Discalculia (off-topic posts split)

[discord]

grey:

Guns make killing easy and therefore a much more attractive choice. A good example is Japan for gun control,

no, access to guns make them a good choice.
what you need to understand is that there are basically two different kinds of murder, premeditated and crime of passion, only one of these is affected by bans and regulations at all.

why? did some thinking on how to explain why a ban on shuriken(ninja stars) is silly, counter productive and outright bad for society, because it does not limit access if someone wanted to kill someone else with one(stupid since they are not very good killing weapons at all, they were designed for hitting someone in the leg, which would slow'em down allowing you to get away, kill with one is VERY difficult, a simple carpenters hammer is a much better weapon both melee and thrown.) they could go to a hardware store and buy the tools and material to MAKE a bunch for under 100$ and a couple of evenings worth of work.
silly.
nunchaku ban even worse, easier to make, and just like the shuriken better tools for the goal(kill someone) is readily available.
such laws undermines the authority of the law, since they are silly, loss of respect for silly things is expected.
whoever pushed that through legislation should be frickin tried for treason.

guns? are more expensive since you need a better workshop, but still quite possible to make at home.(does not limit access if someone really wants one, even excluding black markets)
but gun regulation at least serves a purpose, and the thing is i would push for STRICTER regulations on several parts, loosening up the bureaucracy a bit(in sweden, US is nowhere near as bad on that point, and norway is worse, germany? effing nightmare.) because tin gods and paperwork makes for frustration, which is not conducive to a safer environment.

but, i would loosen up on what kinds of weapons people can get, because to KILL someone, any hunting rifle will do, a .22 single shot varmint rifle will kill someone, heck a slingshot can kill someone, if you have such intention.

my problem with the gun laws is that usually they do not address the problem, only the ignorant masses fear.(and the political capital gained by playing on that fear.)

premeditated murder will ACQUIRE the tool to get it done, crime of passion uses something readily available.
gun laws should focus on safe storage and handling of dangerous tools, not removing them altogether.
this would effect the part which law CAN affect, easy access of legal guns(not buying them, having one handy when you walk in on your spouse fucking someone not you in your bed, having to go to the gun safe, opening it up, getting the gun, loading the gun, walking back to confront'em gives both time to cool down a murderous rage and time for the stupid fuckers to GTFO!)

I was responding to a statement that implied America was a safe place

according to statistics of intentional murder, smack in the middle of worldwide statistics, not bad for being the worlds leading state on legal gun ownership, and quite a few of the 'better statistics' are not exactly known for reliable data.
yes, the US has a high number of gun related deaths, but not all that high actual deaths, there is literally dozens of countries with five times or more the death rate of the US.

unless you are a high risk demographic(like living in washington DC, the area with the strictest gun laws in the country), the US is actually a rather safe place to live.


side note, murders are almost nonexistant in japan, they are however #10 in the world when it comes to suicide, and hongkong which is another low murder place was the ONLY in the world with higher suicide rate of women than men, food for thought.

[Charlie]

Guns make it easier to kill people. Nations with less guns or where gun ownership is outright illegal have on average far fewer gun related deaths and fewer murders in general because of this. Guns make killing easy and therefore a much more attractive choice. A good example is Japan for gun control, an example of poor gun regulation equaling more gun deaths is Africa. Also, owning swords or other melee weapons is already strictly regulated in many states. Because they are deadly weapons. That were created to easily kill humans.

England has had steadily increasing numbers of criminal shooting fatalities since 1997. South African has had steadily decreasing number of guns but an increasing number of shooting crimes. This is easy explained as illegal guns doing most of the work, in my country it is easier to get an illegal AK-47 than to licence a hand gun. Firearms control can do little to stop this, who turns in an illegal gun? As for very strict laws reducing gun crimes, generally yes it does work, yet don`t forget that they always was a marked increase in other weapons crimes. Violent criminals will use are tool to achieve their ends.

SpoilerShow

Chicago should have lower shooting deaths, it`s higher because more illegal guns are used.

SpoilerShow

Gun control does little to decrease overall violence, it can and does often decrease gun crimes but it will shift the weapons crimes statistic to other weapons. England now has a mjor prblem with fatal stabbings.

It`s worth noting that America is three or four times the size of all of the African countries with a much, much higher population. More murders in a much larger group ins`t as much concern. Also American Criminal Justice often finds who it`s looking for, in African countries it rarely does.

Yes, the problems are societal. And guns are a big part of our societal problems. I see them as one and the same issue, guns do not magically become separate entities above and beyond all criticism because of reasons. Regulating guns is merely one of many steps it will take to get America back on track. Another is raising the minimum wage to $22.50 an hour, supplying free health care, improving the (internationally mocked) American educational system, and massive increases to NASA’s budget and massive cuts to military spending. Also Germany and Japan should be allowed to rearm, to assist American efforts in maintaining free and fair international trade, America has shouldered the financial burden of that for too long, and it is draining us too much. Just a few suggestions.

Guns are not the root cause of cause violence, merely a tool, as a knife is the root cause of stabbings. Violence is the root cause of violence. Wouldn`t be better to crack down on the illegal guns instead of law abiding gun owners?

Free Health care is not effective, at all in any place I've seen it used before. England is a very good model of what you will get with Free Health Care. More deaths at the end of the year when Doctors quotas have been filled. Far slower RnD into new medicines, as there is so much less money to be made from people buying it as opposed to government purchases.

[Grayhome]

As for very strict laws reducing gun crimes, generally yes it does work, yet don`t forget that they always was a marked increase in other weapons crimes. Violent criminals will use are tool to achieve their ends.

Yes, violent criminals will use other tools to achieve their ends, which is why many items besides guns are regulated. But a gun is a far more efficient killing tool than a knife and that is why they are more desirable to criminals-I really feel like I am repeating myself here.

Guns are not the root cause of cause violence, merely a tool, as a knife is the root cause of stabbings. Violence is the root cause of violence. Wouldn`t be better to crack down on the illegal guns instead of law abiding gun owners?

This article sums up my feelings about your reply rather handily:http://www.politicalgarbagechute.com/gu ... heres-why/

It`s worth noting that America is three or four times the size of all of the African countries with a much, much higher population. More murders in a much larger group ins`t as much concern. Also American Criminal Justice often finds who it`s looking for, in African countries it rarely does.

Pop of America is 313.9 million
Pop of Africa is 1.033 billion
Do you mean all of America because I was referring to North America specifically. And The United States is more stable precisely because we do not have armies of marauding bandits armed with assault weapons inside our boarders, which has the tendency to present a major roadblock in establishing law and order.

Free Health care is not effective, at all in any place I've seen it used before. England is a very good model of what you will get with Free Health Care. More deaths at the end of the year when Doctors quotas have been filled. Far slower RnD into new medicines, as there is so much less money to be made from people buying it as opposed to government purchases.

That is a fiction, it's not a quota system, it's not based upon X numbers of services per patient, it is measured largely on outcomes for patients. Yes it is more expensive to buy things here because the pharmaceutical companies load all of the costs onto the American consumers, because they can get away with it. Then they sell the same product to other nations for vastly reduced prices. That is old news by the way...

[Absalom]

Ah, but that truly is but an interpretation. An alternative is that the states should have access to such, and may well be more literal.

and

This, on the other hand, I don't recall any basis for. Did you get this out of the Congressional regulation of militias bit? Because saying that is the same as mandating funding is stretching the point a bit too far...

Right to bear arms = citizens have the right to own and operate the most technologically advanced firearms available of the time. Founders didn't want the state to devolve into another monarchy, so everyone having muskets was deemed a good preventer for that. To put down the government if it got uppity. This interpretation is from historians and political scientists who devote their lives to studying History in general and early American History in particular.

I'm well aware of the reasoning behind the right to own weaponry, I was asking why you thought that the government was obligated to pay for it. The requirement to allow something is not the same as the requirement to assist in it.

And telephones didn't exist, nor radios, nor airplanes, nor any of a number of other things.

I will tell you right here and now: if the Constitution was rewritten to compensate for modern technology then the result would be massively inferior, because adjusting such a document to current technology means that it will no longer be as appropriate when the technology changes again. If you attempt to "cover your bases" with a Constitution analogue then you cause problems, because it's role as a foundational document means that it must not change often. Every time that the Constitution doesn't have something that you can apply to a legislative problem, there's a 99% chance that you're approaching the subject wrong.

The constitution was made to adapt. It was designed to be very very hard to adapt, but adaptation was a design feature because the Founders knew there would be future events that they could not predict.

Adapting the Constitution is as easy as passing a law that doesn't violate it, or making a court ruling that reinterprets it, "necessary powers" and all that. The particularly difficult bit is changing it via amendment, which frankly is not a common necessity.

Outdated is up to interpretation (does it mention telephones? no, but you still have a Constitutional right for the government not to wiretap your phone whenever it feels like it, because that's the way the Constitution was always meant to be treated), and both the open-endedness and the difficulty of amending are themselves some of those intentional features that were mentioned to you. The people who think those are bad things always believe it because they already have something that they want it to say. Gun-control advocates and gun-rights advocates are both stereotypical examples of this.

The three fifths compromise is still a part of the constitution. Even neutered it still exists as evidence to the outdated and clunky nature of the system.

And how is it outdated and clunky if you aren't trying to do something that you just aren't supposed to do with it?

None of this is relevant to gun regulation, and I can't think of any way to tie it to gun violence either. Superfluous.

I was responding to a statement that implied America was a safe place, and giving criticism of that theory. America has a murder rate approaching third world nations. Also why you are criticize me noting social factors related to gun control when a few paragraphs ago you criticize me for not noting social factors that are responsible for gun violence? Nothing is superfluous. All things are connected, and poor morale, failing public health and poverty are recipes for increased crime rates.

I was criticizing you for letting your attention wander to gun control when it's just a bandaid on top of a gaping wound, you should have noted by now that I am ready and willing to distinguish between gun control & gun violence: one is caused by a flawed attempt to suppress social ills, while the other is caused by the ills themselves. And for the record, if you were trying to answer to the social interrelations then you should have written the segue better.

The environmental lobby doesn't seem to help much anyways. They want changes that most of us aren't currently willing to accept, and haven't been pushing stuff that could justify itself on other merits as well (e.g. replanting mangrove swamps, both to absorb C02, and to resist hurricanes). I would hope that they'll improve, and I think that they might have been, but doom-and-gloom aren't enough to drive people to action.

The EPA has been gutted and rotten through for quite a while now. There have been several investigations into fraud and corruption and recent findings have proven that corporate entities illegally influencing the EPA for the purpose of removing or limiting regulations. With ex-CIA, FBI, NSA employees they hire for very, very large sums. Totally agree with you there, really need to give the EPA more teeth.

I was talking about environmentalists as a social group, not the EPA. The EPA sounds like it needs a good anti-corruption campaign first, only afterwards can you make a realistic assessment as to whether it needs more powers (if that CO2 regulation thing got upheld then I'd say that it's teeth are fine).

This post has pretty solidly moved into "the sky is falling!" territory. The sky is always falling, the only reason that we care is because we aren't lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps and getting to work. Obama is unfortunately probably the one at fault for that: he's apparently loath to use political capital on international movements (you know that "pivot to Asia"? that wasn't Obama, that was Hillary: and now we have Kerry, who's more focused on his own legacy than on Obama's), producing an unfortunate duplicate of the servant that buried the money that his master entrusted to him, whereas he's supposed to be acting like the master himself. He didn't get elected to the office of Press Secretary In Chief, he's the President.

American are amongst the hardest working people on the planet, per capita. We are the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet, bar none. That wealth has been concentrated into the upper 1% of Americans.

Trickle-down economics will do that to you, yes, a study of old European nobility will teach you that much. Reagan was wrong, and so was Ayn Rand, and whoever it was that said "greed is good".

Notably example of this is the Wallmart family.

Small-town local grocery stores are often worse. Sure, the money stays local, and they do buy services from others, but so does Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart pays it's employees better (painful to hear, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that it's accurate). When a Wal-Mart moves in it actually usually results in an increase in the general standard of living, the biggest problem with Wal-Marts is that they usually don't integrate well.

So basically, we're being torn apart by social ills, so we need to focus our efforts on guns? Yeah, no, we need sustained, good social reform programs. That'll take care of a host of ills at the same time. Guns are a distraction, and the more focus that gets paid to them, the less that gets paid to the root issues.

As discord said, the problem isn't gun regulations, but instead societal.

Yes, the problems are societal. And guns are a big part of our societal problems. I see them as one and the same issue, guns do not magically become separate entities above and beyond all criticism because of reasons. Regulating guns is merely one of many steps it will take to get America back on track.

Regulating guns won't do jack squat to the social triggers, and simultaneously disenfranchises those who consider them important. You may have forgotten, but liberals are not the entirety of the nation, like conservatives they aren't even a half.

Another is raising the minimum wage to $22.50 an hour,

Haha, not going to happen. It's a known fact that hikes in the minimum wage destroy a portion of the jobs that they theoretically increase the wages for, for the simply fact that those jobs no longer produce enough profit to keep the employees. Increase the cost of goods, you say? This leads to a cycle commonly known as deflation.

Besides which, the people that are most commonly at minimum wage are actually part-timers, so it's unlikely that your $22.50 an hour would directly affect them, as part-timers are on a lower pay scale. If you want real increases in general pay then you need to take a look at corporate governance structures, as well as removing employee pay for... let's say the bottom 90% per income of an employer's employees, or everyone expect for the three highest-paid employees, whichever number is higher, before tax rates are calculated, so that high pay can make a big dent in a company's taxes. Add to that a per-employee corporate fine for anyone paid less than some certain amount, and an equivalent fine for contract workers. Take that, increase shareholder authority by law (non-relinquishable) so that they can e.g. set the pay for the board & executives without any input from said top-tiers, and require a yearly statement to shareholders stating long-term (let's say 15 years) and short-term per-year profit projections, as well as current tax rates vs the tax rate resulting from increasing the pay of lower-paid employees, and you'll start seeing progress. The board & executives of many major companies (Nike, for example) have greatly exaggerated incomes at the expense of both shareholders and employees (the stats for Nike should be online somewhere, you should go look them up). The problem isn't the minimum wage, so changing that will at best produce spotty results. The problem is a failure to keep a tight leash on corporate leadership; even Carl Icahn, figurehead of corporate raiders, agrees that it's a major problem.

supplying free health care,

I've never seen a good explanation of how this will genuinely help. Free emergency care, and covering the most extreme cases, sure, I can see that (the process of dying is usually enough to bankrupt those involved), but medical care in general? No, too expensive, especially with the Baby Boomers upon us.

And don't cite Medicare, if Congress didn't keep passing supplemental compensation for it then all of the doctors that accept it would go bankrupt, it doesn't quite pay for the cost of treatment in many cases, much less enough for a doctor to pay back their student loans.

improving the (internationally mocked) American educational system,

This I can whole-heartedly agree with, but unfortunately the biggest problem is itself often social & outside of the school (e.g. domestic arguments, even if violence isn't involved), and there's few parts of that which schools are actually capable of dealing with (free meals are, fortunately, one of those; it would be nice to see the "keep your land fallow and we'll pay you" system switch to "give us all of the crops and we'll pay you for them tax-free", so that they could be funneled into that system).

and massive increases to NASA’s budget and massive cuts to military spending.

Regardless of what you've been told, our military spending is actually quite sustainable. The budget problem is entirely in the form of social programs, mostly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (but really, Medicare). Why? Because they expand with the population demographics, while military spending doesn't (I'd expect the bulk of military spending to shift to cheaper technologies for a while, in fact, just due to their sufficiency for most purposes).

As for NASA, I think we should fund it more, but it would be irresponsible of me to say it like you have.

Also Germany and Japan should be allowed to rearm,

I'm pretty certain that we don't have the authority to stop them, no matter how much clout we have. Also, Germany is a noteworthy supplier of military submarines, and Japan "doesn't have a military", but only because they cheat by calling it something else: a system which I'm pretty certain that the US started, since we were using technically Japanese military ships for minesweeping pretty quick after defeating them, I think in Korea. I haven't looked at the German restrictions, but I can tell you that the Japanese restrictions don't keep them from having a military, but instead from practicing expeditionary warfare.

And at least as far as the Japanese go, dropping all of their constitutional restrictions on their military would cause too much political fallout with their neighbors to justify it.

grey:

Guns make killing easy and therefore a much more attractive choice. A good example is Japan for gun control,

no, access to guns make them a good choice.
what you need to understand is that there are basically two different kinds of murder, premeditated and crime of passion, only one of these is affected by bans and regulations at all.

In the US, a lot of it falls under "crime of passion" in one way or another (usually it's hormonal teenagers, from what I understand, who've likely armed themselves for s3elf-defense from all of the other hormonal teenagers). It's one of those things where we'd be better off dropping the regulations on cannons, and placing them on handguns instead. Kinda hard to do a hit-and-run with a literal artillery piece, seeing as how they're unwieldy.

nunchaku ban even worse, easier to make, and just like the shuriken better tools for the goal(kill someone) is readily available.
such laws undermines the authority of the law, since they are silly, loss of respect for silly things is expected.

Nunchaku, aka sticks-on-a-chain. How the hell does anyone think that a ban would even work? Two nice, solid sticks, some screws, and rope, and you have a home-made set. The only reason they would have needed metal chains in medieval Japan is because the Samurai that would have been targets were always wearing swords.

whoever pushed that through legislation should be frickin tried for treason.

Well-intentioned idiocy is not sufficient grounds for treason charges.

gun laws should focus on safe storage and handling of dangerous tools, not removing them altogether.
this would effect the part which law CAN affect, easy access of legal guns(not buying them, having one handy when you walk in on your spouse fucking someone not you in your bed, having to go to the gun safe, opening it up, getting the gun, loading the gun, walking back to confront'em gives both time to cool down a murderous rage and time for the stupid fuckers to GTFO!)

Unfortunately it requires registering all firearms to properly implement (you need to be able to place blame if someone gets murdered), and lots of people in the US rightfully fear that such a thing would result in their guns just being taken away eventually, because people like Greyhome want to do precisely that.

As for very strict laws reducing gun crimes, generally yes it does work, yet don`t forget that they always was a marked increase in other weapons crimes. Violent criminals will use are tool to achieve their ends.

Yes, violent criminals will use other tools to achieve their ends, which is why many items besides guns are regulated. But a gun is a far more efficient killing tool than a knife and that is why they are more desirable to criminals-I really feel like I am repeating myself here.

The majority of gun crimes in the US are committed by gangs, in some way or another. These are crimes that either wouldn't be stopped by illegalization, or wouldn't be stopped by lack of access, you'd only change the details. Pipe bombs, for example, are very easy to make, and a gang member isn't going to be good enough with a gun to be more effective, so intentional gang warfare won't be stopped. That leaves heat-of-the-moment crimes, which just leaves you with everyone carrying around a big knife instead of a gun, once again failing to stop the problem, because seriously, what are you going to do, illegalize cooking at home? There's a reason I compared swords to kitchen knives: for non-military actions, there is no difference.

Completely ineffective, if you want to stop gun violence in the US then you need a better mental health system (not drugs, mind you: confinement, because the crazies that do mass shootings can't be trusted out in society at all, so free drugs won't help: they won't reliably take them), and to have neighborhood-level civic organizations that you get the children into at a young age (preferably 13 or 14 at the latest). As we know from both human behavior and from watching elephants, teenage behavior becomes much more level-headed when an adult is a part of the lives of said teenagers, it's no coincidence that both poverty and violence congregate around "broken households": the psychological underpinnings of the participants are undermined, and can only be repaired by providing some sort of substitute. Until such substitutes are put in place, no solution to gun violence can exist, for the simple reason that the manifestation of the problem will simply shift elsewhere.

Yes it is more expensive to buy things here because the pharmaceutical companies load all of the costs onto the American consumers, because they can get away with it. Then they sell the same product to other nations for vastly reduced prices. That is old news by the way...

They sell those same products to other nations because they're already making it and those nations have laws on the books requiring it, so as long as they make some profit they don't care too much. Eliminate their ability to charge whatever they want in the US and they just stop developing drugs, because they can't justify the expense. You might say that development will then move to the independent labs that currently do a lot of it, but they won't be able to sell the patents for as much anymore (simple economics), which in turn will reduce both their ability to stay afloat and the availability of financing for them.

[Grayhome]

Every response you have given is either complete fiction, in complete and total denial of reality, or a petty argument over the definitions of word usage.

Your just a troll, aren't you.

[Charlie]

As for very strict laws reducing gun crimes, generally yes it does work, yet don`t forget that they always was a marked increase in other weapons crimes. Violent criminals will use are tool to achieve their ends.

Yes, violent criminals will use other tools to achieve their ends, which is why many items besides guns are regulated. But a gun is a far more efficient killing tool than a knife and that is why they are more desirable to criminals-I really feel like I am repeating myself here.

Criminals will still retain those guns. How exactly will gun control help at all? Even if it did illegal guns can still be brought in, and guns at still easily be made. My father has made a number of shot guns.

Guns are not the root cause of cause violence, merely a tool, as a knife is the root cause of stabbings. Violence is the root cause of violence. Wouldn`t be better to crack down on the illegal guns instead of law abiding gun owners?

This article sums up my feelings about your reply rather handily:http://www.politicalgarbagechute.com/gu ... heres-why/

It`s Leftist Political Garbage, it`s categorized under Humor/Satire.

Regardless, James Schlarmann says that Assault Weapons (Use imagination here in contents of the law and there definitions) should be banned because they can be used in mass shootings. That was the main message I got. He said he owned guns and did not want to ban all guns.

So by that point, I would say a person is insane if they shot a mass number of people. He would use any means to get to his insane goal including an Assault Weapon. He would display outward signs of mental instability.

Rather than outright ban Assault Weapons, institute a metal stability test. If he does not pass, meaning he would have done something malicious with the weapon, he doesn`t get one. If he passes because he is safe mentally, he gets one. If a damaged person manged to get one though hiding their metal state he is obviously in control. Going by that level of control, even if they were banned he would use a hand gun or a bomb. Banning these weapons will not reduce mass shootings.

Better control of sales would be better than an ill thought out total ban.

It`s worth noting that America is three or four times the size of all of the African countries with a much, much higher population. More murders in a much larger group ins`t as much concern. Also American Criminal Justice often finds who it`s looking for, in African countries it rarely does.

Pop of America is 313.9 million
Pop of Africa is 1.033 billion
Do you mean all of America because I was referring to North America specifically. And The United States is more stable precisely because we do not have armies of marauding bandits armed with assault weapons inside our boarders, which has the tendency to present a major roadblock in establishing law and order.

I did not mean the entirety of Africa, but by a country by country basis.

Here are a few statistics.
World`s Highest 25: Rate of Gun Homicide per 100,000 People

SpoilerShow

World's Highest 25: Rate of Civilian Firearm Possession per 100 Population

SpoilerShow

The countries with the highest number of fatal shootings, it does`t not include suicides but does not distinguish between lawful and unlawful shootings, are not even on the list of civilian gun ownership. It proves what I've being saying, illegal guns do most of the grunt work when it comes to unlawful killings of a criminal nature. Also note the highest scorer is my own country. My country has gone though a massive reduction in firearm ownership these past ten years, Assault Weapons have always been illegal here, yet we have the highest number of killings and a very low number of guns per head.

SpoilerShow

Side by side comparison
Citations are at the bottom

The estimated total number of guns (both licit and illicit) held by civilians in the United States is 270,000,000 to 310,000,000.

The estimated total number of guns (both licit and illicit) held by civilians in South Africa is 5,950,000.
Unlawfully held guns cannot be counted, but in South Africa there are estimated to be 500,000 to 4,000,000.
Honestly it`s very much closer to 4,000,000 than you might think.

United States
South Africa

You have a bigger country, more guns, more people, and yet have so many fewer gun homicides?

Also, if it matters, I can find African countries with low rates of gun ownership but very high rates of gun shootings.

Source: Gun Policy
It`s a factual website, there are citations and more information on the charts I've used

Free Health care is not effective, at all in any place I've seen it used before. England is a very good model of what you will get with Free Health Care. More deaths at the end of the year when Doctors quotas have been filled. Far slower RnD into new medicines, as there is so much less money to be made from people buying it as opposed to government purchases.

That is a fiction, it's not a quota system, it's not based upon X numbers of services per patient, it is measured largely on outcomes for patients. Yes it is more expensive to buy things here because the pharmaceutical companies load all of the costs onto the American consumers, because they can get away with it. Then they sell the same product to other nations for vastly reduced prices. That is old news by the way...

It`s not fiction at all, there is a large spike in deaths at the end of the year. Doctors who do not see enough patients are reprimanded. They care little for anything of the patients long term, as they don`t have time, Do you honestly think the government of England would waste time checking each patient is happy? No, it`s a numbers game.

In my country we have both Private Care and Free Health Care, to pay for the increases in Free Health Care they introduced a new tax. Regardless of my farther having a Medical Plan, he is forced to pay.

Free Health care is a death sentence in the literal. The quality has been so greatly diminished by the lack of in flow of money the government was forced to institute a new tax for it.

Private Care is basically a business, it`s goal is money. A service is provided, if it is substandard nobody uses it and the company goes broke. If it is a good service, and is market competitive as there is more than one company, it makes money. To make money they need to keep people alive and paying. Free Health care doesn`t need to keep any alive.

The only Free Health Care should be emergency care, if a poor person has a broken leg sure treat them. If that same poor person has the flu or a tummy ach, tough luck.

[Grayhome]

Criminals will still retain those guns. How exactly will gun control help at all? Even if it did illegal guns can still be brought in, and guns at still easily be made.

The same way having driving licenses helps keep people that shouldn't be driving off the roads. Also, it is not easy to make guns. It requires specific resources, knowledge and tools to craft an effective weapon that does not immediately blow up in your own hands. And saying "they can bring guns in from elsewhere so we should not ban assault weapons" is like saying "they can ship cocaine in from elsewhere so we should not ban cocaine". It makes absolutely no sense and I think that the law enforcement agencies of the United States would not be advocating to ban all assault weapons if it would not be effective in keeping assault weapons out of the hands of criminals.

My father has made a number of shot guns.

I would think that the difference between a home-made shotgun without high capacity ammo clips and a factory crafted assault rifle with a thirty round magazine should be fairly apparent.

World`s Highest 25: Rate of Gun Homicide per 100,000 People

&

World's Highest 25: Rate of Civilian Firearm Possession per 100 Population

Picking the low hanging fruit there, I see. Where are the other industrialized nations? Where is Japan? Germany? France? Great Britain? They are all far to the right of that statistic, and the second statistic only proves my point that more guns equals more deaths by firearms. Here is the is the firearm death rate for the United Kingdom: 0.04 per 100,000 people.

It`s not fiction at all, there is a large spike in deaths at the end of the year. Doctors who do not see enough patients are reprimanded. They care little for anything of the patients long term, as they don`t have time, Do you honestly think the government of England would waste time checking each patient is happy? No, it`s a numbers game.

Charlie, we're talking about the most progressive, liberal countries of the face of planet Earth. Countries that have the highest standards of education, economics and social commitment to the common good. Countries that look at America and collectively shake their heads, wondering why Americans put up with bi-weakly mass shootings in schools and political corruption. Those nations would never tolerate a medical system that murders their loved ones, there would be riots in the streets long before things devolved that far. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to have this conspiracy theory mindset that the medical institutions of first world nations have all joined together to kill as many of their patients as possible. It is completely and totally in denial of all reality. You are negating my ability to argue with you with your incredibly dogmatic and completely fictional portrayal of the medical advances of the first world nations (minus the United States) over the past few decades.

Preventive medicine has been shown to be both economically and socially beneficial to first world nations. For decades. That's why all first world nations invest in it. It not only saves a massive amount of capital, it's been shown to generate massive amounts of capital in production, as laborers are spending less time sick or injured and more time working.

[discord]

grey: not trolls, just interested in the matter and looking at actual data.
assault weapon ban:
silly, because it affects something like 1% of gun related deaths, those weapons probably have a higher average accident numbers(US military training, probably lower rate, just so many a small percentage gives a high total number.) and not relating who uses them, i would bet that it is more commonly used(somewhere along the lines of 10:1) in defensive shootings against criminals.
because generally criminals do not use 'assault weapons'.
so a ban would do....somewhere between nothing to net detriment. it is fear of such weapons that fuels this ban hammer approach not their actual use.

[rage rant]
that is what pisses me off, the basic approach is wrong, fundamental idea flawed, historical data does not back up your claim.
[/rage rant]

handgun(pistols, revolvers) ban:
the tool usually used by criminals, has actually been done in a few places.
result? higher violent crime rates usually both gun related and not.
does not seem like a good idea.

how difficult is it to comprehend that legal guns are very seldom used in crime? and that removing legal guns gives perception of easier prey, which leads to more violent crime.

-------------------------------------------

yes, gun ban can be done, BUT it must be done in a similar way as the japanese sword hunts, search every home, every person, EVERYWHERE, and have a isolationist country to limit smuggling.

result? historically? heavy increase in banditry and much lowered tax income and living standard due to that.(not to mention starvation, rape and other fun things.)
give it another 50-100 years of hunting down bandits, and you can have something similar to what you want, actual removal of said weapons from the hands of criminals.
would it be worth the cost?

[Grayhome]

assault weapon ban:
silly, because it affects something like 1% of gun related deaths, those weapons probably have a higher average accident numbers(US military training, probably lower rate, just so many a small percentage gives a high total number.) and not relating who uses them, i would bet that it is more commonly used(somewhere along the lines of 10:1) in defensive shootings against criminals.
because generally criminals do not use 'assault weapons'.
so a ban would do....somewhere between nothing to net detriment. it is fear of such weapons that fuels this ban hammer approach not their actual use.

An outright ban on all assault weapons and heavy regulation upon all other firearms would significantly lessen the firearm related violence in the United States, and would lessen violent deaths in general. As evidence of this I present the other industrialized nations of planet earth, who have far fewer guns in civilian hands, far more gun regulation, and thus a higher quality of life than do Americans.
Also it is fear of terrorists gaining access to nuclear armaments which promotes the international community to keep nuclear materials out of terrorist hands. This has so far proven a very viable strategy.

[rage rant]
that is what pisses me off, the basic approach is wrong, fundamental idea flawed, historical data does not back up your claim.
[/rage rant]

All historical data backs up my claim, and there is no historical data that anyone on this site has provided that does anything other than strengthen my claim. I am a political scientist. I have quite literally devoted my life to studying social issues such as firearm related violence in order to assist in their correction.
Please remember that this is just a website blog discord, there is nothing to get angry about here, we are simply having a discussion over what course of action would be best to solve a problem we all have recognized. Growing enraged over such matters is unproductive from both of our perspectives.

result? historically? heavy increase in banditry and much lowered tax income and living standard due to that.(not to mention starvation, rape and other fun things.)
give it another 50-100 years of hunting down bandits, and you can have something similar to what you want, actual removal of said weapons from the hands of criminals.
would it be worth the cost?

So you are saying the result of a ban on civilian possession of assault weapons in the United States would be either a null impact on the level of gun violence, or it would have the negative effect of increasing firearm related violence. Even though in first world nations that currently heavily regulate guns such as Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, France, etc the result has been a (historically) marked decreases in the level of violent crimes. What historical evidence are you drawing this from? Please provide it for review and provide a full list of sources for examination.

[Hālian]

Regulating firearms only makes it easier for criminals to get them on the black market. Not to mention the fact that it violates the Second Amendment.

[discord]

gray: no modern country has done such a thing i proposed, not really, the closest is the 'sword hunts' of japan, but in modern time the closest i know of is great britain.

what do we know of that....
post ban, homicides went up for a few years(peaking at about 100% more) and falling down to something similar to pre-ban levels.
gun deaths did fall a bit.
at no point was gun related homicide over 10% of total homicide.
point though, i do not have good statistics of pre-ban levels, so data uncertain.

source
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-kingdom

my view is at least plausible based on those statistics.

take sweden and norway, both on top 20(number 10 and 11 respectively) on legal gun ownership, both among the best (#21 and #8 respectively)on firearm related deaths.
legally owned guns are seldom used in crime, ILLEGAL guns usually are.
and to bring it by again, correlation does not imply causation.

--------------------

assault weapon ban.....effing morons.
sweden, you can own machine guns, i have heard a story about a guy in the inlands that legally owned a WW2 88mm AA gun, in sweden, i think he ran out of munition and turned it in late 1990's.
smg competitions and shooters exist here, myself am considering starting with shooting, but it IS expensive, and money is a issue but IPSC seems like fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... federation
legal guns? #10 on legal guns in the world, #21 in least gun deaths.

and finally, there ARE pretty heavy regulation on select fire(automatic weapons) in the USA, the so called assault weapons ban is all about cosmetics, 'tacticool' and black and dangerous looking....basically you want to ban picatinny rail for accessories like telescopic sights, flashlights...and other sighting apparatus, and pistolgrip for rifles, because that makes it so much more dangerous....no, but more comfortable for some shooters.

what you need is standardized laws regarding gun storage, safe usage and registration not this state by state patchwork currently in effect....while you are at it, you might try and standardize the legal age of consent too(varies from 18 to possibly 14, depending on state).

[discord]

your(the gun ban crowds) dream is of course japan, with no guns, and no gun violence, or any other violence to speak of.... might be an interesting place to visit, i would not want to live there for the exact social reasons which cause that state of affairs.

[halftea]

...and finally, there ARE pretty heavy regulation on select fire(automatic weapons) in the USA, the so called assault weapons ban is all about cosmetics, 'tacticool' and black and dangerous looking....basically you want to ban picatinny rail for accessories like telescopic sights, flashlights...and other sighting apparatus, and pistolgrip for rifles, because that makes it so much more dangerous....no, but more comfortable for some shooters.

Thank you for clarifying that discord. This is actually a topic we studied in both my Ethics and Sociology courses. The point was made there is legally no such thing as an Assault Weapon in the United States. As stated by discord, fully automatic weapons were already regulated and mostly illegal without a VERY special permit process and oversight by a Federal Agency (ATF), rather than State-level legislation and oversight. The legislation targets specific cosmetic features only, (as previously described -- the "tacticool") that offer virtually nothing in the basic functionality of the weapon.

[Arioch]

your(the gun ban crowds) dream is of course japan, with no guns, and no gun violence, or any other violence to speak of.... might be an interesting place to visit, i would not want to live there for the exact social reasons which cause that state of affairs.

While violence (and crime in general) is certainly lower in Japan than other industrialized nations (due to reasons of social structure), the lack of guns does not mean there is no violence or murder in Japan. People kill each other with knives or whatever else is at hand.

[discord]

arioch: yes, people will kill with whatever is handy, and as a student of the martial arts i know a little bit about what can be used and how....and how much punishment the human body can take, which interestingly enough is almost always both more and less what people think at the same time.

any home you can find at the very least a dozen different 'weapons', and this is before you have anything IN the home, just the home itself, any hard surface is a weapon, and sharp angled hard surface a better one, bathrooms....


halftea:
no, they offer something, simpler changing and maintenance of accessories(in the case of picatinny rail), optional handling(pistol grip), and possibly lighter material(black plastic, which interestingly enough increases felt recoil, so this is a two edged sword in reality), and choice of color, since apparently it should be illegal to paint your gun black.
everyone knows a gun becomes more dangerous if painted pink, black is for posers.

[Charlie]

Criminals will still retain those guns. How exactly will gun control help at all? Even if it did illegal guns can still be brought in, and guns at still easily be made.

The same way having driving licenses helps keep people that shouldn't be driving off the roads. Also, it is not easy to make guns. It requires specific resources, knowledge and tools to craft an effective weapon that does not immediately blow up in your own hands. And saying "they can bring guns in from elsewhere so we should not ban assault weapons" is like saying "they can ship cocaine in from elsewhere so we should not ban cocaine". It makes absolutely no sense and I think that the law enforcement agencies of the United States would not be advocating to ban all assault weapons if it would not be effective in keeping assault weapons out of the hands of criminals.

Both of your assumptions are flawed. First Driving licenses. How often do you see people driving illegally? I see it all the time. Look at many of Police Traffic arrests, many of them don`t have licenses or they are expired.
Knowledge and tools to make a gun? Hardly.
Look under tools required

Lets say I want a RPK. Soldiers fleeing other African countries like Zimbabwe don`t bring much besides their guns which they sell. I'd go to the boarder station and buy it off one of them there. Or I could go to one of the rougher police stations and buy a fire-arm out of evidence lock up. America isn`t this corrupt so it won`t apply there. But your laws on person to person sales are basically unregulated, it would be easier for me to get one one there.

My father has made a number of shot guns.

I would think that the difference between a home-made shotgun without high capacity ammo clips and a factory crafted assault rifle with a thirty round magazine should be fairly apparent.

What difference exactly? Both are lethal to humans.

Charlie, we're talking about the most progressive, liberal countries of the face of planet Earth. Countries that have the highest standards of education, economics and social commitment to the common good. Countries that look at America and collectively shake their heads, wondering why Americans put up with bi-weakly mass shootings in schools and political corruption. Those nations would never tolerate a medical system that murders their loved ones, there would be riots in the streets long before things devolved that far. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to have this conspiracy theory mindset that the medical institutions of first world nations have all joined together to kill as many of their patients as possible. It is completely and totally in denial of all reality. You are negating my ability to argue with you with your incredibly dogmatic and completely fictional portrayal of the medical advances of the first world nations (minus the United States) over the past few decades.

Preventive medicine has been shown to be both economically and socially beneficial to first world nations. For decades. That's why all first world nations invest in it. It not only saves a massive amount of capital, it's been shown to generate massive amounts of capital in production, as laborers are spending less time sick or injured and more time working.

I never once said they did it actively. It`s a simple matter of economics. Doctors who are paid less that private care doctors don`t work as hard. Resulting in sub par medicare.

As for proof, if you can take my dogmatic word for it, I have family in Ireland, Australia, and England.
My uncle in Ireland is struggling with the rescission there. He has told me of the decrease in quality of the clinics there because of it.
My uncle in Australia refuses to go the hospital there, he doesn`t live in the bush but 30 minutes away from Perth a major city, because they incorrectly treated his sickness. He instead goes to the pharmacy to acquire medical advice and medications. On my last trip there I took two kilos of various pill medication because he couldn`t get them without a doctors prescription.

England is home to my grandmother`s sister and some of her grand children. She requires a number of medications to survive, she almost died he a free doctor there gave her the wrong form and dosage of medicine.

If you can`t believe me on any of that, it`s fine. Research some of the shadier practices of Japanese doctors. Japan is one of the best nations on earth in the westernized categories. I recently watched a documentary on Japanese Doctors, it showed how they did not inform patients of their diagnoses when they were found to have terminal cancer. It occurs so frequently there that they are making new laws to stop it.

Private medicine has always generated greater profits, it has been responsible for most of the more recent medical advances as companies try to gain an edge of each other.

your(the gun ban crowds) dream is of course japan, with no guns, and no gun violence, or any other violence to speak of.... might be an interesting place to visit, i would not want to live there for the exact social reasons which cause that state of affairs.

While violence (and crime in general) is certainly lower in Japan than other industrialized nations (due to reasons of social structure), the lack of guns does not means there is no violence or murder in Japan. People kill each other with knives or whatever else is at hand.

I could be wrong, but, I'm fairly sure there is more suicides than murders is Japan.



discord may be able to elaborate more, but I believe you are given Sig 550 by the government for free.

[discord]

charlie: actually the efficiency of it(public health care) has to do with work ethics and how law abiding the populace is... and how hard the government cracks down on corruption, it is pretty decent in sweden in most cases, but the nordic countries are a aberration in this case as far as i have understood it.

on gun smithing for dummies, that is still a pretty advanced gun, you could make it a LOT simpler by removing the magazine and making it breech loaded break action.

and yes, the suicide rate in japan is rather high, 54 times the murder rate to be more exact.
US has a suicide rate 2.66 times higher than homicide.

sig 550? from where? why? /me confused. referring to standard issue gun for the swiss armed forces?

[Charlie]

charlie: actually the efficiency of it(public health care) has to do with work ethics and how law abiding the populace is... and how hard the government cracks down on corruption, it is pretty decent in sweden in most cases, but the nordic countries are a aberration in this case as far as i have understood it.

on gun smithing for dummies, that is still a pretty advanced gun, you could make it a LOT simpler by removing the magazine and making it breech loaded break action.

and yes, the suicide rate in japan is rather high, 54 times the murder rate to be more exact.
US has a suicide rate 2.66 times higher than homicide.

sig 550? from where? why? /me confused. referring to standard issue gun for the swiss armed forces?

It looks harder than it is to build, there are easier plans out there it terms of full autos. The more mechanical experience you have the easier it is. As for breech loaded break action that would be more apparent on a home made shot gun.

On the Sig 550
army-issued personal weapon

[fredgiblet]

Re@fredgiblet
Would you say you are currently depressed? Currently at risk of suicide? No? Then under those fictions laws you may posses a gun.
Even if you were taking a drug with potential side effects like that, take a psych test proving you are fine, job done. The law would have to prove you shouldn`t have a gun, you need prove you should. If the law can find sufficient cause to block you, they can`t stop you.

That's how the law would be written, yes. However the Hoplophobes have proven to be very persistent at interpreting laws in a way that gets them what they want, rather than what the law intends. The debates over the meaning on the 2A show that pretty clearly.

Also technically under the constitution it is stated (if you follow a literal translation) that all citizens should have access to predator drones, Abram tanks and suitcase nukes and if the citizens cannot afford such weapon systems the government is obliged to purchase them for us.

And if the 1A was taken literally we couldn't have slander or libel laws, in both cases we take liberties with the literal wording, however gutting the wording isn't supposed to be on the agenda.

Guns are a tangential subject to gun violence. Why? Because it's the violence that people have reason to care about.

I'm always amused when people arguing for gun bans say "Country X banned guns, then their gun homicide rate went down!" Correct, what did their HOMICIDE rate do though? THAT'S the one that's important.

An outright ban on all assault weapons and heavy regulation upon all other firearms would significantly lessen the firearm related violence in the United States, and would lessen violent deaths in general. As evidence of this I present the other industrialized nations of planet earth, who have far fewer guns in civilian hands, far more gun regulation, and thus a higher quality of life than do Americans.

Those other countries also have less inequality and better social programs. Do you know what happened in 2005 with the '94 AWB expired? There was an orgy of purchasing of "Assault weapons" and the murder rate went DOWN, just like it did for the preceding 12 years, and just like it's done for the following 8. The number of crimes committed with "Assault weapons" is minuscule, the only reason they are notable is because SOME of the most sensationalized crimes use them, however as Cho showed us a pistol is all you really need to have the highest kill count in US history.

So you are saying the result of a ban on civilian possession of assault weapons in the United States would be either a null impact on the level of gun violence, or it would have the negative effect of increasing firearm related violence. Even though in first world nations that currently heavily regulate guns such as Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, France, etc the result has been a (historically) marked decreases in the level of violent crimes. What historical evidence are you drawing this from? Please provide it for review and provide a full list of sources for examination.

Can you provide compelling evidence that the sole, or even primary, reason for the lower murder rates is limited access to guns? I haven't seen the numbers for Britain, but in Australia the murder rate was lower than the US and dropping BEFORE the gun ban, the fact that it's lower post-ban is hardly surprising or noteworthy. You are pointing out a correlation from a small group and saying that it equals a universal causation, that's REALLY bad statistics work.

[fredgiblet]

Thank you for clarifying that discord. This is actually a topic we studied in both my Ethics and Sociology courses. The point was made there is legally no such thing as an Assault Weapon in the United States. As stated by discord, fully automatic weapons were already regulated and mostly illegal without a VERY special permit process and oversight by a Federal Agency (ATF), rather than State-level legislation and oversight. The legislation targets specific cosmetic features only, (as previously described -- the "tacticool") that offer virtually nothing in the basic functionality of the weapon.

Indeed, one of the things that the anti-gun people are GREAT at is PR, 30-rounds isn't "high-capacity", it's standard capacity. Assault weapons don't exist, assault RIFLE is a term that has a meaning, they are almost totally banned after the Hughes Amendment in '86. I've been chewed out for insisting on air-quoting "assault weapon" before, but the problem is that if you let your opponent dictate the language of the debate you start behind.

While violence (and crime in general) is certainly lower in Japan than other industrialized nations (due to reasons of social structure), the lack of guns does not mean there is no violence or murder in Japan. People kill each other with knives or whatever else is at hand.

IIRC they are at .4 murder rate, which is the lowest major country. There's lower but it's mostly tiny countries.

discord may be able to elaborate more, but I believe you are given Sig 550 by the government for free.

The Swiss example isn't nearly as good as pro-gun people believe. Militia members are issued a rifle, but private citizens aren't allowed to own ammunition, you buy it at the range and you use it at the range. They USED to issue ammo with the rifle, but they stopped doing that for almost everyone because fear. Now only militia members at high-importance areas get ammo issued.