On the Nature of Things | Forum

Actually, guns don't kill people, postal workers do.

Point being that -- per some tweets by Iowahawk yesterday... Chicago, pop. 2.6 million. Houston, 2.1 million. Similar demographics. 2012 homicides: Chicago 487, Houston 215. 60 murders in Chicago 2012 were non-gun (stabbings, beatings, strangulation). Iowa, with 500k more people, had 46 total murder...

There's a pretty large racial discrepancy in there, too guys -- when looking at America as a whole.

Apparently guns "make" some more violent than others... anyone willing to touch than one?

Even just locking the classroom door seems like it would have gone a long ways.

And the sad fact is that individual weapons, be they sword and buckler or AR15s, can be put to good use or ill. Their efficacy depends more on the user and target than the items themselves. Of course this ballsack tard had a massive body count. He was killing kids. Again, could have done it with a ...

...Again, could have done it with a hammer. ..or chained the exits shut and set the place on fire. I know. He could have carted off those heavy petrol canisters into those classrooms while recess is in session(when no one will be looking!), then surreptiously shut down both ends of the exits to the...

Enki wrote:I feel like the internet deserves its own thread...

It's called "Twitter."

Demon of Undoing wrote:...Again, could have done it with a hammer.

..or chained the exits shut and set the place on fire.

DoD is right, U.S. attention spans are not up to the task of dealing with this issue. You cannot use broad public policy to stop random criminal acts by unhinged people -- show me where that's happened. (Short of going Singapore on our drug war.) Also, we don't have the time or money to either arm t...

You can't use broad public policy tools to control random acts by the insane/unhinged.

What would be the unintended consequences of banning semiauto weapons? What litigation/enforcement costs would arise from creating a black market that large? Why aren't the Norway shootings or Ft. Hood shootings a gun control issue? Agian, what pushes this sort of incident from gun control as the ca...

Wait, numerically speaking, if we banned cell phones, think of the lives we could save every year?

And, good lord, looking at the death rates from distracted drivers on their cell phones just now... FFS...


Let's invade Cellphonistan.

Seems a bit arbitrary, guys. We somehow want weed legal, but semiauto rifles illegal. How many people will drive impared (and kill/damage) this year? How many will die from gang violence? Within correctional facilities? Sounds like a bunch of bullshit hysterics in answer to a real tragedy among much...

JN: I hear you, but if you look at the Norway shooter, he actually tried to get his weapons illegally, then got them legally.

It just occurred to me: if the shooter was Muslim, this wouldn't be about gun control. At some (what?) point do acts like this jump to the "terrorism" meme?

New take on an old favorite:

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But any "conversation" is in purely secular terms -- like talking about "christian" fiat monetary policy, or using chaplains/counselors as a therapeutic adjunct to a Prozac regimen. There's simply no way to formulate the questions outside of the secular landscape. Or look at publ...

SciAm: Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy Really? How did the Scopes generation defeat the Nazis and put a man on the moon? This article puzzles me, in that America and the West in general have NEVER been more secular than they are at this moment. Run the clock back 50, 100, 150 years, a...

Hey you guys, if Romney got elected, dissent would become patriotic again!


Hmmmmmmm.....

NYC, NEVER EVER EVER HAD A STORM LIKE THIS EVER BEFORE EVER. This is same Earth we're both talking about, yes? The New England Hurricane of 1938 (or Great New England Hurricane, Yankee Clipper, Long Island Express, or simply the Great Hurricane) was the first major hurricane to strike New England s...

I dunno Tinker, NO could have used some better levees, pumps that didn't fail, blah, blah, blah.

Sounds a little like your subway system.

Oh, and Fukushima is still safer than producing the same energy with coal.

Enki wrote:
And how would you propose that NY prepare itself for 14 foot storm surges?...

How was NO supposed to have prepared?

And I am talking about the flooding [storm surge.] Maybe you're just skimming my posts.