problem at the source and zone/regulate suburban level low density living for the sake of reducing crime. Obviously the problem can't be the kind of people who live in cities, the problem must be the city population density itself, so as a human rights violation we must demolish the cities. I'm down with that in theory although I like the idea of keeping cities as a "containment zone" for problematic people. Contaminating the rural areas isn't going to fix anything.
I find the density argument rather bogus but I'm willing to run with it for the LOLs.
So put a criminal in solitary confinement and they're not magically cured although they were alone which supposedly matters.
Or for that matter it implies having the family over for a birthday party somehow magically quadruples the crime rate. Well, maybe, for some families, trivial stuff like back yard noise violations if the party runs late, or parking violations because of all the cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)
I find you rather bogus and I've got at least as much evidence to back up my beliefs as you do yours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @07:21PM
The difference is that VLM wants to be left alone with the means to take care of himself, whereas you want to violently render VLM and everyone else helpless (except for those pesky criminals which always seem to have ways to harm others regardless of "legal" restrictions).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:06PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday June 05 2017, @12:29AM (8 children)
The issue in the United States isn't so much the guns themselves, as your Switzerland example shows, but the toxic gun culture in the USA. Gun ownership might be benign, even beneficial, if the majority of citizens are have a communitarian and peace-loving ethic, receive compulsory military training, and are strictly monitored for criminal or psychiatric problems. That's hard to implement if you are starting from the assumption that gun ownership is a right. That's always been our problem.
We should treat it more like having a driver's license. It's no great difficulty to obtain a driver's license but we do demand a level of competency which we test for, and if you break the laws enough times you can have this privilege taken from you for a period of time or permanently. Owning a gun is even more serious and potentially deadly than driving a car yet we have less restrictions on it because 250 years ago guns existed and cars didn't. The 2nd Amendment as it is formulated is wrong for our current world
I own guns, and I want private gun ownership to continue, but you won't see an NRA sticker on my car. Given the opportunity I would run away from my house before blowing away an intruder--the proper thing to do. It was too easy for me to get the firearms I have. I should have had to do more training to demonstrate my competency. If everyone who owned guns in the USA was like me then our stats on gun violence would look more like Switzerland's.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday June 05 2017, @12:36AM (6 children)
How exactly is our gun culture toxic? If you're law abiding you can have guns. If you aren't you can't. If you aren't you can get guns outside the law. If caught you face heavy penalties.
I'm not seeing a lot of white supremacist folks using guns (see: Oregon asshole who used a knife). I'm not seeing open carry states having a surge in gun violence. What I am seeing is a lot of shootings in Chicago, where from what I hear it's damned near impossible to get a gun.
Guns don't kill people, physics kills people (wish I knew who to attribute that to, it didn't come out of my brain).
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:17AM
Congratulations, you're the problem.
The gun culture is what prevents any sort of meaningful work be done in preventing people who are at a high risk of abusing firearms to have them. Limiting the kinds of firearms people are allowed to have and checking to make sure that people wanting to buy them aren't mentally ill, criminals or otherwise disqualified from purchasing them gets fought tooth and nail by the NRA and other gun rights clubs.
There's literally tens of thousands of people killed every year through suicide alone, not to mention the people who are accidentally maimed or killed and the people who are killed by criminals that obtained their firearms either through theft or by buying them on the black market.
Hunting and target shooting are the only legitimate reasons for owning firearms by non-law enforcement/security people. Self-defense is a really big tip off that a person shouldn't be allowed to own a gun and in some countries, you're required to have a reason for owning a gun and self-defense is not included in the list.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:51AM (1 child)
Then you are not looking.
Dylan Roof - Charleston Church Shooter
Michael Wage Page - Sikh Temple Shooter
Alexandre Bissonnette - Quebec Mosque Shooter
Adam Purinton - Olathe Kansas Bar Shooter [heavy.com]
Allen Scarsella - Shot 5 BLM protestors [atlantablackstar.com]
And that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure I could easily find 10x that if I googled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:37PM
HEY! You better stop poo-pooing the GP's alternative facts, or perhaps more appropriate, selective memory.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @01:56PM (1 child)
We use them all the time, just perfectly legally for target practice and other completely legal sporting purposes. Its a valid hobby.
Also the logical operation of (not (hating your own race)) doesn't magically auto imply hates all other races under any system of logic. That guilt trip is only applied to white people. Black people not hating their own race doesn't imply magically they somehow magically must hate Samoans for example. Its a constant part of Hollywood propaganda. Much as they never make a mistake in their science and computer narrative naturally they never make a mistake in their characterization of white people who are not self loathing. The point of this is most white people who are not into self loathing are not necessarily white supremacists and generally don't hate any race, although they particularly do not hate whites, which is admittedly highly politically incorrect.
What you will see a lot of is 100 black dudes shot 100 black victims in Chicago last weekend, and some white guy in Texas climbed a university tower and shot a couple students back in the 60s, so logically the highest safety priority is to take guns away from law abiding white people. I mean, white people with legally owned guns kill almost as many people per year as lightning, its obviously a high priority (LOL)
And gun control is just a dog whistle for anti-white racism, what they always mean is we need to make it impossible for white people to legally own guns. Never hear them say "we gotta take all the guns away from the Jews" or "we gotta take all the guns away from the Koreans". Gun control is implicitly an anti-white racist topic. Only racists are "into" gun control. Its sorta like how pre-civil rights era only racists cared about implementing "poll taxes" and "voting tests" in the pre-60s post civil war deep south.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @09:13PM
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/ [theatlantic.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:52PM
An excellent 90's sitcom. [wikiquote.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @03:58PM
You mean Toxic Ghetto Thug Culture. In absence of guns they would use knives. Calling it "Gun Culture" is a slander to many upstanding, law-abiding, gun owners, who hunt and hobby shoot. You are trying to re-frame a debate which you would lose otherwise by changing up the definitions because you cannot argue against Switzerland example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @06:38AM
The reason Switzerland has low rate of gun violence is that owning a gun there is a privilege, not a right. Background checks, mental evaluation and continuous law abiding is needed to keep it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pvanhoof on Monday June 05 2017, @09:12AM (1 child)
Switzerland has a high gun ownership because a) citizens have to serve in the military and b) once you had to serve in the miltary you have to keep your army issued rifle with you in your house. Note that the Swiss people I know all hate having this goddamn thing in their house. Also note that they have a registered box of (numbered) bullets and that these bullets get counted by the government. You're not supposed to fire them.
Also note that most Swiss people are peaceful and the ones who don't live in the cities live in mountain villages where everybody knows each other. It's a bad idea to start pointing guns at people you've known for years. You might have to leave your house and go live somewhere else after that. As everybody in the village will hate you. But then again, this stuff simply doesn't happen much to a highly civilized country like Switzerland.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:10PM
Ah, the myth of the swiss guns. [nih.gov]
Switzerland has lower firearm ownership rates than the US and a much lower handgun ownership rate.
The army myth is particularly egregious, only people above a certain rank were required to keep their rifle at home, equating to just 25% of households and over the last decade and a half they've switched to keeping the rifles at local depots in town because swiss suicide rates were off the chart compared to neighboring countries.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday June 05 2017, @10:08AM
Here's another anecdote...
Kennesaw is a surburb just North of Atlanta, Georgia. The citizens of that little town were being invaded by Atlanta folks, having their stuff taken, and other sometimes violent crimes.
I know of this because some of my family live in its environs.
The fed-up citizens and city council were being overwhelmed with high crime rates. So they passed a law. *REQUIRING* everyone to be armed!!!!
Here's the Wikipedia writeup on it. [wikipedia.org]
TLDR:
So, for what its worth, this is what happened there, when citizens got fed up and quit begging government to fix it - and did it themselves.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:12PM (2 children)
Well, we have grandparent and parent with opposed strategies, both reasonable, both missing context.
Terrorists have been intentionally created, like dogs prepped for illegal fights, both by the Guantanamo madness (jailing mere suspects, torturing, and then RELEASING them) and the arab spring, which was more of an USraeli winter. The infrastructure, same since the helping afghans against soviets era.
Terror is useful for those in power or sure to be gaining it.
What does this mean? it means that the real strategy will be: militarization of police (already begun before the crisis, like army drills about crowd control happened well before the crisis) secret police methods (begun before the crisis) digital panopticon (begun before the crisis) no freedom of press, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of expression especially religious (these freedom will remain only nominally).
Other scenario, civil war, intervention from either Russia or Usa, Yugoslavia war 2.0.
I will add that your comment about arming citizens is true, but because citizens have been monkeyed by years of mass media. When people were all armed (blades) there were many killings for trivial reasons (even this can be discussed, though, because if the right of passage meant loss of reputation in front of the superior, they were pretty right to knife each others), but it was far from the anarchy we witness now. The propaganda in the media, where police apprehending the culprit after investigations seems to set things straight, is utter bullshit. The crime is done and the victim will suffer it for years, decades, forever.
Plus, every time governments reduced citizens to sheep, bad things eventually happened. Society is for man, not the other way round.
Plus, if you really want to see the broad picture, all of these wars are just the way for a system designed for failure to justify the failure. Remember that even with no 9/11 nor wars, economy would have tanked, only a bit later and with puzzled people. Instead, we have our nice emmanuel goldsteins.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:14PM (1 child)
note, I forgot to say that militant Islam is terrorist by default, else it seems it's all fault of the imperialists, which is not honest.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:48PM
All the fault of the imperialists? No, I don't think that's fair either. Are recent incursions into Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. giving the extremists another lever to use in terms of radicalising others? That's likely to be a yes. If people want to win this battle by warfare, then they're going to have to be OK with turning the entire middle east into a smoking ruin. I'm no expert but I believe that's called genocide and civilised people don't do that sort of thing. While you may argue that these Wahhabists[1] are not civilised, is it worth becoming worse than your enemy - who may well want to subjugate or kill all of us but does not have the capability to do so - to be rid of that enemy? That "hearts and minds" thing needs more work. Go to their country humbly, when requested, as liberators and educators rather than conquerors, to stop the weed taking root.
[1] I initially misspelled that with one 'h' and autocorrect suggested "wabbits".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @12:27AM
"Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190), MORON resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume" [box.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @01:18AM (1 child)
Wrong, you have it: Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to anger, ANGER leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
Educate the world and raise them out of ignorance to defeat the Dark Side.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @01:44AM
Phone rings at police headquarters.
Excited caller: There are 2 men with guns and knives killing people at my school!
Dispatcher: Right, ma'am. Offer them seats so you can teach them out of ignorance.
Excited caller: Thank you, officer, the dead feel so much better now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 05 2017, @01:57AM (11 children)
You mutter nonsense yourself. Texas does not have an incredible number of false shootings. Bystanders? How about the Pulse. Just suppose that only 2 or 4 persons in the Pulse had been armed when the shooter opened up. The shooter was shooting indiscriminately, and that is pretty damned obvious. If the shooter had aimed his weapon anywhere near one of the other armed patrons, that patron could have shot back, and ended the senseless killing.
Ignore the attacks? Arm every adult male, and all the adult females who wish to be armed. When two damned fools tried to stage a terror attack on a speech in Texas, the only two fatalities were the terrorists themselves. THAT is the result of a real world test in arming civilians.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:21AM (8 children)
There would have been a couple of well-armed dead men. Few people have the guts to actually use that firearm that they bought for self-defense to actually shoot somebody. It's a huge problem that they used to have with conscripts into the army, they'd flee or deliberately miss because they didn't want to shoot the enemy.
Locally, there was a mall shooting years back and one of the victims was a concealed carry and had the firearm out and pointed at the shooter and couldn't pull the trigger. He wound up gut shot. IIRC, he did survive, but he was shot because he stood there like a target and didn't fire a single shot.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 05 2017, @02:55AM
So, it is your opinion that because one person froze when action was required, that the same response will be the norm.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @02:55AM (6 children)
That's a pretty rare occurrence, actually the first time I've heard of such happening. Link please? What Runaway's talking about in TX is an actual occurrence, not a hypothetical, and I've read about several other times when a legally armed (permit or constitutional carry) bystander has brought a killing spree to a rapid end. These occurrences generally don't make big headlines because when the death toll is small it isn't a big enough tragedy, and it goes against the "narrative". You wouldn't live in fear and beg the government to take all your rights in order to protect you if you thought you could defend yourself, so they don't want you to believe that you can defend yourself.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:17AM (5 children)
Those tend to be exaggerated.
For example:
Joel Myrck, Asst Principal at Pearl High School. [snopes.com]
He "stopped" a shooter with his gun only after the shooter was done shooting and trying to drive away.
Or Mark Kram [soylentnews.org]
Who shot the guy fleeing on his bicycle, and then ran him over with his car.
Or Joseph Robert Wilcox [bbc.com]
Who drew his gun to stop the Las Vegas Walmart mass shooters ... and was killed.
Or Joe Zamudio [slate.com]
Who got to the Gabby Giffords shooting after the perp was tackled by unarmed people and nearly shot a good guy.
Remember the Dallas sniper from last year?
There were 20-30 armed civilians in that crowd. [nytimes.com]
They didn't help the situation at all, instead making it harder for the police to determine who was a good guy and who was a bad guy.
The "good guy with a gun" is the rare exception. It sounds like a good story, some real dirty harry shit. But the reality is much more rare.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @07:03AM (4 children)
I notice most of the anti gun quacks are posting anonymously. Perhaps they're all shills.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:28PM (3 children)
Aren't you one of those people who whine about ad-hominem attacks that aren't really ad-hominems, they are just people being mean to you?
Well guess what buddy, you just indulged in a actual ad-hominem fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @04:19PM (2 children)
Actually no. In order for that to be true I would have to say that your argument should be ignored because you're not a credible source. I was merely observing a correlation and suggesting a hypothesis which could explain it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @05:31PM (1 child)
Lol.
No, LOL
Surely you aren't so stupid to think we're that stupid?
Accusing someone of being a shill is literally calling for their argument to be ignored because shills are by definition not trustworthy.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 05 2017, @05:44PM
Well if you don't want to be thought a shill perhaps you should put a name to your words.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @02:20PM (1 child)
How do you know they didn't?
FL law makes guns easy accessible.
The club had a capacity of 300, reports are that it was at capacity, maybe even over-capacity.
It seems extremely unlikely that in a 300+ size crowd of young, minorities who regularly traffic in illegal pharmaceuticals not a single person was armed. Its not like they had a metal detector at the door.
Hey dummy, those guys were shot by an on-duty cop. [dallasnews.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 05 2017, @07:15PM
Those cops were Texans, weren't they? Citizens? So, they were loitering, looking for problems. Any two citizens could have done the same. It's how things are done in Texas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 05 2017, @06:08AM
Doesn't work when the offenders can only be reached by military means. For example, Al Qaeda had a strong military presence in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 and was a favorite of the Taliban government then in place. Police wouldn't be able to arrest anyone until said government was overthrown and Al Qaeda's military presence was neutralized or destroyed. In other words, you don't use police for a military problem and that was a military problem.
Except of course, when the ignorance is among the educated. Communism of the last century was of that sort. It started in the colleges. Even for the nastier variants that exploited an uneducated underclass, the founders and early leaders generally were college-educated (though not necessarily to the point of getting a degree). For example, the Khmer Rouge started as a student group in Paris. The Shining Path started at at a Peruvian university. In current times, a lot of the leadership of the Islamic radical groups that are currently creating a hubbub are educated.
IMHO, it is likely that most such future terrorist groups will start among the educated. The reasons are rather simple. The kind of people with the talent and ambition to create and organize such groups will also usually give college a try. That combined with the increased social atmosphere of colleges allow them more opportunity to connect with other people of similar views. Physical proximity is probably also necessary for the creation of such groups (I think strong group cohesion being a key dynamic) though it might be possible to create a group via the internet. College tends to be very immersive. Colleges also happen to be where the impressionable, gullible young adults are.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday June 05 2017, @07:23AM
Educate the world and raise them out of the ignorance which leads to hatred.
That is so naive that it hurts. They don't want educated, at least, not by outsiders. Wall them off, and let them figure things out themselves. GTFO of the Middle East and Africa. Seriously, "build a wall" and leave them alone. In a hundred years, or two, or three, they may achieve civilization.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @08:17PM
texas is already this mythical place where people are well armed. i carry *everywhere* without a stupid fucking license and dumb asses like you never even know. police? those useless thieves? stfu!