No, I’d want spaghetti. Because I do love spaghetti. Masochistic spaghetti is the best.
Or, just maybe this time, I’d want a grenade. Because if it were 4-5 or 5-6 or 6-7 or 7-8 attackers, I’d want that new lathe I saw last week, or perhaps a replacement miter saw. I could use a hyrdaulic m/c lift, too. Or a larger torque wrench, but that’s only if it’s like…10-20 people. I’m picky like that.
Or, gosh, maybe I’d want to call the cops.
On other threads here, someone would doubtlessly tell you that only white people have that option.
Motivating people to write their congressmen. And perhaps to change mindshare on the issue.
I am not suggesting he was faking it. Just that our president is a controlled man, and that it was his choice to make that show of emotion.
That doesn’t make me a conservative wingnut.
The thing is - fixing the socioeconomic issues that lead to gun crime would actually be really, really helpful for the responsible, legal gun owners that the NRA represents. So it would make their lives (the NRA’s, that is, as gun lobbyists) much easier if they also focused on helping to find solutions to those problems.
What I find interesting, though, is that even with these announced actions (but really, any time the topic of changing gun regulations comes up at all), you still get gun owners/advocates railing about how the government is coming to confiscate their guns. In this specific instance, I don’t see anything about confiscating any guns.
As a Canadian, you should be worried about that.
Indeed I am, though I was referring specifically to Americans being concerned with regards to Obama’s new proposed (or are they already signed?) actions.
Starting with…
and ending with…
is the problem. Because you are explicitly suggesting he was faking it, “…it was his choice to make that show…”, and with no regard as to your political leanings, that is where we fundamentally disagree. When he spoke in Charleston (IIRC) about the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, he was visibly upset for reasons that rational people might agree would make other rational people become visibly upset.
Or, to put it another way, my Cynical River doesn’t yet run so deep so as to make me believe that Obama’s every last action, down to his facial movements subtle or otherwise, are political in nature and intended to sway opinion.
Faking it would mean pretending to be feeling emotions he is not having, which is not what I am suggesting. (Could be true, but probably not; we can’t be certain either way)
I am suggesting that he did not have to cry on TV, that he could have maintained his composure, but chose not to.
We’ll have to agree to disagree then.
The Grip is completely straight which naturally results in a balanced feeling between the two men. It is also the perfect basis for the next step of the handshake, the shake.
Look at the stats. Wealthy white guys are the least likely to be the victims of violent crime. Drunken guy in a cinema with a knife could also kill you. Or knock you dead with one punch (it happens). You’re more likely to die on a car accident on the way to the theater, so live your life and don’t worry.
But… but… but… $HORRIBLE_THREAT!!!
The ability to rate risks by their actual magnitude and not by the volume of screams of journalists and activists should be taught since early elementary school. Or, if possible, even earlier.
Tough luck to see that, though. Scared people are easier to control.
While I haven’t read Dune, the longer I live the more I see the truths in the words, “Fear is the mind killer.”
Not sure whether I should like, or report.
True enough, but we’re still taking about completely manufactured, preventable causes. It’s not like automobile safety is off the table or anything like that.
Statistically…totally true, gun related deaths and suicides are a low hanging fruit…but they’re still a fruit that other people have successfully picked. No reason to pretend they don’t exist and just ‘go our merry ways’
Besides, it’s not like the poor black people aren’t relevant to the safety conversation.
Listening to George Carlin and he mentions 1000 people a year in the US accidentally kill themselves while jerking off and choking themselves. Huh. Well looking at google, that is the going estimate. Accidental gun deaths vary by year, but 500-800 is about average lately. Assuming the numbers to indeed shake out, your kid is more likely to kill himself accidentally jerking off than with a gun.
If you really cared about him you would buy him one of these.
You can combat accidents and suicide with education, health care, and awareness. Not laws. You think people wear seat belts now because we made a law?
Sure. Everyone should have basic gun safety. And knife safety. City dwellers are the ones least likely to be educated, encountering a gun for the first time in the “wild” with no guidance and think it’s like TV. Vs like where I came from many people hunted, target shot, was in boy scouts or 4-H. Hell I took rifle shooting in College even.
Umm, yes. Also yes. Also, yes.
So basically, yes.
So your fix is to provide a token solution for accidental deaths and ignore suicides and homicides? I’m all for mandatory QUALITY training, but that doesn’t help with far too many of these deaths, nor does it help with the ‘trained’ people who still are prone to acting like idiots (i.e. humans)
Another approach: one could NOT deliberately limit our options and acknowledge the possibility that maybe also having lots of lying around might be somehow related to a solveable problem?
Have you forgotten this so quickly? The R-squared is strong here and you can’t just ignore it.
When those laws were passed there was also a massive push in education and awareness. When people finally realized that seat belts really saved a lot of lives, the paradigm shifted and use went up. Do YOU personally buckle because it is prudent or the law? If there was no law would you be like, ugh, finally! I don’t have to wear this stupid thing!
I am not ignoring anything. I was replying to the statement that poor blacks should be included in the safety conversation, which they should. Thus I was talking about safety to prevent accidents. Safety training doesn’t stop murder or suicides.
Certainly access and number of owners is a factor, especially when it comes to suicides and accidents. The more cars on the road, the more accidents. The more gun owners the more gun accidents. The more gun owners the more likelihood if one becomes suicidal they will have a gun around. That is all commons sense.
The problem with your chart is there is a LOT going on here with no analysis and break down. Let’s look at the outlier there, Wyoming. Hoo boy - looks like the wild west with the gun death rate. I bet you better keep your head down driving through there.
But wait, let’s look up the numbers. Oh - in 2010 they had 8 murders in Wyoming, 5 of them with guns. So a state where 60%+ people own guns, only managed to murder 5 people with them. That is .9 per 100,000 people, way below average.
2015 saw 129 suicides for a rate of 21.36 per 100,000 people - that is a bit more than Japan. I can’t tell how many of those were via firearm, but let’s just assume all most of them, as that would line up with MJ’s Chart. I am sure there are accidents in there too, but I can’t easily find it and get back to work.
So anyway, point is, one needs to analyze data. Yes ownership plays a factor, especially with suicides and accidents. CRIME is a more complex. CA is low on their, but their gun murders is 3.4. I don’t see DC on the chart but wiki says only 3.6% ownership , but it has an insane 16.5 rate and very strict gun laws.
So what the studies actually say isn’t important and we should just go with anecdotes again? You realize there’s a reason why people do all this complex analysis and they don’t just pull things out of their butts, right?
Yes, further analysis of data always pays off. Nickle and diming data however does not, surely you see a parallel to many of the climate change and other conversations here with your statements, right? You still can’t disregard a chart with a strong R-squared. It’s not about the tiny outliers, it’s about how the general group adheres to the predictive band. I wouldn’t be pointing it out to you if didn’t have some relevance.
Are you willing to defer to data analysts and studies done by professionals then? Because there are people who do a lot of work and take these things into account (and a lot more, honestly you’re at the first tier of seven here), and there are plenty of freely available journal articles, NBER reports, and the like on the subject…and many of these individuals and groups are plain old statistical analysts and not beholden to one political side or the other.
