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rosencrantz23:
Unfortunately, to the kind of people who ban books, shutting out unapproved ideas sounds like a really good ... well, idea.
Habemus plus vis computatoris quam Deus
Further ramblings of a Unix ronin
From rosencrantz23:
Unfortunately, to the kind of people who ban books, shutting out unapproved ideas sounds like a really good ... well, idea.
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My new job includes rolling out a literary pr0n imprint in NZ & Aus- both countries have state censorship of media, including traditional printed words.
Today at work I started researching the hurdles we will have to jump to print naughty novels.
I may actually meet the National Censor next week.
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If you look back through my journal, you'll find that I'm just as willing to call the Republicans on the carpet as the Democrats. There are certain areas in which I feel Democratic party policies are more harmful than Republican. (For instance, their pathological fixation on gun control, their willingness to forgive and overlook almost any misdeeds on the part of illegal immigrants, and their propensity for soak-the-rich taxation policies.) There are also areas in which I feel Republican parties are more harmful than Democratic. (For instance, their constant kowtowing to the right-to-lifers and the religious right in general, their insistence on giving corporations and the rich tax break after tax break, and their apparent idea that any domestic problem can be solved by starting a war somewhere.) And then there's areas where both are equally at fault. (Such as both of them trying to regulate every damned detail of our lives, their use of terrorism to excuse taking away ever more civil liberties, and the fact that both of them are determinedly spending America into bankruptcy and ballooning the Federal bureaucracy seemingly without limit.)
I'm not a Republican supporter. I'm an equal-opportunity critic. If you don't get it, you need to stop looking at it as a straight-line, two-choice, either-Republican-or-Democrat issue. Because I'm neither, and I'm just as willing to call either asshats. The Republicans' flavor of asshattery just seems to leave me a slightly better chance of someday being able to get our country back from our government ... and, honestly, right now, I consider Obama the scarier of the two Presidential candidates, and Biden DEFINITELY the scarier of the two VP candidates.
(Oh, quick footnote: The current Governor of New Hampshire is a Democrat by party affiliation. But I voted for him last election, and I'll vote for him again this time around. Because he's doing a good job. Heck, the man even appointed several libertarian folks - Free State Project folks - to a committee on reducing state government costs, because they're libertarian and he values their viewpoint.)
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I tend towards Libertarianism myself, and could support a Libertarian candidates for local office.
I find McCain/Palin much scarier than Obama/Biden, probably because I give different weight to different issues than you do.
Gun control just doesn't bother me. I learned how to shoot years ago, but haven't used a firearm in over two decades -- not for ideological reasons, just happenstance. Woof owns a handgun but I would have no idea how to load it and have never shot it. On the other hand, I've had a good friend commit suicide with her handgun. My uncle the cop, who has been shot at three times while on duty, is strongly in favor of making it more difficult for non-hunters to own firearms.
On the other hand, I have personally benefited from the right to obtain safe, legal abortion. I consider myself to be bisexual, with several bi and gay friends. I am viscerally afraid of someone in higher office who thinks he or she has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body. Palin and the religious right scare the heck out of me. McCain is 72 and not in the best of health -- if he's elected then Palin could end up being President!
Obama could be a hundred times worse than he is, and I'd still vote for him, to prevent that from happening.
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There are a few very basic truths about gun control, and this is one of them: You cannot significantly reduce violent crime by making it harder for the law-abiding to own weapons. All that does is make violent crime safer for the criminals, who aren't afraid of obtaining weapons illegally (and very frequently already do so).
Funny you should mention that.
You see, in the interview she and John McCain just did with Katie Couric (transcript here (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/eveningnews/main4490788.shtml)), Palin specifically said, several times, that she didn't consider sexual preference any of her business, that she was not going to judge anyone for their sexual preference and didn't think America should do so, and — although Katie Couric tried several times to trap her into saying so — flatly would not say, or let Couric trick her into saying, that she thought abortion should be illegal. Yes, she has strong pro-life opinions, and wants to see less abortions, and she did say she would not use the morning-after pill herself; but she would not let Couric put those words into her mouth. In fact, she said the opposite, "I don't think that it should necessarily be illegal."
(Keep in mind that, as she's repeatedly said throughout that interview, "The Vice President does not make law", and so she can't come straight out and say "Abortion will not be made illegal", because it's not up to her. The statement she did make is probably about as strong a statement as she can get away without making without incurring the ire of the religious right, and the political reality is that she can't do that.)
So, don't be too quick to judge her on that issue.
Yes, I disagree with her on her pro-life opinions too. But she has a right to hold them, and she has repeatedly said in various places that she doesn't believe in forcing her personal opinions on anyone else.
Then the Democratic Party's fear campaign is working, isn't it?
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That's like asking "if you have to have a license to drive a car, how can you ever become a driver?"
First pass background check, then pass a firearms and hunting safety course, then take out a license -- THEN purchase a deer rifle or a shotgun.
Cops are very, very well-trained in the use of handguns for self-defense and for public defense. And yet, even these very well-trained professionals cannot usually respond quickly enough when a criminal is the first to pull a weapon. They depend on armed backup more than on their personal weapons. (I should get my Uncle David an LJ account so he can explain it to you; he's the one who's very adamant on the subject, I myself don't have the numbers, cites, and arguments at my fingertips.)
What I do know is that most firearms deaths are suicides. More people kill or seriously injure themselves with their own guns than ever use firearms in self-defense -- and it's not just a simple majority, either.
When you look at what happens to crime statistics and death rates in states that institute handgun waiting periods, you find that the crime rate is not affected one way or the other. However, the suicide rate goes down. Despondent people have the time to find hope; people in terrible pain have the time to get medical treatment.
INFERNAL 4300-CHAR LIMIT!
England is an excellent example of exactly the licensing model you describe. Over the years since about 1930, the bar for obtaining the required license (referred to as a firearms certificate) was raised ever higher, the restrictions on it made ever tighter, and the number and types of firearms available for public possession made ever less. Today, the UK is to all practical purposes free of legally owned private guns outside of the aristocracy. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to look up the violent crime (and gun crime) rates in the UK over, say, the last 30 years and judge for yourself how well it's worked.
(Violent crime is now so out of control, even after banning public possession of knives as well — even a utility knife needed for your job — that they're now trying to ban even owning any knife with a point, even by — for example — professional chefs.)
In any case, the hunting argument is a straw-man. The Second Amendment is not, and never has been, about hunting.
Fine; that's his feeling. I know plenty of officers who'd disagree with him. But by that argument, we should ban private ownership of cars capable of exceeding the speed limit, because a police officer - very well trained in high-speed driving techniques - cannot respond quickly enough to prevent speeding (or accidents, for that matter).
Only about 0.03% of firearms will EVER be used to commit a crime. Any time you start restricting 99.97% of anything to prevent the illegal 0.03%, you are inarguably throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Re: INFERNAL 4300-CHAR LIMIT! (Part 2)
Actually, yes, it is. There are about 20,000 firearm suicides in a typical recent year, out of 34,000 or so total firearms deaths. That's about 58.8%. That fails to meet the criterion for even a three-fifths supermajority (let alone two thirds or three quarters).
The first half of your statement is also false, but it's a falsehood widely promoted by the gun control lobby. Studies indicate that there are more than two million defensive uses of firearms every year in the US. (About one every thirteen seconds - and that is using very conservative methodology. Other studies have yielded numbers as high as 4.7 million.) In more than 90% of these, no shots are ever fired; the attacker turns tail as soon as the intended victims shows that he or she is armed, even though in 83.5% of defensive gun uses, the attacker is the first to use or threaten force. Less than 1% involve the intended victim shooting and killing the attacker. But gun control advocates count only that 1% when comparing to suicide rates. It's a classic example of lying by telling only part of the truth.
Find some actual stats here. (http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm) A telling quote:
And here's some more:
Another Department of Justice study found that that resisting assault using a firearm resulted in the lowest likelihood of injury or death, followed by resisting with a knife or blunt weapon, resisting with bare hands, and worst of all, by offering no resistance at all.
Untrue again, sorry.
California makes an excellent test case for this, because California initially introduced a three-day waiting period, then increased it in successive steps up to an eventual fifteen days. Each increase was followed by a sharp increase in violent crime, which then leveled off at the new higher level until the next increase in the waiting period, after which it rose sharply again.
In short, you have been badly misinformed.
Re: INFERNAL 4300-CHAR LIMIT! (Part 2)
The fact sheet itself is internally inconsistent, first claiming 2.5 million self-defense uses every year in America, then claiming half a million self-defense uses. Even half a million would mean that of the approximately 52 million gun owners in the US (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gun_owners_are_there_in_the_United_States_of_America), close to one tenth of them uses their firearm in self-defense each year. That's a heck of a lot! (Of course, it could be that a much smaller percent use their firearms in self-defense much more frequently.)
I know that of people I personally know, I know of no times in which a firearm was used by a private citizen in self-defense. I do know of one time in which one was brandished effectively. My father's first job out of the service was to manage a warehouse in rural Kentucky. There was an unloaded shotgun on display hooks over the desk. (It had been there when he took the job, and he just left it there.)
Edited to add: Someone tried to break into the warehouse one weekend, when Dad happened to be alone in the office. The office overlooked the loading dock, where some guy was trying to force open a door.
My Dad grabbed the shotgun, opened the window, and hollered at the man that he had been a marksman in the Army (this was true) and that he would give him about five seconds to clear off.
The would-be burglar took less than five seconds to run away, and they weren't troubled again for the 18 months or so Dad worked there.
I have no problem with keeping shotguns in places of business or in homes, for self-defense of that sort. But that is the only time, to my knowledge, that any family member or friend that I've met in RL has ever used a firearm in any way in self-defense.
Re: INFERNAL 4300-CHAR LIMIT! (Part 2)
If you follow the footnotes, those two cites are referencing numbers from two different studies. The smaller figure is from 1993, the larger from 1995, presumably after a larger-scale and more rigorous study.
I know of several among my circle of personal acquaintances. For just one example, my first wife,
That's a perfectly legitimate defensive use. A defensive use doesn't necessarily require either killing an attacker, nor actually firing a shot at all. If merely brandishing the gun, or even just showing that you're armed, is enough to scare off the goblin, your weapon has done its job. Most of those of us why carry by habit sincerely hope we never have to shoot anyone; we're just prepared to do so if we should ever find ourselves with no acceptable alternative.
Re: INFERNAL 4300-CHAR LIMIT! (Part 2)
On the other hand, I know several people who have been hurt by firearms. My close friend Eden committed suicide with the handgun she'd legally acquired (but never used) for self-defense. My sister-in-law was shot and wounded by her ex-husband, with the handgun he'd legally acquired (but never used) for self-defense.
This is not counting my Uncle David, shot at and wounded several times while on duty as a police officer -- once by an angry man brandishing his legally-owned handgun during a domestic violence call, once in the foot by a drunk driver with a perfectly law-abiding record who didn't want to give up his concealed carry handgun when arrested for DUI, and once (not wounded but shot at) during a raid on a drug house.
I've been a crime victim -- my car's been stolen, my apartment burglared, my wallet lifted -- but never when I was there to prevent it even if I had been armed. There have been a couple of times when I've felt like someone was "approaching with fairly evident nefarious intent". I've managed to avoid trouble without showing a weapon, by retreating to a well-lit place with other people, or by quickly locking my car door and driving off, or by just looking fiercely self-confident. Maybe if I'd been carrying, I would have shown my gun -- and then I too might have said that by showing that I was armed, I'd discouraged the potential bad guy, even though, it turns out, being armed wasn't necessary after all.
If I saw a neighbor being dragged across the lawn by her hair, I'd call 911 and start screaming at the "miscreant". (Bet you dollars to doughnuts it was a domestic violence incident, wasn't it? A former partner, perhaps?)
dammit, I have to split this again ...
I'm sorry to hear about those. But (I hope this doesn't sound insensitive) my grandfather on my father's side cut his throat with a straight razor, and he's no less dead for not using a gun.
There's this about suicides: As a rule, most of the people who commit suicide with a gun are the really determined ones who, in the absence of a gun, are going to find some other highly lethal means. People who are desperate for help or attention, and don't really want to actually die, tend to do things like slit their wrists shallowly or the wrong way (or both), or take drug overdoses, or swallow rat poison or drink pesticide. Sometimes they get it wrong and die anyway. Out of those, the lucky ones are the overdoses, because they usually go peacefully with no pain. The ones who choose rat poison or pesticide frequently die in unspeakable agony.
Now, this is a philosophical position that you may not share: I personally feel that if someone is so deeply miserable and hates their life so much that they just want it to end quickly and cleanly, NOW, who are we to deny them? It's their life, and we should consider it theirs to end at a time and in a manner of their choosing if they so choose.
One thing the gun-control lobby likes to quote is what's become known as the Kellerman factoid, which states that "A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used against a family member than to prevent a crime." Dr. Arthur Kellerman based this on a study of a thousand homes in and around Atlanta, Georgia.
There's three major problems with it, though.
First, Kellerman got his math wrong. When confronted with the corrected math that showed only a 2.3:1 factor supported by his data, Kellerman conceded that the 2.3 factor was correct ... but both he and the gun control lobby continued to cite the known and admitted incorrect 43:1 number.
Second, even while touting the 43:1 number, Kellerman admitted in a radio interview that if his own wife were to be attacked, he'd want her to have a gun to protect herself.
And third, Kellerman got his data not from a thousand normal households, but from a thousand households specifically selected for having the highest levels of domestic violence in the area, because the study he drew his numbers from was about domestic violence. But the datum was so attractive, given his anti-guns-for-other-people viewpoint, that he took it and promoted it out of context anyway.
Nevertheless, the fact remains, sometimes guns — like any other implement — will be used to hurt or kill those close to us. On the average, the odds are agsinst it. I'm sorry your friends and family seem to have gotten the short end of the odds.
As for your Uncle David, I'm sorry to have to say this, but he knew — or should have known — up front what he was getting into when he chose to become a police officer. If he thinks it's too dangerous now, and thinks that means everyone's Constitutional rights should be restricted in order to make it safer, then just maybe he might be in the wrong line of work.
Re: dammit, I have to split this again ...
She had a sudden and severe psychotic break. She left a long, sad, rambling note explaining that she had suddenly realized that aliens were trying to take over her body in order to control the earth. She decided that the only way to save mankind, her family and everyone she loved, was to destroy herself so that the aliens could not enslave us all. She acted with great courage and sorrow, because she hated to die.
I feel so proud of her incredible self-sacrifice, and so intensely sad and angry that it was completely unnecessary. If she had used a less-lethal means of trying to commit suicide than shooting herself in the temple, she might have been hospitalized and treated and be alive today.
Many times depressed people have passing moments of intensely suicidal feelings. If they have access to a firearm, they are likely to "successfully" kill themselves. If they only have access to less-lethal means of suicide, they are more likely to survive the attempt and to get treatment for their depression.
I agree that if someone in basically sound mind should have the right to commit suicide, perhaps because they are terminally ill, or in the very early stages of irreversible dementia, or in severe and untreatable pain, or out of deep guilt for a crime committed, or for whatever "sane" reason they may have. But most psychiatric illnesses are treatable; most moments of suicidal ideation do pass; and most people who survive a suicide attempt are ultimately grateful that they did survive.
Re: dammit, I have to split this again ...
It's particularly rough when things go that way, and you KNOW the person wasn't thinking rationally at the time....
Re: dammit, I have to split this again ...
I do know that most homicides by whatever means are committed by people the victim knows. Relatives and partners (including former partners) are much, much more dangerous than random criminal punks. Domestic violence calls are the most dangerous ones for police, as well. On the average, you are more likely to be assaulted, injured, even killed by a partner or former partner than to be a victim of a street crime.
Firearms are more lethal than knives, fists, baseball bats, hot irons, frozen chickens, or any of the other things family members may attack each other with. Not that these other things can't be lethal, just that firearms are more likely to be.
Firearms are not terribly useful for self-defense in a domestic violence situation. Either both partners are insanely angry and not likely to use the gun wisely or to back off when a gun is brandished... or one partner is sane and miserable, and not likely to want to shoot the insanely angry partner because, y'know, being sane and miserable, s/he doesn't really want to kill this person s/he once loved....
Yeah, David knew what he was getting into. He's retired now. Forty years of dealing with the worst of the public he has sworn to protect has made him cynical. He has a acquired a fairly low opinion of the intelligence, competence, and maturity of the general public, I'm afraid.
Re: dammit, I have to split this again ...
(Part 2 again)
Absolutely nothing wrong with those (though the third is risky; glad it worked out for you). Avoiding trouble is better than repelling it. The absolute best way not to get hurt in a trouble situation is to never get into it in the first place.
Sometimes, though, trouble comes to you — or to a neighbor.
Sorry, but if what her attacker had done was drag her into the alley he was dragging her towards and stab her, slit her throat, or bash her head in with a hammer or a brick, it would probably have been little consolation to her next of kin that someone had dialed 911. The average time for police to respond to a 911 call is over twenty minutes. She could have been dead in two.
The police do not, and cannot, prevent crimes. They don't have the power, and it's not their job. The Supreme Court has ruled they cannot be held responsible for failing to do so. Trust me, you don't want there to be enough police with enough powers to prevent crimes. Their job is to investigate crimes, find and arrest the guilty, provide evidence for a court to convict the guilty, and see that the worst of the mess gets cleaned up when necessary.
They can't protect you. That's your responsibility. Even if you have a specific and tangible threat from someone, they really can't do much of anything until he actually commits a crime.
Very former, with a restraining order that was the most the police could give her, and which didn't slow him down for a moment.
Re: (Part 2 again)
But, sure, the police can't prevent crimes. When my sister-in-law was shot, she was confronted in the parking lot of her apartment complex by her ex-husband. The guy was angry because he'd heard that she was remarrying, and he "just wanted to talk". He showed his gun to persuade her to come talk with him. Pegi screamed for help, neighbors called 911, and a police officer arrived very quickly. (The ex was still trying to drag her into his car at gunpoint to "talk".) The police officer, drawing his own weapon, commanded the ex to drop his. Seeing the police officer's weapon didn't prevent the ex from shooting Pegi. He shot Pegi in the side at close range, and the police officer then emptied his magazine into the ex. The ex was killed, but he had managed to seriously hurt her anyway. (Fortunately no major organs were damaged. The bullet passed through her arm and both breasts. She lost a lot of blood, and ended up not being able to nurse my nephew when he was born.)
Re: (Part 2 again)
(Counter-example: The one time I ever had to call the police, in Spokane Washington, it took two calls and 45 minutes for an officer to arrive. Spokane PD, among others, will no longer even investigate property crimes. They say it's because they're too overloaded. Ask most people in Spokane and they'll tell you it's because too many of them are posted on traffic enforcement.)
Re: (Part 2 again)
St Louis PD has been uneven on that score. When my car was stolen, they didn't bother to investigate at all. But when someone broke into our garage and stole $200 worth of power tools, two officers arrived about ten minutes after we called.
But when an inebriated neighbor punctuated a barbecue party this past summer by shooting into the air, three squad cars showed up literally moments later.
Re: (Part 2 again)
Fortunately, that time it turned out to be a backfiring truck.
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I don't trust her one bit. The religious right wants to take away my rights to control my own life, my rights to have the liberty to act as I please and to pursue happiness as I please. The Republican party has made a deal with the devil in supporting the religious right, and I want to keep them as far away from the White House as I can.
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You're free not to trust her, though. Just as I'm free not to trust Obama further than the Secret Service would let me throw him by the lapels of his suit.
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I do see (in the transcript) that she often repeats the exact same phrases, which seems to me to indicate that she was well-prepped. (The Ledbetter act "would be a boon to trial lawyers", for example, in addition to "I am one to seek a culture of life".)
But, no, I don't trust her at all. She's an ambitious Bible-thumping beauty pageant queen, and I do NOT want to take the chance on her running this country.
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Yeah, I'd have liked to see her enlarge upon that statement a bit myself. Not that she got a lot of opportunity. I don't personally know anything about the Act.