The more I see of those videos, the more I am starting to understand previous generations' contempt for hippies. The difference is hippies actually believed in something.
If you see these kind of things and immediately jump to a conclusion like this then I'm going to have to agree with SpicyLemonZest in their earlier discussions with you. I hope you stay as the 'right citizen' per your own argument lest the boot comes for you too.
If you actually look at that conversation then you know it is not exactly immediately, but based on evidence as it trickles down. I personally think your 'side' is missing forest for the trees.
Since that is the case, allow me to spell it out for you. Antics of middleaged, overindulged woman, who was so comfortable that they thought she was virtually untouchable have gone mainstream. Do I get to stop ATF or IRS from performing their operations? No? Why is ICE different then? Because you don't agree with them?
So, the choice is now to either normalize those antics, normalize excessive police force or some sort of reasonable middle ground.
But what do I get? Insults and thinly veiled threats that once dems get into power, I will rue the day.
Get off your high horse and realize that you are encouraging civil war for a retard, who thought they could do whatever they want and face no consequences. Welcome to the real world.
Thank you for proving my point. In one scenario, you argue that ICE has the right to perform an extrajudicial murder because he felt threatened by a car. In this scenario, you defend ICE hitting someone with their car whose only crime was walking nearby. Your only consistent belief is that anything that ICE does is justified. The kind of person you are is incredibly clear.
<< The kind of person you are is incredibly clear.
Oh? What kind of a person am I? Or maybe more interestingly, what kind of a person should I be? The second question is more interesting as it is intended to elicit your hopes and dreams.
Are they now? If so, where is the carefully nuance bio of Good? Why do I get choreographed and weirdly aligned responses from various online profiles ( my 'observer' note )? The answer is obvious: there are points to be made by strategically aligning her verious 'more than one thing' portions of persona to match a narrative, which, but I repeat myself, is very, very tiring.
I don't know, I don't think it's normally assumed that when someone dies (or more to the point is murdered) in a very public way we all immediately deserve to know every thing about them.
I don't know what you're talking about really. What I mean to say is the rest of this comment is incoherent to me.
BS. And I do not say this lightly. When it fits a given narrative, media has no issue or qualms in publishing anything and everything related to a given person they find online. It is only when they selectively release it over days that you just know how well the person does not fit the script, as it were.
She can be both, she will become lots of things over time depending on agenda. Her background was decidedly under-reported, for a few justifications, including preventing a preferred audience from sympathizing with the victim.
Not sure what your point is other than volume of information available increases over time.
You do have a point. My point is that we are constantly a part of informational warfare and it is getting old. I would love nothing more than people to look at it all with a cold eye and say something akin to: oh, I recognize this pattern. Instead, I attempts of various power centers to frame it in a way beneficial to them. Some of us are rather tired of this.
But why is your own framing exempt from the analysis? The idea that you should see a murder and "look at it all with a cold eye", to try and dispassionately understand whether it might have been justified, is a non-obvious idea that's quite advantageous to power centers that expect to be shooting people frequently.
Again, this concept of "newly assigned martyr" you have is not something that fell from heaven fully formed. It was shaped and given to you by what you call "power centers" - ones which are currently running the United States government! - because they think this framing is beneficial to them. I'm going to stop the conversation here before I start coming up with unwise insults, because it's just infuriating that you can't turn this critical eye on yourself and the informational warfare you're subject to.
What's infuriating is that you are acting as an agent of the government, defending their murder of a random citizen, but perceive yourself and frame yourself as a dispassionate observer who's interested in the media dynamics of how different descriptors get attached to people. I don't know if you started off like this, or if you're so deep in DHS propaganda that you can't find your way out, and right now I don't care to find out.
The difference between us that I know exactly what ( and even why ) I advocate for: keeping the system stable.
<< random citizen
She was a not some random citizen; I would have been addressing it differently if that was the case. Now, if you have a stomach for it, we can go over what kind of citizen she was.
I fundamentally disagree that ICE deserves that presumption. They have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be unreasonable people who want to hurt others. I'm sure there's a story they'll tell about why it was totally legal to shoot her, but they're murderers and you're supporting murderers until they prove that there was she was doing something so terrible they had no choice.
Hm, as with taxes, do we get to choose which federal enforcement agency we are willing to submit to? Not going to lie man, it is a fascinating frame of mind to me and I am absolutely willing to talk to you about it if you wanna go that route.
<< but they're murderers and you're supporting murderers until they prove
This is not exactly how any of it works, at all. I am not being difficult man, but I don't get to, say, block FBI caravan, because I don't think they deserve 'that' presumption ( quotation, because I am not certain what it refers to ).
I similarly don't get to tell DEA, ATF, and multiple other agencies to just fuck off, especially if I encounter them in the wild.. doubly so, if I was attempting to track them that day..
The real question then becomes:
Why do you think you get to pick and choose, who can enforce the laws of the land upon you?
More importantly, whose authority would you accept?
They just shot another couple in Portland. I get to tell them, and you, to fuck off as much as I'd like. I encourage you to get on board with the right side of this issue while you have the chance.
Good luck out there friend. I am not sure what you meant to say, but it may be a good idea to stop here for both of us. I see no reason to continue this further.
I think you know precisely what I meant to say. There will come a time when the stain of having supported these murderers will be inescapable. At best you'll live in fear that your life will be ruined forever if anyone ever makes a viral post with strategic quotes from your 2026 commentary. You still have a chance to escape that fate if you want to.
Best of luck in your endeavors. As noted above, it would be wise for you to stop now before you say something very, very unnecessary. I urge you to reconsider this path.
If you are actually issuing a threat and feel confident nonetheless, feel free to post it in plain English for everyone to see.
That said, in spirit of kumbaya hand holding, I would like to offer you a chance to look at the reality around you.
If you look at the released cam video, the only thing that is clear that Renee was not an innocent bystander.
I urge you to pull yourself out of the radicalization spiral you're in. This video shows an innocent victim whose murderer will be prosecuted and convicted. He calls the victim a "fucking bitch" at the end, I'm genuinely baffled what twists of logic you're using to not see this.
I would emphasize since you mentioned it that I don’t intend any sort of threat. Despite the murderers’ best efforts, we do still live in a free country with free speech. Supporting murder is a terrible thing to do, and I will never in this lifetime hold the hand of someone who does, but it isn’t a crime and doesn’t deserve anything other than deep and enduring shame.
its not some pattern of abuse by shady actors manipulating opinions youre noticing, its voting algorithm and attention economy itself.
new ideas are constantly being published, and popular ones gain momentum by being shown to more people. as the idea gets saturated, the popularity gets overshadowed by the time based downranking.
if the idea is still popular though, in this case that ice murdered some woman as part of their shock and awe campaign, variations are going to show up such as "legal observer" and "mother of a three year old"
I disagree, but I am interested in pulling this thread somewhat. What would be alternative? The role will likely exist in some form regardless, but I suppose there are obviously ways to make it less common just by removing of its incentives. That said, I might be tipping my hand a little.
Germany practices basically rent control, so that 60%+ of population rent and consider it stable. That's another way.
Maybe there are more, I didn't think hard. The basic idea is to prevent formation of an "aristocracy" that holds some limited but necessary (not luxury) resource. Pretty much every revolution happened because of that.
Writing a book intended for nontechnical people using LLMs cautioning them against certain common recurring issues. The idea came to me when I saw some of the outputs across various fora that were a little too common.
Super interesting. I'm a behavioral scientist, and I spent a ton of time thinking about AI adoption patterns and how certain experiences can be a massive detriment/boon to adoption. Let me know if you'd be up for a chat!
I have become something of a statist over the years and I apparently annoy a whole lot of people, when I argue for not upsetting the status quo much further. Needless to say, this obviously is not a good thing if you share that perspective with me. This is actual political violence. And it has little to do with guns. If someone really wanted to get to the guy, one would. The issue is further societal deterioration in basic standards.
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.
It was actual political violence when MN state representative Melissa Hortman was killed. It was political violence when Gabby Giffords was shot. Actual political violence has been happening. We live in a politically violent time.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. I am concerned about the increasing frequency of such events more than anything else, because, to your point, why things did happen in decades prior, it was not nearly as common.
Gabby Giffords's shooting was tragic. But thankfully it was an isolated incident.
In the past year-or-so we have seen two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the assassination of the CEO of an insurance company, the assassination of Rep. Hortman, and now this. That's five political assassinations/attempts in a year.
It would seem fair to argue we are now firmly in a state of contagion which is unlike the situation in 2012 when Giffords was shot.
Additionally, I’ve seen a troubling amount of online sentiment positively in favor of the Trump assassination attempts, the murder of Brian Thompson. The sentiment in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder looks like it might be similarly troubling.
The rhetoric on Paul Pelosi's hammer attack was unhinged - it also was political violence.
I don't doubt the same figures who made lurid comments, mocked or ridiculed the attack will now act more measured and asking for decorum due to the victims "team".
January 6 was mass political violence, and I my unprofessional opinion is that the pardons marked a turning point in how engaging in political violence is viewed; all is forgiven if/when your team wins.
Hyper-partisanship, and choosing not playing by the rules when it benefits you will be America's downfall. At some point, people on the other side of the political fence stopped being seen as opponents,but became "enemies", I think cable news/entertainment shoulders much blame on this, but the politicians themselves know outrage turns out the vote. I wonder if they'll attempt to lower the temperature or raise it further.
I agree that the Pelosi attack was political violence and the rhetoric was unhinged, and I agree that January 6 was mass political violence. I didn’t include them (or some others that came to mind) since I was keeping it to the parent post’s “past year-or-so.” But they serve just as well at making the point, that louder and louder subsets of society are claiming these attacks are actually good, which is a disturbing societal shift. I remember when Gifford was shot; the discourse was all about assigning blame for the bad thing, as opposed to saying it was a good thing. Feels like we’re moving in a bad direction, as your examples and my examples both illustrate.
> But they serve just as well at making the point, that louder and louder subsets of society are claiming these attacks are actually good, which is a disturbing societal shift.
There has been widespread discontent for a while now - it's the vein Obama and Trump tapped to win their respective first terms. AFAICT, it is an evolving class war[1], with American characteristics.
1. One could argue which side tore up the social contract first, and quibble with the definition of what counts as "violence"
It was political violence when Trump was shot on stage too.
I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
> I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
If you haven't noticed a difference between his first and second terms may I suggest you go for a vacation outside the US and try coming back in? For bonus points make a mistake on your forms.
US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports.
I know plenty of people who will be giving NeurIPS a miss _on the advice of their governments_. This _did not_ happen during his first term.
> US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11
You mean that time when millions of American citizens were placed on the No Fly List with no recourse essentially at random? You can't be serious. After 9/11 was far worse.
I've been in and out of the US several times this year through several ports of entry and it has been hassle-free so far. They don't even ask me questions, they just wave me through.
He and his enablers played that argument during his 2024 campaign as well, but everyone is missing a crucial aspect of it. During his first term, he was surrounded by a large number of career administration staff, who put guardrails around him. This time it's all 'Yes men' and his well-wishers. Notably, no one from the previous admin staff had endorsed him for 2024. That should have given a clue to people. But, nope.
> US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports
Apologies, but "citation needed"?
(As a non-US citizen) I flew into JFK earlier this year and did my (first) Global Entry interview. It was the shortest and most polite immigration interview I've ever had anywhere, and I've had a few.
The country may have fundamentally changed, but I suspect that comment was about Trump. Everyone knew they were planning to destroy the place if he got a second term, they wrote a book explaining it.
Yes, I was referring to Trump, not the state of the country. Republicans have full control this time around, but the goals and rhetoric have not changed. Trump was not "radicalized."
The differences we’re seeing were all planned years in advance. This time around Trump had the time and experience to build his own team instead of taking the team the Republican establishment handed him. As for policies, it’s all in Agenda 47, his manifesto, including universal and reciprocal tariffs, ending birthright citizenship, immigration crackdowns, he laid out exactly what he was going to do back in 2023.
Heh. You know. I don't want to be too flippant, but I will respond to this, because it raises an interesting point.
I would like to hope that you recognize that registration of political affiliation is just one data point. Spring it does not make. You know how I got registered as a republican? I got incorrectly registered as one during judge election volunteering.
I am not saying it means nothing. What I am saying is: some nuance is helpful in conversations like this.
PA has closed primaries though, so he likely would have fixed it if it was a mistake. In any case, if you're looking for nuance, there's not a lot of it in political violence in the US.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Timothy McVeigh, Jim Adkisson, Dylan Roof, the Tree of Life shooting, J6, the 2022 Buffalo shooter, Jacksonville 2023, Allen, TX 2023, etc.
Nearly all political violence in the US is committed by people espousing right wing ideology, so if it walks and talks like a duck, is telling you it's a duck...
The moment trump was shot (or whatever ricocheted and hit his face) and the picture was taken of him with the flag, I knew he had the election won. There was just no way for an opponent to top that photo op.
There's no way Trump has the chutzpah to intentionally get shot and hit, no matter how many guarantees he has that it won't be fatal or long-term damaging.
I don't give a single fuck about the wellbeing of Crookes, which might be immoral, but I can tell you from the perspective of usefulness of the photo op, it doesn't appear your concern reached a position of influence.
How does that make it not a photo op? And why the hell didn't you just say who you were referring to since multiple died, rather than just saying ' a man' and then degrading yourself to name calling when I took a wrong guess at who you were referring to?
Please touch grass. I didnt pick for the guy to die, nor did I want this iconic photo op. I don't understand your beef with me and your little guessing game name-calling trap but I hope your day gets better.
Believe it or not 4 out of the last 30 Presidents were assassinated, an additional 3 were shot, and a few more were shot at or otherwise survived attempts. There's a long history of political violence in the US (and the world). We've been in a bit of a lull of late but what we're experiencing today is not all that abnormal.
Yes - makes me think of the assassination of Shinzo Abe.
The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.
My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.
You might want to look into what happened in Japanese politics after the Abe assassination. Public opinion was not unfavorable to the plight and motivations of the attacker.
I just wanted to mention that. Recently I was wondering what was that even about, and I was surprised to read this on Wikipedia:
> Yamagami told investigators that he had shot Abe in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church (UC), a new religious movement to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002.
> The assassination brought scrutiny from Japanese society and media against the UC's alleged practice of pressuring believers into making exorbitant donations. Japanese dignitaries and legislators were forced to disclose their relationship with the UC, (...) the LDP announced that it would no longer have any relationship with the UC and its associated organisations, and would expel members who did not break ties with the group. (...) [The parliament] passed two bills to restrict the activities of religious organisations such as the UC and provide relief to victims.
> Abe's killing has been described as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in recent history due to the backlash against the UC that it provoked. The Economist remarked that "... Yamagami's political violence has proved stunningly effective ... Political violence seldom fulfills so many of its perpetrator's aims." Writing for The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth described Yamagami as "among the most successful assassins in history".
Risk mitigation; statistics and funnels. It's all just trying to reduce the likelihood and severity of bad outcomes, not preventing them altogether. Same story as seatbelts and stoplights.
No, they're the same thing from a risk management perspective. As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations. Seatbelts protect against genuine mistakes (by you or others), mechanical failures, road rage, etc.
There's a long funnel of all the things that could happen, probability of each, and total resulting probability. That's no different for being in a car wreck or being shot at.
Now, on a moral level, sure, malice is different from negligence is different from coincidence.
> As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations
The motivation is not the important part. Sentience is. This person is playing a chess match trying to defeat you.
Consider biology. Cancer is a hard problem to solve, but it's not scheming against you with an intelligence. What about someone in a lab engineering bioweapons?
It's only an accident when taken out of the bigger picture. There is a reason it's often called car collision (or similar nowadays): Because it's a statistical inevitability when taken in aggregate.
There are whole continents of countries showing how effective gun control is. At this point you've got to be ignoring it on purpose.
It's not some statistical difference between almost no violence and no violence. It's night and day. Orders of magnitude. Teens walking back from parties through the middle of the city at 1 am with their parents permission vs clan wars.
I don’t doubt you’ve heard someone argue that, but I never have. I’ve always heard it as a right to defense, generally as in a right to defend yourself from oppressive authorities. I never took that to mean assassinations as much as militia actions against militaries.
You can argue whether or not that is an effective approach to securing freedom, but that’s the argument I’m most familiar with.
The 2A people couch it in metaphor and implication, but "we need guns to stop tyranny" is fundamentally saying that tyrants ought be shot. We can argue whether the semantics of whether death in battle counts as murder, but I think that's just quibbling over the definition of "assassination".
More of a distinction without a difference. Once you get to that situation, you've legitimized murder; now we see what that looks like.
"Militia" action against "military"? Neither side will bother with the scruples of waiting for the enemy to put on a uniform and pick up a weapon. It will be death squads vs car bombs.
> And it has little to do with guns. If someone really wanted to get to the guy, one would.
Disclaimer that this is early and I may be wrong, but I read that he had a security detail (which seems rather likely). I doubt an attacker with a knife would have had success.
Obviously attacks happen even without guns. But it is harder to kill someone without a gun, and harder to kill multiple people or from a distance without one.
Guns aren't as generally useful as knives. So it makes little sense to have 1.2 guns per person, or really any private gun possession. The price of mass murders, shooter drills, and firearm accidents aren't worth what marginal benefits guns may bring.
I've tried to tease that apart and failed. All of the sites hosting statistics I could find count suicide and justifiable homicide as in self defense in the statistics as homicide. I wish I could find a trust worthy source that differentiates in a truly unbiased scientific manor.
Cross, I know we interacted before. I sincerely hope you do not advocate that ends justify the means. "The bourgeoisie" as you call them, will be fine ( more resources at their disposal to ensure that happens ). They always are fine. You know who actually does suffer? Regular people.
Regular people suffer no matter what the problem is, they have always been the front line to blunt the effects of economic, political, or military tolls. The whole reason people resort to political violence is to inflate a problem so large that not even the "bourgeoisie" can completely shield themselves from it. If someone feels they are suffering or dead without doing anything, then suffering or dieing from actually taking action against your perceived oppressors seems like a decent option.
> "The bourgeoisie" as you call them, will be fine
I meant the bourgeoisie as in the middle class. A lot of idiots think rolling out guillotines will hurt the rich and help the poor.
It won’t. It almost never has in the last millennium. If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
I actually wish that were the case.
The problem today is that we've scaled up the damage that a single attacker can do. I won't go too far into it, but think of it this way, what happens when someone wakes up to the fact that they can use autonomous ordinance (e.g. - Drones)?
We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious that it set us on a slippery slope.
> We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse
I remain a fan of bringing back the Athenian institution of ostracism. If more than a certain fraction of voters in an election write down the same person’s name, they’re banned from running for office or have to leave the country for N years. (And if they can’t or won’t do the latter, are placed under house arrest.)
I've always thought that the middle class were proles as well, or petit-bourgeoisie at best. I don't think you're wrong, but one thing that I've noticed in my time of thinking about and discussing societal problems in the US is that nothing ever really seems to help the poor anyway.
Hello. I witnessed racial and religious persecution.
I can tell you my stories. But I always wonder what is the alternative when someone like me is attacked? Should I give my left cheek? Should I attempt to be a pacifist?
People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged because they never have to witness someone’s head roll down. So they don’t know how it feels to be the receiving end of suffering.
<< People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged
I think you misunderstand the point. My argument is that each act of political violence ( especially on a national stage ) further degrades existing society. That ongoing degradation is a real problem and, yes, individual suffering is irrelevant to it, because, society is a greater good.
You may say those say it are privileged, but to that I say that I like having working society. It keeps being us civil. I like it to stay that way.
If you feel otherwise, please elaborate. It is possible, I am misunderstanding you.
Haitian Revolution comes to mind of "the bourgeoisie" that were actually in country, basically got slaughtered, at least the white ones. If you frame it to include the ones even higher up on French soil, maybe not though.
>If you work in tech, you’re part of the American bourgeoisie. If you have a college degree, you’re bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the middle class.
What does the middle class even mean nowadays?
By Marxist definition, the bourgeoisie are the business owners, the landlords. The class that owns the means of production. If you need a salary to survive, you're working class.
A lot of people in tech are salaried employees. They might have some money in investments, but not enough to live off of. Many tech workers are just highly compensated members of the working class.
I'm of the strong opinion that statism is the way of corrupting any ideological revolution. From communism, to democracy.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion as to why letting the status quo be is a good thing. The path society is on is clearly towards a cyberpunk distopia, than anything that would unburden and improve the human existance of the many.
In the USA: There are more suicides than murders every year. The ratio is typically 2:1. The "deaths due to gun violence" statistic includes suicides. It's not exactly that plain and simple either.
"Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. The availability of firearms has been linked to suicides in a number of peer-reviewed studies. In one such study, researchers examined the association between firearm availability and suicide while also accounting for the potential confounding influence of state-level suicidal behaviors (as measured by suicide attempts). Researchers found that higher rates of gun ownership were associated with increased suicide by firearm deaths, but not with other types of suicide. Taking a look at suicide deaths starting from the date of a handgun purchase and comparing them to people who did not purchase handguns, another study found that people who purchased handguns were more likely to die from suicide by firearm than those who did not--with men 8 times more likely and women 35 times more likely compared to non-owners."
It has been stated before, but perhaps we should only allow older people to have guns, probably 40ish. Of course that filters out all but one mass murders - Las Vegas (at least from brain memory).
I would think addressing the reasons people commit suicide leads to a better society. I would think that simply removing a popular tool for them only hides a symptom of a broader problem.
The other break in your statistic is people who own guns and commit suicide, and people who own guns and have a family member steal them to commit suicide. The later is far more common. Which suggests that part of the issue is unrestricted access to firearms by children in the home of a gun owning parent.
> I would think addressing the reasons people commit suicide leads to a better society.
Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
"The rate of non-firearm suicides is relatively stable across all groups, ranging from a low rate of 6.5 in states with the most firearm laws to a high of 6.9 in states with the lowest number of firearm laws. The absolute difference of 0.4 is statistically significant, but small. Non-firearm suicides remain relatively stable across groups, suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to get."
> Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
This is perhaps one of the worst ways of looking at it. People kill themselves slowly by many means, including alcoholism, smoking, risky activities (reckless driving, etc.). These are grouped broadly under the term "Deaths of Despair" (see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8221228/). It may be more informative to look at other countries, such as Russia, Norway and Finland, which have incredibly high rates of alocholism leading to a high rate of deaths of despair.
There are many ways to reliably kill yourself. Guns are just the quickest. A serious discussion on the topic cannot avoid this fact.
The faster the method, the less time there is to change your mind. An alcoholic can go to rehab. A smoker can take up vaping. The guy with a shotgun wound to the face… is in a spot of bother.
Yes but addressing it as far as "can go to rehab" misses the point: deaths from chronic fatty liver and its complications or lung cancer are dramatically elevated in these countries. It is quite literally "too late". The problem needs to be addressed much earlier.
I do but why is the argument you presented is about how guns are the cause of the deaths. The deaths of despair occur with or without firearms. The focus on the firearms par of "firearm suicides" does not reduce suicides.
Again, the statistics demonstrate that the non-gun suicide rates are about the same between highly and lightly regulated American states. That is a hard point to dodge.
With respect, I think you ignored the point I'm making for the sake of pushing an agenda. Suicides are deaths of despair. Whether someone ultimately kills themselves with a firearm or a needle is secondary to the policy goal: to attempt to make America better for people to not want to kill themselves (barring an inherent medical issue related to chemical imbalance causing depression).
Are those "suicides" in the classical sense? No. But they are deaths of despair, and from a public health and policy standpoint, must be approached in a manner similar to suicide.
I don't believe you have even attempted (or acknowledged) an opposing point exists on this topic. Your points amount to banal agenda pushing as opposed to seeking to understand the root causes of many challenges today. This is emblematic of (and partially why) there is such division in the USA today: a lack of willingness to study and understand societal problems, particularly those that are multifaceted and require broader reasoning about the topic.
guns are a very efficient tool for murder or suicide. They absolutely will increase the number of deaths due to their effectiveness. Whether that's worth the societal price is up to the people.
Sure but the people asking to track gun deaths properly are rebuffed by the people who want to keep guns, so even the guys who want to keep guns infer better stats will make them look worse.
So we can conclude that proliferation of guns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for excessive gun violence. Remove the necessary condition, remove the violence.
According to that Wikipedia link there are 1 million registered firearms in the USA and 400 million unregistered firearms. Could somebody explain these numbers, since they seem very odd?
I'm not sure how Wikipedia is distinguishing them but for the most part firearms do not have to be registered in the United States. Some states require firearms to be registered but most do not. Unregistered firearms can nonetheless be counted because they are inventoried and sold legally (firearms dealers must be licensed and regulated), even though the end purchaser is not registered anywhere.
Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.
Only a tiny minority of firearms need to be registered. My guess is that covers NFA weapons like machine-guns, which are uncommon. Virtually all typical firearms people own don't need to be registered.
No one really knows how many firearms there are in the US or who owns them. Just the fact that something like 15 million firearms are sold every year in the US gives a sense of the scale. The number of firearms in the US is staggering, no one knows the true number, and they have an indefinite lifespan if stored in halfway decent conditions.
Certain kinds of firearms are required to be registered, like machine guns, short barrel rifles, and short barrel shotguns.
Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.
Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.
This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).
I think most of us understand the why. That part is not exactly a secret. Naturally, it does not help that the why is a list of multiple factors playing into it and most pick the favorites and I am sure each power center will spin this to their particular benefit further polarizing society.
> Violence is very, very often the answer because power only understands greater power.
Unfortunately, power's usual counter-move to that "answer" is a vastly-more-violent rebuttal. With minimal concern for "collateral damage", or other euphemisms for innocents being maimed and killed at scale.
"The present-day concept of the relatively longer "week-end" first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century... In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a predecessor of today’s AFL-CIO, called for all workers to have eight-hour days by May 1, 1886, playing a crucial role in the push for a five-day workweek."
<< A reason that the left has been less violent is that there's a general ideological belief in taking on systems instead of people.
I think you are mistaken in thinking that 'left' ( quotation, because while I want to keep the identifier for clarity's sake, I think it does not properly reflect US political spectrum ) is not violent or that somehow their violence is lower in percentage.
The reason I am hesitatant to go for that discussion is because it has a good chance of derailing the conversation.
Can we just agree this is a bad thing for now instead?
<< This country has soundly rejected any form of sensible gun control.
Hmm. Do you know why? Having seen the basic pattern of action of anti-gun people, I have come to realization that nothing is ever enough. They will just keep pushing for more stuff regardless of 'wins' they score.
Granted, some of it is various organizations and they really don't want to say 'mission accomplished'. Still, my point remains. I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
> I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
How about, at the very least, making it mandatory to report firearm theft? IIRC currently only 15 states actually have such a requirement.
I'm not American and for a long time I could not understand why American fiction, be it books or movies, assumes guns are available even in a zombie apocalypse. That is until I learned the above fact.
The fact that one can steal a gun and have no one report that makes firearms essentially a natural resource in the US.
I think though joked about, one of the most telling things about the NRA is their absolute militancy about gun rights... when it suits them. As you pointed out.
And as also evidenced by things like "From my cold, dead hands! ... unless you're at an NRA convention, in which case please use these lockers or leave your gun at home, and walk through this metal detector, please."
I wonder if we ever get to the point I remember reading about in a novel ( AI initially based on emails ), where human population is gently nudged towards individuals that in aggregate benefit AI goals.
Sounds like you are referring to book 1 in a series, the book called "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer than It Appears" by William Hertling. I read 3-4 of those books, they were entertaining.
I did notice that my yahoo horoscopes have gotten oddly better and I have to wonder if someone did a little extra by ingesting cookies and so on when serving content.
FWIW, I just tried on chatgpt4o and the results were surpringly good ( in a sense, that I feel validated, it was somewhat surprising, and I want to return to use the system ).
I am sympathetic to this view even if I think it understates the value pets may bring. I do agree that people, as they tend to do, push the limits on what is socially acceptable to some silly degree, but, I also accept, that as long they don't hurt anyone in the process, it might be ok.
The issue is.. pets are still pets. And to your point, unbehaved dog can be dangerous to its immediate surrounding. I won't go into details, but our dog is very protective of our kid, so there are places I will not take it ( or at least not without precautions ).. and this is what I see less and less: responsible behavior.
But I will say this, dog was a great training for a kid, when it came for us, because we saw some very similar issues repeat themselves.
I avoided going into all the myriad of things that pets are good for because it’s not the point. I grew up with a small backyard graveyard of all the pets I’ve had over the years, some given some adopted some stray, so I’m very far from anti-pet.
What I’m really poking at here in the joke behind the rant sort of way is a suspicion, a conspiracy by nature to suppress our reproduction capabilities by slowly not only making us infertile in greater numbers, but steering us towards adopting pets instead of humans as a prank, to make us see the animals we are in an animal kingdom.
Interesting, I will admit that I missed that interpretation, but the coffee still didn't kick in yet. In that sense, it would be an interesting expansion on the jokes of Carlin ( how would planet deal with such unhealthy surface nuissance? ). I did internally chuckle so thank you for this morning smile.
And once there is a cottage industry in place and money is rolling, any attempt to adjust by privacy conscious portion of the population will be neutered or overruled by aggressive lobbying. And that is assuming the amoral entities having access to all that data won't attempt to use it to put a finger on a scale.
And the lobbying dollars will go twice as far because the existence of the industry benefits the government. Whereas a normal industry has to fight an uphill lobbying battle where the courts and enforcers and legislators extract the maximal pound of flesh at every step the government will bend over backward to make it go easy for the privacy invasion industry.
The only ways these status quos change is when people hate the industry so much that being in bed with it threatens the reelection of the politicians and the legitimacy of the institutions can the tide shift.
It's so clear to me now that it was foolish to go after the government for what was, at root, a problem emanating from private industry practices. That was unimaginably dumb. It's clear the issue was obviously the private industry practices the whole time. Those practices are what we should have been trying to stamp out from the start.
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