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I want to consider the two separate incidents in Christchurch, and consider how gun control might have influenced those events.

In the first mosque, those people were just screwed. No one was armed, no one seemed to have any warning. Dude came on like gangbusters, firing in through the door, advancing, and shooting at anything that moved. The people inside had very, VERY little opportunity to respond in any meaningful way - they were pretty much herded into two different killing zones, and they were trapped there. There may have been the slightest opportunity for an armed person to respond meaningfully, if only someone had a weapon. Sometimes, that's how things go - no matter how prepared you think you are, you can be caught by surprise.

In that second mosque? Apparently, there were no armed persons there either. But, there was one ballsy man who stepped up, and said "NO!" Or, to steal back the phrase appropriated by Tarrant, "I will NOT go gentle into that good night!"

Abdul Aziz faced off with the gunman as he advanced towards the mosque, yelling at him to "Come here!" and leading him outside.

EDIT: one of many sources for the quote - https://www.businessinsider.com/abdul-aziz-christchurch-new-zealand-mosque-shooting-2019-3

Abdul had no weapon. There isn't even any mention that he had a knife, however large or small. No firearms. He grabbed the first thing at hand - a stupid CREDIT CARD MACHINE, and advanced on the gun man. The thing was no better than a rock, but apparently there were no rocks at hand. With this near worthless poor excuse for a hefty rock, Abdul advanced, calling for the gunman to "COME HERE!"

You've all heard variations on the phrase, "Fortune favors the bold." In this case, Fortune did indeed favor the bold.

Somehow, in the confusion, the shooter ran out of ammo, apparently dropped the empty weapon, and ran back to his car to get another weapon. Although the details aren't clear, it seems that maybe Abdul threw his sorry excuse for a weapon at the shooter, who ducked into his car. Abdul then picked up the EMPTY weapon that had been dropped, and smashed the (already damaged) windshield, trying to get at the shooter.

About the time that the window was smashed out, the shooter lost his nerve, and drove away, cursing and screaming - and crazy-ass Abdul chased the car down the street!

Fortuna audentes juvat, or, fortune favors the bold

That fact has been observed since even before there was a Rome.

I think that puts paid to the several ideas proposed by hoplophobes that there is nothing a single person can do in these situations. Or, that an individual fighting back only endangers the people around him. All the excuses offered for ensuring that no one CAN fight back. True, the assailant has the initiative, but there is nothing to say that he is calm, cool, collected, and STABLE. If you watch the video of the killings at the first mosque, there are signs that he is falling apart, and losing his nerve. Here, at the second mosque, there is no - I hesitate to use the word "rational" - but there is no rational reason for him to run from an unarmed man. But, the shooter has lost it, in the face of one determined man who maybe has more balls than brains. He tucks his tail, and runs away!

But, we knew this people. Many of us have learned this fact from combat veterans, from police officers, and from anecdotes in real life emergencies. Many of us have seen this in our own lives. And, in fact, there have been some studies on the issue.

What good can an armed teacher do in a shool shooting situation? I invite you to peruse one study: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/01/foghorn/ttag-simulated-school-shooting-experiment-results-and-analysis/

Some teachers are pretty ineffective, others are more effective, and others are extremely effective in neutralizing an assailant.

Conclusion

This experiment was a preliminary test, providing a proving ground for the methodology and scenarios selected for testing before being implemented in a large scale test at a later date.

Based on the limited data collected from this experiment it appears that an armed teacher would save lives in an active shooter scenario. The caveat: the teacher’s effectiveness depends on their level of training. Maximum effectiveness of an armed teacher of any skill level is achieved with advanced warning of the approaching shooter and implementation of a classroom “lockdown.”

If you prefer the full report, rather than the story linked above, PDF here: https://86262a2d5a8678610839-0d14e49ee6aa00b4013e3b6293913ee7.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/SchoolShootingSimFINALREPORT.pdf

Executive Summary
At the King 33 facility in Connecticut, 11 volunteers along with 5 staff members enacted a series
of simulated shooting scenarios with the intent of determining whether an armed teacher or
armed guard at a school such as Sandy Hook Elementary would have been able to successfully
confront and interdict an active shooter.
When designing the scenarios for this experiment, care was taken to identify moments during
the progression of a “typical” active shooter case where armed intervention would have been
effective in interdicting the shooter. Three such moments were identified, specifically the
moment the shooter entered the school building, the moment they entered a classroom, and
the moment an armed response arrived on scene. One of these scenarios (when the shooter
entered the classroom) was enacted both without any advanced warning that the shooter was
coming, and with sufficient time for the teacher to enact a standard “lockdown” procedure as
implemented at Sandy Hook Elementary.
For scenarios where no advanced notice was given, unarmed participants were instructed to
leave and re-enter the area being defended at random in order to simulate normal traffic and
keep the defender from being able to react to an event such as the door opening instead of the
first sight of a gun or the sound of a gunshot, as would be the case during a real shooting.

Do you want to be safe, people? Put an end to gun control. Allow individuals to protect themselves, their loved ones, their friends and associates, as well as random strangers in the vicinity. Put gun safety courses in the junior high schools, and encourage kids to learn how to handle weapons. Put advanced courses in the high schools, and form gun clubs in those schools. Familiarize everyone with weapons, and end the fear of weapons.

An inanimate object cannot decide to kill you. A PERSON has to make that decision. A PERSON with the tools for the job can protect you from the nut case.

In this case, a PERSON, even without any tools for the job at hand, managed to protect a building full of people. Imagine, if he had a real weapon at hand. Imagine if someone at the first mosque had a weapon at hand. At the sound of the first gunshots, he might have armed himself, and put an end to the massacre.

Ask yourself a question: If you should ever be caught in a kill-or-be-killed situation, would you rather be armed, or unarmed? Yeah, you know the cops will respond to the situation - sometime. Would you rather be the survivor who drops his weapon, and surrenders to the police, or would you rather be the sheep, bleeding out on the ground?

The weapon is NOT what you should fear. Fear the bastard holding the weapon!

Tarrant feared Abdul, even though he had no weapon!

EDIT: link to the video, supplied by an anonymous coward, earlier today. via bittorrent, magnet:?xt=urn:btih:52b278c6769eb2edb9773ff6fe0923598ff42fea&dn=Christchurch-Mosque-Shooting-New-Zealand-FULL-VIDEO.mp4&tr=udp://tracker.leechers-paradise.org:6969&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80&tr=udp://open.demonii.com:1337&tr=udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969&tr=udp://exodus.desync.com:6969

Can somebody remind me why we should believe anything he says about the "Russia" bullshit?

No, we're not even close to "Peak Chutzpah"

Pence hosts openly gay Irish prime minister and his partner for breakfast

Vice President Pence hosted the openly gay prime minister of Ireland and his partner for breakfast at the Naval Observatory Thursday.

Leo Varadkar, who is in the U.S. for an annual meeting with U.S. officials ahead of St. Patrick's Day, shared photos of the event on Twitter.

[...] Although Pence has hosted Varadkar before, this is the first time the vice president has hosted the partner of an openly gay world leader.

gay men > lone woman

A man is on his way home from work. Traffic comes to a complete halt.

"Wow this traffic is worse than usual. Nothing is moving."

Soon he observes a police officer moving back and forth among cars getting closer and closer.
He rolls down his window and asks "Officer, what's the delay?"
The officer replies...

"Trump is so depressed about not always getting his way, that he stopped his limo in the middle of traffic and is now threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says everyone hates him. He can't just quit because the Fake News would laugh at him. And he doesn't have, and never has had, enough money for REAL lawyers to defend himself from all the criminal prosecutions that would follow."

"So I've been taking up a collection.", the officer says.

"Oh, really, how much have you collected so far?"

"So far about 26 gallons, but many folks are still siphoning."

_{adapted from a "Canadian prime minister" joke}

Join Us for a Tom's Hardware AMA with Intel Optane

1. What even is it?
2. Why does it suck?
3. Can I have some for free?

Comma.ai founder George Hotz wants to free humanity from the AI simulation

What keeps George Hotz, the enigmatic hacker and founder of self-driving startup Comma.ai, up at night is not whether his autonomous car company will be successful or what other entrepreneurial venture he might embark on next. No, instead, Hotz says he’s tortured by the possibility that all of us are in an advanced simulation observed by either an omnipotent extraterrestrial or supernatural being, or an artificial intelligence far beyond the realm of human conception and understanding.

“There’s no evidence this is not true,” an animated Hotz told a crowd at his SXSW talk on Friday, aptly titled “Jailbrealing the Simulation” and billed on the festival’s website as an exploration of whether breaking out of a simulated universe means we can “meet God” and kill him. “It’s easy to imagine things that are so much smarter than you and they could build a cage you wouldn’t even recognize.”

[...] It’s hard to know seriously to take Hotz sometimes; he strikes me as someone who often says something to get a reaction or to verbalize his inner monologue as a way of making sense of it. And he said as much onstage. “Do I actually believe it? Some days yes,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about something until I say it out loud.”

The crowd didn’t much care either way. During the Q&A, an audience member asked Hotz if he would consider partnering with transhumanists — people who believe in humanity’s eventual evolution by way of merging the body and mind with robotics and AI — to found his church. Hotz was rather ambivalent to the idea; perhaps he didn’t think people would take him at his word. But if he does a start a church, the sermon he gave at SXSW yesterday was delivered to a room of would-be believers.

Smoke weed everyday.

Related: George Hotz's Comma.Ai Cancels Comma One

I doubt there is anyone at Soylent who doesn't purchase anything online. I do, pretty regularly, because I can find things that aren't available in my local area. Things that might be available, I can find for a fraction of the price online. So, I shop online.

Tracking packages is usually pretty straightforward. The vendor sends you a tracking number, which is often a live link to the carrier's tracking site. If it isn't a live link, well, we probably all recognize a USPS, UPS, or Fedex number, so we go to the appropriate tracking site, and copy/paste the number in. Unless the shipper used not-so-Smartpost, we generally know within a day when our package will arrive.

But, overseas shipping? That isn't so very straightforward. Over time, I've learned to recognize some of those numbers, but new ones pop out of nowhere. How do you keep up with all of them?

You no longer have to keep up with all of them. Or, any of them, if you don't want to.

http://parcelsapp.com/en/tracking/SYBAA52472888

Guy named Pavel Tisunov has done all the work, and created a web page, as well as apps for Android and iPhone to track almost everything, it seems. The list of carriers tracked can be found http://parcelsapp.com/en/carriers

Those of you who are multilingual might be interested in his blog - http://parcelsapp.com/blog/

I wish I had found Pavel a couple years ago! It appears that his earliest blog posts were in April 2017. If I could read his entries, I might have a better idea how long he's been around.

Enjoy!

And, thank God for diversity, and for Russians, huh?

I was considering the opposition to Federal taxation and wondered what might happen if the requirements to pay Federal taxes were optional on a state-by-state basis.

The way this would work is that state legislatures could opt the residents and businesses of their state out of paying any Federal taxes, levies and fees.

In order to make this reasonably fair, if a state were to opt out, all those in the state would no longer receive any Federal monies, including highway funds, Medicaid block grants, Superfund grants, education funds, federal government contracts (including subcontracts), Medicare, Social Security, military bases, or any other appropriations from the Federal government.

There are a couple of ways this could go. Those states who are least dependent on federal funds might opt out.

Alternatively, states with populations that are most anti-Federal taxes might opt out.

What other scenarios might drive a state to opt out?

More details:
FY 2013 Federal taxation and spending by state
Federal Tax Revenue By State

Would you support such a law? If so (or not), why (or why not)?

There seems to be a major controversy in Maryland right now. The gun grabbers are attempting to - well - to grab guns. I stumbled over the story on this site: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2019/03/daniel-zimmerman/maryland-gun-owners-will-not-comply-gun-grabbers-and-legislators-freak-out/

Admittedly, this is a biased site. I happen to agree with the aims of The Truth, but it is biased. So, I did a search for articles on the subject, "We will not comply". I found one "mainstream" media mention of it: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/ac-cn-wicomico-not-comply-20190226-story.html

I've scrolled three pages into my search results, and have not found another mainstream media story. I've found infowars, callmegav, conservativefiringline, rallyforourrights, a related story at investmentwatchblog, dcclothesline, unclesamsmisguidedchildren - in short, hit after hit after hit, page after page of hits. But, mainstream media isn't covering the story at all.

Let me change search terms, and see if MSM is even covering the vote on the bill - - -

Search term used, "Maryland HOUSE BILL 786" Results for MSM stories after scanning two pages of hits = ZERO Are they trying to pass this bill without any publicity at all? Keeping it hidden from voters? WTF?

Several small time news sources located inside of Maryland carry stories. I thought I found a hit at the Washington Post - but that was a false hit, on an entirely different subject.

Odd - if all the rest of MSM is refusing to cover a story, we might expect Fox to carry it. I don't even see a Foxnews hit.

Go ahead, do your own searches. If you can find liberal media stories on the house bill in general, let us know what search terms you used.

If you can find liberal media stories on the We Will Not Comply opposition to HOUSE BILL 786, please, PLEASE let us know how you found them.

It's this sort of apparent coverup that lends credence to the likes of infowars.

Lenovo Unveils ThinkStation P520 & P920 ‘AI Workstations’: Xeon Plus Quadro RTX 6000

Ubuntu Linux based systems shipping with 10 or 24 cores, 128 GB or 384 GB of RAM.

Maybe that will be the new minimum in 15 years.