[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

In the face of someone claiming a .7 is a 1, I'm going to retort with a .7.

You claimed it was my cynicism which led me to miss Jeb is breaking the law.

What caused me to miss it is the part where he's not.

Loopholes piss me off, but that doesn't give me leave to say exploiting them is illegal.

I claimed your cynicism was leading to you to act like it was nothing. It's not nothing.

[subego]

I take issue with singling Jeb out.

What makes it a problem isn't Jeb, it's Jeb plus everyone.

[The Final Dakar]

Jeb! is the example because he's the only who's let it slip so far.

[subego]

Do you mean "so far" in time or distance?

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

Do you mean "so far" in time or distance?

This election cycle.

I'm willing to drop the matter as we just don't see eye-to-eye on it. I don't see much reason to keep beating this dead horse.

[The Final Dakar]

...and the thread comes full circle.

Much less galling without the picture of Ground Zero.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

True, but then they'll let their young child ride in a car with a teenage sibling driver, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous.

Thats an unnecessary 'but'.

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

I know you're from a gun-free society, and I'm taking that into consideration here, but that's a terrible analogy. A gun is a weapon of intent, training beats that into one's head, time and time again. I can't fathom how much more dangerous a landmine would be, in an area that sees frequent foot traffic, compared to a CCP holder with a firearm going about their business in public. That would be like comparing the moon to a baseball.

It was an exaggerated example to get my point across. While you're certainly right that a gun is much more about intent than a landmine, its not the 100% you seem to think it is by any stretch.
Pro-gun people are finally starting to latch onto the idea of mental illness as a root cause of the issue, but it seems like they are only doing so because it looks like a chance to deflect from gun control laws so they aren't really taking much time to consider or learn about mental illness.

Lets run a thought experiment: (Don't forget you'd do this a bunch of times)

You take a subject, male from whatever age range the stats say are most prone to snapping and shooting people, I'd guess 16-45 or something like that. You sit him on a chair in the centre of an interrogation room and securely restrain him via his ankle to the floor. He can stand and move a pace or two but he can't leave the room. You put a small table within easy reach next to him and on the table you put a gun loaded with blanks which you tell him is loaded with live rounds. Then you spend several hours subjecting him to as much stress, pressure, humiliation as you can with an interrogator in the room screaming at him for much of this. You also run the same experiment as a control without the gun present.

It doesn't take any imagination at all to predict that the percentage of men who will try to pick up the gun and shoot the interrogator will be higher among the group that actually has a gun to pick up. Even if they are CCP holders.

[subego]

You're measuring the use of the gun via comparison against a control group who has no options.

I question the design of this experiment.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by subego 

You're measuring the use of the gun via comparison against a control group who has no options.

I question the design of this experiment.

You'd prefer the control group had the option to run to Wal-mart and buy the gun I suppose? The question the experiment is looking to answer is whether there is a mechanism by which simply having a gun to hand increases the chances that someone will die when people are stressed.

If you want to question the design of an experiment you ought to suggest specific changes.

[subego]

I had to understand what you were trying to test first before I could offer a redesign.

Personally, I don't need to have one group in shackles to prove the idea if a gun is available, it's more likely to be used.

How likely it is to be used will depend on the psychological makeup of the test group.

As I noted with the graph in the other thread, if your test group is American citizens, and you factor out gang activity due to prohibition, you have a situation where availability is somewhere between 2 and 7 times other high GDP countries, with an incidence rate not much higher than those at the high end of the scale: 3.2/100,000 vs 2.5/100,000.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by subego 

Personally, I don't need to have one group in shackles to prove the idea if a gun is available, it's more likely to be used.

The shackles are really only there to remove the option to run away. But this admission says everything.
The bottom line is that by having guns to hand, more unintentional deaths will occur.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

The shackles are really only there to remove the option to run away. But this admission says everything.
The bottom line is that by having guns to hand, more unintentional deaths will occur.

I don't believe anyone was denying that.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

The shackles are really only there to remove the option to run away. But this admission says everything.
The bottom line is that by having guns to hand, more unintentional deaths will occur.

I directly addressed the scale of the bottom line in the post you quoted, and further, have noted on multiple occasions the right exacts a price.

If it wasn't clear, allow me to explicitly state that price is more people using guns to kill.

[Waragainstsleep]

I have to admit I've re-thought the above experiment since heat-of-the-moment, close quarters, often domestic situations are the ones where killing with whatever is to hand actually does apply. You reach for whatever and you shoot, stab or clobber with it. Might be interesting to see if there is a variation with different objects but it doesn't address the problem with guns that people really want to prevent which is the pre-meditated spree killings.

If you are happy with the price of this freedom then there is little point in debating, but I'll ask this:

Those who die (arguably preventably) due to the prevalence of firearms among the populace, are killed at random, without any choice in the matter. Those who would die in an uprising against the government would almost all have a choice of some kind, even if it was to run away to avoid being collateral damage.

It has an air of human sacrifice about it somehow. Like those killed are being allowed to die as an offering to your god-constitution. It sits rather wrongly with me. How do you feel about it?

[subego]

It's not a sacrifice to the god-constitution, it's a sacrifice to deter the conditions which would foment an uprising.

Those conditions can be summed up as the conditions which exist in a dictatorship.

The bread and butter of a dictatorship is killing and incarceration. Only the privileged or the lucky get the choice to run away from that.

A smaller sacrifice is being made to prevent a larger sacrifice.

[The Final Dakar]

‘Supergirl’ is on TV — I saw that when I was working out this morning,” he said. “She looked pretty hot. I don’t know what channel it’s on, but I’m looking forward to that.

Ok, Dad.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar 

Ok, Dad.

Somewhere in the world an intersectional feminist had a seizure but zhe doesn't know why.

[The Final Dakar]

Jeb Bush Orders Across-the-Board Pay Cuts for Struggling Campaign - Bloomberg Politics

One Bush adviser told Bloomberg Politics in an interview Friday morning that the team was “unapologetic” about the changes, saying the moves were from a “position of strength.”

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by subego 

The bread and butter of a dictatorship is killing and incarceration. Only the privileged or the lucky get the choice to run away from that.

A smaller sacrifice is being made to prevent a larger sacrifice.

Cops shooting unarmed citizens and a prison population of 3 million (neither of these are such big issues in Europe btw) would suggest your sacrifices aren't even working.

[subego]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Cops shooting unarmed citizens and a prison population of 3 million (neither of these are such big issues in Europe btw) would suggest your sacrifices aren't even working.

As ****ed up as those things are, they don't make us a dictatorship.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Cops shooting unarmed citizens and a prison population of 3 million (neither of these are such big issues in Europe btw) would suggest your sacrifices aren't even working.

Given your own crime rate (which is shockingly high WRT to robbery), it may not be that we have too many people in prison as much as you not having enough.

[subego]

These are joke twitters.




Demi-liches don't have a body.

/D&Dnerd

[The Final Dakar]

Jeb! Needs to stay off twitter

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Cops shooting unarmed citizens and a prison population of 3 million (neither of these are such big issues in Europe btw) would suggest your sacrifices aren't even working.

Considering GDP, per capita income, constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, and the vast amount of people trying to get into our country legally or illegally, I beg to differ. No one, aside from refugees from war-torn shitholes, is trying to go to Europe except for a vacation. We have more illegal immigrants that a lot of European countries's total populations.

"Cops shooting unarmed citizens" though tragic and completely unacceptable, accounts for less than .000000000000000000001% of interactions with police, though dominates the news cycles screen time even though tens of thousands of people are killed per year by gang violence, the drug trade, and car accidents. You're talking a few people vs tens of thousands. Why? because our republic is hypersensitive to real and/or perceived tyranny - and the news cycles exploit that to their benefit. This hypersensitivity isn't all bad, since such vigilance combined with an armed citizenry ensures that our country will never fall victim to such dictatorships that Europe has experienced throughout history (until we came over and made some changes back in the 40's). Infact, you can directly attribute the USA's creation to European tyranny in the 1700s.

The prison population has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with the drug trade.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Given your own crime rate (which is shockingly high WRT to robbery), it may not be that we have too many people in prison as much as you not having enough.

Not sure what you think our crime rate is but if its shockingly high (given how many of us there are in a much more confined space) I assume you must think its higher than yours. Yet there isn't a street in this country that I would feel unsafe walking down at 3am unarmed. I don't live in fear that anyone will rob me or kill me. You on the other hand are absolutely terrified of it to the point where you all need firearms.
Or maybe you're exaggerating our crime rate.

That said, we could certainly do with locking up more people and for longer, but thats more about rapists and the like.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

"Cops shooting unarmed citizens" though tragic and completely unacceptable, accounts for less than .000000000000000000001% of interactions with police, though dominates the news cycles screen time even though tens of thousands of people are killed per year by gang violence, the drug trade, and car accidents.

Illegal drugs exist and therefore criminal gangs exist to exploit them. And people expect criminal gangs to kill people because its part of the business of being in a criminal gang. People do not expect those who they are paying to protect them to shoot them dead and get away with it. Thats why they get disproportionately more media time. Because for once its genuinely outrageous.

Originally Posted by Snow-i 

The prison population has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with the drug trade.

How could they be? They aren't illegal.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by subego 

As ****ed up as those things are, they don't make us a dictatorship.

No but I don't see what possibly could in your country. Your gargantuan military fights for your constitution more than it fights for any president. In the event that one really gets too big for his boots and somehow doesn't or can't get removed via the political process, can you really envision a realistic situation where your military would take his side? Even if the generals did, I can't see the infantry going along with it.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Not sure what you think our crime rate is but if its shockingly high (given how many of us there are in a much more confined space) I assume you must think its higher than yours. Yet there isn't a street in this country that I would feel unsafe walking down at 3am unarmed. I don't live in fear that anyone will rob me or kill me. You on the other hand are absolutely terrified of it to the point where you all need firearms.
Or maybe you're exaggerating our crime rate.

That said, we could certainly do with locking up more people and for longer, but thats more about rapists and the like.

An anecdote isn't data, this is data: Countries Compared by Crime > Total crimes per 1000. International Statistics at NationMaster.com

Essentially, your crime rate is nearly 3x higher than the USA's, and the 4th highest in the world.

[Snow-i]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Illegal drugs exist and therefore criminal gangs exist to exploit them. And people expect criminal gangs to kill people because its part of the business of being in a criminal gang. People do not expect those who they are paying to protect them to shoot them dead and get away with it. Thats why they get disproportionately more media time. Because for once its genuinely outrageous.

I don't disagree that those cases are outrageous, but they do not indicate that our country's social sacrifices (i.e. armed citizenry) "isn't working".

How could they be? They aren't illegal.

So your solution to the prison problem is to outlaw guns?