Red_Dragon wrote:
 

Can we just rename this thread 'just another day' and include some happy news now and then. I mean it's already pretty much accepted that there will be a shooting a few times a week now right?

Yee Haw!

gun violence archive

The mass shootings at school by males is well correlated with the mind meds giving to adolescents like candy.   These drugs cut out of empathy neurons in the brain then combine with "social" media that alienates and you get the result.  Most mind problems are due to nutrient deficiencies, most importantly Vitamin D and Omega-3.   And of course the criminal always looks for the weak target.   Don't be that.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

He took a lot of precautions in that regard.

Carrying a backpack rigged out to look like a suicide bomb, hacking one theater patron with a hatchet, spraying several with pepper spray, and brandishing what looked like a gun. How do you think the British police would have responded to that?

I saw the same video. There were two cops and one bad guy, and he did manage to get one of them with that knife, "inches from his neck" according to the cnn report.

That we have a subdued bad guy and not an officer bled to death in that courtyard is in large measure dumb luck. He would have been perfectly justified in shooting the bad guy, had he been able.

I don't know the bad guy's mental state. Would the encounter have ended peacefully—would he have surrendered—if he were threatened with deadly force if he attacked with that knife? We'll never know. I'm glad nobody died, but I'm also glad I'm not a British cop.

 DaveInVA wrote: 
Indeed.

Watched a video a day or two ago of cops in England subduing a very aggressive man armed with a knife. The cops had no guns, only pepper spray. No one got hurt and they arrested him. Here, people are confident enough in the likelihood of cops shooting them if they appear the least bit belligerent that it's actually a viable option for offing themselves.

Man armed with hatchet, pepper spray and airsoft gun killed by police at Tenn. theater

As if I needed another excuse not to go to the movie theater; this shit is becoming WAY too much of a thing.

Details Emerge on Sandy Hook Shooting, Items Found in Lanza Rooms

Kerry signs U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, says won't harm U.S. rights

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States signed a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty regulating the $70 billion global trade in conventional arms on Wednesday and the Obama administration sought to allay the fears of the powerful U.S. gun lobby which says the pact will violate the constitutional rights of Americans.

The treaty, which relates only to cross-border trade and aims to keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers and criminals, still requires ratification by the U.S. Senate and has been attacked by the influential gun rights group the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Among the NRA arguments against the treaty are that it undermines American sovereignty and that it disregards the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to bear arms.

The United States, the world's No. 1 arms exporter, became the 91st country to sign when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put pen to paper on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

"It's significant that the United States, which amounts for about 80 percent of the world's export in arms, has signed," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told a news conference. (...)

O Canada?

 RichardPrins wrote:
 

True, I also think it is incredibly hypocritical for the US or any other nation to try to disarm WMDs in the manner they are attempting without including Israel and any other country friend or foe that houses chemical and biological weapons.  And regarding nuclear, it does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that the only thing standing between US invasion in countries that have conflicts with the US is nuclear capability, past has proven that.  If I were Iran, I would be working overtime to become a nuclear nation which is what they are doing to be sure.

 sirdroseph wrote:
I think that's the gist, however there are always practical problems, for instance when you say no country or entity should be arming (...). Arming another sovereign nation usually just involves commerce (or in some other cases ideological sponsorship/subsidy). And despite grandiose claims to the contrary, very little ethics appears to be involved.

Disarming is an even more complex issue (which of course also includes WMDs).

 kurtster wrote: 
That talks about 2010, not the period of '68-Now, which were the statistics in question.

And no, I don't follow every link that's in an article, especially when it appears as not directly relevant (to the overall statistics). Your link in question (above) leads to the stats of terrorism (and compared to the insane amount of resources spent) which is a familiar (risk) argument that has been used by skeptics of GWOT since 2001.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Should the US intervene in the Syrian or any other Civil War? A simple no will suffice. I am consistent in my position. No country or entity should be arming or disarming another sovereign nation and certainly not its citizens. I think to hold that position and to be against military intervention by the US is quite hypocritical.

 RichardPrins wrote:
.
From the article you posted ...

One more figure. There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

Going to the link in the paragraph above from the article led me to this ...

As with the Boston killings, each of these murders robbed a person of his or her life and left a family devastated. But compared to other types of violent deaths, the numbers are small. In 2010, to take a year at random, there were 11,078 firearm homicides in the United States, and 19,392 firearm suicides. In the same year, there were 544 homicides by suffocation and 89 by fire, plus 79 intentional poisonings and 52 intentional drownings. Statistically speaking, people in American had a higher chance of being killed by malaria than by terrorists. (These figures come from the Centers for Disease Control.)

That is the basis for my ratio of 2:1 and the rest of my calculations.  I used your article and followed the links provided within the article for the article's conclusions of saying that the number of deaths in the US over the period in question warranted the conclusion of saying the number of gun deaths warranted a comparison to the number of deaths in a civil war of some sort and a travel warning as seen above.

Just using the facts you provided.

I'm done for the night.  Later ...

 kurtster wrote:
I don't see any links to those exact statistics (or for that matter to your particular claim on ratios), so I don't know whether they are true or not.

Neither.

 RichardPrins wrote:
On the bolded we clearly disagree and your (reference) article is the type of language used within the SAT.  The SAT if the US ratified it would allow the UN to come in immediately and put Chicago under UN imposed matial law.  Read it.  Its very explicit.

I edited my reply and did answer your question while you were composing the above.

So answer my question regarding my analysis of the stats in the article you posted.
 
Are you trying to turn a sentiment with deliberate dishonesty or did you fail to read your own reference source all the way through ?

 kurtster wrote:
My (unanswered) question was obviously about your false assertion of my position. The rest is the usual UN paranoia, which has been amply addressed in the past.

 RichardPrins wrote: 

I was concluding based upon the articles you have posted over the years.  Its as simple as that.  Its hard to tell where you personally stand on many things.

 kurtster wrote: 
Yes.