Cloudflare punts far-right hate-hole 8chan off the internet after 30 slayed in US mass shootings Cloudflare has yanked its services from 8chan, the "lawless" 4chan spinoff forum favoured by far-right nuts and paedophiles, after two mass shootings in the US over the weekend left nearly 30 people dead. The site was working as normal early this morning UK time, but is now unavailable. Cloudflare said in a statement that the …
Over half a century, and the US is no closer to stopping these horror shows than ever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
You can pretty much draw your conclusions from the facts, and ignore all the handwringing. Especially from the Trumpster.
Think of all the thoughts and prayers that have been offered over the years. Just imagine how bad things could be if they didn't work...
Another Christian principle many christians choose to ignore. I think I'll use the extended text in the "Message' translation : "Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?" [James 2:16, emphasis mine]
When our 'faith' is just words, our faith is worthless and empty. You can show yours by how much you claim to know, I'll show mine by what I do - to paraphrase another bit of James' writing.
Come on Christians, don't just spout empty words, get out there and show the world who Christ is and what He will do if we're willing to give up our selves and love our neighbours! Don't sit in your prison-homes spouting hate-filled excuses, get out and be the good and brave citizens you are called to be!
"Especially from the Trumpster"
^ Much as I don't like Trump either, he is not the root cause. The reason so many mass gun shootings still take place is because of the power of the National Rifle Association and their ability to effectively buy the support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
The Democrats are also equally to blame as much as the Republicans. They had 8 years under Bill Clinton and 8 years under Barack Obama to reform lobbying rules, to try to contain the power of the NRA and to implement sane gun control laws, e.g. no military grade assault weapons, no one with violent criminal records getting access to guns and so on.
"The Democrats are also equally to blame as much as the Republicans. They had 8 years under Bill Clinton and 8 years under Barack Obama to reform"
That's not really true. The president gets the headlines, but the US government has three separate parts - president, senate and house - any one of which can effectively block anything much from getting done. The Democrats have only had 2 years out of the last 26, and 4 out of the last 40, in which they had a majority in all three and would have actually been able to push any major changes through. The Republicans have only had 6 years out of those 40 so they're not really ahead on that count, which goes a long way to explain why so little seems to get done in the US regarding major issues - it's rare for either side to actually have the power to do anything significant.
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"That's not really true. The president gets the headlines, but the US government has three separate parts - president, senate and house"
That is indeed true but both US parties have wasted those opportunities when the they held all three levers of government (usually at the start of presidencies) when more potentially controversial actions, such as gun control, need to be taken within the first year of office and you should not be letting American politicians off the hook over their appalling inaction on this issue.
Furthermore, with the horrendous Sandy Hook Elementary School murders of 20 children back in 2012, an opportunity was lost by then President Obama to take a strong lead on rational gun control.
Among developed OECD states, the USA is alone in having an obsessional guns free for all policy despite all the carnage that takes place. Change is possible though.
Australia used to have a similar pro-gun culture but the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 when 35 people were murdered put paid to that. The then conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, took on the gun lobby to his great credit and he won so firearms legislation is now firmer so these things can be done. All it requires is political will.
. . . are you planning on banning small home shops ? 3-D Printers ? Or Home CNC machines ? You can make a firearm with any of them.
Heck, you can skip down to your local Home Improvement store and get everything you need to make a plethora of weapons, in the plumbing section alone.
Hint: guns are not dangerous: PEOPLE are. Like people on psych meds, and ESPECIALLY people coming off them. SSRI inhibitors are involved on most of the "mass shootings" (i.e. the ones that get air time, and not just J. Random Gangbanger spraying bullets in Da Hood. . . .) in the past few decades.
There are other common factors as well, the most politically incorrect of them being that of the last 23 "mass shooters" in .US (prior to this weekend), 22 grew up in single-parent households. . . .
I'll also note both the rise of "garage guns" in Australia, and the rise of arson as a means of settling scores Down Under. . .
Making a gun at home is certainly possible, but not everybody has the skills necessary to do it -- and those who do, generally prefer putting those skills into practice: which is easier if you are not in prison for life, or dead.
The point you have to aim for is where *finding a way of solving a problem that does not require killing somebody* is easier, for most people, than killing people.
While you can make some kind of weapon, and have a chance to kill a person or two with that - after all if you're strong enough all you need is a club or a stone, or even your bare hands - you need a lot of equipment and skills to build anything near an assault rifle, its magazines and ammunitions.
People WITH GUNS KILL TENS OF PEOPLE in a few minutes, at long range - and inflict devastating injuries to many of those who survive. Guns are dangerous because they have no other reason to exist but to kill, and are designed to be very effective at it.
Most people with metal illness aren't dangerous to others, many just to themselves. Yet, sure, there should be laws to ensure nobody can get a gun unless he can demonstrate he's fully stable, and guns should be revoked as soon as someone shows he's not fully stable at all.
But people worshiping deadly weapons have their own kind of mental illness, I'm afraid. Some probably really think they have to defend themselves from a zombie apocalypse...
Farmers can easily kill hundreds of people using nothing more than the tools of their trade.
The Bath Township massacre, one of the worst in American history, was committed by a disgruntled farmer who blew up after losing a local election. He used his legally-purchased hunting rifle and TNT made available for use as excavation charges.
The Oklahoma City attack was committed with a rented truck and homemade ANFO. The latter was produced with common AN fertilizer (normally denatured to prevent it being weaponized, but they found a way to REnature it) and diesel fuel: both commonly used by farmers (for their fields and for their tractors, respectively).
My point is, Haters Gonna Hate. Killers Gonna Kill. And there isn't much you can do to stop someone that determined without crossing moral event horizons. Which is it going to be: chaos or the police state?
I have the skills to make all sorts of weapons. I have most of the tools and materials and the money to get what I don't have. From my old days as an industrial chemist I also have the contacts to purchase some more interesting materials if I wanted to go that far. Petrol and diesel, gas bottles, knowledge of how to make pressure vessels for other uses, knowledge of what can mix in a volatile manner with other stuff, knowledge of how to make lethal gas clouds (learned from the MSDS's which were a warning on what NOT to mix if you wished to remain breathing - with the obvious reversal of what TO mix if you wished for breathing to stop).
I can cause all sorts of long-term misery if I want that to be my point, make stuff that doesn't kill but debilitates. Stuff that will paralyse people, or blind them, or cause major skin and flesh damage requiring years of painful procedures to partially heal them.
I could drive my car through the streets around the Cake Tin as a crowd comes out after a sporting event, or steal a truck and drive it off a bridge as two passenger trains are about to pass underneath at peak times, killing dozens and causing life-long suffering to hundreds, perhaps thousands.
And when I did martial arts, I was taught ways I could kill or paralyse (my choice) with my bare hands, often using their own force against them.
But I won't.
My parents, and my culture, taught me to value life. If I am to defend someone, I use the minimum force necessary to stop someone else getting hurt. I might be best to use my car to knock someone over (hopefully not hurting them badly), or a handy bit of 4x2 or discarded bit of pipe (not that I see them very often in my travels), but I still use the least force. If someone annoys me, I talk to them or leave them, I don't raise my fists at them or threaten them or even raise my voice at them, that's not how we do things in my culture. I defend my rights, but not at the cost of my neighbour (unless they're being somewhat unreasonable), and certainly not at the cost of hurting someone.
And the thing that kills your argument dead is.. I come from the sort of backgrounds where I should be at risk of all sorts of things. Abused (verbally, physically and sexually), orphaned young, grew up around gang culture, family seen all sorts of nasty injustice and abuse, and even violence from those supposed to protect people. I have every reason to go on rampage, but I only need one to stop me - and that's someone teaching me to see others as valuable and worthy of love, not worthless things to fear and hate
There is a lot that can be done to stop someone going down these paths. The best methods require wisdom and words, not force and violence. For the most part, it really is stupidly simple, and all arguments about what people can do end because it becomes a matter of what people want to do. I don't want to kill anyone, and only in moments of anger do I even given thought to hurting anyone - at which point I know it's time to leave or find another solution (which might also be surrender if they were to have me tied up or locked in a room so I cannot possibly leave - at which point I'm not a threat to them no matter how much I might want to do - before you try a "BUT what IF you CAN'T leave" argument).
No one is born wanting to kill. Nor is anyone born wanting to love, although love is far more natural than hate. It is what we teach about values that makes the difference. Teach a kid to hate Muslims and you'll get someone going into a Mosque and killing. Teach them to love others and they'll be volunteering at the soup kitchen, or wiping the backside of an adult who cannot do it for themselves. It is up to you to make the difference in your area, just like it's up to the rest of us to help out our own neighbourhoods.
What destroys your argument is that you are not a bad actor.
But the knowledge you have, isn't something restricted to good actors only.
As I've said before, the knowledge of how to build IEDs and anti-personnel devices using basic chemicals or supplies you can get from a hardware store is out there.
If you took the time to read the WSJ, there was recently an article talking about the Somali Bomb Techs and their struggle against Boka Harem who are brainwashing kids to become suicide bombers.
So at the end of the day... haters are going to hate and sometimes kill.
My point is, Haters Gonna Hate. Killers Gonna Kill. And there isn't much you can do to stop someone that determined without crossing moral event horizons. Which is it going to be: chaos or the police state?
And yet limiting access to guns correlates pretty well with significantly lower gun death rates for the rest of the world. What you have there sounds like a false dichotomy.
You do realize that most people in here are:
- Under fifty
- Leftwing
- edgy soy boys
Facts mean nothing to them
They Hate anyone that differs in opinion while ignoring the daily horrors from Chicago and Baltimore.
You don't have to like trump, but TDS is just sad.
"Farmers can easily kill hundreds of people using nothing more than the tools of their trade.
The Bath Township massacre, one of the worst in American history, was committed by a disgruntled farmer who blew up after losing a local election. He used his legally-purchased hunting rifle"
If you're going to try to argue that guns aren't a problem because people can use other legitimate tools to kill people, it probably helps if you don't immediately give an example of someone using a gun to kill people.
And there's **EXACTLY** the problem with the gun-grabbing pundits. If a gun just happened to be somewhere in the vicinity of a tragedy, it's suddenly a "gun crime", even if the gun didn't have a part in the incident. But far be it for the gun-haters to actually think and examine the details. The ONLY thing a gun did in the Bath Township bombing was when the bomber used it to kill himself. Seems to me it was put to GOOD use.
"Guns are dangerous because they have no other reason to exist but to kill”
Target shooting, which is an Olympic sport let us not forget, begs to differ. One of my favourite sports also does, I’m a big fan of Biathlon: cross country skiing combined with target shooting with handicaps for misses. It’s never over until the last shoot is finished.
I do not like guns and have never owned or sought to own one.
I grew up in Huntin’, Shootin’, Fishin’ New Zealand and only indulged the latter but I have partaken of the products of the former in the form of ducks, venison and wild pork. My BiL and nephew hunt. But I’m persuaded of the scientific evidence that says Predator Free 2050 in NZ will not be achieved by hunting but by a combination of poison baits, traplines and predator proof fences.
Citizen groups all over NZ inspired by this are trapping their local areas. Sites showing how to make your own traps are popular and in NZ you can register to buy a wasp poison and bait stations. German wasps outcompete NZ native birds for honeydew and prey insects. No NZ birds are bee-eaters. The wasps have to go as well as the rodents, marsupials, mustelids and after those the felines.
Citizen groups all over NZ inspired by this are trapping their local areas.
And I thank you all for your efforts! Where I live, we have morepork, kereru, tui (large numbers!) ruru (I think, not one I heard till recently) among others. Wild NZ is returning quickly, and these efforts are helping. Probably getting ferrets under control helps a lot as well. I wonder if I'll see a Saddleback in my lifetime - I mean in the wild, not in a reserve (not seen one there even).
The bee populations are still low, but I think are regaining the losses to varoa.
As to wasps... I've seen them taking insects out of spider webs. And if you've seen the Huntsman, you'll wonder why you can see anything more than balls with the wasps that steal from them! (I hear the Huntsman's bite, while non-toxic, is worse than a wasps sting - I don't wish to try that for myself)
"Hint: guns are not dangerous: PEOPLE are"
^ You get zero out of ten for being nothing more than an NRA propagandist for that is their line to take.
The USA has roughly 5x the population of the UK but the USA has a 74x greater gun murder rate and, despite your mindless denial, the cause is very easy access to guns and very easy access to powerful guns.
In civilised states, it's only the military and police that need routine access to firearms.
"In civilised states, it's only the military and police that need routine access to firearms."
Except that they can't seem to always stay civilized. I agree that guns most definitely make a mass murderer more efficient, although they certainly are not a requirement for mass murder, as witnessed by the mass stabbing in California within the same week as the two mass shootings in Ohio and Texas. But if the 20th century is any indication, then I still prefer that we keep an armed populace in the US. The argument I am seeing for gun control is that guns are dangerous and make mass murderers more efficient in their killing. I don't disagree, but it also seems that government can be dangerous and gun control makes a genocidal government more efficient in their killing. Those who vehemently oppose Trump should appreciate the difficulty an armed populace presents to a would be dictator in the US.
Those who vehemently oppose Trump should appreciate the difficulty an armed populace presents to a would be dictator in the US.
I think you're failing to see the nature of the orangeutan.
As to your "seems that government can be dangerous and gun control makes a genocidal government more efficient in their killing." - well, you need to look at what the US has within it's military. Is your piddly little pea-shooter going to keep you alive against the US army, or the air force, or the navy or the navy's air force? Even the most chickenshit member of the national guard reserves will outgun you while you're cowering in your home trying to hide behind the tatters of your constitution.
If chump gets his way, those in Yankeeland will be getting a good taste of what a dictator is like.
"Is your piddly little pea-shooter going to keep you alive against the US army, or the air force, or the navy or the navy's air force?"
The Vietnamese and Somalis seemed to be able to hold their own despite all the firepower we could've brought to bear. Perhaps home turf advantage means something...
there is the government addressing things that lead to mass shootings (like mental health) while minding their own business about guns.
You don't see that your severe fear of your neighbour is, in an of itself, a severe mental health problem?
If you're not wetting yourself with terror every time someone walks by, why do you need guns? If you don't fear others, why would you want to carry them around?
I live in a rough area. I'll walk through the streets at night without fearing my neighbour. I don't need to carry weapons, I don't need to fear my neighbours, I doub't I could hold my own in a fight against a deformed moth (though I can fake it - I am way out of condition). But I am known for being nice and helpful - that goes a long way I guess. When you help someone's elderly mother, they tend to leave you alone.
"Be excellent to each other", and you won't have to shit your pants every time you step outside and realise you left your penis replacement at home.
[I have early memories of shooting a .22 rifle from a prone position because, at maybe 2 years old, I was't big enough to hold the thing. Growing up around farms, I've used guns and rifles including my grandpa's .303 bolt-action and (once I was physically big enough) 12 gauge shotguns - all for pest control, hunting and target shooting - IOW I have fired plenty of guns even when I was in, as Jake puts it, "3 cornered underwear" (or similar - thanks for the quote Jake :) ). And yes, we did use them as toys when I was a kid - shooting cans and bottles for entertainment, often without needing to ask an adult to take them out]
I know what you mean. I’m thoroughly middle class, a bespectacled academic type. Yet in the Scottish Indyref I tramped the streets and closes in some of Dundee’s most deprived areas armed only with a smile, a clipboard and festooned with badges marking me as of the Yes campaign, RIC division.
I never had any sort of hassle even when canvassing alone, at night (which falls at 16:00 in mid winter).
I also run, including through some of those areas and often get encouraging calls or am accompanied by kids on bikes asking questions.
I also treat everyone, absolutely everyone I meet as an equal human being. I may be an academic type but I don’t assume everyone else is stupid. If you treat people as rational beings they tend to reply in kind. For some it might be a strain and allowance has to be given but the principle holds.
Treat others how you wish to be treated.
I never had any sort of hassle even when canvassing alone, at night (which falls at 16:00 in mid winter).
Going out alone, after dark, where there are other people around? Poor people even? But surely you need several tank divisions to protect you!
And running? Don't you know running suggests fear, and that makes you a target? And if you have decent running shoes, obviously you have wealth and they'll be after you even more, even if just for your shoes!
You must be lying! How can anyone go into a poor neighbourhood without a nuclear deterrent at their disposal and not crap themselves the moment some disgusting wage-earner looks at them?????
(do I really need a "</sarc>" tag? :) )
I also treat everyone, absolutely everyone I meet as an equal human being. I may be an academic type but I don’t assume everyone else is stupid.
Some of my most embarrassing mistakes have been doing just that. And one of my greatest and longest-enduring friendships started when I sat down next to one of the "dumb kids" who was in a special needs class at intermediate. Perhaps his influence is why I do what I do today :)
"There is no such thing as rational gun control. There is irrational and unconstitutional gun control, and there is the government addressing things that lead to mass shootings (like mental health) while minding their own business about guns"
^ Nope, that is just more unfounded NRA propaganda and a complete denial of reality.
"...there is the government addressing things that lead to mass shootings (like mental health) while minding their own business about guns."
The US government is not doing anything about mental health either. Besides, this time they are blaming video games. As if video games only exist in the USA.
Furthermore, with the horrendous Sandy Hook Elementary School murders of 20 children back in 2012, an opportunity was lost by then President Obama to take a strong lead on rational gun control.
I don't think gun control would make much of a difference. NZ has gun control laws, but we also have a lot of illegal guns in circulation (whether they would actually fire or not is a whole different issue). But gun crime here is relatively low, and while the numbers have increased a fair bit recently shootings are also quite low.
We have self defence laws and yes, they allow for lethal force if necessary - but you will find yourself at a murder trial to determine if you did actually need to kill that person, or if their death was unintended ("I tackled him to the ground while he was chasing her, he hit his head on the curb.."). What we don't have is a culture of "I had a flat tyre, they were walking towards my car, I thought they might be a threat so I killed them without warning" - in that case you'd rightly find yourself on a life sentence.
The US needs to get away from their culture of fear and start to see the value of their neighbours instead of seeing them as something to be afraid of. Instead of wetting yourselves in terror when someone looks at you funny, offer them your hand in a gesture of welcome and make them a beneficial part of your neighbourhood. Get to know and love your neighbours, instead of locking yourselves inside and hating them out of fear.
Then you can all wander around proudly showing off your penis replacements guns knowing that you won't need to use them for anything more than dispatching a few cans and maybe the odd rodent.
Oh, and those who promote this culture of fear? Labour camps would be good for them I think. Ones run by robots. Somewhere they can contribute to society but not be in a place to cause any more pain to others. Let them terrify each other without hurting the rest of your society.
Clinton banned assault rifles. Dubya and the GOP allowed the ban to expire.
No, he banned Assault Weapons. Yes, there is a massive difference.
Assault Rifles have been banned for decades (an Assault rifle is a select-fire rifle - i.e. you can switch between semi-auto and full-auto/"machine-gun" mode). That is a widely used, totally standard definition for a standard term.
There are a handful that were grandfathered in under the NFA, but they actually require a special federal license and supply/demand means they are cripplingly expensive. They're not generally an issue since the only people who can afford them are businesses such as the Las Vegas Gun Range where tourist can pay $$$ to blow some ammo through one under strict supervision.
Assaults Weapons are not a real thing outside of the Clinton-era Assault Weapon Ban which coined the term and then defined it as a semi-auto rifle with more than one or more cosmetic features (pistol grip, folding or telescopic stock, bayonet mount(!)).
Remarkably enough, legislating that a wooden-stocked rifle like this was absolutely fine but one like this was an "assault weapon" is more or less equivalent to "thoughts and prayers". Both of those are semi-auto rifles chambered for the same .223 cartridge. They're the same rifle, but one looks traditional and the other looks "black and military".
The ban expired because it didn't work (and because the Republicans were in charge).
By contrast in the UK we just banned semi-auto rifles - no dicking around about whether it was in a wooden stock or a polymer stock, as if that makes any difference to the terminal ballistics of a .223round.
That also didn't work of course, but it was at least a policy with some sort of internal consistency - rather than concluding that a gun was more lethal because it looked scary.
Certainly, but in most cases they were killed by someone armed with neither (because nobody actually has an "assault rifle" outside the military and "assault weapon" is a made up term).
This is significant if - for instance - you are proposing relevant legislation or writing to your representative.
If you ask them to deal with the rise in knife crime by asking them to ban spoons, you won't make any sense.
IMHO arguing about which type of guns should or shouldn't be allowed ignores the elephant in the room of just guns, so try this instead:
I don't suppose it matters much to the victims whether they were killed by someone armed with an small gun, or someone armed with a big gun.
don't suppose it matters much to the victims whether they were killed by someone armed with an assault weapon, or someone armed with an assault rifle.
Actually, it's vital. FIrst shots fired 3rd August, 1040. Less than 24hrs later, investigators report-
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/08/04/the-el-paso-shooting-and-the-gamification-of-terror/
he projected the image of a relatively normal Trump-supporting Republican.
Oook. An interesting linkage, which then continues. For example-
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-08-03/democratic-candidates-el-paso-shooting-beto-orourke
“He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country,” O’Rourke said after speaking to people wounded in the attack. “And it does not just offend our sensibilities; it fundamentally changes the character of this country, and it leads to violence.”
Referring of course to Trump. Comments came around 12hrs after the shooting, where Democrat hopefuls were holding a conference. Or there's a comment here-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49230861
"Our president isn't just failing to confront and disarm these domestic terrorists, he is amplifying and condoning their hate," tweeted fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg.
O'Rourke's comments are perhaps more insightful given he's from El Paso, and previously wrote about "a feeling of boredom and aimlessness by going on a killing spree, including hitting children with a car"
But then isolation and alienation is a theme of modern US politics. Relatively normal Trump-supporting Republicans are far-right racists & potential spree killers, so the very antithesis of a liberal, democrat who would never dream of authoritarian actions like banning guns, reforming democracy, ending capitalism..
But then there are groups like Antifa, or 'Extinction Rebellion*', who want to do exactly those things and for some reason are loved by the left-wing media. And then of course there's law enforcement. No need for protracted criminal investigations into events like El Paso, simply blame it on Trump!
Or that could just be cheap politicians looking to exploit these outrages for votes.
Then of course there are practicalities. So ban 'assault weapons'. Americans are... strange when it comes to firearms, eg-
https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2014/02/21/gun-rail-mounted-axe-blades-go-full-retard/
Otherwise, first define 'assault weapon'. Easier said than done, and previous attempts have failed. Personally, I think more could be done & was suprised bump kits weren't already illegal. Single shot only firearms could be a solution. Would limit competitions, and in the 21st Century, we could buy all the tools we might need to convert them online, or probably at Home Depot.
But none of that really does anything to examine and address the causes. O'Rourke fantasised about using a vehicle as a weapon. Other people have actually done that. Ban assault vehicles next? O'Rourke could of course talk about his own inspirations, and the dangers of polarising and alienating large sections of what should be 'civil' society.
*Before mashing that down button, try reading those manifestos..
As to the UK banning semi-auto rifles, not quite true.
You require a firearms license to own semi-auto rifle in .22 and .223 calibres
.50 calibre rifles are only permitted as bolt action, basically for shooting things like wild boar, anything less, pretty much just annoys them! :)
You can own a 3 shot semi-auto shotgun (1 in the chamber, 2 underneath) with a shotgun certificate, more than this requires a firearms certificate.
To be clear, with a shotgun license, the police need to prove why you should not have one, for a firearms certificate, you need to prove why you should have one and it can be removed with little notice.
A couple of corrections.
The only calibre you can have a semi-auto in the UK (ignoring N.I. where you can have pistols) is .22 rimfire, you can't have a .223
.50 cal. isn't restricted for ownership any more than other rifled firearms, you have to have a good reason to posses that particular firearm. There will be large restrictions on what ranges it can be used on, and a .50bmg (the round most people think of when they say .50 calibre) almost certainly wouldn't be allowed for shooting wild boar.
The Firearms certificate lists the details of the firearms you are allowed to posses, and you need to have a good reason for possessing each one, so if you say you want a .223 for controlling foxes you will be allowed to buy 1 .223 calibre rifle. It will also specify how much ammunition you can have.
There is a lot more to it than this, but firearms licensing in the UK is complicated and has meant that the illegal use of legal owned firearms is incredible low (although the police are apparently very reluctant to release figures as they might be used to argue for some relaxing in the laws).
As to the UK banning semi-auto rifles, not quite true.
You require a firearms license to own semi-auto rifle in .22 and .223 calibres
1. I wasn't going to get into the .22 exception. It wasn't relevant the point is that we didn't fiddle around with nonsense like "semi auto rifles that have a pistol grip and a bayonet lug" under some delusion that an AR15 is more deadly than a functionally identical mechanism in a traditional wooden stock. We banned that whole class of firearms (which did very little for public safety but at least had some internal logical consistency), with the exception of .22s
2. If you're going to nitpick, don't make silly mistakes yourself. You cannot own a semi-auto in .223. The only semi-auto rifles permissible in the UK are those chambered in .22rimfire (Firearms Amendment Act 1988, Section 1). All centre-fire calibres are out for semi-auto - from .223 through the .30s and up to .50.
"By contrast in the UK we just banned semi-auto rifles - no dicking around about whether it was in a wooden stock or a polymer stock, as if that makes any difference to the terminal ballistics of a .223round."
You say it didn't work - I can recall the last mass shooting in the UK - but mostly because a couple of jobs ago I was sufficiently close to the ESN that I had work to do that directly related to it.
That was many years ago... tell me again that our firearms restrictions don't work?
The list of US mass shootings is broken into small groups of years, and split between schools and non schools... The list for the UK is three items, that difference is not accounted for by the comparative size of the countries or populations.
That was many years ago... tell me again that our firearms restrictions don't work?
Read what I actually said. They don't work any better than the restrictions in France or Germany. When was the last mass shooting in Denmark?
Licensing is a very good thing - I am arguing in favour of it. Arbitrary prohibition of certain classes of firearm is utterly pointless - as evidenced by most of Europe having better homicide rates than the UK.
Why would you insist on making a fatuous comparison to the USA which has NO licensing and NO registration of firearms and then pretending that their problems are because they're allowed to own firearms which are commonly owned all over Europe? The problem is not that such firearms are legal to own, merely that they have no licensing getting in the way of owning them.
But by all means focus on the AR15 as the root of all evil and let's not consider that America's failed society, absence of social welfare, socialised healthcare and abominable media practices might have more to do with violence than the simple availability of firearms. If it was "just the guns" then Prague and Geneva would be warzones.
No, Clinton banned Assault Weapons. Assault Weapon is a made-up term which distinguished some semi-auto rifles from others based on cosmetic features.
It was wildly ineffective, because the terminal ballistics of a .223 are not appreciably changed by whether the rifle has a traditional wooden hunting stock like what your grandfather had or a scary black polymer stock with a pistol grip...
Assault Rifles (along with machine guns) have been banned for decades - aside from a few grandfathered examples which do actually need a federal license and tax stamp and are in very short supply, so don't actually cause many issues - it's the over-the-counter 9mm and semi-auto rifles that are problematic.
over-the-counter 9mm? Pistols is what I meant to type. Trivial access to firearms which are "good enough" - not "military grade" (whatever that means - come on people, you're in IT, what does "Military Grade Encryption" mean?!), but simply "good enough".
Those pistols aren't an issue in Europe (the entirety of Europe except England/Scotland/Wales permits them, for target shooting, in clubs), but in the US with a lack of licensing or regulation... massive problems.
There was "military grade" 9mm ammunition, the UK's 2Z variety being designed for the Sterling SMG and therefore being a bit "hot" apparently caused premature metal fatigue in the Browning HP pistols, given the British military's preference for SMGs over pistols. But I admit that's a somewhat whimsical take on the question, which is really that "military grade" is that sort of meaning-free-but-alarming-sounding comment that's popular with the red-tops.
Also not entirely sure what's with the downvotes you got as your comments seemed neither inaccurate nor controversial: perhaps it would've been more helpful had they said what they objected to. Unless it was just a case "knowledgeable about guns therefore mad."
It was wildly ineffective, because the terminal ballistics of a .223 are not appreciably changed by whether the rifle has a traditional wooden hunting stock like what your grandfather had or a scary black polymer stock with a pistol grip...
Always bothered me some as well that. Ok, so a black gun with a pistol grip etc does have a look that shows it is intended for use against people vs the largely wooden hunting rifles.. But by the time I was 10 I could get through a fair few rounds with a bolt-action .303 in a few seconds (though IIRC it did make the shoulder ache some - but I am struggling to recall what weapons hurt what bit in which way).
At close enough range a human torso is a pretty large target, and at further range I think I'd find a traditional rifle (supporting the barrel on something for steadiness) much more accurate.. Though if I am firing into a crowd then accuracy counts for nothing, randomly dropping anyone and every one I can would be what matters if terror is my object. Unless I want to target only a specific group like a spoilt little racist brat of course.
The look of one is more intimidating than the other, but someone somewhat trained with a traditional hunting weapon will be more of a threat than someone untrained with a fully automatic, pistol grip, matte-black with white racisms, 15,000,000 round magazine etc weapon. The Christchurch kiddy belonged to a gun club IIRC, where is was fairly well trained in how to use a gun.
Can't ever remember a Democrat president using rhetoric so divisive as Trump's, or equivocating so much when the opportunity to condemn far-right behaviour comes up. I've never heard Trump talk like this even once.
So you see, Trump is not the root cause, but he's certainly a catalyst, not an inhibitor. His approach to politics uses divide and rule, and this is the result.
"Trump is not the root cause, but he's certainly a catalyst, not an inhibitor"
But in identifying Trump, you ignore the underlying US culture that supports gun ownership which largely crosses the political divide. Yes, Democrats are more likely to support gun control, but Democrats and Republicans have similar views around whether tighter gun controls would lead to less mass shootings (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/27/facts-about-guns-in-united-states/), and it's divisive issues such as that which the NRA uses to effectively stop gun control.
Trump will go away after two terms at most - the issues that underlie US mass shootings (and gun crime in the US in general) will remain regardless of who replaces him until there s a significant shift in public opinion in the US about the role of guns and gun ownership in crime.
I'm not defending USAian gun culture or doubting it exists, but little can be done about it until the man at the top stops dividing people and stops the dog whistle politics.
I think it's a little late for that. So less than 24hrs after the two shootings, people are blaming Trump. RT's news ticker earlier made it simple saying something like "Democrats say Trump responsible for shootings". So if that's an actual quote, I guess that could be interpreted as conspiracy to murder.
Really?
Ok, so El Paso may be a bit more clear cut. That was another nutjob with a manifesto. Plus said nutjob survived, so can undergo a thorough psychological dissection to try and figure out why they flipped. But then there was also Dayton, Ohio-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Dayton_shooting
On a Twitter account believed to be registered to Betts, he described himself as a leftist, and had posted tweets that opposed Donald Trump and supported Elizabeth Warren, gun control and socialism
And may have been triggered by not being let into a club. It also quotes local law enforcement as saying they didn't know the motive. Plenty of speculation though, especially around El Paso. There's an election coming soon, 20 Democrat candidates hoping to win the big prize, and so shamelessly exploiting these deaths.
Doesn't that strike people as being a bit.. morally bankrupt and reprehensible? Or is this how we should expect politicians to behave now. Hopefully sometime soon, US politicians will familiarise themselves with Godwin's law, and start behaving like adults. At least the Ohio shooting gave something that should be easily bannable, ie the 100-round magazine that nutjob used. I'm not convinced America's founding fathers had those in mind when drafting the Constitution.
"Or is this how we should expect politicians to behave now."
It's pretty much how we ALWAYS expect politicians to behave, as a sociopathic streak is pretty much a prerequisite. Thus why politicians are considered first among the three people you learn never to trust (the other two being televangelists and used car salesmen).
So a lot of American culture is PROUDLY "You're on your own. If you can't hack it, too bad, Game Over, better luck next life."
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Much as I don't like Trump either, he is not the root cause. The reason so many mass gun shootings still take place is because of the power of the National Rifle Association and their ability to effectively buy the support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
I think it's more cultural than that. A nation that does not value the lives of its citizens soon sees its citizens act in a like manner.
I see so many in the US screaming about their right to kill someone who is approaching them because that person may be a threat (also may be a kid with the music loud lost in their own world and not even noticed the person threatening to kill them out of fear of the very dangerous act the the kid is committing by calmly walking in their general direction). In reality, they're a nation of fear, utterly terrified of their neighbour. Fear breeds hate and anger, and this is the result.
Other nations have high levels of gun ownership but no where near the levels of violence that the US has (and yes, perhaps other countries also have more violence than the US - that does not excuse the actions of US citizens nor the state of fear they allow to fester and often actively promote)
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Go back even farther. Google Michigan 1929 School Bomb
I forget all of the details, but that a guy blew up a school filled with kids (actually half the building blew up) Then as people rushed to the scene, he blew himself up in his car.
You can pretty much draw a conclusion that bad actors are going to find a way to do bad things.
That doesn't mean you should make it as easily as you could. The fact in US mass shootings happens one after another indicates it is far too easy to commit one. And the reason is too powerful weapons are too easily available to anybody.
There's a big difference when to kill tens of people you need to be skilled and resourceful, or just enter a shop, and exit with some assault weapons, high-damage ammunition, and large-capacity quick reload magazines, or even have them delivered right to your house, for a few hundred dollars only.
"There's a big difference when to kill tens of people you need to be skilled and resourceful, or just enter a shop, and exit with some assault weapons, high-damage ammunition, and large-capacity quick reload magazines, or even have them delivered right to your house, for a few hundred dollars only."
Are we forgetting the massacres that were made at ZERO cost because the killer used common implements available to everyone AND already at hand...like his/her own personal vehicle?
And frankly, it doesn't take a whole lot of skill to make certain dangerous implements. Indeed, most anyone here knows the recipe for black powder or to make homemade ANFO.
Hell, 9/11 was committed with nothing more than box cutters. Imagine someone armed with a ceramic (non-metallic) knife could do with a first-class seat and the patience to wait for the instant the cockpit door is open.
First Assault Rifles are Class III full auto.
But lets not get too technical since you're not paying attention.
One can legally walk into a grocery store, pharmacy, or a hardware store and buy the supplies need to make an IED. Doesn't take much.
With respect to a gun, if you know what you're doing ... you can take a simple auto loader or a good pump shotgun and do more carnage. Not good enough. Take a std 45 ACP w a single stack 8 rnd magazine. With multiple magazines, you can still do a lot of carnage if you know what you're doing.
And then there's the bad actors using long knives.
The point I was trying to make is that bad actors are going to do bad things.
You are not comparing with guns on a same level ground with those implements you have selected in your argument.
You should at least compare their implementation, usability, lethality and victims reaction time side by side. By the time you've done that, you'll see why gun is the popular choice and the overpowered choice (portable, easy to use, high lethality, and little time for victims to react).
By default in most shooting games, guns are reduced in lethality or limited in ammunition compare to other choices (get hit by a grenade or get run over by a vehicle will still get instantly killed in game) due to how good of a choice it is. Perhaps guns in real world should also be reduced in lethality as well.
You should at least compare their implementation, usability, lethality and victims reaction time side by side. By the time you've done that, you'll see why gun is the popular choice and the overpowered choice (portable, easy to use, high lethality, and little time for victims to react).
I know how to use a gun, having fired hundreds of rounds and used a few different styles. Though a bit rusty, I think I could get a decent rhythm going with a bolt-action rifle, and I probably have the engineering skills to turn a 5 round magazine into something with a bit more capacity.
I used to work as an industrial chemist. The Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) gave clear warnings about how mixing certain substances with certain other substances would react in certain ways, including temperatures for flashpoint and auto-ignition. With that information, looking at what NOT to do if you want to live, you can also learn a lot about what TO do if you want to make a nice hole in the earth. Some chemicals give of very deadly gasses, some can burn up the oxygen in a room, some cause high rates of cancer or paralysis. Some of these can be made from fairly readily available chemicals. For those with a little knowledge, it's not hard to make something that messes people up badly (although many don't have the knowledge they think they have, and very efficiently carry out the second half of "get rich or die trying").
But it's still quicker and easier for me to use a car, van or truck to cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. As I suggested earlier, dropping a truck off a bridge at a time when 2 packed commuter trains are about to pass underneath[1], cause some chaos on the roads (NZ driving isn't that bad though, but seeing some dashcam videos of trucks meeting lines of parked cars at speed - well that probably doesn't do much really. probably looks worse than it is). A truck or van through a crowd of pedestrians is perhaps still one of the most effective and simple ways to kill a lot of people. And you may even be able to get away with it if you can convincingly fake an accidental overdose of your prescription medication that caused you to lose control at a really convenient moment for those poor innocent children.
[1] Actually I don't know if there are any bridges in the region where 2 commuter trains pass under a bridge at near enough the same time for this to be effective - but I'm sure you get the idea. See various incidents where 2 or 3 passing trains have been involved in very bad accidents.
There's a big difference when to kill tens of people you need to be skilled and resourceful, or just enter a shop, and exit with some assault weapons, high-damage ammunition, and large-capacity quick reload magazines, or even have them delivered right to your house, for a few hundred dollars only.
In a few hours, at several locations not far from where I live, schools will get out for the day. There will be children crossing the roads, often in small groups at pedestrian crossings. Sometimes the groups will be larger. Sometimes there may be 20 kids waiting to cross the road at controlled crossings.
I could drive my car at speed into at least one of these groups, maybe kill or maim a dozen kids. If my car survives well enough and no one manages to stop me, I could race off to a school not far down the road and do it again. And if I am still mobile, there's another school a miunte's drive away.
If I skip this weeks rent payment and use the money to hire a truck.......
No skill involved.
Bingo!
But not to paint you as a psychopath... we have ample evidence of people driving trucks in to crowds. And then getting out wearing fake bombs and slashing people.
Or 7/7 in London.
Sorry, but bad people are going to do bad things. We need good people there to stop them.
Look at the incidence.
In 2019 there had been 255 mass shootings (>4 injured excluding the suspected perpetrator) in the USA as of yesterday.
That's an average of more than one a day.
How many bombings have occurred in the same time period? Even worldwide it's fewer.
Purchasable firearms make it easy to kill and injure many people.
Someone with murderous intent can indeed go and buy the stuff needed to make an IED, a homemade firearm or other methods of killing many people. But they'll need the knowledge, skill and time to make it and set it up near their target. They may be apprehended at any time after the purchase of materials and have a hard time explaining why they should be allowed to continue.
Or they can go buy a firearm and a few hundred rounds of ammunition, then pop out and murder a few people. At almost any time before actually commencing murder, if they are stopped then they can easily claim to be law abiding. The risk of being caught before killing anyone is almost zero!
Just because you can't make it impossible doesn't mean you should make it easy.
In 2019 there had been 255 mass shootings (>4 injured excluding the suspected perpetrator) in the USA as of yesterday.How many bombings have occurred in the same time period? Even worldwide it's fewer.
You're missing something very critical. The US has had at least 255 mass murders so far this year. Has the rest of the world had even 50 - combined? With all forms of mass murders, not just shootings - how many have occurred this year outside the US? In countries with the likes of ISIS? Massive problems with drug cartels? Pirates (in the true sense of the word)
The guns may make it easier, but there's still a fundamental problem when the rest of the world combined doesn't even begin to compete (assuming I am right in my belief that the rest of the world hasn't seen that many mass murders).
When guns aren't readily available or aren't the best method, those so inclined will switch to another tool. Some tools may be more effective than guns, once people start trying them. Some may already have been used but not counted as murders but 'accidents'.
No other country has anywhere near the same rate of mass murders as the US. Guns aren't the problem as many countries have comparable and even higher rates of gun ownership than the US. The problem is a fundamentally broken culture, and until the nation is willing to change how they think about others they have no hope of stopping the violence.
Fix the culture, and gun issues will follow. Leave the culture as it is - you could get rid of every gun, every crossbow, every arrow, every volatile chemical, every sharp or blunt object, and yanks will still find a way to kill en masse. And bleat about their right to live in mortal fear of their neighbours.
Sorry, but bad people are going to do bad things. We need good people there to stop them.
Working on the culture will help. I have the knowledge of many ways to kill many people. I've worked with dangerous chemicals, I have skills with fabricating from wood and metals and can build electronic circuits and have even designed a few circuits based around a Pi (commonly triggering relays in response to certain events - like a key stage of a bomb or other trigger), and I've driven all sorts of large vehicles.
I've also had a number of the life experiences that turn people from law-abiding citizens into mass-murdering psychopaths (or mentally deranged, or exceedingly pissed off or....). But the one thing that means I won't harm anyone is that I value life.
Ok, there's probably several reasons why I would not harm anyone (without them being a very clear threat to someone else), but the value I place on life is almost certainly the key one. Teaching people to value life has to be critical to reversing the modern trends. It'll also help with cutting our waste of resources and polluting of the planet. When you care for your neighbour's wellbeing, you act to protect them.
So how do you teach people who don't want to learn and if push came to shove would rather fight you than surrender?
You use your brain.
Sometimes, that requires waiting for "divine inspiration" (and yes, I do mean that in the literal sense - it's probably the rightmost black arrow on the bottom left of the post you want to hit :) )..
And sometimes you just let herd mentality do its job. Can't fix stupid? Go do what you can elsewhere. Peer pressure and leading by example are very effective tools.
But what about Stupid WITH enough nukes to turn the whole world radioactive green? This isn't something you can just ignore since there's always the risk of someone willing to go M.A.D. there.
Do you have someone like that in your area? No? Then what of it? That doesn't apply to what I said.
Argue the point, not the wild straw-men you imagine.
Yes, actually! Worst part, he currently resides in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! AND he doesn't appear to be the type to code power (or ANYTHING) willingly.
Doesn't matter. Worry about your back yard and fix that. One way or another, he'll be gone in a few years (or maybe a few hours, or maybe he's dead now and I should've watched the 11 o'clock news), but you'll probably still be around.
Whether you're in a cesspit or a paradise is largely of your own making. You can have a huge impact on your local community, for better or worse. Me? I do my best to make my communities better, whether it's doing little things to help my neighbours (like taking the old lady's rubbish bin the kerb and mowing her tiny lawn) or larger things like volunteering at a retirement village. Or cleaning up some rubbish in the street, or... I don't want to blow my own trumpet, I say this in hopes of inspiring some to do little things to improve their area, and by that improving our world, and improving their lot.
Don't worry and don't give mind to what someone else does, do what you can and lead by example. You constantly fall back on the excuse of what someone else is doing (whether Trump or Equador or eliter Gamerz!!!1111!!!!!11 or someone who will watch their family get executed if they don't travel to work WITHOUT public transport at 2AM or...), but you seem rather resistant to taking responsibility for your own actions, your own community. You can do a lot if you take your focus off other people and start doing what you can. You start, you show others what can be achieved with a little effort or a little thought, and they'll follow. The more who follow, the less you have to do, and the faster things change.
Focus on yourself and be happy, or focus on someone else and forever be stuck in the shadow of another's failures. Your life, your choice, not theirs.
Charles, as much as I want to kick your head in sometimes - stomp some sense into it, you're someone who has so much potential I'd like to see unleashed. You have it in you to be a truly amazing person who achieves incredible things, if you can only lift your eyes off what others do. I really want - and hope - to see you fulfil your potential, not be bogged down like some of us did to ourselves.
Yes, couldn't remember and was too lazy to google it.
Yes and he was probably the first car bomber in history.
Even in today's world. Ban guns, but you still can't stop people from doing bad things. Do you know how easy it is to make Chlorine gas? My wife did it by accident and luckily I was home to save her and vent it.
(And lucky I had an old gas mask with an unused filter. ) Imagine if someone wanted to do it intentionally and poison a bunch of people. You going to ban household cleaners? That's never going to happen.
Do you know how easy it is to make Chlorine gas?
Is 'easy' even the right word?
If I went back through my files, I'm sure I could find several mixtures that cause misery just by storing them in the wrong places. [Memory triggered about truck loading laws where certain chemicals couldn't be above or underneath certain others, and certain things couldn't be on the same trailer as certain others, and some couldn't be on a trailer with anything else or trailers with a certain makeup (IIRC wooden decks were verboten in some cases - but it's been a LONG time!)]
Christchurch recently lost a few houses due to a small gas leak, and several people were exceptionally fortunate not to have lost their lives. Many houses are lost each year to bug foggers. So much mayhem at the hands of those who accidentally screw up - how much can be done with the same tools by those who know just a tiny bit more? (Mythbusters was maybe material "of use to terrorists" - though they probably cut much of the critical bits out, or fudged data)
They DID leave vital things out. They also blurred out labels if needed (Adam Savage once lampshaded this by calling two chemicals "blur") and censored technical names (often in a funny way). Oh, and they DID prove the bug bomb thing to be true, though they did qualify that it may have been exacerbated by using more canisters than actually needed.
Oh, and they DID prove the bug bomb thing to be true, though they did qualify that it may have been exacerbated by using more canisters than actually needed.
Yup. Even though they doubted it happened very often they actually found out it was a very common occurance (IIRC during the early episodes where they had the lady who did the checking to find the origin of the story, sometimes they said "this cannot happen" and she said "there are hundreds of reports from fire brigades of this happening every year" - strangely she did not last in the show very long).
As to taking out a house while making it look like an accident - despite all their blocking of labels (often very easy to tell what if you knew the pails yourself :) ) the bug-bomb one did teach me an idea or two.
Now.. What happens if I fog my office at the refinery.. I think one can every 2" should be enough...
@Ian et al: A lot of people are saying "Ban guns, but you still can't stop people from doing bad things", or similar. The point that Kiwi and others are making is that, whilst it is certainly possible for people to do bad things without guns, it is notable that these things are not happening in the Western world. Taking into account every possible way of doing "bad things", the incidents in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand don't come close to the incidents in the USA by gun alone, by any measure. The fact that some of the "easy" ways of killing lots of people have never (to my knowledge) been used speaks to the fact that they are probably not as easy as claimed.
There seems to be a problem in the USA which is not entirely addressed by the gun issue. That people are willing to go and kill multiple people without some form of radical agenda suggests, as others have mentioned previously in this thread, that there is a serious issue regarding trust. I suspect that there is a vicious circle - "someone might shoot me, so, if I'm in doubt, I'd better shoot them first". Some sort of control on guns might help, but I'm not really convinced - I've posted before that the sheer number of guns in the USA makes it almost impossible to practically control them. There is also the fact that there is a certain amount of pride that the USA has given people unique freedom to own guns, and this forms part of the national psyche. These two things together make me think that the country is a lost cause, and that the rest of the world will just have to look on in horror as men, women and children are gunned down by arseholes with (or without) a grudge. The only hope is for ordinary people to come together and bridge divides, not make them bigger, because government isn't going to do it. You'll find life is much nicer if you trust people.
There is also the issue of health care - especially mental health care. Most pthe Western countries have at least some way to monitor mentally unwell people, and to do something about it. The USA seems fairly unique in its disregard of this vital aspect of people living together (though the UK seems to be trying to emulate quote successfully at the moment).
Where I'm REALLY afraid is that you CAN'T write off the USA as a lost cause because that risks writing off THE WORLD as a lost cause, given all the military firepower the US possesses (basically, they're a Giant in the Playground: possessing of enough destructive power to ruin the world single-handedly and just waiting for the wrong person to come along).
A lot of "Mericans" love their guns, love their "*Freedom" and First Amendments but they also seem to like to kill..
The term and definition of barbaric sounds about right
": possessing or characteristic of a cultural level more complex than primitive culture but less sophisticated than advanced civilization.
Not many love the first amendment when it's the other side exercising their freedom.
"Don't persecute us for being Christian! (but it's ok to persecute muslims)"
"Don't silence alex jones and other evil cuck shit sturrers.. But feel free to threaten and abuse those that protest Trump".
That aside, I think you probably meant the Second Amendment - that's the one they twisted and misused to arrive at a situation where there is less gun control than there was in the old wild west, and it's easier to get a gun than a beer.
Sweet, so I can get a gun at the grocery store now!
Oh, I have to wait 30 days after buying it to actually get it, need a permit for it, have to get a background check for the permit... Then I can only drink it in certain places, from certain containers, and only certain amounts, and every beer I buy is logged too?
The 8chan "global rule" has always been "don't post anything that is illegal under US law". Child pornography has never been tolerated, however because of the free speech principles of the board they won't act against things that are distasteful but legal, such as clothed images of cute kids shared by pedos as wank material. So in that respect they could be said to be tolerating pedos.
It will be the American equivalent of UK manslaughter for an unlawful killing not premeditated
In the UK, intent is the determining factor which decides whether a killing is murder or manslaughter, not premeditation. Quoting the Crown Prosecution Service, if you cause a person's death "with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm" you will be charged with murder unless "a partial defence applies" (i.e. loss of control, diminished responsibility.) In the latter case you will be charged with manslaughter.
No, murder usually requires deliberation, as in the deadly act was made with the intent to kill. Thus why murder has greater and lesser degrees. The greater degree requires either premeditation (as in it was planned) or wanton disregard for the law (as in committed simultaneously with another felony such as robbery--thus the "felony murder" designation). A deliberate strike to kill made in the spur of the moment (say catching your spouse cheating, the scenario sung by Maroon V in "Wake Up Call") is a lesser degree because it wasn't planned beforehand.
OTOH, a premeditated strike not meant to kill but lethal anyway could be construed as manslaughter instead of murder (being a reckless instead of deliberate act, that's often the key in distinguishing between the two). So would acting in wanton disregard and causing someone's death in the process (DUI manslaughter, for example).
That there is the problem, to try and claim that someone is inspired to commit such acts by a website is a sure way to never resolve the problem. Easy access to guns, the ability to say whatever you want, lack of education and a president that seemingly backs up that way of thinking are the reasons and until you tackle them it's not going to fix itself. It's like the old "video games" trope, Canada have exactly the same video games but not the mass shootings.
I'm also not a fan of internet companies becoming gatekeepers to what people can and cannot access, that should be down to governments backed up by laws and open to scrutiny.
This is precisely what Matthew Prince is saying. He points out that them (CF) terminating 8chan does not solve the problem. The problem needs to be resolved at the root of it. CF were just... infrastructure, but Matt & Co understand that they cannot continue claiming to just be that, and that they can't (and shouldn't) be the gatekeepers either. I quote:
I have little doubt we'll see the same happen with 8chan. While removing 8chan from our network takes heat off of us, it does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. It does nothing to address why mass shootings occur. It does nothing to address why portions of the population feel so disenchanted they turn to hate. In taking this action we've solved our own problem, but we haven't solved the Internet’s.
Perhaps he's taking a roundabout path to declare that the root problem is part of humanity itself and is pretty much intractable. To use the meme, "Haters gonna hate."
If it was an "intractable" "part of humanity" then the rest of the world would have the same problems the US has.
We don't.
We do tend to have freedom of speech, we do tend to have very easy access to weapons, we do have people with mental health problems and people wanting to have their own way regardless of consequences, but we don't have the same levels of people killing each other.
Nor do we have the culture that says we should fear our neighbours and clamour for the right to kill them at the first apparently askance glance.
The problems are with the culture. If 'haters' are a part of your culture, and that is a problem, then you fix the culture of hate.
You do. You just don't realize it because many other countries don't try to blend cultures together, resulting in culture clash. Even Switzerland tends to segregate it's multiple cultures.
We don't.
I live in New Zealand. We are a very multicultural country. Even with the Christchurch Mosque killings (which in itself covered an average year's murder rate), we don't have the murder or violence rates of the US.
If you had half a clue about what goes on in the rest of the world, you'd realise that for many of us living in multicultural societies has been a part of every day life for the history of our nation. I'd hate to think how many different cultures are in my street - or even different birth nations.
You're missing mental healthcare in that list, I'd argue that the access to guns is the least of the problems in that list, with education and mental healthcare taking the 2 top spots.
Of course, improving education will take time and even if it happens today, it'll be a decade or two before the results start to come around. Improving mental healthcare would produce results faster, but the US seems allergic to any kind of affordable healthcare and has a cultural problem that has only recently started to shift of people not seeking help.
So access to guns and restricting speech that incites others to violence and discrimination are the lie hanging fruit. For certain values there of.
Your right but the access to guns should be restricted for people with mental healthcare problems anyway, I would even go so far as to introduce mental health screening for anyone that wants to own a gun. I know that's not perfect but it's better than the current situation.
The current background checks screen for prior mental health issues. If you've ever had ADHD/anxiety/depression/psychosis/etc and been prescribed? Probably won't get a permit.
To change lanes, I think we would be better as a world population if we required mandatory written re-testing for drivers licensing every two years, a mandatory road test every fourth, and a little unit that fines you and dings your license if you don't use your turn signals.
Surely the decrease in road related deaths warrants adding those extra hurdles to driving privileges.
No, because it'll only increase incidents of higher crimes as people who NEED the car for their job to feed the family (as they're the breadwinners) get dinged for too many minor things, lose their wheels, and they can't feed the spouse and kids. IOW, you just start creating a group of VERY desperate people. And you know what they say about desperate people...
I doubt revocation is the way to go.
Just reduce the size of vehicle allowed after so many events.
Nobody needs high capacity fuel tanks, high KW engines, or speeds over 80.
Relying on small cars, mopeds, push bikes and public transit are the price that we should pay for keeping people safe.
The logical conclusion is that anything bigger than a 500 should be reserved for government use only.
You have a valid point, there would need to be proper exemptions for that, so you could get an extended driving permit on an as-needed basis to have a larger vehicle with longer range.
Maybe just have a big scarlet number on the rear windscreen, showing the number of infractions recorded, to warn others. Drop the fines, just use public humiliation.
An indicator of possible "This numpty could do a k-turn in the middle of the expressway, watch it." .
And then someone will invariably try to high-score.
In all, the unexpected outcome of this thought experiment on driving regulation has been much amusing.
That's arguable if someone has to commute two hours each way into the boonies to work (meaning no public transport, high capacity fuel tank is essential, and a powerful engine may be needed to negotiate steep terrain).
Why is a "high capacity fuel tank" 'essential' for someone who has to "commute two hours each way into the boonies to work"?
Why does that preclude public transport? You do know that if there is a potential demand, there will be transport provided, right?
Why is a powerful engine" needed to "negotiate steep terrain"?
My 125cc bike with it's 5L (just over a gallon for those stuck in the olden days :) ) managed all that happily. Being a dirt bike converted for road use, I could even climb terrain that 4WD/SUVs wouldn't manage. 4 hours driving time even at highway speeds was also readily achievable. And I see a LOT of people on ~50cc scooters commuting between Upper Hutt and Wellington, also lots of people on push bikes doing it. Some even cross the Wainuiomata Hill or go up the Ngarunga Gorge on them (push bikes and scooters).
I had a bike that has an 18L tank. That also gave me plenty of riding time including (especially) during commuting. (And yes, I've known people who have missing limbs yet still ride).
No, because it'll only increase incidents of higher crimes as people who NEED the car for their job to feed the family (as they're the breadwinners) get dinged for too many minor things, lose their wheels, and they can't feed the spouse and kids. IOW, you just start creating a group of VERY desperate people. And you know what they say about desperate people...
If you're too dumb to use indicators you're too dumb to drive, and I doubt many people would want to employ you. If you're too arrogant to use indicators, then you're a threat and should not be driving.
I had a problem with speeding myself. In NZ you get so many 'demerit points" when you get caught speeding, and if you get a certain number inside a certain time (I think it's 100 in 2 years), you automatically lose your license for IIRC 6 months. Inside a couple of months I had enough incidents to get very close to that point. In the more than 10 years since, I haven't had a single traffic ticket. It's an effective deterrent and when people get close to seeing their license gone, they behave. And when they have to behave for long enough, the behaviour gets ingrained.
And if you think committing a crime is OK because you failed basic drivers ed and are so unliked you cannot get someone to help you out, well, you have some quite serious problems and the sooner you're in prison the better for the rest of us.
I know people who've lost their license for things including drunk driving. People who have a spouse and kids to feed, and work where/when public transport is unavailable. They don't work alone, so they make arrangements for others to drive them in. It really is simple. Even people who are utter arseholes to their workmates and roundly hated by all can still manage to make legal arrangements.
Charles, you sometimes seem to have some scary rationalisations for why it is OK to commit "higher crimes". You seriously should consider seeking professional help, or at least a mentor. Desperate people don't need to do anything illegal, tempting as it may be. Nor do angry people. There are better and easier ways, and most people understand this.
and a little unit that fines you and dings your license if you don't use your turn signals.
I'd be all for that if 1) you get one freebie each day (sometimes I hit the stalk but fail to move it enough, sometimes it bounces back, and sometimes I read the road wrong (ie I think I'm following the centre line (thus don't need indicators)) and 2) the "dings" are actual dings, like "whack upside the head" - at least after the 3rd failure.
Tailgating, failure to indicate and inability to merge are 3 simple to police things, which also contribute a lot to the pain on our roads. Yet they're all but ignored.
I would even go so far as to introduce mental health screening for anyone that wants to own a gun.
The murderer who killed people at 2 Christchurch Mosques passed all the checks and owned (at least some of) his guns legally.
At the time of the checks, he was at least sane enough to pass, even if he was already on the downward path. By the time it became apparent he had lost it, it was too late (although there were signs earlier that he maybe needed help - but then many of his signs probably aren't far from many of the posts from perfectly sane people here, ie if you wish to focus solely on them then clearly the poster is a dangerous threat BUT if you look at them in context of other things in our lives, then we're venting or postulating or otherwise engaged in healthy even if somewhat creepy discussions)
"The murderer who killed people at 2 Christchurch Mosques passed all the checks..."
And Cloudflare failed to dump 8chan after the Christchurch massacres (although apparently they are now trying to rewrite that bit of history). That didn't count in the way that Walmart does (even though Walmart doesn't seem to be a Cloudflare customer).
You're missing mental healthcare in that list, I'd argue that the access to guns is the least of the problems in that list, with education and mental healthcare taking the 2 top spots.
Or any sort of healthcare.
The US is probably the only developed nation where an ambulance ride and a night in A&E can bankrupt a person...
The lack of social welfare and socialised healthcare, in addition to declining education, high relative poverty (and even a little absolute poverty - bizarre in a "developed nation") are inevitably going to cause higher rates of violent crime.
Trivial access to firearms certainly exacerbates that, but is not the root cause. If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of every gun in America tonight, their homicide rate would still outstrip any European nation you care to look at.
Not to be contrary, but access to guns, whilst it might be a low hanging fruit, IS one of the biggest problems in the US.
Or to put it another way, it is very difficult to murder 20 people and injure another 26 in the space of 5 minutes with anything other than a gun.
Knife crime is still a problem, but people can fight back or run away from a knife wielding assailant. Car and truck attacks can still kill many, but crowds can be protected to some degree with correct concrete placement. Explosives can kill lots of people, but obtaining the necessary ingredients and instructions has a habit of bringing people to the attention of the authorities, not to mention the risk of blowing themselves up. But someone walking into a store and unloading into random people is extremely difficult to stop and that comes down purely to the weapon.
Remove Guns and you will reduce the number of killings, significantly.
Or to put it another way, it is very difficult to murder 20 people and injure another 26 in the space of 5 minutes with anything other than a gun.
Molotov cocktails around a crowded shopping centre (they'll do most of the killing/maiming themselves), truck or car through a crowd, simple IED perhaps placed on vehciles parked near mall entrances (not necessarily mine or stolen vehicles), perhaps even a few loud bang devices placed in rubbish bins.
Explosives.. Heating up spray paint/deodorant etc cans can do that, as can gas bottles. I have no idea how quickly the latter will go off in a burning car, and perhaps the relief valve will work well enough to prevent an explosion (unless I jam it). Of course I could try to let the car fill with gas and ignite it later, but I may drive out too much oxygen so not manage to get things to burn. Nitrous Oxide - readily available in handy sized pressurised containers IIRC - could be another fun one if the bottles can be made to explode.
Poison gasses can be easy to make as well, although getting anything into a strong enough concentration to be truly effective is perhaps not very easy. (I can make large quantities of carbon monoxide just by going for a drive, capturing it, storing it, and releasing it so it'll work is another matter)
With a decent panic, especailly with many armed people in the crowd, you don't even need to directly kill. Hell, I probably could kill 50 people just by letting off a small firecracker around a jumpy armed crowd.
I answered both your and Chales's point in my 3rd paragraph. I didnt say there are no other ways to commit mass murder, but they are a) either easier to defend, b) have a high risk of killing the creator, c) require a significant amount of preparation work, and d) should bring you to the attention of the cops.
Someone cannot create explosives, poison gases, etc at a momentary whim. If someone has a gun, they can act in the heat of the moment, without thinking and without having the chance of having their temper cool down. If you need to go away and create some explosives, your temper will cool down in the meantime. Most people at that point will abandon plans of mass murder...
b) have a high risk of killing the creator
I have often been told that, should someone start shooting in a mall in the US, well-trained, heroic and armed-by-necessity will rise up and shoot the aggressor dead within milliseconds of the first shot being fired. This would make it seemingly obvious that there is a high chance the "creator" would be killed attempting a mass shooting in the US (and this oft-repeated claim gives rise to my belief that there has not been an actual mass shooting in the US in decades - but somewhere a car backfires, Jim think's it's a mass shooter, draws his gun and runs to the scene. Paul hears what he thinks is a gunshot, wants to be a hero, sees' Jim running with gun drawn, thinks Jim must be a "mass shooter" so shoots Jim. Anne sees Paul shoot Jim, so shoots Paul. Mike hate's Anne, and when he sees her shoot Paul he is glad of the chance to kill the bitch, so does. Ben see's Mike shoot Anne.......)
Someone cannot create explosives, poison gases, etc at a momentary whim.
Household chemicals my friend. Household chemicals. And a little knowledge on how to mix them. Emphasis on "little".
If you need to go away and create some explosives, your temper will cool down in the meantime. Most people at that point will abandon plans of mass murder...
Well, not fully true. I could do a McGyver. It's winter here, so hot water bottles are in all the stores however other containers are readily available throughout the year. In some stores finding fun things including pool crystals (chlorine), household cleaners of varying contents, drain cleaners, weed killers, liquid fuels (camping or lawnmower), batteries, spray paints, gas bottles for heaters or camping stoves, fire starters, various electronics including lithium batteries.. If I was so inclined while wandering through The Warehouse, I could probably in a few paces find enough to ruin several people's day, and do it in the time it takes you to wander back to your car and get your gun. Setting something amongst the stack of gas bottles for heaters, or in the cabinets where they keep spray paint cans - well.. A bit of crumpled newspaper and a match applied in the automotive section where they keep the plastic oil bottles might be enough to cause a few deaths when they're having one of their big sales, especially if I tamper with the emergency exits and cause a delay at the main entrance. Take one of those oil bottles and apply oil to a couple of racks of clothing, or furniture, or stuffed toys.....
As to cooling off anger.. These people make posts to their favourite outlet generally a few minutes before starting, but in the aftermath it is clear that stuff was building for a while, sometimes years. I don't think 'cooling off' applies in most of these cases, though I am sure it's stopped a few.
Remove Guns and you will reduce the number of killings, significantly.
You might stem the mass shootings (or replace them with a Nice-style truck/van-rampage), but in the scheme of the USA's annual ~15,000 firearm homicides, most are 1s and 2s - not 15s or 20s.
In individual murders - often domestic violence or a targeted attack - the ability to run away is generally constrained compared with running away from a public space where someone has started lashing out with a machete. It might help a bit, but it wouldn't address the desperation of people being bankrupted by medical bills or losing their job on a whim because the US has a shocking lack of employment rights. Gangs will still gun down rivals, domestic violence will still occur, and the destitute will still rob gas stations and corner shops in desperation.
Whilst the mass shootings are shocking for their frequency and regularity, the truly shocking thing is that they are not all that significant in America's wider homicide statistics.
Additionally, the vast majority occur in the top-10 metro areas. This points to a significant social aspect compared with some rural states which have firearm ownership at >95% but homicide rates better than the UK (Vermont for instance generally hovers from 1.1-1.5/100k and Iowa is ~1.5/100k, comparable with the UK's 1.2 and way below the US average of 5.3/100k).
"You're missing mental healthcare in that list, I'd argue that the access to guns is the least of the problems in that list, with education and mental healthcare taking the 2 top spots."
While I don't dispute mental healthcare as being part of the issue, try reading through the multiple death/injury reports over the last 72 hours in the US to get more insight into the type of events that happen:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours
Now I acknowledge that the site has its detractors (i.e. over reporting gun crime), but it goes past the mass shootings and shows just how big an issue wide spread availability of guns is in the US.
IMO, "affordable" healthcare (lack thereof) is not the real reason why there are so many maniacs out there.
1. The US no longer can forcibly put someone in a mental health facility--except in extreme circumstances.
2. The US culture has decayed rapidly since the 60's. People no longer have any shame and are not are shamed by others. Too many feelings will be hurt. What's right and wrong is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. Death penalty as a deterrent? Pretty much gone. Adultery? Promiscuous sex? It's not only OK now, it's glamorized in all the media.
And the worst of all: The traditional family unit (i.e. father & mother) that used to prevail in raising kids is now actively demonized, or at the very least, it is not rewarded--quite the contrary, raising kids without father and mother is very much rewarded with welfare benefits, huge lobbying from politically correct activist groups, etc.
"The US no longer can forcibly put someone in a mental health facility--except in extreme circumstances."
It's even worse than that -- unless you're wealthy, it's very hard to get into a mental health facility even if you want to.
Much of this is because of actions Reagan took that greatly reduced availability of mental health resources. Remember when most homeless people weren't actually mentally ill? I do, and that changed during Reagan when he cut mental health spending, forcing a lot of mental health facilities to close and release their patients out onto the street.
As was a book and movie titled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Thing was, the conditions depicted weren't exactly contemporary (and if you think that was bad, it was much worse in Nellie Bly's day when she got herself committed to a facility to get a hands-on on just how terrible asylums were in her day--and people wondered why they preferred to lock mad relatives in their attics instead).
1. The US no longer can forcibly put someone in a mental health facility--except in extreme circumstances.
The overwhelming majority of public-funded mental health facilities in the US are attached to prisons or are otherwise part of the judicial/penal system.
Unless you can afford to check into a private clinic or you have insurance covering mental health (not likely!) the only way to access public mental healthcare is by getting arrested.
Figure out what's wrong with that and get back to us.
"I'm also not a fan of internet companies becoming gatekeepers to what people can and cannot access"
Cloudflare's decision (which I am ambivalent about) does not mean that 8chan is evicted from the internet. It only means that 8chan can't use Cloudflare's services, and Cloudflare's services are not necessary to have your site available on the net.
What misrepresentation? That it's a refuge for the worst members of society, degenerates who are too vile for even Stormfront? You'll need to show evidence to the contrary, I'm afraid. The rest of the Internet who are even aware of 8chan regard it as the sort of place that makes the Mos Eisley cantina look like Shangri-La.
> [Cloudflare] also said that it does not wish to embrace a role as a content arbiter and perform a political role.
Except they just did, and have now opened themselves up to demands from vested interests and public hysteria to act on every controversy that occurs in the future. Having taken a moral stance in this instance, they can no longer claim to have a principled stance of just being "infrastructure". Every questionable act, every moral panic, becomes a judgement they have to make publicly. And when the press is on them, asking questions, pushing to deplatform a group, you think they're going to just say "no, this website's expressed views are acceptable to Cloudflare"?
Except they just did, and have now opened themselves up to demands from vested interests and public hysteria to act on every controversy that occurs in the future.
They did that 2 years ago when they booted the Stormer, and there hasn't been a rash of demands to date.
At the end of the day, CF are a private business. They can choose to do business with anyone they like - and they can decline any customer they like (providing they are not discriminating against a protected group). 8chan is not a protected group.
Of course people can demand that they host some service (or demand that they pull another customer's service), and CF are entirely at liberty to tell those people to get f-ed. It's their ball to share as they see fit.
Did a mass shooting or other terrorist act happen citing a website which is hosted or mirrored by a website infrastructure company? Yes -> get rid.
Is it a group which is intolerant and would happily suppress freedom of speech of others if it had the power to? Yes -> Get rid.
I see no problem whatsoever.
The left pondians do seem to like their positive freedoms a lot.
- free to speak
- free to shoot
- free to drive
- free to be shot
They seem to be less worried about some negative freedoms
- free to not be shot
- freedom from illness - free healthcare
I would not criticise them, all cultures are a complex balance of freedom-to and freedom-from.
But when their leaders tell us 'this is terrible, it must stop' (*)
and then pass by on the other side of the road and do nothing, I get more than a whiff of false virtue
(* No, not particularly pointed at Trump, at all people over there in power who said ... it must stop ... and did nothing )
After a stint against Talibans, who loves guns more then them, and actually are extensively trained at their use - they will start to think different after finding themselves at the wrong end of a loaded gun - if they survive.
And of course anybody suffering from PTSD shouldn't be allowed a gun....
Solution is simple - guns only after active military service, where at the end - board of medics confirms the stable mentallity of the future gun owner.
Or just do what works in the following countries:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Greece
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Serbia
Slovenia
Sensible licensing, no bans (pistols and semi-auto rifles), lower homicide rates than the UK - yes, the UK.
Try a country with much more culturally-diverse populations. Few are more diverse than the US, and those that are tend to be worse.
The main reason? The primary driving force behind the violence is culture clash: either within or between cultures that can only see violence as a solution to their problems: either because it's the only thing they know or because all other ways are blocked. Here's a hint: most violence in the US is actually between criminals. A sizable chunk of the rest are suicides that simply pick the gun as convenient but can easily change methods (as the US suicide rate is pretty average while being MUCH worse in Japan and South Korea, both heavily-gun-controlled).
Nope, I believe that he is simply stating some facts or at the very least a very probable cause for the existing violence.
I don't personally believe that it is the mixture of culture that is the problem, I would consider it more as the "Merican Way of Life". There are some very strong ideas relating to "Rights" which are very much exagerated in daily life. The Right to free speech, the right to protect ones home etc.. The ideas behind them are probably quite sound but quite often they are exagerated beyond good reason.. One does not need an AR15 and 20 * 30 rounds magazines to defend one's home...
Help was REFUSED. Like Rohrshach, they just looked back and said, "No." Often it's because the potential benefactors have been previously betrayed: once bitten, twice shy.
You've never met a real dead-ender, have you? People kicked out of school early. People not even McDonald's will hire. People turned away by churches and charities. People for whom the ladder of upward mobility literally has no rungs. Not that it matters, as often they don't have the aptitude to climb it.
Denying it doesn't make it less true. What is society supposed to do with the hopeless rejects?
You've never met a real dead-ender, have you?
Never met one? I've been one! I've lived on the streets with my only roof being the clouds (or stars) above. I've wandered Wellington streets at night hoping to find something to eat that doesn't come from a rubbish can. I did complete school but that is my highest on-paper qualification (well, I've held HT licenses and forklift certificates etc)
Church? I grew up gay in a conservative rural community. I'm sure that pastors gave sermons on how I was beaten up at school many times, even one of the teachers gleefully joining in - and how just and righteous they were for doing this. When I did join a church, and became part of the crew, I lost my position when it was found out I was not straight. 3 churches moved me on in time, even though I never acted gay or obviously took a boyfriend or did anything else different. In the end I tried many before finding one pastor who, when I told him, his response was "So? That's between you and God". Then I found a home for a while.
I've been abused, I've been jobless and homeless. I've not known if I'd be digging through rubbish or going hungry, even been turned away from food banks because I didn't have a place to call home. But I got above that with the right tools, and I've helped many more. Again, my faith has done a lot to help there. Ok, my faith is actually responsible for all the good and some of the bad in my life. I'm actually pretty selfish, disgusting and useless left to my own - as you've no doubt seen :)
One of "my boys" now owns his own company and is really doing well in work and family life. When I met him 20 years ago he was 14, school drop out and only just managing to not get into drugs even though he hung with the worst crowd. Parent's couldn't do much, many problems of their own. I got him back into learning (a special course not based on school yet able to get the same NCEA qualifications), talked one of my contacts into giving him a chance which he later blew BUT we got him on his feet, and the next job he excelled at. Another of my 'boys' (although he's older than me) was a special needs case that now has a good job in Sydney, and owns his own home. Not much you can do with someone with a low IQ and no real capacity to learn, right? All you can do is give up on them and claim other's have no experience. Except.. Others go in when you give up and do the job you say cannot be done.
(One also will be in prison for some years to come - that damage was done before I learned how deep the rot was there, and if only I'd opened my eyes a little wider :( )
There are very few true "no hopers" in this world. I've not met one. I've met people who have been beyond what others can or are willing to do. I've helped many and have been through it myself. Sure, I only spent a little while homeless and utterly broke, but it opens ones eyes. You should try it one day. Seriously, try getting a little dirty for once and working with others. You'll have to change your tune of course, but hey - stranger things have happened.
It may take effort, it does take wisdom - what worked with Peter today will only offend Gerald tomorrow - but it can be done if you take the time and effort to actually care about people. That's what makes the difference. Sure, some try to abuse you and take advantage, but they learn if you're willing to teach - hard as it may be. Even you aren't beyond help, although I sometimes wonder :)
"What is society supposed to do with the hopeless rejects?"
People are only rejects because they have been rejected by someone else. Your phrasing is typical of those who think that people choose to have no hope (the "hopeless" in your comment). A society that accepts the notion of "hopeless rejects" is creating them. Don't reject and offer hope, and you will be surprised at the results.
Point is, they've BEEN rejected. Doesn't really matter WHO rejected them, particularly when the who is EVERYONE. Like I said, some people really do end up at dead ends (there are magazine and website articles about them all the time these days), creating a dilemma: it's morally wrong to just write them off, but it's also wrong to hamper everyone else to the point of exhaustion to save them. After all, what's the biggest argument against socialized anything (particularly in America)? LEECHES.
Point is, they've BEEN rejected. Doesn't really matter WHO rejected them, particularly when the who is EVERYONE.
Been there done that got the scars. I know what it is to feel cold steel tearing into my flesh, and I know what fun it is to watch as someone levels a loaded gun at your kneecap and pulls the trigger - thankfully they didn't know what they were doing. But I do have a hole in my leg that roughly matches that left by a .22 from another incident.
I faced levels of rejection you cannot imagine. Not 'for real'. You can talk about it, somewhat conceptualise it (wow, that's an actual word and I spelt it right first-time!), make vast sweeping statements about, but you haven't lived it. You've tasted some of the worst violence this world has to offer, but it hasn't touched you directly (and I hope and pray it never does!).
Some people are capable of sucking up a lot of resources, I know that and have worked with many. They often proudly proclaim "I don't want to be a burden" (IME that's your first, and clearest, warning that you're dealing with the worst kind - the guilt-throwing resource sucker). You deal with them what you can, leading them to the concept that they can do better and have a responsibility to rise above what they are. Use peer-pressure, or kid-pressure, or lead by example. Or maybe find someone who wants to volunteer but is practically useless anywhere else, yet can take this case and be given the special honour of single-handedly dealing with the GTRS - making 2 people happier and changing more than one life in the process.
There is not one person in this world who is so far gone they cannot be redeemed. But there are many people in my community who it would not be right for me to try and do anything with or for - other people will reach them better. I may, however, be the right person to equip those 'other people', or provide a shoulder for them to cry on, or simply help out someone else freeing up resources for those 'other people' to use.
But.. If everyone else in the community is rejecting someone, then it is right for me to act and do whatever I can for them. Some people are so annoying they deserve to be rejected, and my life would be more enjoyable if I did reject them. But I have a debt to pay - repaying what someone did for me. And as I quoted weeks ago in this same thread, I cannot claim to be a Christian if I am willing to reject anyone - even the worst person. No one should be rejected, and if someone in your community is so rejected then YOU are the failure, for you have options to do something about it.
As I said earlier tonight, don't look to others for excuses, look to yourself for fixes (paraphrased obviously).
God Bless....
Yep. That will solve all of our problems. Just ban all speech I don't like.
I advocate freedom of speech and freedom of association.
A part of that "Freedom of association" means I should be able to choose who I wish to serve in my shop for whatever reasons I wish, perhaps short of not serving physically disabled people (although I know shops who have had a lot of shoplifting done by people in wheelchairs, and as they don't tend to cater to those people's needs they'd like to not have to put up with the hassle)
Oblig XKCD - I personally think CF are within their rights as a private company to choose their customers, or who they associate with. I've seen some very good talented people close up shop because they've been forced by law to violate their conscience and serve people they don't want to associate with. So they've closed up the shop and put their staff back into the job market (generally willingly as they agreed with the owner) rather than be forced to go against their principles and work for people they don't want to.
I cannot argue to be allowed to associate with or avoid whoever I want unless you are afforded the same right. If I want to turn someone away because I don't like the shade of sunglasses they're wearing or who they hold hands with, you must be able to do the same to me.
[I work with and for disabled people and you must know what I faced in my youth by now - I have experience with all sides of this argument, and not all of it comes down to easy answers.]
Isn't the real problem the people using the guns rather than the guns themselves?
Sure, if they didn't have guns they couldn't shoot people so easily, but they'd probably find other equivalent means to express themselves.
I am pretty convinced people are the problem and that edukayshun is the answer.
Come on seriously? Yes the people make the decision to kill, and not the gun, but pretty much every moody teenager/young adult everywhere has at one point wished they had a gun and could shoot everyone. If they have a gun, they can act on those fantasties. If they dont have a gun, they cant. It is that simple.
It's a pretty easy formula, people without guns cant kill 20 people in 5 minutes. People with guns can.
Remove people's guns and you remove their ability to kill large numbers of people. They might still be able to kill one or two people if their so inclined with a knife, but in the meantime other people can run away or can fight back.
London is suffering from a massive murder problem at the moment, but every single time it's a single murder, thats all. Someone is stabbed, and either the attacker runs away or they get caught. But its still only a single victim. Tragic for that family, but it is not 20 families grieving. If the London criminal community had access to a ready supply of guns, the death count would rival a warzone, but they dont and so the numbers are still less than what can be done in 5 minutes in a Walmart.
Ready supply of guns IS as much the Problem as anything else in this situation...
Remove people's guns and you remove their ability to kill large numbers of people.
While the "mass" shootings get the press, we have places here in the states where the gunfire can resemble a combat zone such as Chicago.
As for the idea of "removing people's guns"... how do you propose to do that? Door-to-door searches? The US is big... really big. A law banning firearms won't do it as even if all the places that sell guns were shut down, there's still one helluva lot of them.
So.... how do you remove the guns? Answer that and you'll solve the problem.
Disclaimer: I am a licensed firearm owner of just one gun. You want me to give up my gun, guarantee me that no one with evil intent will try to break in my house or assault my person. The cops sure as hell can't offer that protection.
In most countries that are not US people don't own so many guns, aren't obsessed to carry them around always, and aren't so obsessed to be attacked. And usually their police is less armed and omnipresent than US one.
Maybe you should ask for advice about such obsession.
This is the bit I can never understand, there's something fundamentally wrong with people living with constant irrational fear of home invasion. Almost all the bravado filled macho justifications for gun ownership are fundamentally based on fear... they're basically bricking it every minute of every day. And when that fear becomes overwhelming, the shooting starts.
So, they're not wrong when they say it's a mental health problem, they just don't realise they need help.
"This is the bit I can never understand, there's something fundamentally wrong with people living with constant irrational fear of home invasion."
Unless the fear is JUSTIFIED, as in people all around them ACTUALLY DO get burglarized on a routing basis, sometimes in ways that pretty much say if they want in, they'll get in in spite of God, Man, or the Devil.
I'm sure every single one of them believes their fear is justified, that would be why I called it irrational. It seems highly improbable that America is so gripped by home invasions that the "home defence" argument holds water for the sheer number of people who insist they need it.
I can't guarantee someone won't break into my home or property tonight "with evil intent" (what-ever that means), I don't live in a particularly low crime area and my garage has been broken into several times in the last decade, but somehow I manage to deal with it and don't feel the need to live in fear or arm myself against the nebulous "evil" at my door.
More guns won't make the fear go away if it hasn't already.
I manage to deal with it and don't feel the need to live in fear or arm myself against the nebulous "evil" at my door.
Hear hear!
--> May you never be short of these (or your preferred variant), good sir!
Unless the fear is JUSTIFIED, as in people all around them ACTUALLY DO get burglarized on a routing basis, sometimes in ways that pretty much say if they want in, they'll get in in spite of God, Man, or the Devil.
You mean like the neighbourhood I live in?
Sorry, your rationalisations with violence yet again don't wash. Being burglarised is barely a justification for violence, and not at all a justification for lethal force. My possessions are not worth causing harm to others.
Such a level fear of these things is not in any way justified, and shows the person with the fear to have some problems that can be dealt with through either faith (the best way) or a bit of time with a psychiatrist or decent counsellor.
You start with buy backs, and amnesty's. People hand in their guns and get paid cash for them. Then the law banning the weapons comes in and people still holding guns are doing so illegally. You hold yearly amnesty's where people can hand in their weapons without fear of being charged for being in possession of illegal weapons.
And yes, when people's houses are being raided for some other reason, you search the house for weapons as well. And take any you find.
You strongly licence sellers of weapons so that they are not selling anything illegal, you go after the backyard sellers and crack down on them hard, you put the onus on the supply chain to know where there weapons are going, and punish them for letting weapons fall through the cracks. Any weapons that get confiscated get destroyed (after any legal action is finished of course), and under no circumstance dow weapons get resold into the commmunity (even legal ones).
That's how you start and you keep it up, year after year and the weapons will disappear from the supply chain. Attitudes will also begin to change. This is not something thats never been done before - Australia did it back in the 90's after Port Arthur. New Zealand have just started doing it after Auckland. And its been a resounding success in Australia, and looks like it will be in New Zealand as well.
By the way, you say you keep a gun for your personal protection. I assume that you're a responsible gun owner and the gun is always kept unloaded and locked away in a locked cabinet so that no one in your house (such as small children) can get a hold of it and hurt themselves or someone else? If the answer is No, then we have nothing further to discuss as i consider you a danger to your own community and family. If yes, do you really think that by the time you realise you have an intruder, you will have time to get to the cabinet, find your keys, open it, load the gun and then be ready for the person before they've had time to come at you? If you do i think your delusional. Your first thought upon hearing an intruder should be to call the police, get your family together in one room and barricade yourself in, then inform the intruder that the cops are on the way. Anything else is just wasting time and endangering your family...
But what about the Second Amendment? The Supreme Court has already ruled that it's an individual right AND that a militia can be one person.
BUT what IF the GOVERNMENT just CHANGES the AMENDMENT. they ARE just WORDS on PAPER after ALL?
Isn't that your common argument when others talk of rule-of-law?
Under the rule of law, you're going to need 2/3 of each house AND 38 state legislatures to agree. In today's hyper-partisan world, you're going to need a crisis of existential (or at least 9/11) proportions to get them to agree. Otherwise, they're willing to just pin the blame for America's decay to the other side, meaning decay works FOR them, not against them.
Under the rule of law, you're going to need 2/3 of each house AND 38 state legislatures to agree.
You're forgetting "it's just ink on a page".
But what about the Second Amendment? The Supreme Court has already ruled that it's an individual right AND that a militia can be one person.
What about it? The Second Amendment apparently does not guarantee your right to own full-auto. They have also accepted as constitutional that felons may not own firearms. That means the Supreme Court have accepted that not all arms are equal, and that the 2A does not apply equally to all individuals regardless of circumstance. It is not an absolute right - it is subject to conditions and clauses.
Therefore, what "arms" are covered by the Second Amendment and under what conditions are entirely open to interpretation. The Supreme Court have interpreted it one way, in the future it could be interpreted differently - such as saying (like in Europe) that it's perfectly permissible to own a firearm but you need a license and rigorous background check, or that the firearms must be registered.
What about considering that since the Second Amendment was ratified, almost 230 years ago, the world has moved on.
When the Second Amendment was drafted, it was about defending against federal armies, not about letting almost anyone wander into a hardware store and tooling up.
I expect the Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they realised they'd allowed a culture to exist where someone can easily (and notably legally) obtain the means to slaughter a large number of people simply because they disagree with their colour, religion, background or lifestyle choices.
For all good things that have come out of the USA, it's still a nation that refuses to let go of the past and accept that the world around it has changed.
Perhaps the Supreme Court might be persuaded that the "Right" was to bear the arms available at the time the Amendment was written: generally single-shot weapons and IIRC muzzle loaders at that. The cylic rate for a well-trainerd operative is no higher than about 3 rounds a minute. For those with a fear of beaing attacked in their own hone - well, they'd better just be very good at target practice.
For those with a fear of beaing attacked in their own hone - well, they'd better just be very good at target practice.
A well-determined assailant is not going to be threatened by an untrained someone in their home no matter the weaponry. OTOH, a determined and trained homebody is going to have all sorts of advantages.
The untrained homebody is far more likely to kill their own spouse or kids than ever fire a shot at an intruder. And like with computers, once they have physical access that's it.
Upon reflection of the title of your post, the answer methinks is "both".
Here in the States we have a rise in extreme right and the extreme left. We also, for the most part, have easy access to firearms. Eliminating guns may cut down the number of "attacks" but it won't stop them. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? No guns involved.
Those motivated to do evil won't be stopped by gun controls or any other panacea. It's the mindset they have. Changing that will be a big part of the solution but also a very daunting task to say the least.
There's an interview floating around with a former extreme right type who's know working to get folks out of that. But he points out that if, per his example, one pilot is ready to take out a bunch of people it wouldn't be all that hard.
So solving the extremist problem is going to be harder than solving the gun problem. And the solutions and will to implement will have to come from the top. The demand for such changes will have to come from we, the people.
Those motivated to do evil won't be stopped by gun controls or any other panacea. It's the mindset they have. Changing that will be a big part of the solution but also a very daunting task to say the least.
Start small, and set examples. Encourage and educate as best you can, and encourage others to do the same.
Large scale societal changes can come from amazingly good orators who feed on the right public emotions at the right time, but they can also come from someone starting small in their local village. Sometimes it's a tidal wave that spreads through a population in weeks, sometimes it happens so slow no one can actually say when it changed.
My nation was the first to give women the vote, one of the first to go with decent gay rights (in my lifetime it was illegal, many people went to prison or were locked up in psych wards over it), probably one of the first to give "indigenous people" the right to vote. Several other changes, some good some terrifying, have come because of a shift in public opinion, and that shift came from people being brave and sometimes smart enough to stand up for what they believed was the best way, and to speak out. Many probably took a while just to get things beyond their neighbourhood.
So there's the key. Start small, start to change your local area. Make your life right, and when someone asks why you're different tell them - you may have a convert who also tells someone else. If you find strong opposition then ignore it where you can and move on. If some local gun nut won't listen, don't speak to them but speak to their neighbours.
Even in the face of violent opposition who has the law on their side, change is possible. I've seen it in my own lifetime. But, to quote Londo Mollari - "it is the quiet ones who change the universe. The loud ones just take the credit" (paraphrased).
"Start small, and set examples. Encourage and educate as best you can, and encourage others to do the same."
Problem is if the people in power WANT the status quo AND has few if any scruples. Just look at who's running the show right now..AND he was ELECTED.
"Start small, and set examples. Encourage and educate as best you can, and encourage others to do the same."Problem is if the people in power WANT the status quo AND has few if any scruples. Just look at who's running the show right now..AND he was ELECTED.
Doesn't matter. Just another feeble "whataboutism" excuse.
In my nation, 40 years ago, the majority of the population wanted the status quo. Fags were vile creatures worthy only of torture and death. The 'love' fags felt for each other was just an aberration/abomination and not even close to actual love. Just something based on lust due to their twisted minds. Only thing to do with them was to shoot them or lock them away.
Politicians, the media, the general population - each and every one of them wanted things to stay as they were and did not want things to change. Certainly every effort must be expended to make sure that "gay rights" could never be a thing. This was much the same around a lot of the rest of the world.
And yet... Today I can marry another bloke if I choose. Not just a 'civil union' but full marriage, and other countries do the same. Even some of the more conservative places.
What was a crime worthy of life imprisonment or even death is now accepted standard practice.
Those in power WANTED things to stay as they were. They had few scruples (I mean we're talking politicians after all), and they were elected.
Look around you. Look at the changes in places like North Korea - a long way to go yet a lot has changed.
There's been changes for bad and for good - but a great many changes that not long ago were considered utterly impossible, the societal changes required considered insurmountable. Yet much of this happened simply with a few people starting to make the change.
One person can make an entire neighbourhood a good place, or a toxic wasteland. It's your choice. You won't always see the fruition of the work in your lifetime, but if you stick at it you'll change society for the better long-term. You may not be remembered, you may die horribly in the effort, but things will change.
If you have a big problem to deal with, you just haven't broken it down enough yet. When building a house you don't start with a completed house, you start with a couple of bits of wood, a hammer and a nail. (Well, actually you start by finding land and getting materials to the site but you get the idea...)
Disclaimer: I am a licensed firearm owner of just one gun. You want me to give up my gun, guarantee me that no one with evil intent will try to break in my house or assault my person. The cops sure as hell can't offer that protection.
I can't guarantee that someone with evil intent will not enter my home while I sleep. I've also been assaulted more times than I could possibly remember. There's a good chance I'll be assaulted again some day as well.
My culture pretty much guarantees that if these happen, I don't need to fear for my life.
When you culture means that you are so piss-pants scared of your neighbour that you feel you have to have a gun, you need to fix your culture. Getting assaulted or having someone break in is NOT and should never be an excuse to use a gun or other intended-to-be-lethal weapon. Don't blame others, start with yourself, then your household, then your neighbourhood, then your city. The solution is within your reach, in your hands even.
Or you can carry on claiming fearful stupidity while worshipping your apparent right to kill.
"When you culture means that you are so piss-pants scared of your neighbour that you feel you have to have a gun, you need to fix your culture."
I can't recall a time when a culture fixed itself from within prior to it collapsing and being changed from without.
"The solution is within your reach, in your hands even."
Wanna bet? You've never been to the likes of El Salvador, have you? There are plenty of places where the options are pretty much reduced to "go criminal," "go elsewhere," or "die."
Wanna bet? You've never been to the likes of El Salvador, have you?
I've been to Australia. I'm sure that's close enough.
One country being messed up is NOT an excuse for you not doing your bit to fix yours. Stop making stupid excuses to live a life of fear, start seeing reasons to live a life of freedom, and start making your part of the world a better place.
It doesn't take a lot of hard work, it does take a decision to not be ruled by fear.
"I've been to Australia. I'm sure that's close enough."
Not even. Somalia is probably closer.
"It doesn't take a lot of hard work, it does take a decision to not be ruled by fear."
It is if you're ruled by DEATH...and all his friends. For some, the way of life there (think MS-13) would make death a blessing if it wasn't damned by religion.
It is if you're ruled by DEATH...and all his friends. For some, the way of life there (think MS-13) would make death a blessing if it wasn't damned by religion.
You've clearly never been to Oz...
But anyway.. Do you live in Somalia or any of the other "bad" countries discussed? No?
Then how does that absolve you of your responsibilities in your own patch? Stop using the feeble "whataboutism" excuse and start doing something to improve your patch. Just because one country has problems doesn't mean you can stop doing your bit to improve your society.
When you use these excuses, you really do make yourself sound like someone around 13 or 14 (or someone with a lower than average IQ).
"pretty much every moody teenager/young adult everywhere has at one point wished they had a gun and could shoot everyone."I seriously doubt this is true. Do you have any studies to support that claim?
I can't say I have ever wanted a gun like that.
I can say that one of my earliest memories was when my mother had really upset me, and I thought of setting fire to the house and getting my siblings and my father out, but not warning mum. I can say I wondered how much damage I could do to the school teacher's cars with the tractor I used to drive.
Damn, maybe you're right.. There's really not much mass-mayhem I've ever considered (from the standpoint of actually doing it - I don't count knowledge of chemicals and wondering how much damage they would do in certain circumstances). Maybe I've been a Christian far too long and missed one of the more enjoyable parts of childhood - fantasising about wiping out large groups of people who seriously pissed me off? Or perhaps it was the early part of my childhood - finding out first-hand what it was like to be hated for being 'different' (probably much of that by people who were more 'the same' than they wanted to admit) that made me both anti-violence and not fearful of being on the receiving end of a beating :) Either way, I came to this post to argue with you and walk away largely agreeing with your point :)
Isn't the real problem the people using the guns rather than the guns themselves?
We could probably run a useful experiment by giving different (large) groups of people access to ICBMs, each group having different levels of education, then seeing if the result were more instructive than destructive.
Since when can you educate the crazy out of someone?
It is possible to educate some people how to do things in a different way, how to change or re-direct thinking to less destructive ideas.
Maybe not everyone, I've known some people who really are just so caught up in their own mind that nothing seems to get through, but I've also seen some people turn around massively - perhaps aided by sufficient quantities of helpful meds but sometimes also by the right words from the right person at exactly the right time (miss any one of these 3 and it fails).
The Second Amendment guarantees American citizens the "right to bear arms". "Arms" are weapons. Fifty-caliber truck-mounted machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and stinger missiles are all arms. They're all illegal for American citizens to own.
As a society, Americans have already decided that not all arms should be available to civilians. The debate is not about the right to bear arms, the debate is about where we draw the line between military arms and those allowed to civilians.
One of the most dangerous aspects of current US gun ownership is the ubiquity of semi-automatics with quick-change high-capacity clips. The Dayton shooter killed 9 people and wounded 27 in under 30 seconds. He was firing an AR-style rifle with 100-round clips.
In Oregon, large-game hunters with rifles are restricted to 5-round magazines. Bird hunters with shotguns are restricted to 3 rounds.
Yes, shooters kill, and inert weapons are harmless. But try a simple thought experiment: put two men a field with 300 sheep. Give both unlimited ammunition. Arm one with a bolt-action 30:06 with a five-round magazine. Give the other a Colt AR-15 semi-auto with 100 round quick-change magazines. See who can kill the most sheep in sixty seconds.
Those are the points of discussion as far as I am concerned. We are not talking about taking away all guns. We are not talking about repealing the Second Amendment. We are talking about where we draw the line on civilian arms. To my mind, semi-automatics with high-capacity quick-change clips are on the wrong side of the line, along with RPGs and land mines. They give no particular benefit in hunting (and, as mentioned, are illegal for hunting in at least some states), and no benefit in target shooting.
Finally: Yes, the US needs to do a better job of identifying dangerously unstable people. Whether they are racists, conspiracy nuts, religious extremists, or despairing teen sociopaths, we need to keep them from killing. But it would do a lot of good if weapons with the capability to kill many people rapidly were eliminated from the civilian population.
-- Funny, when I was a teen I used a bolt-action .30-40 Krag with a flip-out 5-cartridge magazine. Very old-fashioned rifle. I remember it as being kind of fiddly to load without getting the cartridges jammed in the magazine. Can't imagine a shooter even trying a mass attack with it -- "Hold on and don't jump me for a minute while I reload... dang, it's in crossways... gimme another 20 seconds or so, OK?"
"The Second Amendment guarantees American citizens the "right to bear arms""
Isn't the first part of that sentence the important bit?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Huw D, one would think so. AFAIK, however, the initial phrase seems to be taken as a justification for the amendment, not as a prescription for how it shall be enforced. The last half of the sentence has been taken as legally prescriptive, ie, "...shall not be infringed."
Obviously, Americans' right to "keep and bear arms" has been infringed, and with good reason. Most sensible people -- nearly all Americans -- agree that the right of civilians to own howitzers and cluster bombs should be infringed!
If the amendment were phrased, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed when they are constituted as a well-regulated militia" then the militia part would be prescriptive and the rights would flow from that prescription. But it's not phrased that way.
Actually, you can own a .50 cal machinegun, an anti-tank weapon, even a fully operational tank. There's a place in Nevada that actually has a gathering every year where folks do bring all sorts of weapons and blast away in the desert. The catch is they are highly restricted via license fees and background checks.
You are right, Mark 85. As you say, machine guns are legal, but only under very tightly controlled conditions.*
I didn't research the laws on heavier arms, but I'm sure you're right there too.
It's an interesting indicator: American mass-murder shooters have not used full-auto (machine) guns in an attack. So tightly regulating arms works. Do it with high-capacity clips too.**
One crazy-guy fantasy is of spraying a crowd with a hail of bullets, shooting so fast that no-one has a chance to stop you. Eliminate weapons which lay down a hail of bullets, and the fantasy gets disconnected from real-world action.
Another crazy-guy fantasy involves armed resistance to some kind of government perfidy -- the Red Dawn scenario. Frankly, if the US military is arrayed against you, a semi-automatic rifle is not going to make you victorious. Nor is a full automatic, for that matter. The Red Dawn fantasy is about as realistic as the Lord of the Rings fantasy. But it's taken seriously by the Turner Diary crowd.
The point to these examples is, if you defuse the fantasy by making the necessary kind of weapon very hard to own, then the fascination with a "ending it all" in a Götterdämmerung hail-of-bullets becomes unreal. Which is good.
---------------------
*"The main federal law governing fully automatic weapons is called the National Firearms Act, or NFA. First enacted in 1934, this federal law regulates fully automatic weapons, suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and destructive devices such as bombs or grenades. The NFA was subsequently modified in 1968 by the Gun Control Act and in 1986 by the Firearm Owners Protection Act. ... Under the NFA, it is illegal for any private civilian to own any fully automatic weapons manufactured after May 19, 1986. Only certain types of FFL/SOTs may make them, and then only for purchase by qualified state and federal agencies. There are no exceptions. According to the ATF’s official handbook on NFA laws and regulations, it’s not even legal to make new replacement parts for pre-1986 machine guns: 'There is no exception allowing for the lawful production, transfer, possession, or use of a post-May 18, 1986 machinegun receiver as a replacement receiver on a weapon produced prior to May 19, 1986.'"
** There have been two instances (since 1986) of a full-auto weapon being used in a killing. Alan Berg was killed by white supremacists, and (in Dayton, Ohio) an informant and drug dealer was killed. And bank robbers in Hollywood used illegally converted full-auto weapons; they wounded a number of people and were themselves killed by police.
There's a video somewhere on YT of a man attempting a mass shooting - staged, obviously - using a weapon that was contemporary to the Second Amendment being written in 1789. He fires one shot, and by the time he's reloaded for a second everyone has run away. I can't find it, it being drowned out by reports on real mass shootings, but Business Insider ran an article on it that you can find Googling for "mass shooting 18th century gun".
The cynical part of me wonders if this is no more than a PR exercise from Cloudflare and whether 8chan were actually a paying Cloudflare customer or mealy using the free services to reduce server load and to protect themselves against DDOS attacks?
Where as Cloudflare are obviously entitled to decide which sites they want as their customers by actively removing some sites surely they are opening themselves up to be liable as a publisher if they then at a later date decide not to remove another website that is also allowing hate speech?
Hate speech absolutely is a thing.
And free speech has limits, including in the USA. There are several cases testing those limits, eg the infamous "fire" in a crowded theatre (which was antisemitic, IIRC)
Now go away and try to think, you spiteful small-genitaled imbecile. You have the brains of a turnip and the visage of a decomposed partridge.
>Now go away and try to think, you spiteful small-genitaled imbecile. You have the brains of a turnip and the visage of a decomposed partridge.
Quite an inflated response isn't it ? Calling other small genitaled is surely a reflection of low self esteem. Not to mention a typical feminine reply alluding to sexual value
There's no such thing as hate speech, it's all free speech, no matter you like it or not.
I know personally that there absolutely is "hate speech", I know that first hand.
But it's also "free speech" and you should have the right to it. I can't speak my mind freely if you can't speak yours freely.
After all, you're simply speaking to them and perhaps giving them some money.
If all speech is free, that's absolutely fine and nobody can ever be prosecuted for it.
(With thanks to some random tumblr whose handle I don't recall)
Encouraging others to commit violent acts must carry similar legal consequences as the violence itself. That's what hate speech is, and it is indeed illegal in civil society.
There's legal arguments around the edges - was it a joke, could they have reasonably predicted the resulting violence - which hatemongers have of course long abused and will continue to do so.
You have the right to say many things, but words have power and you also have the duty to face the consequences of your words.
You have the right to say many things, but words have power and you also have the duty to face the consequences of your words.
Best keep your mouth shut and your keyboard unplugged then. You might accidentally say something that could be considered bad, and you have a duty to face the consequences of your words.
I know it all too well what words can do. I'm actually quite qualified to speak on so-called "hate speech" having been a victim of it a great many times. I quite literally bear the scars of someone using words to incite another to act with violence.
I'm quite qualified to speak on it. Are you? Have you ever been held by a teacher who tells your classmates to beat the gayness out of you? Has that teacher had his boot on your throat - legally - while he tells your class that "evil must be destroyed"? and suggesting that while they cannot kill you, they can encourage you to kill yourself? (Yes, it wasn't a crime in the mid 80s).
People better and braver than me won the right for those of us born/made different to live and love. To do that they had to win some very significant "freedom of speech" rights, as there was a time when saying "I'm gay" was an admission of a crime and you would either go to prison or go to a psych ward. I was still growing up then, but I have a very deep, personal understanding of what many of these men and women faced as I faced it from my own school. Few people stood with me or stood up for me, and they faced their own risks.
If we allow freedom of speech or freedom of association to be destroyed, then we allow every other right to be lost. No government, given that power, would give it up nor would they long allow us to have the other rights and privileges we currently enjoy. Those rights are under increasing attack - especially our rights to privacy. So much blood has been shed to give us the freedom we enjoy today - are you going to be so quick to throw that away? For shame.
I have the right to tell my chosen that I love him, but that right would quickly go if we allow free speech to be taken. I have a lot to lose and nothing to gain by such things.
(And if you're reading R.D - I still remember what this day means, and I'm still so grateful for what you endured to be my friend!)
Assuming your words are true, that teacher illegally assaulted you and illegally incited violence against you.
I presume they were not prosecuted, but that does not change the fact of your allegation and that the law prohibited their behaviour.
Some murderers also escape prosecution, that does not mean murder is acceptable.
Nobody has the right to incite such violence. Nobody.
I guess that you tell yourself the story of unlimited free speech to explain to yourself why they were not prosecuted, but it's not true. Likely they weren't prosecuted because they held sufficient power over everyone in the room to prevent reports.
Assuming your words are true, that teacher illegally assaulted you and illegally incited violence against you.
Back then, they had pretty free reign. And even if what he did and said was illegal, who'd believe a fag. Who was I going to go to? I'd've been in a psych ward or jail cell before the day was over if I complained.
"Physical discipline" of children was not illegal in the mid 80's in NZ. Asking other kids to help with said discipline was not illegal in NZ in the mid 80's. Being gay was. (Well, actually it was only acting on it, being gay got you locked up in a psych ward until they believed you were cured. But, short of a massive miracle, there is no cure for being gay.
I presume they were not prosecuted, but that does not change the fact of your allegation and that the law prohibited their behaviour.
It didn't, but even if it did - where would I turn? I'd have been worse off if I'd complained. After all, ECT and other wonderful "treatment options" were also perfectly legal, quite acceptable, and very commonly used back then.
Even on small children.
Nobody has the right to incite such violence. Nobody.
You're correct in that, but at many times even in 'civilised society', it was quite acceptable. Take a look at the likes of Dad's Army and the racist comments commonly made there. 'Foggy Dewhurst(sp) in Summer Wine - talking of how he would sneak up on 'Japs' and slit their throats from behind, constantly living his supposed glory days of killing people of a certain ethnicity. Much of our movies and other TV spewing hatred against today's foes.
I guess that you tell yourself the story of unlimited free speech to explain to yourself why they were not prosecuted, but it's not true.
It's got nothing to do with it. What was done was not a crime under the laws of the day, hence there was no possibility of prosecution. OTOH, if I'd complained I would've been convicted.
Likely they weren't prosecuted because they held sufficient power over everyone in the room to prevent reports.
They held sufficient power over me. Every else? They didn't want the vile, evil little fag to live either. I recall we did a class on knot tying once. Special emphasis on how to tie a noose in case anyone realised they deserved to die and decided to hang themselves to save the rest of the world some pain.
This was NZ (and much of the rest of the world) in the early-mid 80's. Even after 1986, after the protests, riots, and violence that led to the 'homosexual law reform' (much of it far worse than the media will ever show), those who wanted to 'touch' gays were largely untouchable themselves.
A decade later, in the mid-late 90's, we still faced a great deal of abuse for being gay. Jeff Whittington, a 14yo boy, was beaten to death in 1999 by two men who proudly boasted that they'd "fucked up a fag" and left him dying in the street. I never knew this kid but I do know the area he lived in, and I've had a taste of the terror he felt in his last moments. Yes, although the two men were convicted of his murder, NZ even in '99 was still a place where you could beat up a fag and be proud of it.
"The faggot was bleeding out of places I have never seen before". This is what we lived with, 13 years or so after the law reform.
Today, even to call someone a "fag" could almost lead to jail time. If someone harasses you, you snap, give them a slap, and it turns out they were gay (but you had no idea at the time), sorry that's a hate crime and you're doing time.
I've lived with abuses, I've lived with people saying nasty things, I've lived with people inciting violence against me. I don't wish that on anyone.
But
If the heroes in 1986 who'd had enough of the violence didn't have some rights to speak up, to say "enough is enough" and to fight for the law reform, then my life today would be very different. Today, I'd either be serving a life sentence in jail for sex crimes (ie sexual activity with a consenting adult male), serving a life sentence in a psych ward (undergoing ECT and other wonderful fun activities), or dead - either by my own hand or by someone else's (although disease or accident could've intervened).
This is why I am very much pro free-speech. If I want to speak my mind, I have to give you the same right. I might think you're about as stupid or as horrible as a person can be, but the right to utter your words is what my grandfathers fought for, and it is one of the highest rights we have. If we lose that right, we'll lose much more very quickly. The moment you cannot speak up for your fellow man is the moment we descend into governments that make 1940 Germany look like a Jewish Paradise.
(I'm pro-Israel, just in case anyone mis-reads my words above).
No, Cloudflare has been a willing host of criminal activity for years - even bragged about it in a blog. They deserve serious federal investigation heat. All the home remodeling scammers, counterfeit web sites, illicit drug sellers, and hate crime message boards that have been there for years with Cloudflare knowing exactly what is being hosted.
1) Cloudflare threw them out. That took the protection from the site, but that doesn't change DNS records (the domain is held by Network Solutions) which would have to be repointed at the actual site.
2) but, the DNS and even NS records also vanished. That has ZERO to do with Cloudflare, but everything with its entry at the registrar.
So, the unasnwered question is: did only Cloudflare dump them, or did Network Solutions zap their DNS records too? It is something that the domain owners can do themselves, so I wonder who did it.
In any case, glad they're offline, not so glad that it's about 100% certain they will show up again in a country that benefits from international crime.
It's quite bizarre for a hotel to require guests hand over their guns. People travel with handguns for protection all the time. I would not trust the staff to protect them from theft.
You are right about 'bizarre', however.. It is not considered 'normal' in most of the world for people to carry weapons for protection. The rest of us consider it quite 'bizarre' that "the land of the free" are such slaves to fear that they think they have such a need. The rest of us face comparable risks of muggings, robberies, drunken twats assaulting us, burglaries and the like, yet we are not so scared of those around us that we feel a need to carry any form of weapon or 'protection'.
Grow up, change out of those nappies for the last time, and stop being so scared of minor noises in the night. Most likely just the wind or the neighbours cat or something, not likely someone coming to kill you in your bed.
Suppose they instead used only what is sold at petrol station... as in, e.g., HappyLand fire (USA, 1990) - 87 corpses. KyoAni fire (Japan, 2019) - 33.
Not to mention the half-dead... can't speak for others, but personally I'd rather be shot than burned.
Harder to do. That's the point.
Try to list 200 such events this year that killed or injured 4 or more people.
In all other circles we make pretty heroic efforts to reduce the chance of bad things and to reduce their effects should they occur. Why are guns so much more important than (eg) cars?
(Seatbelts, crumple zones, rubber tyres, disc brakes, ABS, wipers, lights, safety glass, catalytic converters, unleaded fuel... the list goes on)
Not THAT MUCH harder to do. That's MY point. Take one means away and people will just pivot to another. Make something hard, they'll come up with a way to make it easier. I mean, people in the far east kill themselves MUCH more than in the West in spite of considerable efforts to prevent it. Where there's a will, there's a way.
"In all other circles we make pretty heroic efforts to reduce the chance of bad things and to reduce their effects should they occur. Why are guns so much more important than (eg) cars?"
And yet people STILL die (in large numbers) in car accidents. Sometimes, you just can't fight physics. People can exploit that for other's detriment.
Firstly... Should I be surprised that "far right" and paedophilia seem to go hand-in-hand like a 50yo only son and his 10yo "nephew"? A very odd mix but anyway...
Here in NZ we've just had abortion made easier (despite the many women who've made that mistake saying they wish they hadn't, and wish someone had told them what it would do to them for the decades to follow), and have the euthanasia bill being pushed (thankfully they at least dialled back from making it so people with crippled family members could push them into it). In the US it seems there are pushes for "abortion on demand" right up to the moment of birth, and of course pushes for increasing the application of the death penalty (surprisingly many so-called "christians" involved in some of these!)
It seems simple, perhaps even childish in a sense but.. Teach the value of life. The more people know that God values every one of us, and we should do the same, the less we will see of the mass idiocy that pervades our societies. The more we value ourselves and those around us - and those to come, the more we will do to protect our planet and her remaining resources, the more we will do to make life better for others by living better ourselves.
When you love your neighbour you seek their good, even if their good is finding them a better home further from you so you yourself can have a better life. You might distrust them, but you still seek their betterment. They might annoy you with every breath, but you seek their improvement not their harm. And, in time, your neighbours also return the favour, watch your back, offer help if you may need it, pick you up when you fall.
It is in our own best interests to care for those around us. If you cannot find it in your heart to do it for your neighbour, at least see the wisdom in selfishly appearing to care for others so that your own life may be better. The Christian teaching of "do your best to live at peace with your neighbours" is simple and makes every one happier. The simple concept of not wastefully polluting the air your neighbours breathe means your own air is better.
And by teaching kids the value of every human life, we can start to reduce and perhaps end this needless waste of life, this senseless selfish violence, and work together for a better future for all. It is something so easy to do, and you can do it with selfless or selfish motives. Everyone wins.
"Here in NZ we've just had abortion made easier (despite the many women who've made that mistake saying they wish they hadn't, and wish someone had told them what it would do to them for the decades to follow),"
Whether or not to have an abortion is ultimately the decision of the woman concerned - and only her - there is no role in that decision for someone else's "beliefs", no matter how right the person holding those beliefs might think they are.
For the record, I am a fellow Kiwi and when I met my wife 30-odd years ago she was still dealing with the after effects of having recently made that decision - you have the right to emotionally support a woman who has had to face a decision about abortion, you don't have the right to make, influence or comment on that decision.
Whether or not to have an abortion is ultimately the decision of the woman concerned - and only her - there is no role in that decision for someone else's "beliefs", no matter how right the person holding those beliefs might think they are.
As a fellow Kiwi you can watch what happens in light of this decision, and the others where the value of life is being eroded.
I also have known people who have had abortions. Seems very common that before hand it's painted as a "lifestyle choice" no more different than getting a Ford over a Honda - kill the baby and go on an overseas holiday or let the baby live, paint the living room green or blue.... But afterwards - they wish they'd known of the depression and other aftereffects so many seem to face.
if you love a woman for whom that is a consideration, then you will do all you can to make sure she has all the information available to her. You won't just be there to pick up the pieces afterwards, you will do your best to make sure that there is not going to be a need to pick up pieces. That applies to any major decision with a potential for life-altering and life-long results. I have known woman who battled depression for years after an abortion, despite those around them supporting them with "it was your right" and "it really was the best decision" etc. No one making them or suggesting they feel guilty, yet some still take their own lives over the depression they feel.
There is something in the makeup of many (most?) women where, no matter how much they feel it is the right thing to do, aborting a baby winds up messing them up for the rest of their lives and they suffer for decades as a result. I guess you missed TV one's news last night (or was it Sunday night) where, despite their efforts to hide it, they still showed people struggling with that decision nearly 30 years later. It doesn't matter how they got pregnant, it doesn't matter how much support they have, it doesn't matter what changes it otherwise makes to their lives, it doesn't matter how bad the child's life might have been, having an abortion messes so many women up. But they are never warned of this before hand, expect by a few doctors brave enough to risk their practice by speaking out in a manner they're not supposed to.
If you love someone, you will do your best to support them through a tough or life-altering decision. That includes doing your best to make sure they're equipped to make the right decision. You won't abdicate your responsibility by saying "it's your decision", if you love them you will make sure they have the best support they can get.
Open your eyes. If you love them, you have a responsibility to comment on those decisions, influence them, and make damned sure they're making the right decision. ANY decision. That is what love is, making sure someone does the best thing, and that they're aware of the risks of each option. I dare you to ask your wife if she would've wanted someone else to talk with her about that decision. (actually no don't, it may cause her to relive things she shouldn't have to - or you may find out what a weight of guilt she still carries)
In this situation, my beliefs don't have to come into it - seeing what that decision has done to people I love is all I need to see to know we need to do a much better job of making sure it is the right decision. I'm yet to know a woman who has had an abortion who hasn't regretted it for the rest of her life (admittedly I know few who have had them)
As the wiki-rabble would say, [citation needed]. Unfounded implication that all or most women having abortions regret it in a substantial way - it is quite a common procedure, yet women loudly regretting it are rare, and almost always from a culture/religion that tells them that they should (and the quickest route for them to find acceptance & forgiveness in that culture is to express regret).
Even within simple questionnaires of sentiment must remember not all "regret" is equal. People can regret unwise comments or selfies... do we feel the need for regulation of those requiring mandatory warnings and cooling off periods?
You are framing the argument to advance your moral perspective, choosing to lament one lost potential while ignoring others. What about regret for the life choices lost by being forced into unplanned child bearing, dropping out of school, derailing their career, never meeting the partner they might have found otherwise, children of happy family that never exist because their mother became a single parent before she found a partner.
Unfortunately, this is one argument that can't help but have moral implications. It's in its own way a Trolley Problem: no matter what you do, something bad's going to happen because there are always two lives involved (even if one of them is in potentia, which is in itself an argument for whether or not that counts as a right to life). There are plenty of other argument points to be made: the option of adoption and the potential regrets there, too; the possibility of pregnancy complications that can also have long-term or even fatal consequences; custody issues when the mother is herself a minor; social costs concerning population and support for the helpless, and so on. And many of them have knock-on effects that cause them to affect other aspects of society, including potentially total strangers.
So like I said, it's complicated.
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Updated Cloudflare has yanked its services from 8chan, the "lawless" 4chan spinoff forum favoured by far-right nuts and paedophiles, after two mass shootings in the US over the weekend left nearly 30 people dead.
And a ***SINGLE*** arson attack in Japan left 35 people dead (and who knows how many more will ultimately succumb to their injuries). But because it didn't involve guns there wasn't an excuse for the brain-dead media to start frothing at the mouth.
And a ***SINGLE*** arson attack in Japan left 35 people dead
The key word is SINGLE.
SINGLE
Not >250 so far this year. Not 9,000 or more dead by arson attacks.
SINGLE.
When such things become more common, then the media gets involved in a 'public outcry' (how much of that they generate themselves and how much is "just reporting the news" I'll leave for another debate (I'd be on the side that says "They report the news, but in a manner they hope generates more public unrest that generates even more news and gruesome pictures). Until then, they report it as a terrible one-off but there's not much more they can say on it. A couple of hours later it's mostly forgotten by all but those involved while there's other "terrible tragedies" to sell report on
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