StrangeSox

QUOTE (kev211 @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 11:28 PM) Norte dame didn't lose to Oregon tonight so your point is worthless His point is that Notre Dame is bad and you should feel bad.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 07:02 PM) Well, it's often a really hard case to try, even if there is physical evidence. A lot of times it comes down to a literal "he said, she said". It's the most under-reported serious crime

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:23 PM) Now that Illinois has banned AIDS there should be no more AIDS. Whew. Through decades of publicly funded research and AIDS awareness campaigns, the rate of HIV infection has stabilized (though it's still too high) and treatment for HIV is exponentially better than it was two decades ago. Much stronger protocols are in place to prevent accidental transmission in the medical world as well. Public policy in action.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:16 PM) Except that the stated purpose for many is the elimination of the second amendment. you can still have guns without the second amendment. to be honest, I'm not sure how you can square Heller with the NFA as it is.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:12 PM) Yea, they should slowly eat themselves to death to make sure they can be a burden on everyone else. or keep a bunch of firearms around the house, that's a risky activity too!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:11 PM) And yet, if the statistics say that you and your family are vastly less safe when owning a gun, you don't care. I could thus take that exact same first phrase and replace "wear a seatbelt" with "own a gun" and it would fit perfectly. Well, yeah, he's advocating a sorta-anarchist libertarian position here, he's fine with no seatbelt laws and no gun laws.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:08 PM) Uh its a founding document for a democratic republic written in an era of Kings and Empire. They had to write down how to set it up. Written after an especially weak federal government structure had already failed.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 02:07 PM) I do not care at all about that. Seriously, I wear a seatbelt because I'm not stupid... if stupid people want to not wear them then they can go off and get themselves killed. The statistics might not look as good, but the reality behind them is more-or-less unchanged. Were getting off topic btw. OTOH, it's probably best if a country doesn't have a bunch of its citizens being stupid about seat belts and getting themselves needlessly killed.

The Myth of the Weak American State

So wait, are you against airplane and industrial construction regulations as well? But food, cars, crosswalks and homes are all heavily regulated anyway.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:54 PM) Accidents happen, were just going to have to learn to deal with that as a country. Not just with guns but with everything. Planes can crash, boats can sink, catwalks can fall... just because someone makes a mistake at a range doesn't mean they meant to hurt anyone. As for otherwise law abiding people being caught up in a ragefit and shooting people at random, that's really rare. I dont think the 100 or so people killed every year in those situations is worth tearing up the Constitution and abandoning a core principle of this country. We institute all sorts of risk-aversion regulations on planes, boats and catwalks. Thanks for the info I guess, though I'm confused why you brought it up and now don't want to talk about it

So a significantly higher percentage of black people are risking becoming victims by not owning guns, then.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:48 PM) Response to Balta's gun death by region graph. But what needed to be said? That African Americans suffer disproportionately from gun violence? Ok, not sure what I'm supposed to take away from that information?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:44 PM) But gun controls dont work! People get thrown in jail all the time for having guns on them but still the murder problem persists. Even with enforcement its impossible to keep guns out of criminals hands. If you cannot enforce a ban in a city of 3 million with a police department with division-strength manpower how are we supposed to keep 300 million people from breaking gun laws throughout the country? Part of the reason you cannot enforce a ban in a large city is because it's surrounded by areas where it is much easier to get a gun. That's why it doesn't work at that mico-level and why it needs to be a national-level policy. Of course there would still be illegal guns and gun violence even if a total ban-and-confiscation policy was enacted. Nobody has ever suggested or argued otherwise. What stronger regulation would accomplish, as we can see from numerous other countries, is to seriously restrict the availability of weapons such that if someone wants to obtain one for illegal purposes, it'll be much more difficult and costly, and there won't be as many guns floating around for otherwise "Good Guys" to have momentary lapses in judgement or accidents.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:41 PM) Stupid image didn't work. I know I was b****ing about race being brought into this earlier, but blacks die from guns at 5 times the rate of whites. The link works if you paste it into the address bar, not sure what's wrong with the embed. What are you saying with that, though? What's your point?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:32 PM) f*** it, let's just say it because it needs to be said (from your same source): What needs to be said?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 01:25 PM) This line of though will graduate from "City bans aren't enough, we need state bans!", "State bans aren't enough now, we need a nationwide ban!", "The nationwide ban isn't working, we need a global ban!", "The global ban isn't working!! We need to ban guns on Mars and the Moon!"... forever and ever and even as nothing gets solved we'll keep thinking legislation will fix all of our problems. Nah, I'm perfectly fine with much stronger national policy. You only need to get to your absurd levels if you've assumed your conclusion that gun controls don't work. Face it, there are numerous factors to play into any (city/state/nation)'s crime rates. The fact that Chicago has very tight handgun laws yet still sees a lot of gun violence does not prove that all attempts at gun control are doomed to failure. I've readily acknowledged that a city-level ban is not going to be very effective, so pointing out instances of city-level bans not working particularly well doesn't really do anything.

City-level bans aren't effective because its far too easy to get a gun in the immediate area, but it's much more ridiculous to conclude that Chicago has 500 homicides because of handgun bans.

The conservative movement is still an elaborate moneymaking venture

cool.

From Brad Delong: As I understand it, Stephanie’s hope is that the U.S. government can borrow and spend and that investors will always value U.S. government debt so highly as a safe store of value that, even without high inflation, the real interest rate on the debt will be on balance lower than the real growth rate of the American economy. If so, then the issuing of debt by the U.S. government is a very profitable business indeed: it makes something—safe nominal assets—that investors love and are willing to pay for through the nose, and we can finance whatever we want our government to spend on from the profits of this very profitable debt-issuing business. If not, then while it is certainly true that the U.S. government cannot be forced into bankruptcy or “run out of money”, it would be imprudent not to take steps now to guard against the possibility of monetary and financial disruption—not now, not five years from now, but thirty or fifty years from now—when we can no longer refinance our debt on easy terms but instead need to retire our outstanding government debt via high taxes or very rapid rates of money creation. As I have said, repeatedly, austerity now—and probably for the next five years—is counterproductive. But it is not the case that austerity is always and everywhere unneeded. I think that encapsulates my view pretty well. Right now, bond rates are incredibly low (negative in NPV) and we have huge unemployment/insufficient demand problems. Trying to 'solve' a potential future deficit problem in the midst of a weak recovery and a weak international economic structure is absurd. But, eventually, bond rates will rise and carrying substantial debt burdens will cause issues. You can't borrow infinitely forever, but you can work to grow your way out of these problems and balance your budgets when you're in a strong position to do so.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 11:20 AM) Not really sure how you view that as backtracking. Yeah, guns are very deadly but, thanks to modern medical advances, the chances of surviving some gun shot wounds is increased. I guess in a strictly technical sense medical advances made guns "less deadly" in the same way that penicillin made bacterial infections "less deadly."

I'm not interested in some dumb technical discussion over what guns are the "best" for any given scenario. But I wouldn't place good odds in someone surviving 5 shots to the head and neck at very close range from a .22, let alone a .38.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 10:31 AM) Mom of the year. How did she miss on the 6th? It's actually pretty remarkable that she hit him 5/6 times. In an adrenaline-filled situation like that, a lot of people would struggle to hit the broad side of a barn from a few feet away.