20 or more shooting victims reported in San Bernardino, CA. Police seeking active shooter

boing
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Expensive? It’s not so much. The sheer number of weapons per capita in the US seems like a problem but not if properly scaled.

A firearm buy-back+(possession)amnesty* could offer $2000 per serviceable weapon, no questions asked as a means of drastically reducing the number to more manageable levels.

Offer say, $2000 cash per item. Figure for another $500 per item administratively, then another $500 per item = corruption.

Roughly 300,000,000 firearms would qualify. Erase 1% for legitimately owned & licensed firearms that are worth more than 2 large to the owner. Remember you can’t get them all, you don’t even want them all, you’re aiming for the stars hoping to reach the moon.

Nine Hundred Billion. Round it up, it’s just ONE TRILLION. It didn’t disappear, it’s prolonged economic stimulus that for the first time ever went primarily to those who would benefit the most both directly and indirectly.

Oh Noes! A tur-illy-un!

The bank bailout totalled in at 29 trillion when the feds future commitments and asset purchases were tallied. They wanted everyone to think it was 1.7 trillion, were begrudgingly forced to acknowledge it was 7.7 trillion, and when future commitments and outlays for related assets were tallied it swelled to 29 trillion.

So lets do the math on what you and I prefer. Would you rather the government spent 1 trillion to return the children of Sandy Hook mostly alive and well to their parents with a few stab wounds? Or give the banks 29 trillion.

I know what I’d do.

you get to keep your hunting weapons, target shooting weapons, collector weapons, weapons you happen to want within reason, weapons you need for bears and shit, and the program is 100% voluntary. You end up with a shit load of guns like we have in Canada… but no gun culture*.

**supplement widely with cohesive social safety nets for results described. People shoot/stab/strike each other less when they have those nets.

edit - Figure that cost over 5 years to actually garner a shit ton of weapons. 200 billion a year. 1% of the GDP, one-third of what is spent on the military which is somewhere around 3% of GDP. End one pointless war overseas, reduce the military budget by 1/3, put that cash in the hands of the people while doing a social justice. Priorities.

Double Edit - The US could continue it’s policy of destabilizing third world nations even with the reduction in military spending by simply crating up all the purchased weapons and airdropping them into global hotspots… PROBLEM SOLVED

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284

The only ideas I have seen from the pro side are:

  1. More guns (The good guy with guns against the bad guy with guns argument)
  2. Mental health

So how many more guns do we need for mass murders to go down significantly? Does every man, woman and child need to open carry 24/7 365 days a year. Will we be safe then? Because to me that sounds an awful lot like certain third world countries that are in a constant state of violence, the very opposite of safe.

I am not a violent person. I don’t have mental issues. Never been in a fight. Never even really been in a verbal fight. I’m described as laid back and chill. But three times in my life I have been in a situation where I lost it. Pure fucking rage. No sense of self preservation. No logic. Nothing but tunnel vision. If I had access to a gun in those 3 moments, there would be three dead people and I would sure be in jail for life rather than working hard, paying taxes and raising a family. Thankfully I didn’t own a gun nor did I know anyone with a gun. On one of the three occasions I tried to figure out how to get a gun but it was too complicated for the reptile brain to figure out. In each case with time I calmed down and where applicable took legal action instead. Anyone can snap under the right condition. No prior mental issues required. I agree that gun laws are not a magical force field but less guns means less opportunity and more guns means more opportunity to purchase, borrow or steal a gun when violence is the intention.

On mental health. Yes, we do need to re-invest in mental health. Many cities now have sub-cities full of people completely abandoned by America and unable to properly take care of themselves and their mental health. But when it comes time to fund the systems required to deal with the mental health issue, republicans scream no more taxes and insist that all those people asking for help are just lazy fakers looking to mooch of hard working Americans. So funding is cut or never granted and more and more programs get closed. Of course this all assumes that all mass shootings are due to crazy people. Mental health programs wont stop extremists or criminals.

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285

I’m gonna die from a horse throwing a shoe, and I don’t even ride horses!!

On topic, fuck guns and ammo. And fuck glorification of violence and fuck glorification of ‘defense’.

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286

Yup! There are two times in my life if I’d had access to guns someone would be hurt. That someone would have been me, but that is beside the point.

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287

Why not do an apples-to-apples comparison?

The firearms deathrate in the US is over 10 per 100,000 a year.
In most European countries, the rate is below 2 per 100,000.

I think there’s something going wrong in the US, when you compare it with the other developed nations. Americans in general are at much higher risk than Europeans like yourself.

Or as some people might put it, dead bodies are the cost of freedom in America.

Although there’s a lot of countries in Europe that seem to me to be much freer than America. It’d be nice to live someplace where, if I am shot and am rushed to the emergency room, I won’t have to worry about also going bankrupt and losing my housing. That seems like some great freedoms to me.

ETA: I did this as a reply to @shaddack, but for some reason it linked to @Mister44

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288

I have had precisely one incident of rage. I was on Oxycodone after a knee surgery five years ago. Apparently, for me, Oxy is psychotropic. I f.u.c.k.i.n.g. LOST IT. I was yelling and screaming about who knows what, pounding on the stair railing and wall. I was hopping mad, just about to throw shit and my wife gathered the kids into a room away from me and came out and calmly talked me down from the edge, helping me realize it was the painkillers making me that way. I felt so bad when I realized what was going on.

To this day, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to take that stuff and rob drug stores to get it. I HATE that crap.

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289

Frankly I am rather glad my next door neighbour (probably) doesn’t own a gun.

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290

I’m glad you didn’t have access either time. The world is a better place with you in it.

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291

#Loves and hugs

I am pretty sure every sane person in the world has become irrational at some point. And as we are all painfully aware it isn’t just mental illness.

(I also hide the Jarts when friends have been drinking)

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Hear, here!!! Here’s to our favorite Phrygian. Live long and prosper, hoopy frood.
#MEGA INTERNET FISHBUMP

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293

Dude. GET THEM OUT when you’re drinking. It’ll show you who your REAL friends are!!!

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(You know I have, right?)

Edit

Worst decision evar? Adult pinata. With swords. I am a walking cautionary tale.

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Why not Canada? I mean were right here… we have crime and gangs and drugs, the same as you and yet our “murder capitol” had 11 murders last year.

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It’s the only way to be sure…

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I haven’t been able to follow if there is any discussion here about the actual event anymore, but I read on BBC news that two attackers have been killed. I am not clear whether or not there is/was a third attacker.

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Especially since
#They have all the guns.

It’s pretty hard to have a reasoned and pointed discussion with people who think it’s civil to carry around machines explicitly designed to and very successful at killing people. Makes me glad I can’t be shot through the internet. Just SWATTED.

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299

Back in August, when we were talking about the Nashville theatre shooting, I did a spot of analysis around the idea of MOAR GUNZ = MOAR FREEDUMZ! Funnily enough, that proposition turns out to be not true. I know! I was surprised too!

The post is here.

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300

Seems so. A man and a woman are dead and a 3rd is in custody. Seems someone had a dispute with a coworker at the xmas party and left but they’re not confiring if it was that person who came back.

14 dead.
It’s so obscene.

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Wow! Thankful your wife was there an able to calm you down.

It’s really difficult for me to talk about the details of my incidents but just to give a relative scale of what it takes for me to lose it. My wife (girlfriend at the time) had to fire an employee. He was great when she hired him but he was bi-polar and after several months his behavior became increasingly erratic and including making advances toward her. When she let him go he was apologetic at the time and and said he understood completely. So everything seemed fine. He had left a punch bowl at the office that was some sort of family thing, passed down the generations. So she dropped it off at his house. I was out of town on business and had no idea she was going by there. Short story is he held her hostage for nearly 12 hours. He was delusional and ranting. She watched him drink multiple bottles of vodka and he would almost pass out but wake up if she moved toward the door. He smashed the punch bowl and used a large shard to cut himself to show he could not feel pain. She also saw him eat ramen noodles barehanded out of a bowling pot of water on the stove. She made it outside once in the early morning but he caught her and drug her back into the house. He finally did pass out in the early afternoon the next day and she made it out. Her father helped her with the police and she didn’t tell me or her brother about it until things were legally taken care of. She has always maintained that he never hit or raped her but I never saw any of the police reports so I don’t know if that is true or if she was just trying to deescalate a situation that was already handled. But so yeah. Anyone can snap. Even wimpy liberal dudes.

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Sadly, at comment 300 (I can’t believe I ate the whole thing), there’s nothing new. But there is something very much missing:

Do we know that the all our numerous Mutantos de Los Angelenos are unaffected?

Family of Fraunenfelders? Friends de Jardin? @donald_petersen? who else? I know we’ve a lot for whom this area counts as stomping grounds.

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