Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jul 28, 2015 -> 02:01 PM) Feel awful for Tracy. By all reports, an extremely hard worker, high character kid. For me, Groce's job status is impacted by a number of factors - you can't just look at Tournament or No. I will question his long term standing at Illinois if I see Tate and LaTullip sharing ball handling duties for 40 minutes a night. Groce has a lot of talent at the wing, let's see what Jordan, JCL or DJ Williams can do as a primary ball handler. Might take some lumps early on, but it's in the program's best interest to shift somebody over who might excel in the long run rather than chasing wins early on with Tate for 30 and LaTullip for 10. I bet DJ Williams gets a lot of PG time. He was a point-forward his senior year. They'll be a bubble team. Unless Hill goes for 20 a night, they'll miss out i'm sure. Quentin Snyder's signing day de-commit hurts more and more every season.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 05:07 PM) You said above most people support reasonable gun laws but now you say the nra is correct in opposing literally any new law because of a fear of different laws in the future. I'm saying I can understand the reason they act they way they do. Doesn't mean I personally agree with it in every situation.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:59 PM) Guns at home are, which is what you are arguing for. I may have missed a word in the original statement, but Im pretty confident everyone knew I was talking about guns at home. You're wrong. I had a 410 shotgun at home that was never once used to kill or hurt anything. I had a clay disc shooter and I shot discs in the air. People keep handguns at home for the same reason.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:56 PM) I can use my car to store my groceries, but that's not the intended and designed purpose. Almost all guns are intended and designed to hurt or kill something. Who gives a crap about the intention/design. How do people use the item? If it's no longer JUST the intended purpose, it has additional uses. I'm not arguing that guns are never used for hurting/killing. That would be dumb. That's obviously the vast majority of the use. But it's also equally dumb to keep saying guns are evil bad things because they have no other use than to kill things. That's just not true. I know several people who own handguns strictly for the purpose of shooting cans in a field and/or going to a range. It's a hobby. It has nothing to do with death.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:55 PM) So you oppose any new gun regulations whatsoever because of a slippery slope argument, but you keep insisting that "most people" have no problem with additional gun regulations. I don't think most people do. A vocal, powerful minority is different. If you were to somehow give an assurance to the NRA that all you wanted were back ground checks and other administrative requirements, and nothing further, I bet they'd happily agree. But they know, correctly, that then in 1 year there would be calls for back ground checks, for gun registries, for purchase limits, for size limits, for ammo limits, those autodetecting things that lock guns if in the hands of the wrong person and on and on. It's not an unreasonable slippery slope argument, it's a very real one given the types of legislation that has been proposed and/or passed.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:53 PM) 1) Suicide isnt my argument. 2) I have no problem with people having guns that are stored at a gun range and only allowed to be used on the premises. Well, then don't inject yourself into the argument that's being had. And great, I'm glad you concede your original point that guns have no other purpose than hurting or killing people is wrong.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:51 PM) Some. But again, something as simple as a universal background check couldn't even pass after Sandy Hook. Gun rights absolutionists will oppose any measure at all. More states have actually loosened their gun laws in the last few years. If you give an inch, they take a mile. We all know a background check would be just the start. Then it's on to the next thing. That's why they oppose any new restrictions.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:46 PM) When was anyone talking about the Colorado shooting? This is a thread that started with the more recent mass shooting in a Louisiana theater. Two women were killed and the shooter killed himself. I dunno why I was thinking about the Colorado shooting. If this were true they'd have been taboo for centuries. But they haven't been in our country until recently. edit: and it's probably 100% political because gun rights get people riled up.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:42 PM) Jenks, You are all over the place. Last time I checked eating McDonalds couldnt accidentally kill my neighbor. There is a huge difference between laws that are designed to "protect me from me" and laws that are designed to "protect me from you." If we're passing gun bans to protect people from committing suicide how is that not a law to protect me from me? Sport? Target practice? You don't have to hurt or kill something to enjoy a gun.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:33 PM) Because over 30,000 Americans die every year from guns, we should implement policies to reduce those numbers. And most reasonable people in this country don't have a problem implementing certain policies. But we also have people seeking full on bans. Not in terms of available assistance. I'm just saying a dude in the Rockies 45 minutes from town is going to have a different viewpoint on the need to have a gun available over a person living in Lincoln Park, 5 min from the closest cop at any given time of day.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:34 PM) Because pools have a purpose outside of scaring/hurting/killing things. Why not just let people have nuclear weapons? Less people die per year from nukes than peanuts, so obviously peanuts are more dangerous. This line of argument is extremely boring. So do guns. They have more uses than that. Our use of guns has evolved over time to include other things. Just like anything else. That's like saying cars are only for travel. Just not true anymore.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:24 PM) In this case? Because we'd now have 4 people dead instead of 2. And I'd just point out that this happened in Louisiana, not exactly the place with the most strict gun laws. I assumed we were still talking about the Colorado shooting. I thought he killed 10-12 people. IMO it's an "insignificant" (again, relative term) amount. I think people die tragically from a lot of random causes that if we really wanted to make a big deal out of it, we could, and we could claim that they would all be prevented and won't someone think of the children, etc. Guns are just taboo for a sizeable chunk of this country (mostly urban people, mostly people who have had zero exposure to guns) and a big talking point these days. Again, if you really want to save lives based on some preventable act go ban fast food so that 200k people or whatever a year don't die from heart disease.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:18 PM) I agree that they are rare. They still happen more than they should, though, and there's scant evidence that CC makes us safer on the whole. Balta's issue also reaches to private gun ownership in general, where we unquestionably have thousands of deaths by suicide a year that we likely otherwise wouldn't have. Those events are not rare. So because people off themselves with a gun my constitutional right should be disregarded? That's pretty f'd up. I mean I don't agree with them on that, but you're talking about an act that is illegal in more than half of the states and that don't result in a LOT (relative) of deaths. I think those measures should be in the law for all states if you have a kid. But I can understand the argument that for self defense purposes you would want your gun ready and available. I think the disconnect here is that usually the people for those laws are people who live in cities, usually nice neighborhoods, that have never had to think about someone randomly showing up in their homes. Go live out in the country a bit where it'd take 30 minutes or an hour for a cop to show up. That changes your opinion, or should. So what? We're talking about unintentional deaths here. A gun sitting out, loaded, without anyone around, also doesn't kill anyone. It requires that accidental act for the death to occur. In that sense it's the very same thing. Except the numbers are like 4000 versus 1600. Get rid of the pools and those drownings don't occur. They happen "more than they should."

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 04:11 PM) I'd imagine it would be quite the disorienting situation with people running everywhere and many not even being able to quickly and accurately realize 1) what's going on and 2) where the shots are actually coming from. As Balta pointed out, at some point, the shooter in this case walked out with the crowd and was attempting to blend in before he spotted the police. That's a whole theater full of people who didn't recognize the man who was just trying to kill them. People get really bad tunnel vision in situations like that. Police and military (and private security forces) train in these high-stress, active shooter scenarios and they can still fail. I don't think you can expect the person who took a 6 hour class on a saturday and goes to the range to shoot at paper occasionally to perform in a situation as crowded and disorienting as an active shooter in a movie theater. How much worse could that situation get though? A guy strapped with guns shooting a crowd of people. Let's assume Tex is in the theater and in the middle of the chaos he gets off 10 shots. He accidentally kills (or hits) 2 people, but manages to hit the shooter and kills him before he can reload and kill another 5-10 people. Why wouldn't that be a better outcome? Take this site for what it's worth, but there are links to the online stories: http://gunssavelives.net/browse-by-state/ Concealed carry/guns have been a positive in a number of situations. It's not ALL bad.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 27, 2015 -> 03:32 PM) You keep confusing "some" and "literally every single one" in this thread. When Balta pointed out that if you remove guns from the equation of a lot of gun deaths, there would be a lot fewer deaths, you jumped right to "Exaggerate much? No other reason? Got it." When I tried pointing out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes, you jumped right to "so anytime a person dies and a gun is present, they would be alive if the gun wasn't there. Got it.". You can't know who is the "good guy with a gun" and who is the "bad guy with a gun" for now and all points in the future. The "good guy with a gun" could get pissed off while waiting in line for pizza and shoot someone. They could get pissed off at the guy talking in the theater in front of them and shoot someone. They could have depressive issues and shoot themselves. They could leave the gun out where its accessible and a child ends up hurting or killing themselves or someone else. The more guns there are out there, the more the chances of these things happening increases. Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho." You are completely missing the point. Of course the problem with this is the myth-making to prove your point. We've had concealed carry for decades now. Those events don't happen on a regular basis. They're incredibly rare. People who leave their guns around for kids are irresponsible. Some are morons, some just made awful, regrettable mistakes. But so are people that let their kids drown in pools. It's a sad tragedy in both cases, but in the one instance we don't all scream "ban pools!" Why not? More kids die from that than from guns.

"No one has a right to grade a President—even poor James Buchanan—who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions." - JFK

QUOTE (Tex @ Jul 25, 2015 -> 04:38 PM) Exactly. Of course you could also say that about land mines, bombs, etc. In balance guns were developed and improved to kill things not put holes in paper targets. They were used for survival. You eat better with a gun than a stone tipped spear. The fact that they are versatile and can do other things does not obscure the fact that they are the most efficient killing "inanimate object" that Americans can legally own and use. They kill and they kill really good. Someone mentioned that there are laws on the books to prevent that from happening. Laws do not prevent anything. They never have and never will. If we judge a law by how many people break it, and decide if people break the law it is bad and we don;t need it, we would eliminate every law. We have laws against murder, murder happens. We have laws against robbery, robberies happen. All laws do is establish a punishment for those that break the law. We've been over this before and you're still wrong. Laws don't have a singular purpose. They can be for punishment and prevention, or something else (e.g., money). We pass laws all the time to curb behavior X with the goal of preventing Y.

I think the problem was I had originally thought it would be a dumb story and then I saw it made 1.5 billion so I figured it must be better than I expected. But it really wasnt. Just so many dumb elements: the divorce situation was unnecessary, the relationship between Pratt and the girl was unearned, the feasibility of the whole story was dumb, from not immediately looking at the tracker to not having a contingency for a dino getting loose (you know, which is what happened 20 years prior and which everyone knows would immediately kill the entire venture), the raptor thing, the billionaire being the only helicopter pilot, the main chick becoming Rambo-esque (in f***ing heels the whole movie!), driving a motorcycle through a dense jungle, the ending with the T-Rex (yeah I can stand 5 feet from it and run and it won't catch me! Totally believable!!) And I'm sure there was more. I liked a lot of the not so serious dialogue (Jake Johnson killed it) and the little funny moments but it never felt appropriate for the scene or for the time in the movie. I enjoyed the dinos. I enjoyed the world they created. But it was basically everything the original was not. It's about on par with 2 and 3. Nonsensical story but dinosaurs so watchable.

Way late to the party, but holy s*** was Jurassic World terrible. I mean, just so many awful things: plot points, acting (Pratt...wtf?), some of the dialogue and pacing.... D+. Would have gotten an F if not for some cool call backs to the original.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 04:23 PM) How man children under the age of 12 or 14 die in accidental in-home shootings? One would have to follow the logic that without the presence of a deadly weapon that was accessible (for whatever reason), this category of deaths would be 98% preventable. IIRC the CDC site I was looking at earlier said it was like 1,600/year. Laws are already on the books in like 30 states to "prevent" that. It still happens. 4,000 people drown every year accidentally. #banwater Without the water they would still be alive.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 03:19 PM) I don't buy it. Gangs are not unique to US, the gun violence rate in US is beyond substantial. The flood of guns available in the western hemisphere from US obsession with them has made the entire 2 continents more dangerous. There's not a lot of information on gangs in the rest of the world, but here we're now probably over a million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_population The references to other countries pale in comparison. I'm not discounting we have a gun culture that's clearly different from the rest of the world, as indicated in those numbers.

Balta logic: 25k-30k Japanese kill themselves every year. #banbalconies.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 03:11 PM) Why does this matter? Other countries don't have the gang numbers we have. That "100k" pool is a bit different in comparison.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 03:05 PM) Firearm deaths go up even as fewer people own guns. Automobile deaths go down even as more people own cars. Edit: The trick in your plots, btw, is that they're normalized to "number of guns". A sliver of the population is stockpiling them while the portion of the population smart enough to not drink and drive keep a killing tool in the home is going down. Even though fewer people are owning guns, the number of people they kill per year is going up. Marginally. But you still have a nonsensical approach to this issue. Bans never work, even if we ignore the constitutional rights involved. If you really want to bark up this "omg the humanity!" tree, go after the fast food industry. They kill more people than autos and guns combined.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jul 24, 2015 -> 03:05 PM) 3.6 per 100,000 is still really high. Most other countries are well under 1. Germany is at 0.20. Take out the gang killings and what would it look like I wonder.