Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, csyphrett said:

Who knew if you were poor, you were more likely to get shot while being robbed or shoot yourself, or if you were married, you are more likely to get shot by your significant other especially if you are the woman in the relationship

 

More likely than what? Do you have any neutral citations for these "facts"?

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, pinecone said:

But I have to be "that guy" and point out sweden has had mass shooting incidents Anyway.....

 

Yes, both of them.  Committed by gang members.  What a bunch of amateurs--America has that many mass shootings in a single weekend.

[archer]

14 hours ago, Lee said:

 

Interesting how many of the same conservatives that reject this idea, used the same idea to justify the Strategic Defense Initiative. Experts indicated that SDI could at best be 90-95 percent effective and that given the number of nuclear weapons the Soviets (at that time) had, 5-10% would still completely destroy the United States. The question that was asked, "why spend all that money when the country would be destroyed anyway?" Their answer was "just because we can't stop all of them doesn't mean we shouldn't try..."

 

Strange how people will use an argument when it works in their favor, but reject the very same argument when it doesn't...

 

 

I can't speak for whichever people you were discussing the defense situation the country was in at the time because if you are relaying what they said accurately, they were idiots. But I can address the topic.

 

The concern at the time was that a first strike against the US by the USSR would cripple our forces to the point where they couldn't respond effectively. Mutually-Assured-Destruction only works as a deterrent if both sides are assured that they would be destroyed. 

 

At the time, the USSR was aggressively developing their anti-sub tech, both detection and destruction. They'd already greatly increased the accuracy of their nuclear weapons so that they could effectively target our silos, which could withstand a minimal amount of damage but not repeated close strikes. Our airbases were known factors and our aging fleet of post-WWII bombers weren't likely to make it through Soviet air defenses to get deep inside their country, even if they could manage to get off the ground during a Soviet first strike.

 

An SDI which could take out 90-95% of incoming missiles would mean that the Soviets couldn't count on missiles getting through to any particular target. And if the Soviets didn't have a pretty good idea that a first strike would work and prevent an effective retaliation, the political calculation in the US was that the Soviets wouldn't try a first strike at all...the SDI concept was to preserve the status quo of a Mutually Assured Destruction peace. 

 

And if they did try a first strike anyway, they'd have to focus their missiles on military targets to make sure they actually got the military targets rather than spreading their nuclear missiles broadly across the US. Sure places like San Diego, Seattle, Cheyenne Mountain, Washington, SAC bases, the missile bases in Montana and Arkansas, etc. would get quite thoroughly obliterated. But places which had no military value and weren't major industrial centers would probably have survived without getting hit directly by nukes: the Soviets simply didn't have enough missiles to hit both civilian centers and obliterate all military targets in a first strike if 90-95% of their missiles couldn't reach their targets.

 

It wouldn't have been a pleasant existence in the US after that version of a nuclear war (I'm highly skeptical that the country could survive food and gas shortages, much less nukes going off). But neither would it have been an "everyone instantly dies" which an actual nuclear war would have been otherwise.

 

========

 

Now consider this: an SDI which was 100% effective in intercepting incoming missiles would actually have increased the likelihood of nuclear war.

 

We knew at the time, and know now from old Soviet records, that many people in the Soviet military thought they could win a nuclear war and were looking forward to the day when they had enough of an edge where they could convince their government to go for the military option (either conquering Europe and holding off the US with the threat of nukes or going for a nuclear first strike against the US then taking Europe).

 

If the Soviets knew the US was about to deploy a 100% effective missile shield, the Soviets would be faced with either having to use their missiles right then or losing the opportunity to use them forever. In that environment, the Soviet military could probably have talked their government into launching a first strike. There was a deep-seated fear in both their government and the military that the US wanted to take them out, as silly as that might sound to us, because the Soviets never really understood us. If the US could sit behind their missile shield and wipe out the USSR with nukes anytime they pleased without consequences, the Soviets thought the US would do that.

 

The possibility of an ultimate defense would have triggered the ultimate war.

 

< shrug > We live in a weird world.

[archer]

18 hours ago, CrosshairCollie said:

 

A flat income tax is a terrible idea.  It's just another break for the rich.  For a poor or middle class person, let's say 20%, 20% could be the difference between paying a bill or not, or getting your car fixed or not.  To a wealthy person, that's the difference between owning two or three Ferraris. 

 

I already addressed your misunderstanding of a flat tax during the discussion.

 

Out of curiosity, do you really think that Governor "Moonbeam" Jerry Brown's goal was to give a tax break to the rich and stick it to the poor people and the middle class?

[csyphrett]

14 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

More likely than what? Do you have any neutral citations for these "facts"?

What would you consider neutral? I saw about twenty different things on Google plus an Interactive map from 538.  

CES

[csyphrett]

Oh wait i found everytown which has some stuff. They list their sources

 

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. While it is broadly considered to be the most comprehensive firearm fatal injury source, two of the intent categories—Shootings by law enforcement and Unintentional Deaths—are estimated to be greatly underreported. This underreporting is largely due to missing information on death certificates, which may result in misclassification of intent. Multiple media sources and nonprofit groups have tracked shootings by law enforcement but no reliable public database captures unintentional shootings. Intent category averages may not total to yearly average due to rounding.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports. The CDC derives national estimates of nonfatal firearm injuries treated in hospitals from a survey of hospitals known as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). According to the CDC, some of these estimates may be unstable. The CDC’s nonfatal injury data has come under scrutiny largely because of increasing error margins in recent years. Nonetheless, data provided by the CDC on nonfatal injuries are the most common data currently used in gun violence prevention research. To account for fluctuations between years, a yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. Intent category averages may not total to the yearly average due to rounding.
3. Loftin C, Wiersema B, McDowall D, Dobrin A. Underreporting of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States, 1976-1998. American Journal of Public Health. 2003; 93(7): 1117-1121.See also: Barber C, Azrael D, Cohen A, Miller M, et al. Homicides by police: Comparing counts from the National Violent Death Reporting System, Vital Statistics, and Supplementary Homicide Reports. American Journal of Public Health. 2016; 106(5): 922-927.
4. Fatal Force. The Washington Post. Fatal Force. Data reflects a 4 year average (2015 to 2018) of deaths attributed to police shootings. https://wapo.st/2QlEZOo.
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017.
6. Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine. 2019; 123: 20-26.
7. Anglemyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G. The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2014; 160(2): 101-110.
8. Opoliner A, Azrael D, Barber C, Fitzmaurice G, Miller M. Explaining geographic patterns of suicide in the U.S.: The role of firearms and antidepressants. Injury Epidemiology. 2014; 1(1): 6.
9. Miller M, Azrael D, Barber C. Suicide mortality in the United States: The importance of attending to method in understanding population-level disparities in the burden of suicide. Annual Review of Public Health. 2012; 33: 393-408.
10. Ibid.
11. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. White men defined as non-Hispanic white.
12. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. Homicide includes legal intervention.
13. Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine. 2019; 123: 20-26.
14. Anglemyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G. The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2014; 160(2): 101-110.
15. Aufrichtig A, Beckett L, Diehm J, Lartey J. Want to fix gun violence in America? Go local. The Guardian. January 9, 2017. https://bit.ly/2i6kaKw.
16. Ibid.
17. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports. The CDC derives national estimates of nonfatal firearm injuries treated in hospitals from a survey of hospitals known as the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). According to the CDC, some of these estimates may be unstable. The CDC’s nonfatal injury data has come under scrutiny largely because of increasing error margins in recent years. Nonetheless, data provided by the CDC on nonfatal injuries is the most common data currently used in gun violence prevention research. To account for fluctuations between years, a yearly average was developed using five years of the most recent available data: 2013 to 2017.
18. Ibid.
19. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Nonfatal Injury Reports.
20. Ibid. Analysis includes: males of all ages, white defined as non-Hispanic only, and assault including legal intervention.
21. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. Data from 2017. Children and teenagers aged 1 to 19, Black defined as non-Hispanic, number of deaths by known intent (homicide, suicide, unintentional deaths). Age 0 to 1 calculated separately by the CDC because leading causes of death for newborns and infants are specific to the age group.
22. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. Analysis includes: ages 0 to 19, and homicide including legal intervention.
23. Fowler KA, Dahlberg LL, Haileyesus T, Gutierrez C, Bacon S. Childhood firearm injuries in the United States. American Academy of Pediatrics. 2017; 140(1): e20163486.
24. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2013 to 2017. Analysis includes: ages 0 to 19, non-Hispanic only and homicide including legal intervention.
25. Grinshteyn E, Hemenway D. Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015. Preventive Medicine. 2019; 123: 20-26.
26. Uniform Crime Reporting Program: Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), 2013 to 2017. Washington, DC: Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. While the FBI SHR does not include data from the state of Florida for the years 2013 to 2017, Everytown obtained data directly from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and included the reported homicides in the analysis. Whereas SHR includes both current and former partners in its relationship designations, FDLE does not include former partners. As a result, Florida's intimate partner violence data only includes current partners.
27. Sorenson SB, Schut RA. Nonfatal gun use in intimate partner violence: A systematic review of the literature. Trauma, Violence & Abuse. 2016; 1524838016668589.
28. Ibid. See also: Tjaden P, Thoennes T. Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. National Institute of Justice, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2000.
29. Campbell JC, Webster D, Koziol-McLain J, et al. Risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships: Results from a multisite case control study. American Journal of Public Health. 2003; 93(7): 1089-1097.
30. Uniform Crime Reporting Program: Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), 2013-2017. See endnote 26. Analysis includes homicides involving an intimate partner and a firearm, and compares the crude death rates for Black women (0.65 per 100,000) versus white women (0.35 per 100,000) (all ages included; Hispanic and non-Hispanic women included).
31. SurveyUSA Market Research Study. Data collected from December 7, 2018 to December 11, 2018. https://bit.ly/2ExxpyZ. See question 39.
32. Finkelhor D, Turner HA, Shattuck A, Hamby SL. Prevalence of childhood exposure to violence, crime, and abuse: Results from the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence. The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics. 2015; 169(8): 746-754. Everytown analysis derives the 3 million number by multiplying the share of children (ages 0-17) who are exposed to shootings per year (4.2%) by the total child population of the U.S. in 2016 (~73.5M).

 

[Hugh Neilson]

5 hours ago, archer said:

 

I already addressed your misunderstanding of a flat tax during the discussion.

 

Out of curiosity, do you really think that Governor "Moonbeam" Jerry Brown's goal was to give a tax break to the rich and stick it to the poor people and the middle class?

 

I find few politicians possess an understanding of the impact of their tax plans which goes deeper than a soundbite.  A problem not limited to tax, or even financial, issues.

[Pattern Ghost]

5 hours ago, csyphrett said:

What would you consider neutral?

 

Anything not from a lobbying group from either side, or which objectively assesses such data, such as the one article I linked to that discredited Klecker's methodology.

[Pattern Ghost]

5 hours ago, csyphrett said:

Oh wait i found everytown which has some stuff. They list their sources

 

Lobby group. I don't want to have to track down the original studies to figure out how they manipulated or misinterpreted the data they're citing. It'd just end up as an endless rabbit hole that wouldn't benefit the discussion, and I don't want to come off as over argumentative and/or dismissive here. I will, however, look over the citations list when I have time* and see if I can find anything in it worthwhile. Thanks for taking the time.

 

Edit: If you have a link to the page that these footnotes are from, that'd help. It's hard to see what conclusions they're trying to support with these sources.

 

 

*Pulling an extra shift tonight, so might not be for a few days, if at all.

[Pattern Ghost]

I'm finding this link from csyphrett interesting.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/jan/09/special-report-fixing-gun-violence-in-america

[TrickstaPriest]

I've abstained from commenting on the gun violence topic, but from my (American who grew up in Canada) perspective, the real problem with mass shootings to me is that it's a symptom of an often clearly abusive relationship certain extreme political show hosts have with their viewership.  We can be kind and say it's a symptom of what happens when a large part of the rural population feels abandoned by political efforts (which it is), or children feeling abandoned by their own society (which they are), but it's also a symptom of an idology that's literally preying on the minds of those vulnerable people and instilling violent anger in them as a mechanism of control.  It's been happening for a long time, but if the government was invested in preventing that abuse instead of using it then we wouldn't have 'these styles' of shootings.

 

Which of course is only a subset of the other shootings we have (school shootings are their own category), or the gun violence in general in this country...

 

The amount of people being killed, relatively speaking, is low.  But it's a very obvious symptom of societal breaks that are "not good" for the future of a stable, democratic society.

 

...OTOH those symptoms are great if you don't care about maintaining a stable, democratic society.  But that's just my opinion now.  (edit: not as a conspiracy theory, just as a 'some people are shortsighted opportunistic assholes' statement)

[Lee]

12 hours ago, archer said:

< shrug > We live in a weird world.

 

Indeed we do. That's the sentiment I was trying to convey in my post.

 

Lee

[Doc Democracy]

On 8/12/2019 at 4:27 PM, ScottishFox said:

More people die each year in the USA to being bludgeoned to death than shot with rifles.  Stabbings are even a higher number than that.

For every single person killed with a rifle - more than 400 are killed by medical errors.  But we won't be talking about that - we'll keep railing on about "assault weapons" because it riles up the constituents to vote.

 

I think this is the wrong way to look at the statistics.  You do not compare causes of deaths in the US, you compare the same thing in comparable countries.  You look at gun deaths in the US compared to gun deaths elsewhere.  You do not look at deaths due to breast cancer in the US compared to suicides to decide whether you want to tackle breast cancer.  You see if deaths due to breast cancer in the US are significantly higher than breast cancer death rates in comparable countries.

 

The comparisons of gun deaths in the US against comparable countries are stark.  There is something that needs to be done and Gun ownership is possibly the most obvious lever to pull.

 

Doc

[ScottishFox]

4 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I think this is the wrong way to look at the statistics.  You do not compare causes of deaths in the US, you compare the same thing in comparable countries.  You look at gun deaths in the US compared to gun deaths elsewhere.

 

Depends on the goal.  Is it to eliminate senseless death and misery?  Then are many other things to choose from that cause vastly more deaths. 

Also, the original discussion was mass shootings which is a very, very tiny percentage of gun homicides which are in turn dwarfed by gun suicides.

 

If the goal is take a tiny sliver of a problem and use it for political gains then ineffective gun bans on scary looking weapons are going to be the trick.

 

Meanwhile we're discussing this tiny percent of a percent of a problem while ignoring massive killers in this country.  In the 10 to 44 age range suicide beats homicide and cancer both.

 

Also, the gun ownership lever.  Regardless of how you feel about guns it's not a straightforward correlation.  Nor does it address most of the driving issues that may be contributing to our abnormally high gun homicide rate.

Such as abject poverty, unchecked gang violence and a completely failed war on drugs that seems to be incredibly focused and unmitigated in the neighborhoods that need help the most.

 

One chart I've lost track of shows that some neighborhoods have 26% of the countries gun homicides and only 1.5% of the population.  How is that not drawing additional policing?

 

As a final note I'll say how relatively disgusted I was looking up the charts.  Pages that tilt to one side or the other chop their dates off at the most beneficial point for making an argument instead of stating facts.  Right-leaning pages cut off at 2013 while left leaning pages start at 2014.  Why?  Because gun violence stops going down at 2014 and spikes up considerably.  If you want to win an argument more than tell the truth editing statistics is your play. 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

6 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

There is something that needs to be done and Gun ownership is possibly the most obvious lever to pull.

 

Not really obvious to me. Guns aren't the underlying problem. They're just an easier, scarier sell for politicians, who are more concerned with power than with solving larger societal problems.

[megaplayboy]

2 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Not really obvious to me. Guns aren't the underlying problem. They're just an easier, scarier sell for politicians, who are more concerned with power than with solving larger societal problems.

What specific problem exists in the United States, that doesn't exist elsewhere in the developed world, that leads to a significant difference in homicide rates?  

[Lord Liaden]

As I've mentioned here before, I don't believe gun ownership in the United States is the fundamental issue underlying gun violence. Neither do I believe poverty or racism are the fundamental issue. All of those factors have an exacerbating effect on the problem, but other countries that have roughly comparable demographics in those areas don't experience the same rate of gun violence. I believe the biggest distinctive factor in the United States is a culture that reveres and glamorizes guns, to the point where unstable people look to them as a legitimate first resort whenever they feel in any way aggrieved or threatened.

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

Meanwhile we're discussing this tiny percent of a percent of a problem while ignoring massive killers in this country.  In the 10 to 44 age range suicide beats homicide and cancer both.

 

Unfortunately this is entirely irrelevant.  It's like saying we shouldn't bother curing Ebola because it doesn't kill as many people as heart disease.  Only that's a poor analogy, because we don't know how to cure Ebola but we know damn well how to reduce the prevalence of semiautomatic rifles with high capacity magazines.

 

4 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

 

What's tough about this particular chart is that Guns/Person is not the same as % Of Population That Owns Guns.  Many gun owners hoard dozens of guns, sharply skewing the numbers.  A graph of the latter statistic shows a weak correlation with the drop in gun homicides.

 

[Old Man]

10 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

As I've mentioned here before, I don't believe gun ownership in the United States is the fundamental issue underlying gun violence.

 

No one believes gun ownership causes gun violence.  However, to have gun violence, there must be a gun.  Guns are the "means" in Motive, Means, Opportunity.  Guns, especially semiautomatic guns with high capacity magazines, endanger innocent people for no valid reason.

[megaplayboy]

4 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

No one believes gun ownership causes gun violence.  However, to have gun violence, there must be a gun.  Guns are the "means" in Motive, Means, Opportunity.  Guns, especially semiautomatic guns with high capacity magazines, endanger innocent people for no valid reason.

"Utility vs Risk" is the correct formulation for comparison. It's why we don't allow widespread public ownership of military hardware, because the risk of public harm greatly outweighs any utility to such ownership.  So, does the risk of public harm posed by semi-auto rifles with a designed magazine capacity of greater than 10 rounds outweigh the public utility of such arms being widely available to the public?  If, say, said availability means 500 extra civilian deaths per year, what public utility does it add/enhance to offset that?  

[csyphrett]

A gun is a tool. It's the means like old man said. The problem is the motive. Until motives can be verified before people do things, it doesn't matter what the tool is. A semifamous case here in Clemmons is a woman got fed up with her husband telling her to stop spending money on horses. Something I could relate to at the time. She went after him with a harpoon/spear he had got somewhere and had laying around. There's been two or three cases where a man shot his wife and then himself I'm going to say in the last five-ten years maybe and we're a one horse town so it's not like there's a murder every week.

 

If a person doesn't have a gun, they will use something else. BTM used cookies.

 

A gun just makes things easier.

 

Until someone figures out why people act like they do, and how to solve that so they can deal with modern life, murder and suicide is always going to look better than trying to walk it off and trying to start over.

CES      

[Starlord]

Trump Official: Statue of Liberty poem refers to Europeans

 

Ohhhh!  Well it all makes sense now.

[Hermit]

2 hours ago, Starlord said:

Trump Official: Statue of Liberty poem refers to Europeans

 

Ohhhh!  Well it all makes sense now.

 

So much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin.

And I say that as one who has a conservative bent when it comes to illegal immigration. Pardon, it used to be conservative- now, because I don't like the idea of tearing families apart and placing kids in concentration camps I'm apparently a hippie or what not.

Folks should come through the doors our country provides, but those doors? They need to be OPEN and ready to receive. We have a moral and ethical obligation to help those coming here seeking freedom and democracy, who cannot achieve it where they come from. As soon as they say the Oath, they're as American as any one who has some great great someone or another that stepped off the Mayflower. And there's a good chance they can answer more questions about our Congress to boot. THEY had to take a test.

 

I know some others will disagree, but the way I see it...

 

You become an American, everything good about the United States of America becomes yours to take pride in. That's right, if you're born in Ethiopia or Thailand or wherever, come over here, earn your citizenship you get to be proud of the moon landing? WHY? Because you have just as much right to be as any other American of this generation and we should treasure what's best in us, cultivate it, and yes damn it be a bit proud. It's like cheering your home team when it's not YOUR ass making a touch down, you still cheer. On the flipside, while you don't have to take the blame for every bad thing America or Americans did- You do gain a sacred responsibility to keep those dark days from happening again. Trying to live up what is best in our country, fighting hard to fix the worst and keep old evils from rising again is the duty of anyone who claims to love their country. Waving the flag is cheap, making it worth waving is what matters.

 

There are going to be a lot of disagreements on what it will take to embrace the best, deny the worst.  We're not all going to agree. Welcome to a Democratic Republic! 

We all love the rags to riches story. We all love the idea of folks coming with nothing and through hard work and sweat making it big. But to me that is not the American Dream. It is the FREEDOM to chase your dreams that is what matters. Some want wealth, some want safety for their family, some want the chance to do something they love. A few want to help their fellow man. You have the chance! But thanks to racist bullcrap like Trump and his goons are trying to enact into policy multitudes wont' even get the CHANCE to prove themselves legally? We won't even offer a hand to them as they come in?  To assume that because of WHERE they came from, what they own, and not who they are, that they cannot be worthy of freedom? That we can't let them have legal means to join us?

 

That is racist, regionalist,  hateful, and let's just admit it, a betrayal on a moral and ethical level so profound that it is treasonous to the American soul.

 

I'm so pissed right now I could shove a flag pole up some bigot's ass!

 

"In God We Trust" is our current motto, but your actions determine who you are giving worship to. Right now? Trump is the high priest of fear and greed, and I didn't sign up to kiss the asses of either Phobos OR Mammon.

It sickens and disgusts me that so many of my fellow citizens are gladly puckering up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ScottishFox]

9 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

What specific problem exists in the United States, that doesn't exist elsewhere in the developed world, that leads to a significant difference in homicide rates?  

 

Our willingness to kill each other.

[Hugh Neilson]

22 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Our willingness to kill each other.

 

To be clear, are you saying that Americans are, statistically, significantly more likely to be willing to kill other people than residents of other nations where incidents of gun violence are statistically less frequent?