OT: Politics

[PBSteve]

That really is a bad one I do. I look at your sacred totems and I assume. My mistake. How about I say you lean Left? Have a prefered title? Socialist Democrat? Progressive?

Lean left, sure.

I am the idiot?

First: You live there. Not me. Huh. Haven't heard a gun shot yet, in 3 years. Shoot, we don't lock our doors and the neighbor leaves his garage open. (looks around the room, points to self, mouths "He thinks I am the idiot...")

So now not only are you going to armchair quarterback urban issues from (suburban?) white bread parts of texas, but you're going to armchair quarterback my life circumstances as well? Impressive.

Second: What gun laws are there in Compton? According to California, that is illegal!!. OMFG!!1! That cant happen, there is a law! How is it working out? Tough gun control laws are doing there thing.... oh wait, no. They are not. Maybe you should try more than, right? What is the definition of crazy? Ah, doing the same thing and expecting different results? You are making my point.

Third: You are one of the people dismissing my use of Chicago deaths in a graph. That seems a bit hypocritical... Take a moment. Just a bit. See, you are saying that it is normal, then getting pissed because I am ignoring it, when I brought up the fact that gang related crime is ignored.

I'm not dismissing anything about crime in cities. A graph comparing homicides in Chicago to service member casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan is, and will forever continue to be, incredibly stupid for reasons that have nothing to do with crime in the US.

Speaking of productive, the assumptions you make of what the GOP is doing and why? You seem almost...UFO pyramids and flat earth level of clueless. Aliens Meme guy gif goes right here, just...hold your hands apart a bit. Perfect.

Hrm, let's see..

*Holds hands apart*

How's this?

The War On Drugs.

Wow, thank you for opening my eyes, I had never heard that before. I mean, truly gripping stuff, you're blowing the doors off my preconceived notions and just might save the country single-handedly.

[ironyusa]

I think you've taken it too far, Steve. Disagreement is one thing but name calling is another. Perhaps taking a walk in that safe neighborhood of yours will calm your nerves.

Also, I probably hear as many gunshots as you. The difference, there's almost no crime in the area and those people are just target shooting in their back yards (20+ acre backyards). I could be wrong, but I think one of the main points Josh is trying to make is that there is little to no correlation in gun ownership density to gun related violent crime. That points to a more cultural issue as the underlying problem.

[pbjosh]

So now not only are you going to armchair quarterback urban issues from (suburban?) white bread parts of texas, but you're going to armchair quarterback my life circumstances as well? Impressive.

Ah, but look at your reply? Pot and kettle here man. You call me an idiot then talk about how violent your location is, that was a meat ball I couldn't not swing at. really, it would be a bigger insult to not call you out on it.

I live in Knoxville TN. I lived in Corpus Christi TX, over a decade in Bellingham WA (which means a lot of time in both Vancouver BC and Seattle, used to drive there just for dinner) and and originally from the country in Alaska, in the Kenai/Soldotna area. Which is too small to be considered suburbia - and my summers were spent here:



And Corpus isn't white bread - it is Way South, by the Rio Grande. Run down also. Whites make up less than 20% of the population in the area we were in, and for the most part you did run into fairly rampant racism (Don't go here after dark, because you are white. Don't come to this restaurant without me because they won't serve whites. Had to remove my kid from school because of how she was treated by the students and teachers.) Even our black friends said they hadn't dealt with it as bad living anywhere else in the South, so it wasn't just us. Shoot - it was kinda weird moving to TN and being around so many white people, and not having breakfast tacos in gas stations. Ha! And I lived in very liberal Bellingham, which makes a point to try and stay left of Seattle. Loved it there.

These:

Hrm, let's see..

*Holds hands apart*

How's this?

Is that it? Dude, that ain't nothing compared to ACORN or otherwise. Really, that is almost a non-point compared to the huge stupidity that the WoD is. And has a much smaller affect. Or even how much Soros spent trying to True the Vote? Just, try harder. Please. I want a better debate here man, I like my tea strong and dark, not weak like this.

Wow, thank you for opening my eyes, I had never heard that before. I mean, truly gripping stuff, you're blowing the doors off my preconceived notions and just might save the country single-handedly.

[pbjosh]

I could be wrong, but I think one of the main points Josh is trying to make is that there is little to no correlation in gun ownership density to gun related violent crime. That points to a more cultural issue as the underlying problem

Trying? Man, I used half a dozen different hammers to try and nail that down, and he got all bent out of shape because I used a wrench once also.

[PBSteve]

So how do we go about correcting this cultural issue?

[Unfated33]

My point was that it was multiple cultural issues that have solutions that do not necessarily overlap.

[Laku]

Trying? Man, I used half a dozen different hammers to try and nail that down, and he got all bent out of shape because I used a wrench once also.

There are contradicting studies to what you're trying to say.

These analyses do not support the hypothesis that
firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead,
this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership
are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent
crime

http://www.csus.edu/faculty/m/fred.m...nt%20crime.pdf

We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/



https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/f...uns-and-death/

[pbjosh]

So how do we go about correcting this cultural issue?

My point was that it was multiple cultural issues that have solutions that do not necessarily overlap.

First identify the problems. We can grab some big ones quick, but there will be variations and complications.

We have a drug problem. A gang problem. And an ignorance of firearms in training and related issue.

Suggested ways? Hmm... Normally I look at some of these.

The Drug problem.... I can't help but look at the Portugal Solution as a better way, and variant of that. It would reduce felons and our prison population. It would reduce the stigma of prison, which also feeds gangs and related 'street cred'.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-10301780.html

Drug use and drug deaths are complicated phenomena. They have many underlying causes. Portugal's low death rate can't be attributable solely to decriminalisation. As Dr. Joao Goulao, the architect of the country's decriminalization policy, has said, "it's very difficult to identify a causal link between decriminalisation by itself and the positive tendencies we have seen."

Still, it's very clear that decriminalisation hasn't had the severe consequences that its opponents predicted. As the Transform Drug Policy Institute says in its analysis of Portugal's drug laws, "The reality is that Portugal’s drug situation has improved significantly in several key areas. Most notably, HIV infections and drug-related deaths have decreased, while the dramatic rise in use feared by some has failed to materialise."

The Gang problem? A lot of that has to do with drugs, but also the large volume of single moms. I have seen the problem where, because of the way it is structured, welfare benefits mothers who are not in a relationship, hence penalizing young, less educated families.

http://www.heritage.org/welfare/repo...at-do-about-it.

A second major problem is that the means-tested welfare system actively penalizes low-income parents who do marry. All means-tested welfare programs are designed so that a family’s benefits are reduced as earnings rise. In practice, this means that, if a low-income single mother marries an employed father, her welfare benefits will generally be substantially reduced. The mother can maximize welfare by remaining unmarried and keeping the father’s income “off the books.”

For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of food stamp benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving benefits from Section 8 or public housing would receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed, but if she marries a man earning $20,000 per year, these benefits would be cut nearly in half. Both food stamps and housing programs provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separate and unmarried.

A positive first step in this incremental process would be to reform the EITC. For the most part, the EITC provides refundable tax credits (i.e., cash benefits) to low-income parents who have no federal income tax liability. The EITC is superior to all other means-tested welfare programs because parents must work in order to be eligible for benefits. In contrast to other welfare programs, the EITC has slightly different benefit schedules for married couples and single parents. These mitigate, but do not eliminate the anti-marriage incentives provided by the program. Policymakers should build on the strengths of the EITC by toughening its work standards, preventing fraud, and further reducing its marriage penalties.[9] A properly reformed EITC could begin to offset the marriage penalties in other welfare programs.

By contrast, increasing the EITC for unmarried fathers who do not support their children is a bad policy that intensifies the anti-marriage incentives within the welfare system. Such a policy would increase overall welfare benefits for parents who do not marry and increase the benefits lost when the couple does marry.

I think some welfare reform in this manner would help.

As for firearm training and related - I wish we could ask movies to show some sort of proper firearm safety, but that is unreasonable. The NRA is supposed to, and was formed to, provide firearm training and safety. I would like to see it focus on that more. I think a problem is a fear of firearms we have as a society, which is kind of irrational. It does't help the way they are glorified and at the same time, misunderstood.

[pbjosh]

We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828709/

Part of the reason, previously in this discussion, I made sure to look at homicides in general and how they were consistent both after a ban (after a small uptick) with before, and how they were often consistent across areas that have high and low gun ownership.

I guess it bares repeating, and I have done that here on almost every page, that people find a way to kill. That doesn't change dependent on the tools. Homicides stay at the same level. WHAT tool they use changes. How they kill.

We determined this a while ago? This was shown as the MEANS vs the MOTIVE discussions we had. Motives, being why people murder, are more important. If you remove the Motive, you remove the murder. If you remove the tool, they just find a different one - which with 80% of homicides being drug related gang activity, it is important to impart action on the Culture.

[ironyusa]

I still hate the "war on drugs" thing. Shrooms, peyote, LSD, and cannabis should all be legal. The hallucinogens should probably be more strictly controlled but certainly decriminalized/ legalized. Prescription drugs, particularily opiates, need a war waged on them.