We had submissions from three Soylentils with different takes on the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the public response in the wake of an attack at a Parkland, Florida high school.
Public Outcry Convinces National Companies to Cut Ties with NRA
Common Dreams reports:
In the latest sign that the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida tragedy may be playing out differently than the fallout from other mass shootings, several national companies have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA).
[Car rental companies] Alamo, Enterprise, and National--all owned by Enterprise Holdings--announced late on [February 22] that they would end discounts for the NRA's five million members. Symantec, the security software giant that owns Lifelock and Norton, ended its discount program on Friday as well.
The First National Bank of Omaha also said it would stop issuing its NRA-branded Visa credit cards, emblazoned with the group's logo and called "the Official Credit Card of the NRA". The institution is the largest privately-held bank in the U.S., with locations in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota.
Additional coverage on TheHill, MarketWatch, Independent and Politico.
The NRA Just Awarded FCC Chair Ajit Pai With a Gun for His 'Courage'
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai joined the pack at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday alongside fellow Republican commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr—the architects of the recent order repealing net neutrality protections passed in the Obama era.
Upon taking the stage, it was announced that Pai was receiving an award from the National Rifle Association: a handmade Kentucky long gun and plaque known as the "Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award."
https://gizmodo.com/the-nra-just-awarded-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-with-a-gun-for-1823273450
These Companies are Sticking by the NRA
Fallout continues from the mass murder in Florida. The National Rifle Association is taking it up the wazoo. A national boycott is emerging. If you are old enough, you will remember that this is what brought down Apartheid in South Africa.
From the Huffington Post:
In what may be a pivotal moment for American gun law reform, the National Rifle Association has become the object of intense pushback from anti-gun activists and survivors of last week's mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead.
All the attention prompted the gun-rights group to break from its usual strategy of keeping quiet after mass gun deaths. NRA officials have gone on the attack to rail against the "politicization" of a tragedy, and going so far as to suggest that members of the media "love mass shootings" because of the ratings they supposedly bring.
The uproar has once again presented companies affiliated with the NRA, and its powerful pro-gun lobby, with a question: to cut ties, or to continue a relationship with a large but controversial group?
The NRA partners with dozens of businesses to spread its pro-gun message and provide discounts to its members, who number 5 million, according to the group. But this week, some companies have begun to jump ship.
Facing pressure from consumers, the First National Bank of Omaha said Thursday it would stop issuing NRA-branded Visa credit cards after its contract with the group expires. Enterprise Holdings, which operates the rental car brands Enterprise, National and Alamo, says it will end its discount program for NRA members next month, along with Avis and Budget. Hertz is out, too.
Related Stories
Raw Story summarizes a New York Times report that Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as "trigger warnings," explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.
The debate has left many academics fuming, saying that professors should be trusted to use common sense and that being provocative is part of their mandate. Trigger warnings, they say, suggest a certain fragility of mind that higher learning is meant to challenge, not embrace. "Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom," said Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor, who often uses graphic depictions of torture in her courses about war. "Any student can request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of one-size-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even dangerous."
Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said, "It is only going to get harder to teach people that there is a real important and serious value to being offended. Part of that is talking about deadly serious and uncomfortable subjects."
A summary of the College Literature, along with the appropriate trigger warnings, assumed or suggested in the article is as follows: Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" (anti-Semitism), Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (suicide), "The Great Gatsby" (misogynistic violence), and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (racism).
Note: The Raw Story link was provided to provide an alternative to the article source, the New York Times, due to user complaints about the NYT website paywalling their articles.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:26PM (12 children)
Sering that the school district's population was 40% Jewish, with median home prices of $1m, I knew that this time more PR stops were going to get pulled.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:22PM
It does make you wonder.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:17PM (10 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews#Significant_Jewish_population_centers [wikipedia.org]
County-by-county table shows:
12 (rank in counties across USA) Broward County, Florida 170,700 (Jewish) 9.8% (of total county)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:03PM (9 children)
Well, they must have been concentrated at that school then.
My facts originated from Wikipedia too, but since that bit was already deleted, here's the original source:
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/1469603/bde-first-jewish-victim-identified-in-florida-school-massacre.html [theyeshivaworld.com]
At least 40% Jewish: “Together with Rabbi Shuey Biston, I rushed to the school to give support to anyone we could. The school is at least 40% Jewish, so we know many of the students and their parents,” he continued. “We went from parent to parent and tried to offer as much comfort as possible, and helped them recite Psalms, praying for the students and faculty in the school. ”
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:59PM (8 children)
I would say that if your stats are true it makes the attack make more sense. Another crazy fucked up RWNJ being a crazy fucked up racist RWNJ targeting a racial group cause "they own the world and are screwing over everyone." You want to comain about PR making a difference? How about the this fucking story? Courage under fire award to the turd Pai? Lol, even hard core gun lovers probably took a step back at that one.
Except you, you're a disgusting piece of human garbage so you just love this shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:09PM (7 children)
"they own the world and are screwing over everyone."
...and when you draw back your focus, you notice that where that is true, it is only a part of the picture.
The bigger picture is that the problem is CAPITALISM.
Want things to get better?
Change the ownership model where you work.
A really smart guy suggests worker-owned cooperatives (Socialism). [democracyatwork.info] (More reasonable file sizes) [kpfa.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:36PM (6 children)
If socialism is to work, it must be built atop capitalism; that is, socialism must be built atop voluntary trade.
Capitalism is the necessary foundation of society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:24PM (5 children)
Capitalism is exploiting the labor of others.
In a Socialist workplace, all workers are owners.
If you're so smart, explain how it is possible to exploit yourself.
voluntary trade
Markets existed before Capitalism existed.
These days, the (Socialist) Mondragon worker-owned cooperative engages in voluntary trade daily.
Let me guess: You were "educated" in USAian schools.
...and clearly have swallowed a whole bunch of Cold War bullshit fed to you by Lamestream Media (a proxy for USA.gov).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:49PM (4 children)
What does it mean to "exploit" the labor of others?
Capitalism is merely the philosophy that ownership must be defined by agreement in advance of interaction; a dispute over ownership is the lack of a well-defined contract.
When you say that the labor of others is being exploited, it sounds like you are not describing Capitalism. If you want your arguments to be persuasive, then you should adopt another term.
I don't know what you mean by "socialism", but what I do know is that if you want a certain philosophy of ownership to be implemented, then you must build that philosophy atop capitalism, because capitalism is the most fundamental philosophy of ownership in a free society.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:45PM
You're attempting to be literal with words when that's not apt.
Capitalism displaced Feudalism.
Feudalism replaced slave economies.
Look up those economic models and stop embarrassing yourself with nonsense definitions.
...and Socialism is on its way to replacing Capitalism.
Milwaukee and Madison, WI as well as Boston and Toronto each have a cluster of worker co-ops.
Italy has Socialist workplaces by the thousands.
Hell, there are worker-owned co-ops all over Europe. [google.com]
Mondragon, by itself, is in 40 countries on 5 continents.
At Suma in UK, everybody in that worker-owned company gets the same compensation. [google.com]
(You won't ever see that in a Capitalist operation.)
Even the pay differential between the highest and lowest paid worker at Mondragon is less than 10:1.
Again, you don't see that in Capitalist operations.
In those places, they don't have top-down organization (i.e. exploitation).
Professor of Comparative Economics Richard Wolff likes the term Worker Self-Directed Enterprises.
...and, again, your sources of "information" truly suck.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:50PM (2 children)
I believe by exploitative, socialists describe the monopsony effect on the working class. If each person in the working class bargains individually, they will all find themselves in a race to the bottom. One can see this demonstrated in the West in the past 40 some odd years.
By working class, I mean people who own no capital and must sell time (labor) instead. (We can hem and haw about how it came about that so many people find themselves without capital. Failure to build generational wealth should be a cardinal sin [not sloth, because people without capital are anything but slothful, but perhaps some form of idiocy--"penny wise and pound foolish"], but it is not, and so many people fail at this.)
I also believe that when men evolve to become more like angels, anarcho-capitalism will allow a more perfect system of collective bargaining to come about. In fact, I think that under anarcho-capitalism, the current status quo of capital and labor being separate will be very uncommon. Collective ownership and operation contracts would be the norm, so we would see many more Mondragons. The working class would be no more, because it would be normal for a worker to also become a capital owner (thus invalidating my definition of working class above) when signing on.
I see socialism and anarcho-capitalism as beautifully compatible. Unfortunately, both systems require men to be angels.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @12:15AM (1 child)
Thank you for the response.
Under capitalism, what you call "labor" is indeed "capital"; your labor is a resource with well-defined ownership, and it is a resource that can be incorporated into contracts. That is to say, I dispute the premise on which "socialists" seem to base their arguments.
Secondly, capitalism is the only philosophy that explicitly embraces the fact that men are not angels; under capitalism, the rules that govern interaction between men must be established in advance of interaction.
Thirdly, socialism is what seems to ignore the fact that men are not angels; that is why socialist revolutions tend to seek a "new" Man, who is more noble, stronger, fitter, and more moral; the result is that dissenters get sent off to "re-education" camps, which devolve into concentration camps, which devolve into murder camps.
I will never EVER agree with you until you acknowledge that capitalism is the sole foundation of a free society; do that, and then we can talk about more complex abstractions that one might call "socialism".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:00AM
"labor" is indeed "capital"
No, nitwit.
All capital is derived from labor, [google.com] but the terms are NOT interchangeable.
You are attempting to present yourself as an intellectual, but you don't have the knowledge base to pull that off.
capitalism is the only philosophy that explicitly embraces the fact that men are not angels
You may find that to be significant, but it isn't.
(Small minds dwell on unimportant minutia.)
...and it isn't even correct, nitwit.
socialism
You don't understand the word.
"re-education" camps
...and you just can't help but repeatedly show how much Cold War bullshit you have swallowed.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:50PM (56 children)
Legal Texas Gun Owners Have a Lower Murder Rate than Britain [redstate.com]
That's me just saying.
What say you?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:32PM (34 children)
I say: if you want to have a rational discussion, instead of the trolling you so obviously intended (and I bit), then stop picking only the statistics that support you argument.
Germany (very strict gun control) in 2011 had a total murder rate of .35 in 100,000 for all causes including guns, which is still lower than just gun-related deaths alone in both populations named in your link. In 2016, that rate rose to .44 without any changes in gun control laws.
Could it be, just possibly, that there's more factors at work here than just gun control? Or are Germans just an inherently non-morderous people? (for trolling effect, I could have asked that question the other way around ...)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:47PM
The ghetto population in Germany is organized like the mafia within large families; they aren't wannabe independent agents like in the US.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:56PM (5 children)
To tack on further, how many accidental gun deaths were there? We'll be kind and skip suicide by gun, since you could argue that they'd probably figure out a way to do it anyway (although reducing ease of killing yourself does have a measurable effect, and guns are the easiest way to kill yourself,) but how about 'suicide' by keeping your finger on the trigger while cleaning? Oops. Or your kid gets ahold of it and shoots their friend, punch through your femoral while you're adjusting your holster, you know, those things.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:07PM (2 children)
Anyone who has a round in the chamber, and the safety off deserves to be shot adjusting their holster.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:10PM
Ohhh! Is it time for "I just fucking shot myself, The Musical" again?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTGmTrQXrwg [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:47AM
A couple of years ago I was a civilian participant in a simulated training exercise with the Air Force; the exercise lasted about two weeks. During the exercise we trained and lived like military personnel, including each of us being issued a semi-automatic rifle. We only ever used blanks during the entire time of the exercise. However, they wanted us to get into the habit of treating our weapons as if they were loaded with live rounds. Whenever we entered an enclosed space, we first had to step up to the "pit"--a little space enclosed by sandbags with sand in it--to make a weapon check. We had to check that the chamber of our weapon was clear and that of our buddy to our left and then make sure the switch on our weapon was set to "safety". Well, one time I was sure that there was nothing in the chamber of my weapon and the safety was set. I almost decided to forgo the check. Bad idea. Really bad idea, in fact. It turns out that not only was there a round in the chamber but the switch was set to "semi-auto". Oops. Now, in my case, no one was ever in any danger; as I said, we were using blanks the entire time. However, I have no doubt that had my weapon discharged inside the tent that I would have been sent to see the Colonel for an embarrassing chat about how this all happened. And, it's not that I was being intentionally careless. Honestly, I was trying to be careful with that rifle. I really was. Why am I telling you this? Well, first, you are correct that anyone dumb enough to have a round in the chamber and the safety off deserves to be shot while adjusting their holster. But I also want to note that it is all too easy, in a moment's inattention, to make a mistake that can have potentially tragic consequences. While I was proud to do my part by participating in a training exercise, I am so thankful that in my day-to-day activities I don't have to carry around a weapon with me everywhere I go. Having a weapon in your possession is like having to care for a toddler that is carrying a hand grenade around with them! I also came away with the impression that the vast majority of the people in the USA who own guns probably should not even be allowed to own anything with more fire power than a pee shooter. (No, I don't think I am any more or less careful with potentially hazardous equipment than any other person; I'm probably about average.) Just sayin'.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:18PM (1 child)
Dead is dead. What's the difference if it was an accident, or intentional, to the dead person?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tekk on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:43PM
I agree with Runaway for once? Weird. That was my point: if you want it to be apples to apples, compare the murders plus the manslaughters *plus* the ancillary accidental deaths (count your equivalent UK ancillary deaths too. Knife sharpening incidents? Shillelagh juggling mishaps? Whatever pepole in the UK are carrying for protection and equivalent sport.) Shot yourself while cleaning your gun, kd got your gun and killed their sibling while playing with it, that sort of stuff. Suicides are the biggest cause of death by gun, but I can understand not wanting to get into that because it'd be hard to say whether they would've attempted without a gun or been unsuccessful.
Incidentally, this only counts the *license holders* not the people in houses with a gun present, so if your wife murders you with your gun, that's not a murder here. I'd also be open to them counting some manslaughters and murders by *illegal* gun owners. Most of those illegal guns, after all, are legal guns that were stolen, and so it'd naturally follow that reducing the number of legal guns reduces the number of illegal guns, there just aren't as many around to steal.
I feel like this is where the talking past eachother thing kinda comes in.I'm not going to say that Western Free Press published it in bad faith, but there are different questions that are being answered. Gun control advocates say "Let's have fewer guns", pro gun people hear "...because gun owners do bad things" so the murder statistics of the people who legally are considered to be the owners of a gun are relevant and the others hear "...because having a highly armed populous does more overall harm to society than good" where the statistics of those gun owners is irrelevant, let's look at the larger impacts of having all these guns.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:16PM (11 children)
I'll argue your complaint about cherry picking. Your side of the gun control argument does it all the time. You pick some place in Europe, maybe even five or six places, where there is no crime. When you do that, then my side can do the same. We can cherry pick our own continent, and find where the streets are safe, and violence is very low.
If/when your side understands that ALL OF EUROPE is roughly comparable to ALL OF THE US, then we'll have some more-or-less fairness. That's right, an entire continent, versus an entire continent, with populations that are comparable within an order of magnitude.
So long as you pretend that Europe has no hell holes comparable to Chicago, you lose the argument, every time. You don't get to decide who is European, and who is not - that's the old No True Scotsman routine. You don't buy that nonsense, neither do we.
It isn't guns that make the streets unsafe - is it PEOPLE who make the streets unsafe. No gun, no knife, no club has ever violently raped a woman, nor beat a man to death, or stolen a purse or wallet. PEOPLE do that stuff. Your precious Europeans are on par with Americans. Worse, your immigrant problem is dragging you down. Give it another 20 years, and you'll all be wishing you were American.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:22PM (10 children)
I refute your argument, citing UN data (if the UN is not good enough for you, please quote better data, with sources): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
Ordered by "intentional homicides per 100.000 capita" the US is on place 94 with 4.88 intentional homicides (IH for short).
There is one EU member higher on that list: Lithuania, with 5.98 IH. The influence of Lithuania on the European average is negligible, because its population is so small. Latvia is next (but lower than the US) with 4.11 IH and also a small population. Then Estonia with 3.2 IH, completing the list of baltic states.
Then come Montenegro (2.72 IH) and Albania (2.28 IH), both not EU members but arguably in the same cultural region. And indeed considered quite hellhole-y around here. And still less dangerous than the average US.
The first "traditional" european state is Belgium on place 149 with an IH of 1.95, less than half the US average. The first populous EU country on that list is France with 1.58 IH, about a third of the US.
Now, I'm not going to do the sums for you (feel free), but with the numbers above it's quite obvious that the EU average is not going to be above the US average.
BTW: I did not include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and the french overseas areas because IMHO they are *far* outside the colloquial definition of "Europe" for the terms of our discussion. This discussion, to my impression, was centered around a culturally coherent Central+Western Europe, or perhaps the current EU members. Are you disputing this definition?
Unlike your unbacked assertion, the numbers above do *not* show Europe (as whole or in parts) on par with the US, and with a wide margin.
Unlike your unbacked assertion, it does *not* look to me like immigrants are dragging Europe down, at all: Italy, Greece and Spain, bearing the brunt of immigration and generally poorer than northern states, still have less IH than even Germany, France or the UK.
I agree with you on one thing: people make streets unsafe. But - at least concerning intentional homicides - it seems that I should rather stick to European company than to US.
Did I leave any of your claims unrefuted? I would be very happy to see a breakout of the US states' homicide rates, similar to the way I did above ... I'm sure you have more than just bold statements up your sleeves?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:33PM (8 children)
Oh, I overlooked: the same source gives the average for Europe (including Eastern Europe and all of Russia) at 3.0 IH, compared to US 4.88 IH.
So, even when throwing in another big hellhole, still only 60% of the US number.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:45PM (1 child)
This site makes you wonder what the point of facts really are. No one here is swayed by facts on this topic. All I want is better gun licensing, not stopping people from owning guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:37PM
If you really want your head to ache, try finding a pattern between "good" and "bad" nations in the quoted list.
Hint: gun control is just a symptom of the actual cause, and therefore not as relevant as you may think.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:38PM (5 children)
Ahhhh - you've done well. Quite well, actually. Now, the numbers are comparable. Not good, but comparable. Take an entire continent, with it's population, and compare it to another continent with it's population, and the numbers begin to look similar. Again - they don't look good for the US, but they look similar enough to work with. You simply cannot compare spanner wrenches to pillows, now can you?
Now, allow me to point out that methodology messes things up as well. There are huge differences in the way numbers are arrived at, in each country. The UN uses the numbers given to it by each country, without making much attempt to correlate them. Allow me to compare just two countries, to give you an idea. In the US, the FBI (whose numbers are cited most widely) tends to take a reported crime, and add it straight into the tally of crimes investigated. No arrest or conviction is really necessary for the FBI to increase the crime count by one. The UK, on the other hand, tends to "lose" crimes at several stages. A crime is reported to the police, but the police may or may not record that crime as a crime at all. The police do an investigation, and either confirm that there has been a crime commited - or not. If not, that crime is subtracted from the tally. If the police take a crime to court, the court may or may not convict - and if dismissed, then of course, there was no crime. Now - EVEN IF a UK court actually convicts and sentences a perpetrator to prison - time is on the UK's side. If I'm arrested in June of this year, and convicted in Jan of next year, guess what? I'm off of the police station's blotter, and no crime was committed, so far as statistics go. I've fallen through the cracks.
My terminolgy regarding UK justice may seem off - that is just my interpretation of the facts that I've read. You may read the report from the Home Office, if you like. It has more exact figures, and the proper UK terminology, which should make you more comfortable. The direct link to the Home Office report is in my journal entry - https://soylentnews.org/~Runaway1956/journal/1674 [soylentnews.org]
Bottom line, the "real" numbers of dead bodies left in the streets and alleys on both continents are far more comparable than you will like. I hope that you can accept that we are all lied to, routinely, by our governments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:33PM (3 children)
Ahhh, so now all of a sudden Europe and the US are roughly the same? Didn't you, just a single post ago, *staunchly* assert that Europe was far worse off than the US?
The study you are referring to has no bearing whatsoever on our discussion. "Your" study is about the reporting of gun-involvement. My above-quoted numbers are for "intentional homicide", no matter the tool, and intention as declared by a court. This standard should be reasonably comparable across nations, methinks. The UN study I quoted is aware of the number skewing you mentioned and went to great lengths to avoid it, not least by defining and stating their exact criteria.
For your newest assertion (of EU/US being on par), please provide actual numbers from a somewhat reputable study. Not for Great Britain alone, but for all of Europe. Otherwise I'll have to throw your own argument at you: please don't compare the US average to Great Britain. If you compare, you must compare to the whole of Europe.
Or were you really saying that "the numbers are not comparable anyway, so it's impossible to prove wrong my assertion of equality" ?
If that were the cause, I'd suppose you had indeed been proven wrong and were now looking for a face-saving way out; pathetically so.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)
First - I don't think that I stated that the EU was worse than the US. I have repeatedly stated that the EU is worse than the EU admits, but I think that you have confused me with someone else. The EU is worse than the US in one respect - and that is their utter carelessness in admitting outsiders into their lands. The great-however-many-great grandfathers of those same Muslims went a long way toward enslaving your people years ago. They controlled eastern and southern Europe, and your own grandfathers finally kicked them out, at great cost. And here you are, allowing them in, to try again. Same people, same religion, same justifications.
As for the study not being relevant - yes it is. It is more than enough to demonstrate that the governments aren't honest, or consistent, in their reporting.
And, finally - your "intentional death" may be defined more narrowly than I would like. How many people have died in Ukraine, recently? We don't have anything like Ukraine happening in the US. We manage to police ourselves well enough that groups of people don't start shooting at each other at the drop of a hat. The EU isn't able to do that, are they? All deaths, all causes - which is the more dangerous continent to live on?
You, and others, hate it that I won't be corraled into discussing your narrowly defined ideas, in your own terms. Violent crime is probably as much a problem in Europe as it is in the US, but so many of you pretend that you have nothing to worry about. You live in Utopia, and we are savages, in a savage land. Phhht. Keep pretending. Again - give it a few more years, and those crazy Muslims are going to make the US look like Utopia, compared to the shithole you are creating today.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:03PM
That's exactly what I suspected, nah, counted on: as soon as your opinions (they are just that, without backing facts, of which you provided none in your last post despite my request) are challenged, you change the scope of the argument to better fit your unsubstantiated narratives. It's an impossibility for you to stay on a specific topic.
How intellectually cheap, yet how effective. If you just keep at it long enough, you can wear anybody out since *your* part does not involve lots of time consuming research, instead just pulling opinions out of your ass.
Anyway, my community service today (i.e.: calling out your deficient argumentation schemes) has been fulfilled, so I'm going back to the jungle for more actual fun.
Keep trolling, little racist despot-wannabe, well-known around these parts as you are.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @01:27AM
The immigration situation in Europe is a DISASTER. As everyone knows. But we're having a terrible, terrible time here. So many bad hombres crossing our VERY WEAK Border. And some terrific people. But a lot of criminals. We need to Build the Wall. Because without a Wall, we don't have a Border. And without a Border, we don't have a Country. Kate Steinle, very brutal murder, disgraceful verdict on that one. MS-13 gang members are being removed by our Great ICE and Border Patrol Agents by the thousands, but these killers come back in from El Salvador, and through Mexico, like water. El Salvador just takes our money, and Mexico must help MORE with this problem. We need The Wall! I promised you a big, beautiful Wall. But I didn't count on OBSTRUCTIONIST Dems in Congress. Congress needs to pay for The Wall. Dems say, no Wall until we do DACA. All along I've said, let's do DACA, let's take care of our wonderful Dreamers. I'm the one that's pushing DACA and the Democrats are nowhere to be found. And time is running out. Believe me, it's running out very soon. Very soon.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:26AM
This is true for small-scale crimes against property and very true for online crimes (where, for strange historical reasons, they fall under the jurisdiction of the City of London police and so sometimes fail to end up in either the reported or responsible force's statistics), but it is not true for any crimes involving loss of life. There is a huge paper trail for those and it is basically impossible for them to be omitted from the statistics.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:51PM
OMG I just realized: recent statistics for the gun violence in Belgium and France *INCLUDES* the Bataclan etc. terrorist attacks.
That should up the avarage considerably now that the Bende van Nijvel has disappeared.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:21PM (10 children)
Actually, it's tied to race. If you want to start the shit flinging on a massive level, go ahead and post statistics for those murders, and then we'll post ones for the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:39PM (9 children)
*heavy sarcasm* Yeah, we should kill all blacks to reduce the number of homicides!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Sulla on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:38PM (8 children)
Thats what original poster was getting at, it is insane/wrong to make such a proposal but in the US a disproportunate number of gun deaths are black-on-black. Removing (taking) guns from the inner cities would significantly improve our scores vs the rest of the world because the black-on-black crime would go down. Inner cities are hellholes, harder to start out, harder to break out of the rut, bad or expensive housing, lack of jobs, being stuck either being the best of the best or resorting to crime to feed yourself. If I am sure someone could post the stats comparing Montana to Illinois. The solution is not to kill them all the solution is to take away the need for violence.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:47PM (1 child)
I don't think you can do that. Young men need some kind of "rite of passage", and those rites usually involve some sort of violence. I believe that you can redirect violence. High school sports work for a lot of youngsters, with football probably being the number one satisfier for violence. Country boys used to get into hunting, fishing, camping, and generally challenging mother nature. School and extracurricular sports are probably the best way to redirect boy's need for violence. Peewee leagues and similar keep kids pretty busy, if you can just get them involved. Boy Scouts was also good for keeping kids busy - but I don't see that so much anymore.
But, so long as humans are humans, I think that boys and young men will always need some form of violence in their lives. Kids have just GOT TO "prove" their manhood to each other. Inner city kids with few opportunities do that by shooting each other.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:38PM
Maybe not necessarily violence, but your point makes sense. I visited fairly recently some of the places I used to frequent as a youth, mostly in pursuit of hunting and fishing but sometimes just wandering around. Most of them now have access cut off. A little patch of woods we wandered around in was bulldozed and youth league football and baseball stadiums were built, complete with locked chain link fences keeping out those who do not join sanctioned leagues. Several areas had flood control dikes, we used to fish there but apparently they are off limits since 9/11, when anyone fishing or exploring became a possible terrorist. A great grouse woods was buried under a reservoir in which, since they had to do major engineering work to prevent the water from draining into the sand, has access limited to one fishing pier. And so on. Public access to almost every place I used to frequent has been cut off. I can't imagine how I would have spent my time if I was growing up there now. And they wonder why kids turn to drugs or worse?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:18PM (4 children)
in the US a [disproportionate][1] number of gun deaths are black-on-black
I noticed that you didn't support your claim with a link.
Could it be that you just made that up?
[1] ...and get a spellchecker, dude. They're free.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:41PM
Yes, it could be. In fact, that sounds like just exactly what a racist would make up.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday February 26 2018, @04:03AM (1 child)
Na, im known for my inability to spell
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls [fbi.gov]
From 2013 but when looking at overall murder stats it is 2800 killed by whites to 2700 by blacks. To me this means there is a problem with the inner cities, not necessarily that there is a problem with those who happen to be black. White on white being 2500 and black on black being 2300.
Go read crime stats on the fbi site. Trigger warning, you wont like what you read.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @08:19AM
>To me this means there is a problem with the inner cities, not necessarily that there is a problem with those who happen to be black.
It's poverty. Get rid of the poors and violent crime goes way down (first link is a PDF).
https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1391&context=parkplace [iwu.edu]
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/new-study-gentrification-triggered-16-percent-drop-in-city-crime/ [mit.edu]
Except when it goes way up.
http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-central-20150902-story.html [latimes.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday February 26 2018, @04:54AM
https://www.amren.com/the-color-of-crime/ [amren.com]
And you may disapprove of the messenger, but that doesn't change the numbers.
Same with "mass shootings":
https://herestherealnews.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/debunking-the-myth-that-most-mass-murderers-are-white/ [wordpress.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @01:38AM
Chicago, they had so much "carnage" going on. It's a gun-free zone. But every day they had so many people getting shot. And getting shot to death. They did the gun control, it didn't work. So I told the Mayor, stop that "carnage"! Or I'll send in the Feds. And finally, he did something. Obama, supposedly he's from Chicago. He's not from Chicago, he's from Kenya, really from Kenya. But Chicago, right? He was the President, he did nothing. Massive "carnage." But you elected me and I made a promise: eventually we’re going to get something done. And I told that to the Mayor, he took care of it. Because of me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:48PM
> Could it be, just possibly, that there's more factors at work here than just gun control?
One of the factors: those in charge are not interested in your health and safety, meatbag.
If they were, you probably would not need gun control, because people would be eating healthy food, working less (technology, remember) living clean, having less of that hollywood shit, not exceeding brain altering substances the way our pre-drug wars ancestors did, enjoying education and culture.
Since they are not, you will have gun control, then blade control, then movement control, then opinion control.
My tip is, control resides better in your hands than out of them.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:31PM
Look at this stat from 7 years ago! Checkmate!
How about you look at the trend following Germany's 'enrichment'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:58PM
It rose,and will keep rising due to the number of moslems in Germany
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 26 2018, @03:43AM
That's not trolling, is providing once-only (and by citation)...mmm... an irritating stimulus for further discussion (yeah, that the term. Grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:35PM (15 children)
I'd say that's an easy pitch. After all, one doesn't have busy traffic in Texas gun shows to worry about.
What I find more interesting is the claim that 98% of mass shootings (in public areas and not involving ongoing criminal acts like gang warfare or robbery) are in "gun-free" zones (which also include areas where concealed carry is possible, but a microscopic number actually take advantage of the policies). That's better than climate change consensus.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:32PM (14 children)
That's not surprising at all, it's a trivial secondary effect from a hidden variable.
Gun free zones are erected where extra protections from violence are deemed neccessary for the weak protectees.
Large numbers of weak people that lots of other people are emotionally attached to make a perfect target for attention seekers. E.g. mass shooters.
It's not the gun-free-ness that causes the shootings. If you select any large herd of weak victims, chances are very high that you will also have selected a gun-free zone, without having actually planned it. Gun-free-ness is not a predictor for shootings, it's a predictor for weakness which is in turn a prime target for shooters.
In short: mass shooters want to feel and/or display power.
Actual target selection revolves around the cause for the (real or imagined) powerlessness firstly, and around the availability of weak (easy) targets secondly. This explains pretty much every shooting I heard about, across several countries and cultures. The second part usually involves some apparent randomness due to personal/local/time circumstances of the shooter, but is clearly identifiable in retrospect (i.e.: with good knowledge of the shooters personal perspective).
There are two solutions:
1. Don't have weak targets. Keep weak targets (kids?) well-separated and protect them strongly (private schools?)
This is the paranoid way. It works against mass shootings, but destroys the working-together-magic that defines the term "civilized society". It's easy, and can be bought with money.
2. Don't have severely disenfranchised people
This is the kind way. It's very expensive, very difficult, long-term only, and involves actual caring over me-first strategies. Therefore, it is usually associated with religions and indigenous societies. It is not the True American Way (tm).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @12:45AM (13 children)
[...]
Not my argument. My point is that gun free zones made those vulnerable areas even more vulnerable. For example, in the most recent shooting if the police officer on the scene had engaged the shooter, that would have stopped his rampage and maybe saved some lives. Anyone else with a firearm could have done the same, even a 70 year old granny. Instead, this rule created the situation where there were two people with firearms on the school campus - the shooter and a police officer who refused to do his job.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @02:24AM
Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom. WRONG! I don’t want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms. I’m not advocating guns in classrooms. In some cases -- and a lot of people have made this case -- teachers should be able to have guns, trained teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms. So many of our teachers, people don't know this, but out of your teaching population -- out of your teaching population, you have 10 percent, 20 percent of VERY GUN-ADEPT people. Military people, law enforcement people, they teach. They teach. So many are well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches and people that work in those buildings. People that were in the Marines for 20 years and retired. People in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard. People that are adept, ADEPT with weaponry and with guns. Good guys with guns. And ladies, let's not forget the ladies, and I never forget (hello, ladies). It's not all of them. But it's a lot. They teach. I mean, I don’t want to have 100 guards standing with rifles all over the school. You do a concealed carry permit. And the beauty is, it’s concealed. Nobody would ever see it unless they needed it. It’s concealed. So this crazy man who walked in wouldn’t even know who it is that has it. Nobody would know. It's a MAJOR DETERRENT. Because it's concealed!
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday February 26 2018, @02:40AM (5 children)
"My point is that gun free zones made those vulnerable areas even more vulnerable."
More vulnerable to mass shooting incidents like this, yes, i think you are correct.
But because its a gun free zone, the only way a gun gets onsite is pre-meditated intent to commit a crime with a gun. That eliminates a lot crime of passion and accidental gun related injuries.
So its more vulnerable to a pre-medicated attack, and a lot less vulnerable to a bunch of other things. Does the net cost of the former exceed the net gain of the latter?
"if the police officer on the scene had engaged the shooter, that would have stopped his rampage and maybe saved some lives."
Funny you say that. If there'd been no police officer at all, people would be saying "if only there had been an armed police on the premises. That would have stopped his rampage'.
But there was. And he didn't.
So now its 'if only the police officer had engaged...then that would have stopped the rampage' And what if he had engaged?? We don't know that it would have stopped the rampage as you claim... maybe he'd have missed and shot a student, or maybe he'd have gotten shot himself.
In any case 'One good guy with a gun' wasn't enough because he decided to wait for backup instead of playing rambo, I guess what we really needed was even more guns!!
"Anyone else with a firearm could have done the same, even a 70 year old granny. "
Let's suppose it worked, and the rampage was cut short, that would be offset by all the stories in the news about people getting shot/killed with guns stolen from 70 year old granny teachers at school. Or perhaps even shot by some unhinged teacher.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 26 2018, @03:57AM (2 children)
If you think pre-medicated attacks are worse, wait until you see how a post-medicated attack looks like.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Monday February 26 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
That's got to be one of my better typos :)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 26 2018, @02:50PM
One can only strive for better (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @07:55AM (1 child)
Neither which is particularly common either. The vast majority of those happen at home. Nor do I advocate that everyone should be armed.
What was the point of that paragraph? Why do we need to have perfect knowledge of alternate histories in order to be allowed to reason about this subject? Instead, I'll point to several professional sources [newsday.com] such as the Sheriff of the county and a police training profession who support my claim:
[...]
Moving on:
So I can't be allowed to have an opinion on what-could-have-been, but you'll just make shit up? We already have two sources of such firearms, legally from police officers and illegally from students and whatnot who bring them onto the campus. They don't get into the national news, until they're fairly large mass shootings.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:57AM
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 26 2018, @06:47AM (5 children)
> and a police officer who refused to do his job.
I haven't spent enough time reading all the details of the character assassination that the NRA will sponsor on that guy.
How dare he defy the "good guy with a gun" narrative so bluntly?
Good guy with a gun didn't like his chances against unknown number of assailants with semi-auto rifles designed for mass culling. Troubling fact for the NRA and friends. he must be "a coward", because No True Scotsman would ever refuse to rush towards an unknown situation where they're clearly overpowered!
I guess we need two, maybe three .. make that four good guys with guns in each school ? 130k schools in the US, half a million True Scotsmen needed, automatic weapons provided.
Don't they need an APC, or better a tank, to make sure they survive a first-strike surprise assault? That will be 130k APCs, please!
In the end, whoever doesn't have 4 guys in an APC is just a Soft Target... think of the children!
A bunch of good teachers with guns. That's now what we need. Because US no-tolerance schools are not scary enough.
Absolute madness.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @08:00AM (4 children)
Too fucking bad. That's his job. And a bunch of people probably died as a result.
Why let those teachers near students, if you don't trust them?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:31AM (1 child)
If the job of the police is to rush towards armed people in entrenched positions, then I think you'll find it difficult to hire any police officers that are not already suicidal. In most of the civilised world, the police are expected to behave rationally and act to minimise loss of life, not get themselves killed on futile gestures. As some of the first world war survivors how well rushing towards an enemy with an automatic weapon works some time.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:50AM
What entrenched position? That would be great actually, because a shooter who is fixed in such a position has less people to shoot at. And it's like you're not even reading the professional criticisms I quoted. This was their job. This is what they're trained to do. Sure, it's risky, but it's not suicide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @11:28AM (1 child)
Read what some veterans [businessinsider.nl] have to say about it. Apparently even highly trained military sometimes freeze in combat. It's a natural reaction that is so strong that it seems that no amount of training can fully suppress it. Your macho "that's his job" attitude is a denial of human nature. You're not being realistic.
By the way, people dying at that school were primarily the result of someone shooting at them with an assault weapon, not of a guy with a handgun not shooting back. It's quite likely he would not have hit the killer but be killed himself, had he tried.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:10PM
We aren't told how long this officer was unable to "fully suppress" his "freeze" reaction, but it apparently was considerably longer than just those critical four minutes. He was reported as not having entered the building when a team finally went in. The members of that team arrived after the shooting had stopped.
I didn't say otherwise. The problem here is that when you're the sole person on a school campus with the power to intervene in a mass shooting, you have responsibilities that can't be excused by human nature. This is something that could have been mitigated or even prevented by arming teachers (and it doesn't have to be all teachers and they don't even have to carry those firearms in order to be armed). The shooter may well have decided not to take that course of action at all, if he knew he would be going into a situation where people could shoot back.
Then it wouldn't have been such a big deal that this officer froze. Somebody would have responded.
Further, avoid use of the nonsense term, "Assault weapon". Use "rifle" to be accurate. "Assault weapon" [wikipedia.org] is an empty phrase that just means it cosmetically is in the style of most modern military weapons (painted black, bayonet attachment points, flash suppressors, etc).
(Score: 5, Informative) by tonyPick on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:38PM (1 child)
That these stats don't quite manage to say what you (and red state) want seem to want to think it says.
They are using the subset of License To Carry [wikipedia.org] figures, and conflating those with the "gun owning population".
In practice LTC Holders have jumped through a strict set of legal hoops for gun ownership (including ages, training, and "certain types of psychological diagnoses") and with renewals every five years.
What these stats say is that the subset of people covered by "Strict Laws on Who Can Own A Gun" are safer than "A General Population Who Own Guns".
It is actually a very good argument for increased, and very strict restrictions, on who can own firearms in terms of training, age and background checks. This, AIUI, is generally not the position of 2nd-Amendment types.
(Overall I believe the Texas murder rate is actually quite good for the US: 4.8 per 100K. It's way worse than the 0.99 in the UK though...)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:22PM
The general population of Texas is far safer than the general population of Illinois. And, the general population of Houston is far less likely to be shot, than the general population of Chicago. If you insist on generalities, then of course the availability of guns to the law-abiding citizenry makes them safer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:55PM
Did you even read that article? Let me paraphrase it for you:
Only the weak-minded cannot see that the numbers in the article prove nothing, since they compare two very different rates.
That article tells you more about the intelligence of the readers than it does about murder rates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:28PM
Dumb people get dumb statistics wrong. EVERY TIME. Let's compare "legal gun owners in Texas" vs "legal gun owners in Britain", both per population, as that would make sense. Or we could compare all gun owners (legal or not) in both places, both per population, as that would also make sense. It does not make sense to compare apples with oranges.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 26 2018, @04:04PM
Police check all weapons at the door when you enter and I believe they zip tie the trigger. (Never took one in myself.) Apparently every now and again some schmuck ends up accidentally firing a gun every now and again. It gets real quiet for a minute or so after that. Never heard of anyone actually getting hit, though. Even with a loaded gun, if you treat it right and accidentally fire it, there shouldn't be any injuries. Treating a gun right, means you never, ever, point it at anyone or anything you don't intend to shoot. Even, if you "Know" it's unloaded.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:13PM (3 children)
is laughing all the way to the bank, despite having a deathcount to his name a few orders of magnitude larger. And no one gives a damn.
Stupid people are stupid. They can scream but cannot count, let alone think and reason. Their calling themselves progressives is a slander of progress.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:26PM (2 children)
We have to be unarmed, sick, and overworked.
That's how you maintain slave populations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:05PM
Dn you fools are triggered as fuck by this article.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:01PM
You missed:Kept in the dark
He who believes himself to be your master will deny you information
(Score: 4, Troll) by SpockLogic on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:18PM (19 children)
Fuck them. The NRA is the propaganda arm of the small arms manufacturing industry. The NRA should be designated a terrorist organization . Their policies are directly responsible for the death of thousands of Americans every year. The NRA should be eliminated on public health grounds as they spread The American Disease™ almost unfettered access to weapons of war that kill with brutal efficiency. I'm sick of seeing their members wring their blood stained hands in faux concern as they considers a few dead children acceptable collateral damage in their war against any form of gun safety. Fuck them and the horse they rode up on.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:28PM (13 children)
Apparently you aren't familiar with "weapons of war". The AR-15 that is available at your local gun store is not such a weapon. There is no "automatic" selector on it. The damned gun is marketed at the same people who buy "tactical" flashlights, "extreme" sporting supplies, and other retarded nonsense. That AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, little different from any number of semi-automatic rifles designed to take deer, rabbit, squirrel, moose, or grizzly bear. You CAN purchase some options that make the AR-15 somewhat more impressive, but the stock rifle is just another damned hunting rifle. But, none of those readily available options turns the rifle into a "weapon of war". My single shot .22 rifle can be just as deadly as an AR-15 in the hands of a skilled marksman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:22PM (6 children)
What a line of crap. A skilled marksman is the whole point. Any moron can fire an AK and kill a lot of people with a round that has a muzzle velocity 3 times a standard 22. (Ask an emergency room doctor what the difference is.) Add a few simple mods and the firing rate is quite a bit faster than the 22 I fired at scout camp. It's hard to find any data on how fast a bump stock can actually fire. Even the manufacturers don't publish. A hundred or so rounds in a minute seems pretty likely. This is also not much like my 22.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:49PM (5 children)
The mechanics inside the ar15 are still limited by physics, and when not limited by physics you have to deal with 100rd pain in the ass to change drums that jam. You could have a bunch of 20rd mags but need to train at not fumbling them.
Looked up some vids, if it doesnt jam you can do 100rd in 15 seconds but accuracy is shot after that due to barrel heat. You can fumble to find the awkward sized drum and pull and load a second. Assuming the guy is superman and takes zero time to change drums he can achieve 400/minute, more likely he can achieve somewhere between 200 and 300.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:01PM (3 children)
In fairness - accuracy isn't really the issue. It is very well known among hunters that the first shot kills. If you hear some guy on the other side of the ridge fire three, six, twelve times - you know he didn't get the deer. When you hear a single shot, you can figure that the shooter likely got his deer. The human factor really sucks after that first shot. People who want to put a hundred rounds through the tube in very short order aren't interested in accuracy, so much as they are interested in fire power.
If you can stomach watching the videos again, neither the Las Vegas shooter, or the Florida shooter were interested in accuracy. They went to where people were herded together, then laid down the fire power. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The body count is high, because no accuracy was required.
So - assuming that I can push 100 rounds out the barrel before the barrel warps, all I need for a high body count is to find some place where people are packed so densely that I can't miss.
I can't say that I would mind a ban on high capacity magazines. Seven or ten rounds is adequate for any reasonable use of firearms - except, of course, the purpose intended by the second amendment. That purpose, of course, is to keep congress in line. The second amendment had nothing to do with hunting and sports - it was all about keeping government in check.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
Given his vantage point, I wonder how many people Whitman would have killed in the same situation.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:33PM
For the curious:
University of Texas tower shooting (1966) [wikipedia.org]
16 dead in a 13-1/2 hour span
31 non-fatal injuries
ranked as the eighth-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:14PM
Most places, if your magazine holds more than 5 rounds, [google.com] the game warden will confiscate your gun and arrest you.
If you hear some guy on the other side of the ridge fire three, six, twelve times - you know
...that what he has is a weapon of war.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:19AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by number11 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:09PM (4 children)
It's true that the civilian AR-15 would not meet modern military standards, and in some respects is just "a scary looking rifle". However, a hunting rifle doesn't have to do more than a few shots. If you can't hit your target in 5 shots, you probably shouldn't be out wandering around with a loaded weapon. And by amazing coincidence, most hunting rifles don't hold more than 5 or so cartridges.
As to "weapon of war", apparently you think that World War II was fought by soldiers wielding nerf bats? Most soldiers' rifles didn't hold much more (American Garand, 8 rounds; British Lee-Enfield, 10 rounds; Soviet Mosin–Nagant, 5 rounds; German K-98, 5 rounds; Japanese Arisaka, 5 rounds). And none of those shot full auto (indeed, all except the Garand used manual bolt-action to ready the next shot).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:16PM
Point taken. Fact is, when I was growing up, an M-1 was a fine hunting rifle. Today, no one carries an M-1. Those who still own them keep them at home. I really can't understand why a hunter wants a semi-auto - that second shot doesn't take the deer down. Nor the third, or the thirty-third. It is almost ALWAYS the first shot.
On the other hand, the second amendment isn't about hunting. You don't have to be hunter to justify owning a gun.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
And then the operations research guys found that the number of enemy soldiers killed correlated far better with fire rate than with marksmanship proficiency. Now we have automatics.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:51PM (1 child)
But that doesn't mean that the rifles used by all sides in WWII weren't military weapons, even though today they are considered obsolete. Even today, the weapons used by snipers aren't full auto. And frankly, if you've got a shooter vs. a bunch of people who can't shoot back, full auto is a waste of ammo.
Lest anyone take that as an argument for arming the bunch of people, if they're armed it's likely to become a melee, because people will mistake good guys for bad guys and pretty soon everybody will be shooting at everybody else. It won't be like in the movies, where the bad guy is the only one wearing a black hat. Witness that recent SWAT occasion where the cops shot the victim instead of the perp. That seems to happen all too often, and the shooters are supposedly highly trained individuals.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:08AM
I agree that they're weapons of war. The thing about operations research is just something I find interesting. I took a course on it in college and really enjoy the subject, but I find some of its applications troubling.
Semi auto with a large clip is close enough to an automatic from the perspective of killing efficiency, as we have seen many times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:22PM
The ignorance of firearms and hunting on this site is appalling! Anyone who takes on Griz with a round tame enough to put into a semi-auto action deserves the inevitable meal they will become. And, BTW, who eats squirrel? Oh, Arkansas? Huckabee? Well, if you are using a semi-auto to hunt squirrel, you probably will go hungry. Real hunters "chip" squirrels by shooting the branch below their head, so no penetration at all, just a fatal concussion. But that takes marksmanship, something the NRA used to encourage, before they went all "spray and pray" with the right to mass killing.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
First, this doesn't have anything to do with firearm safety. The shooter didn't accidentally kill 17 people. He would have bypassed any safety devices intended to prevent accidental discharge of the weapon. We are no longer speaking of safety, but rather of removing dangerous weapons from the hands of people who are likely to be a risk to society. The problem here is that you aren't speaking of firearm safety, but rather of removing a lawful right from many tens of millions of people "for the children". That deception is the heart of the NRA's (and others') resistance to all this bullshit.
Let's also note here that there were mechanisms in place to prevent the shooter from acquiring firearms and seize his existing firearms. He had been reported to local and national law enforcement somewhere around two dozen times. He had a blog and YouTube videos where he apparently publicly fantasized about shooting up this particular school, according to Wikipedia, these threats were even reported to the police twice in the past year.
But do we hear national level gun control ("gun law reform") advocates speak of this failure of law enforcement? For example, that isn't mentioned in the least in the Huffington Post story which instead focuses on the tribulations of the NRA, exulting in a loss of revenue generating power. Before we "reform" such law with more onerous regulation, we should make sure we have someone who will enforce it. Else it is just an empty gesture with the potential to create tens of millions of law breakers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @05:12AM (1 child)
Ummm, I can't be bothered to look it up again but in the past the NRA has been opposed to restrictions on the 2A rights of mentally ill people. Since you seem to be stepping up to defend 2A rights, are you now advocating that guns be taken away from mentally ill people? If so, I think that could be a significant step forward, assuming that the majority of other 2A advocates feel similarly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:35AM
Mentally ill is not good enough. For starters, mental illness doesn't mean that one is incapable of responsibly handling firearms. It varies in severity from mild cases that are basically self-treated and temporary to people who yes, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near firearms. The general category affects too many people [newsweek.com] (the article cites estimates ranging from 20-30% of the US population). I don't see a good reason to block roughly 80 or so million people just because one feels uncomfortable about mental illness.
It's too easy to game, which is probably the source of the NRA's opposition. If authorities want to harass someone who owns firearms, declaring them to be mentally ill is a natural tactic, ripe for abuse. And who knows? Maybe the stress and humiliation of having to defend oneself from such tireless bureaucratic mendacity would be enough to trigger or worsen mental illness (since that's not good for mental health), turning these games too often into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Finally, being able to suspend rights for generic mental illness is a terrible precedent. What would be next? Free speech? Your right to vote? Just look at the research efforts to cast various sorts of political disagreement as mental illnesses or deviant behavior today (recent example [soylentnews.org]).
I do see times when firearms should be removed, such as someone who is found to be mentally incompetent, someone posting their sincere massacre fantasies on blogs, or someone acting in a grossly or criminally negligent way with firearms. But sorry, I don't buy that we have to interfere with the rights of tens of millions of law-abiding owners of firearms just because there are a few bad people out there.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @01:09AM
Gun free zones are the locations for 98% of mass shootings in the US. It is approximately 3% of our population causing 50% of our murders. It is not gun safety or gun access at the root of our problem here. The NRA are the opposite of terrorists here!
They work to defend an essential right, and make it possible for people to defend themselves in those and other situations. You don't disarm your population, treat them like children and expect to retain and of your other freedoms for long. Unfortunately there are so many left-wing fascists who believe their own propaganda who try to take those rights away from us. You can keep trying, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:01AM
Regardless of your feelings about gun control, what you propose is just insanity. I doubt you were completely serious, but whatever.
No, that's indirect. If they were directly responsible, then they would be the murderers themselves (i.e. the people who shot other people with the guns).
Furthermore, this idea that you can be held directly responsible for other people's actions merely because you support a policy which may or may not have allowed said people to carry out evil actions is extremely draconian. Using that logic, anyone who doesn't support a policy (say, mass surveillance) that could potentially have stopped some attack would be 'directly responsible' for any deaths. Some people care more about freedom than security, but that doesn't make them directly responsible for the deaths.
The government has no constitutional authority to eliminate organizations for such a reason.
Collateral damage can be tolerable in the name of freedom. I would not support mass surveillance even if it were extremely effective at stopping terrorism, just like I won't support gun control under any circumstances.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:23PM (16 children)
The NRA getting into the NN debate really smacks of partisanship, rather than service to their charter. If they want to do that they should have registered under 501(c)4. So perhaps their 501(c)3 status should be reviewed.
(Score: 2) by idiot_king on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:23PM (2 children)
The NRA getting into the NN debate really smacks of partisanship, rather than service to their charter.
Apparently you've missed the "new" trend that's been going on since the Bush administration.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:39PM
It is really beyond batshit for the NRA to get into the NN debate. The only thing I can figure is that one or more of the telecoms made a big fat donation, to try and turn the NN issue into a a partisan issue. NN is supported by Americans, not democrats or republicans. But the NRA is viewed by the far right as a pillar of society. Which it isn't. It's just a REALLY big gun club.
So the NRA rubs its dick on Ajit Pai, and the right is supposed to regard him as the queen of the Republican party apparently. Then NN becomes a DNC issue instead of a 1st amendment issue. I think the more likely response is that right distances itself from the NRA because it's acting like a fairy. (no disrespect to fairys intended)
This is bad for the NRA. It is bad for the 1st amendment and the 2nd amendment. Either they are stupid enough to think this was a good idea, or they were stupid enough to get baited into this. In any case the NRA needs new leadership.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:49PM
Oh, youngster.
You've never heard of Newt Gingrich (elected to Congress in 1978)?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by sjames on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:49PM (7 children)
The NRA has officially jumped the shark.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:27PM (2 children)
The NRA jumped the shark in the 80s when Reagan implemented gun control specifically to stop the Panthers and company from arming up. Don't kid yourself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:28AM
Insurer Lockton will no longer offer NRA gun owner insurance [thinkprogress.org]
Hearing aid company Starkey Hearing ends relationship with the NRA [thinkprogress.org]
Vinesse Wines suspends sales of NRA-branded products due to customer feedback [thinkprogress.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:31AM
Sorry. Clicked the wrong link.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:14PM (3 children)
...and the shark is riding a tsunami:
Car buying service TrueCar ends its relationship with the NRA [thinkprogress.org]
Two national moving companies cut ties with NRA [thinkprogress.org]
Telemedicine company Teladoc confirms it's no longer in partnership with the NRA [thinkprogress.org]
Home security company SimpliSafe cuts ties with the NRA [thinkprogress.org]
Airlines: Delta and United abruptly reverse course; sever contracts with the NRA [thinkprogress.org]
.
There's also this:
Already 5 Potential Parkland Shooter Copycats' Weapons Caches Have Been Seized Since the Shooting [alternet.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:39AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday February 26 2018, @07:08AM (1 child)
Solved ?
How does "18th school shooting of the year" match the word "solved" ?
People know that any asshole can kill 3 or 4 people with a kitchen knife. But that it takes a certain kind of person to do that.
Spraying bullets all over the place? That's easy. Any guy with a grudge and no hope can do that.
Some weapons are too dangerous to be freely available to anyone with cash and a clean background (or not clean, at gun shows, or not cash, if stolen).
The people should have normal hunting rifles, and the military with the nasty weapons should be beholden to the people, because they are the people. That's how other advanced countries do it, and maybe it's time we learn (not holding my breath).
In the meantime, there has been over 300 school shootings in the last 5 or 6 years. There are 130000 schools in the US.
The odds of a schooting [sic, like the typo] happening at your children or grandchildren's school are astronomically higher than the lottery odds. Wanna keep playing?
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @08:12AM
You do realize there has only been one mass shooting so far this year? That number, "18" [washingtonpost.com] includes accidental discharges, suicides, and a bit of gang activity, some which didn't actually happen at a school during operating hours and some which didn't actually cause any damage.
[...]
It's time to stop using dishonest statistics. With this crap, you can't understand the problem much less solve it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:11PM (4 children)
The NRA has been doing this for a while now, sticking their noses into things that have nothing at all to do with guns. In many ways, they are just another propaganda group working for the Republicans. Sadly their membership seems to just eat it right up.
I'm for gun rights, but the NRA does not represent me. Part of that is because I support reasonable restrictions on guns, especially non-long guns. But mostly I simply find the NRA to be despicable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:58PM (3 children)
Yeah. There's a lot of that going around.
Have you found another organization that can better represent you?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday February 26 2018, @05:05AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Owners_of_America [wikipedia.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @07:22AM (1 child)
So, more of the same nonsense.
To reiterate a recurring theme: Reagan really fucked up this country.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:40AM
The obvious rebuttal is that the Second Amendment does just that. Let us recall that every single other time in the Constitution when it discussed rights assigned to "the People", these rights were individual rights not collective rights. Further, the grammar of the Second Amendment clearly indicates that the "militia" clause is merely an explanation (though used to specify what sort of firearms are covered by the Second Amendment) not a requirement. And yet, here we are with yet another bit of historical revisionism.
All your link shows is that even basic grammar can be made subservient to the desires of the reader.
What 200 years of jurisprudence? I glanced through Wikipedia's summary [wikipedia.org] of Second Amendment court cases. And it turns out that court rulings were all over the place with favoring a more collective right and some less. This caught my eye:
So it was actually slightly over a century since anyone did that in a court. And if you look at actual US Supreme Court cases listed, you'll see a remarkable lack of any support for the collective right interpretation or support for restricting access to firearms to militia. Instead we have such things as:
I think what we should take away from this is that wishful thinking is no basis for law. Once we get into interpreting language and history as we would like, then anything is just as lawful as anything else. For rule of law to exist, we must decide on a meaning that reflects what is actually written in the law.