Re: Google Groups

Jan 29, 2024 Last reply: 2 years ago 160 Replies

I assume you refer to the "defunding of the police"? That this could happen at all is just another indication that the basic structures of governance are badly organised where you are. Here, there is complete separation between the police (paid for by a local tax but organised much more nationally) and local government. This also applies to traffic enforcement, so that traffic fines accrue to the state, not local government. I observed this at first hand when I had a speeding ticket in California. I went to traffic school and at the close of the session, a little old lady asked whether quotas existed. The convenor (an off-duty San Francisco cop), eventually said "Yes, but no one would ever admit that publicly."

What this refers to (I eventually discovered) is that if the city runs low on funds, the Mayor tells the police chief about it, and the traffic cops get told to go out and not come back without (say) three sitter and four movers. Meaning that, as a way for the city to raise some funds, they book people for trivial infringements that would otherwise have been overlooked. This smells like legalised banditry to me.

It comes down to structures, and you folk need to realise this.

It is extremely difficult to 'plug someone from a distance' with a handgun.

Even I, who have never fired one, know that. That's why we have rifles, which I have fired.

In fact many fatalities are from handguns rounds that hit entirely the wrong person altogether, by sheer chance.

There was a story I saw re-enacted on TV, where a friendly barbecue was having fun shooting at water melons on poles. Then the wife was invited to 'have a go'. Being short, she had to shoot *upwards*, and the round travelled several blocks and killed someone in their garden.

She could never have done that by aiming at them.

I think the effective accurate range of a handgun is probably little more than 5 meters, and in the hands of the average person, not even that.

No, its an opinion framed by reading/listening to them.

There is an apocryphal statement allegedly made by I think Mark Twain, more or less along the lines that :

"One can rely on the accuracy of newspapers except in a subject one has direct and comprehensive knowledge of".

Sadly I found this to be completely true.

Which is why I read the Daily Express, No one believes for an instant that it is actually telling the truth.

If there is a story that looks interesting I research it elsewhere...

No it's just difficult to plug the person you're aiming at. Hitting a bystander is a matter of probability depending on the density of bystanders and the distance the bullet flies. Close your eyes and fire randomly on a busy street and you'll likely hit someone well before the clip empties. (please do not try this experiment).

Precisely, whereas accidentally knifing the wrong person is extremely rare. If somebody wants to murder someone else badly enough they will find a way, I would prefer that the method they find isn't one that leads to killing the wrong person by accident.

Accidental killing and mass/random shootings are the most unacceptable aspects of guns[1] and they are far more common in the US than anywhere else.

[1] No other weapon lends itself to them so well. Bows come a distant second.

No, though that doesn't help either. Both have blatantly unconstitutional gun-control regimes in place...the sort of laws that the hoplophobes assert without evidence would reduce crime. (DC v. Heller rolled back some of this nonsense.)

I usually set up man-sized silhouette targets 7-10 yards out when shooting handguns. It's not that difficult to keep most of your hits within the silhouette, even though I don't practice nearly as much as I should.

A bit more pessimistic opinion of the press is put forth by Michael Crichton:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

YOU practice. How many street gang members bother to do that? They just wave them 'in the general direction' and loose off a penis-enlarging series of shots..

YOU are interested in guns for sporting use, YOU take care of your guns, YOU practice to know how to use them.

YOU are not the person who is going to do a drive by shooting from a moving car...

Does that mean you have actually researched Elon Musk? Or are you relying on other second-hand accounts of him, that you, for some reason, deem more reliable than these?

It worked in Australia. The secret is, it’s not enough to outlaw the assault-style weapons, you also need to have a buyback scheme to force them out of circulation.

The result is the mass killings dropped away from one a year to less than one a decade. That’s a pretty good improvement, don’t you think?

I should have added that I strongly disagree with him on CO2.

Bob.

Re: Re: Google Groups By: TimS to All on Mon Feb 12 2024 07:10 pm

The cool thing about having to justify having things is that, fundamentally, people does not need much.

You could keep a guy trapped in a hole and feed him with a nasograstric tube, and if he asked for anything we could deny it to him based on the assumption he already has everything he needs in the hole you provided to him.

"Buybacks" are nothing of the sort. The government can't "buy back" that which it never owned. Be honest and call it what it is: confiscation, usually at nowhere near what the firearms involved are worth.

We don't actually give a flying f*ck about that. There was never any justification for these weapons to be in private hands anyway.

As you can't own them any more and you can't export them, their value is only a fraction of what they cost originally. Basic market supply economics.

Questionable justification for them to be in any hands IMHO.

They need the freedom to not have to worry about buying bulletproof backpacks for their kids to try to ensure they survive their school years.

And yet when I give you information about that, you somehow disbelieve it.

This is why we have things like “checks and balances” and “rule of law”, to govern how we live together with others who may disagree with us, in peace.

Online misinformation is a whole new can of worms.

Well no, confiscation is generally free of any cash reward.

'Compulsory Purchase' is the more commonly used euphemism.

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required