


RE: Australia News
If you look just at the numbers on their own, they are going to look high compared to these smaller countries. but you would have to divide it by 6.5 roughly to compare it to UK, and by maybe 14 or so to compare to Australia.
My other point is that this is mainly a regional issue. We do not have school shootings in my state. In fact, we basically don't have any shootings at all in my state, except for the deer that I was helping my brother track yesterday. And he shot it with a bow. He is a Marine though and has plenty of guns to go with his religion. Our state has some of the least restrictive gun laws, but no one gets shot. Unlike Ohio.
RE: Australia News
Several things I can't let pass, Harambe.
The points I made about gun violence, and how the proliferation of weapons in the US only enhances the "freedom" of criminals, and not peaceful citizens, were directed at Lancellot, who in this thread followed his usual pattern of suggesting that anyone who isn't from his country doesn't know what freedom is. I've given several examples of what I consider freedom to be; maybe you or Lancellot could provide us with your definition of the word?
If you have a bunch of militant thugs wandering around giving nazi salutes and intimidating innocent passers-by with their hateful rhetoric, who are you going to boycott to deal with it? Manufacturers of swastika flags, maybe?
Other causes may account for more deaths than guns. That doesn't negate the fact that 30-40 thousand Americans every year die at the point of a gun. This figure is 10-50 times more per capita than any similarly developed nation.
"SCOTUS hasn't let Trump get away with much of anything. They are not ruling on a person, but on a principle of the law." LOL
And lastly,
"If you look just at the numbers on their own, they are going to look high compared to these smaller countries. but you would have to divide it by 6.5 roughly to compare it to UK, and by maybe 14 or so to compare to Australia."
The division has already been done. The numbers I quoted previously are already on a per capita basis. Surely I don't need to explain what that means? Yes, the difference is that stark and horrendous.
We still have no answer to the question I asked in my very first response to Lancellot's post where he presented the video of a slightly unbalanced 80-something year old. I don't get what point he was attempting to make by posting the video. I'm not being disingenuous, I'm just baffled. Maybe you can suggest what point was being made?

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RE: Australia News
The point of the video was in how our law is vs the law in Victoria. Both, that old lady (who ever said she was mentally il. Shame on you.) and the two female victims, is that each had freedom of speech and expression. What that old lady was offended by and thought was racist, despite her own racism, that she clearly didn't see, both were allowed under our laws.
The crime 'only' came in, when the old former teacher, put her hands (action) onto another. That triggered the police and her motivation for doing such, brown women supporting Trump, triggered the hate crime enhancement.
RE: Australia News
I said she was slightly unbalanced, because normal people don't go around assaulting others.
RE: Australia News
CD, ok I think there are two points relevant for me to respond to here. I am free speech absolutist, because there is a time and place to say anything and everything. You already knew that.
>> If you have a bunch of militant thugs wandering around giving nazi salutes and intimidating innocent passers-by with their hateful rhetoric, who are you going to boycott to deal with it? Manufacturers of swastika flags, maybe? <<
There are a lot of creative ways to punish people without legislation. My entire writing portfolio is full of contest entries mocking my enemies. You can find out where they work and poop on their car. You can hire a prostitute to proposition them in public. You can leave a tragic story of how they mistreated you in a Yelp, Google or Facebook review of their business. (Going after their customers is a biggie). You can write a newspaper article. You can carve their name and number into a Ferrari, and leave notes in gay bar bathroom stalls of "for a good time, call [their number]." You can donate to all their enemies in their name. You can report a crime at their house. If you need more ideas for how to ruin someone who is considered to be an upstanding member of their community, just watch Better Call Saul. More elaborate schemes are needed if they have a sterling reputation. Leave the swastika flag manufacturers out of it though. They are needed for theater production.
RE: Australia News
Re: gun deaths, let's leave suicide out of it. Cut the numbers in half. They are still too high, I agree, but I'm more interested in solving the drug OD death issue first because that problem is five times bigger.
RE: Australia News
Message edited:
I'm becoming convinced you REALLY don't understand the concept of "per capita", Harambe. Disregard suicides for the US, and you have to disregard them everywhere else. So, assuming the ratio of homicide to suicide is roughly constant across nations (which it is), you're still left with a 10:1 to 50:1 comparison. That should send shivers down your spine.
I think those who believe "liberty" is being able to carry an assault rifle (or any sort of gun) with you everywhere you go should be forced to confront the loved ones of victims of child shootings and explain why their dead children are simply collateral -- the price that must be paid for "freedom".

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RE: Australia News
Being able to carry a firearm, there is no such thing as an assault rifle, that's a made-up term, is not representative of liberty. It is representative of a Constitution Right in America.
I would have no problem explaining why I carry my 9MM when I leave the house, face-to-face with any parent or survivor of a school or mass shooting.
But having worked around murders, thieves, rapists and all kinds of evil SOBs, that would make most people run and hide, I would challenge those people or anyone here to spend a few minutes around those evil land-sharks, and then honestly say, "I see no reason to have a gun."
RE: Australia News
Lance is absolutely correct about the term "assault rifle". I think there are more useful things we could be talking about that affect a lot more lives, but I did not appreciate young thugs waving guns in my face in Cincinnati, and I’ve now left in no small part due to that, so I will humor this conversation.
The very reason I started out talking about aggregates rather than per capita is because we were talking about disproportional news coverage, which is incident-based rather than proportionate. I am quite confident in my gorilla math and rarely make mistakes. Let’s have a look at this research of CD's showing that homicides support suicides. Some quick cursory reading shows that this trend you are mentioning had some basis in Asia, but does not hold in the Americas. Australia's suicide rate lags only a little behind the US, and South Korea's is a fair bit higher, even though they don't allow guns.
The correlation is true for veterans though. Now, I would need to see specific data from the military to know for sure if those suicides are causal from violence experienced and meted out while in the military, or whether folks more likely to kill themselves in the first place were more likely to join the military, and whether the military increased or decreased the rates of suicide of that demographic X years after their period of service. I know anecdotally that a lot of vets want to blow their brains out becuase they have experienced recurring concussive injuries from roadside bombs, which were an insurgent weapon of choice against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a very general sense, it may be that our higher than normal mortality from guns is a cost that goes along with being the world’s premier superpower. That's not the ONLY reason of course (high rates of narcissism, frontier culture, 2nd amendment, drug trade, and Western film romanticism all contribute) and the usefulness of firearms training for protecting trade routes is fast becoming outmoded with drone and AI combat replacing grunts with guns.
I think CD was suggesting that our higher gun homicide rate increases our suicide rate, but if that were true, it would also support my point that someone who kills himself with a gun would have used another means to accomplish the same thing if he did not have a gun available.
Gun violence is not a problem where I live, and you can say whatever you like to folks in my state about their guns and they'll have no good reason to listen to you. Overall in America, gun homicides are responsible for less than 0.3% of our overall mortality. Heart attacks, cancer, substance abuse, and abortion kill WAY more people. For the amount of effort it takes, we could make more progress in any of these other areas with less political persuading and fewer resources. Let's talk about one of those other topics next.
RE: Australia News
Well, I'm certainly glad I have a couple of munitions experts on hand to set me straight. Otherwise, I might have believed Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, The Australian War Memorial, The New Zealand Defence Force, oh yes, and DARPA, plus dozens of other sites I could reference, that an assault rifle is an actual thing, and not a figment of my imagination.
I'll address a number of other points once I've had my swim and dinner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
https://www.britannica.com/technology/assault-rifle
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault%20rifle
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/REL22186
https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/nzdf/our-equipment/firepower/modular-assault-rifle-system-light-mars-l/
https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/agile-and-m16#


Martin Luther King Assassination
Part of the Catherine Remembers series
Part of the Catherine Remembers series
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