*sighs, turns over "DAYS SINCE LAST MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA" sign to 0*

PatrThom

PatrThom

Charlie Don't Surf said:
if he was poor and black and there was a bong in the background of the videos, a SWAT team would have blown off the door and killed his dog
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Or maybe blow up the face of his infant brother*.
Espy said:
Um, abolish all the laws because people will break them no matter what, duh.
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Abolish redundant laws. Can't charge a person twice for the same crime, but can charge a person 8 different ways for the same crime.

--Patrick
*I would just like to say that I feel bad for everyone involved. The department, the family, everyone. Nobody wanted this to happen. Nobody. I hope that this child's sacrifice (and it is a sacrifice) results in people devoting Batman-like levels of preparation time in future missions.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Zero Esc said:
But is that just correlation or causation? I'm not saying there's no relation, but some places people tend to be more friendly.
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Well, until we can quantify "friendliness," how do we account for the difference?

Chad Sexington said:
World poverty is at all-time low, actually.

But, I relate to what you're saying, in which case, I'd ask, what do you think should be done? Those lucky enough not to have been subject to extreme tragedy, whether violent or social, should go on, while those who've suffered disproportionately should fatalistically accept their lot as the bottom? Do you really think individual choice is the only factor, and not environment, in one's success or failure?
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I was speaking about the US poverty rate, specifically, which has been waffling around 13% for the last 50 years despite ever-increasing social spending.



(Bear in mind looking at the above chart that LBJ's "Great Society" public welfare legislation - AKA the "War on Poverty" as it is called now - got hashed out between 1965 and 1969, after the dip in the poverty rate.)

Now, certainly people don't decide to be poor, but they do consistently make decisions whose consequences keep them poor, post 2008-crash notwithstanding. Now. if I knew exactly what had to be done to alleviate poverty, I dare say I wouldn't be spending my friday workday afternoon here debating about it. The point was, doing just "more of the same" doesn't get results. Which is where I was going with the whole overarching discussion in this thread. We're already going to extraordinary lengths in terms of legislation and restriction to stop mass shootings from happening. Why would we think that even more of exactly what we are doing would help?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Zero Esc said:
I'm not saying that's the answer; I'm just questioning if gun law is the sole factoring difference.
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I'm not saying stricter gun laws necessarily CAUSE more gun crime (though some other people elsewhere make related claims, vis a vis "when you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will still have guns"), but merely that they aren't as effective in preventing it as some people seem to believe. And these "some" people seem to think it a panacea.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
sixpackshaker said:
Looking at the graph, it was Regan's War on the Poor (Voodoo Economics) that caused the uptick in poverty.
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The 3% uptick that started in before he was elected and had largely eliminated itself by the end of his second term?

The real takehome here is that at no point between 1965 and today has the poverty rate not been between 11 and 15 percent.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Another thing to keep in mind when looking at that pair of graphs is that the topmost line is the absolute number of poor people. Then the bottom line is just a representation of the percentage of the total population, that is, it is the size of the slice of the pie graph that is made up of poor people. Since population was increasing during that period, if the top line remained steady, the bottom line should have declined. Instead, it shows that there is almost some sort of minimum proportion of poor people.

--Patrick
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

Satire is a very, very difficult thing to understand on the internet.

Because you're never quite sure if they're for real or not.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

They're saying to make the drugs legal; not the problematic behavior that ensues from addiction.

And in any case, just making usage and possession legal is one thing. As we've seen with states that have done so with marijuana, buying it, selling it, growing it, etc. These things would need to be legal too or it won't rob power from the criminal organizations that thrive on the drug trade.
While I support making marijuana legal even though I'd never use it, I'd be wary of an increase in methheads if meth were made legal. I don't know how accurate Breaking Bad is, but it fucking scared me, that's for sure.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

As I understand it, meth (and the other stimulants) give a feeling of elation, that "reward" feeling you get when you've finished a task, or when you've made a satisfying decision. This can lead to a feedback loop ("I just had meth!" "I made a good decision." "I had some more meth!" "I'm doing so good today!"), and that's what causes the problems.

--Patrick
 
Mathias

Mathias

Necronic said:
I work in industrial chemistry, which can be a dangerous workplace, but at my business we take safety very seriously. What you just is said is what I call "The BP Excuse". Things are inherently dangerous so really what can you expect other than these accidents? Except, when you look at my company and you look at their company, the accident rates are dramatically different. There is something you can do, BP is just a lazy incompetent company and the people who excuse their behavior as "cost of doing business" are dangerous morons. And I feel the same is true here.

Now, what the actual answer is? I don't know, it's complicated and needs deep thoughtful consideration. But saying that you can't eradicate dangers so don't try? If we operated like that at my company I might be dead right now, I would very likely be missing half of my face (I narrowly avoided a horrific injury because of our strict safety policy.)
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As someone who works in Pharma, I love this analogy so much.[DOUBLEPOST=1401630971,1401630710][/DOUBLEPOST]
GasBandit said:
The main thrust of my post though, was aimed at those who believe that it IS possible to eliminate suffering through legislation. You have to look pragmatically at cost and result to gauge effectiveness. For example, comparing gun crime/murder rates in the sections of the country with draconian gun control laws vs those with relaxed gun control, you see a patter opposite that which one would expect - Chicago has the tightest gun control and yet the highest gun crime. The same goes for california, new york, etc. Throwing more money/more legislation at a problem doesn't always make it better. Indeed, in the case of the war on poverty, it has had exactly no measurable effect.

So is a crimeless society worth living under the Justice Lords? Trading one tragedy for another?
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Could you link up the data that supports these claims? I honestly can't Google -Fu anything legitimate data that provides evidence for strict gun laws being specifically the reason for high gun violence in Chicago. And New York has become one of the safest cities in the US - partially because of the gun control laws.
 
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blotsfan

blotsfan

Its probably more along the lines of the places that have the worst crime are the same places that want to try stricter gun control. If no murders are happening, no one really cares about gun control.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Mathias said:
As someone who works in Pharma, I love this analogy so much.[DOUBLEPOST=1401630971,1401630710][/DOUBLEPOST]


Could you link up the data that supports these claims? I honestly can't Google -Fu anything legitimate data that provides evidence for strict gun laws being specifically the reason for high gun violence in Chicago. And New York has become one of the safest cities in the US - partially because of the gun control laws.
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Of course it's not the *reason* for the violence, the point was the regulations were ineffective. Just because you take aspirin for a headache and it doesn't go away doesn't mean the aspirin caused the headache.
 
Sparhawk

Sparhawk

With Chicago, it's more of evidence that strict gun-control (arguably the toughest in the nation) did nothing to stop gun crimes, since the criminals weren't obeying those laws anyway.
 
Mathias

Mathias

GasBandit said:
Of course it's not the *reason* for the violence, the point was the regulations were ineffective. Just because you take aspirin for a headache and it doesn't go away doesn't mean the aspirin caused the headache.
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But pro-gunners always use Chicago as an example of gun regulations failing without mentioning that the state of Illinois itself deregulated a lot of gun control measures, whereas, the entire state of NY has strict measures and has a lower gun murder per 100,000 people than Illinois.


The fact is gun murders per 100,000 inhabitants are higher in states that have high ownership based on the FBI's recent reports.

I'd love for there to be better, more conclusive data from the CDC on such matters, but our friends at the NRA lobby heavily against such studies.
 
Krisken

Krisken

Mathias said:
But pro-gunners always use Chicago as an example of gun regulations failing without mentioning that the state of Illinois itself deregulated a lot of gun control measures, whereas, the entire state of NY has strict measures and has a lower gun murder per 100,000 people than Illinois.


The fact is gun murders per 100,000 inhabitants are higher in states that have high ownership based on the FBI's recent reports.

I'd love for there to be better, more conclusive data from the CDC on such matters, but our friends at the NRA lobby heavily against such studies.
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It's the bolded part which makes me very frustrated with the NRA and the citizens who support them. The NRA shows often they have no interest in doing what is best for their individual supporters. You'd think the gun lobby would gain strength by dispelling myths and doing proper studies to find better correlations to gun violence rather than allow statistically rare tragedies to shape gun reform measures.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
The New York gun registration bill and assault weapons ban was passed in 2013. However, New York's crime rate in general - and gun crime with it - has been consistently falling since 1990. It's not reasonable to ascribe to legislation a result that predates it by 23 years.



Moreover, the New York gun ban is unconstitutional, and the case is stepping its way up through to the supreme court. Not only that, but they are in violation of "full faith and credit" by refusing to recognize other states' permits. The authors/supporters of the bill knew it wouldn't stand up to public scrutiny, as it was brought for a vote a mere 24 hours after being introduced. It's remarkable how often statists (who repeatedly try to claim the high ground in morality and transparency) force through legislation in the literal dead of night.

Moreover, here are violent crime rates overlaid with important firearm legislation -



Note that not only does this mirror the above graph, showing the new york crime rate drop predates their gun ban by 23 years, there is also no correlation between gun control legislation and changes in the crime rate trend. In fact, there was a nationwide drop in crime during that time. But New York dropped much more than other states. MUCH more. Why? Well, partly surely because it was so high to begin with, but really what it boils down to is they hired more policemen and engaged in "Hot-Spot Policing" - IE, stationing officers more where the problem is worst.

But it's a double edged sword - consider all the media scandals and stories we've had in the last few years of new york cops engaged in civil rights violations, "stop and frisk," or just the outright shooting of innocent civilians by NYPD. Yes, crime does go down very fast under a police state.

Here's another interesting graph. What would you expect to happen when the Assault Weapons Ban expired? Crime to shoot up? (If you'll pardon the pun) Wellll...





Huh.
 
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