Rand0m her0

require more people. I require IRON squadron dakkaing people with the power of american .50 caliber flamethrowers!

Buzzfeed, Surprisingly. no. Buzzfeed gets a ton of its funding from clickbaity silliness, but it's one of the few places that do actual for real investigative journalism. After The Wall Street Journal and a few other papers took the weed whacker to their investigative teams, buzzfeed turned around and hired a bunch of them. So they've put out really really really high quality work. They swung a pulitzer citation last year and only lost out because it was for international reporting and the NYT kicked the shit out of everything last year. They ouytihy have multiple Pulitzer prize winners on staff. The clickbaity derp and lifestyle stuff is buzzfeed's solution to the funding problem facing journalism. Even if you don't like it, it is a hell of a lot better than some of the other "solutions" we've seen. And whatever else can be said about buzzfeed, it's been pretty good at keeping a bright line between the clickbait fluff and the real work, rather than trying to disguise the fluff as real work . Personally I'll take 100 articles about "You won't believe how cute these smol bunnies are!" or whatever if it funds real journalism. Sure as hell beats anything Bill Maher has done, let alone of the trash rags like the sun/the independent/NY post etc.

No a lot of the current law in the USA is patterned around Regan era laws, or is outright from that period. Which you know, very similar desire as the post civil war stuff, but occurred rather more recently.

behold the local mopus domesticus. https://i.imgur.com/h2e6vpn.png Necro yes. But doggo.

A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013 is the FBI study. I'll have to hunt for the others, but that's also the more recent one i know of. You can agree, but it doesn't make you not wrong. While im disinclined to say so entries should never be done, there is a reason many PDs explicitly forbid it as a option in cases. I'm not spouting hypotheticals, thisbis a well studied topic. Whay he did is litteraly what cops are trained to do in many places. The places that do train for solo entry, and not many provide adequate training( seriously three day course with minimal training) o, do so because the nearest backup maybe 30 minutes away. Even then it's not considered a good option. And usually the officers have better equipment avallibe than a service pistol and a blue shirt. 30% chance of being shot per a 200 to 2010 study. 46% of being a casualty per the FBI. And that's all active scene solo entries, which wiill include a large number of best case scenario for a solo entry Wich this most definitely was not. That sort of danger is never what someone is expected to confront. Those who chose to do so tend to end up heavily commended for courage and action far above any call of duty. Often posthumously. This is no more what a police officer is expected to do than it is for your hypothetical fire fighter to run into that building with a fire extinguisher and some safety squints for protection. JFC the military wouldnt expect that out of a solider, explicitly trained to deal with that kind of shit. You think it's something to be routinly expected of a glorified hall moniter old enough to be a grandfather? Calling the dude a coward is a vile and crass attempt to foist the blame for this onto him; for doing exactly what s expected of police officers all around the country. Its an attempt to make what happened his fault and pretend that it only happened because of him. It is absolutely disgusting. Because the officers life is more important than those of our kids.... You say this isn't what's expected of a police officer except even the local sheriff agrees with me here, as does the superintendent and the students. The school staff decided to sacrifice their lives to protect students, but not the officer. Is that expected of them? No, it's not. But they weren't cowards. He should have gone in and confronted the killer. Armed officers are in schools for this exact reason. They don't carry guns to break up fights in the hallway. They carry guns to protect students from psychos with guns. You say this isn't what's expected of a police officer except even the local sheriff agrees with me here, as does the superintendent and the students. Really, the students? gonna need to source that. The students and their families and the teachers have criticized the shit out of the PD for utterly failing to respond or take action on the initial information *before* the shooting. But on this guy? Very few people have said anything about him. well know, there is this: Feel free to google the quote yourself and pick a source you like. People who are criticizing him? Media talking heads with an axe to grind, folks like the sheriff playing a game of CYA, politicians with an axe to grind... Hey on the topic of criticism, know who aren't being lambasted in the media? The other three officers who showed up....and did exactly the same thing. What you want and seem to expect is for a random sheriff's deputy to have IARD training or something equivalent. Which can be done. but IARD requires that the officers be equipped in a way that makes them effective (ie, rifle or carbine and body armor), it requires continual training (which PDs rarely provide), and requires a massive overhaul of fire arms training and practice from the usual PD standards (Shot accountability is a BFD when shooting in a crowded environment). four officers from the BSO, none of them equipped with ballistic protection or a patrol rifle, none of whom enter the building. Oh and this is after two other officers completely fail to take any worthwhile action despite more than enough information and credible reason to do so. Do ya really think that's reflective of a PD that trains and equips for that? If that's the standard you wana have? Fine. But you are in for one hell of a surprise if you think the shit show that is the average PD manages to do that effectively right now. Three day course, max,; often two days with only one day of physical training, not continuing training, no performance standards and they maybe get a refresher every 5 years. Many don't do it. other's might want to do it, but don't get the funding. and a few get the funding and then quietly misappropriate the cash . If you think broward county does it in the light if a half dozen different officers failing to take appropriate action by that standard...I've a bit of waterfront property in Brooklyn to sell ya, real easy to get to Manhattan from there. There's a reason Scott Isreal is being so very shocked and appalled at everything. Oh as for the superintendent: yea this was made worse by the utter shitshow that was the school distircts active shooter response training. It was not only not proper by all indications, but was flawed sufficiently that the bastard actually exploited it in order to kill more people. Dude's looking to spread the manure around cause he's gonna have a lot of it dumped on him soon.

You can agree, but it doesn't make you not wrong. While im disinclined to say so entries should never be done, there is a reason many PDs explicitly forbid it as a option in cases. I'm not spouting hypotheticals, thisbis a well studied topic. Whay he did is litteraly what cops are trained to do in many places. The places that do train for solo entry, and not many provide adequate training( seriously three day course with minimal training) o, do so because the nearest backup maybe 30 minutes away. Even then it's not considered a good option. And usually the officers have better equipment avallibe than a service pistol and a blue shirt. 30% chance of being shot per a 200 to 2010 study. 46% of being a casualty per the FBI. And that's all active scene solo entries, which wiill include a large number of best case scenario for a solo entry Wich this most definitely was not. That sort of danger is never what someone is expected to confront. Those who chose to do so tend to end up heavily commended for courage and action far above any call of duty. Often posthumously. This is no more what a police officer is expected to do than it is for your hypothetical fire fighter to run into that building with a fire extinguisher and some safety squints for protection. JFC the military wouldnt expect that out of a solider, explicitly trained to deal with that kind of shit. You think it's something to be routinly expected of a glorified hall moniter old enough to be a grandfather? Calling the dude a coward is a vile and crass attempt to foist the blame for this onto him; for doing exactly what s expected of police officers all around the country. Its an attempt to make what happened his fault and pretend that it only happened because of him. It is absolutely disgusting.

In this situation he had a choice. Try to save lives and come out a hero, or wait for back up and resign. He waited for back up and resigned. Anyone who would attack a school with an AR-15 and kill 14 kids and 3 teachers is a shit stained coward. This "Deputy" was bested by a 19 year old shit stained coward. He had the training, and a responsibility to take action. Even the Sheriff said he "should have went in, addressed the killer, and kill the killer". He had to resign, because no one would ever respect him. We've not even begun to get large. The sheriff is a fuckhead who's PD's response pissed over fucking everything in a dozen different ways and is going out of his way to deflect blame. If you think a School resources officer, who's main job is to hrumph at teenagers and make noises about how serious fighting in the halls is, is in anyway equipped or trained to deal with that shit your absolutely delusional. At best he took a three day course at some point in the past 20 years. Maybe. While some PDs give the responding officer the ability to conduct a solo entry if they feel it should be done, fucking no on requires it. And the ones that allow it mostly do so because they're small PDs in the middle of bugfuck nowhere and it might be half an hour before backup gets there. Set up a perimeter, gather and relay information, wait for other responding officers to arrive so you can get together a contact team for entry is exactly what should be done, and is exactly what he did. Something like 1/3 of all officers who do a solo entry into an active event like this end up shot. Half of the time, they fail to accomplish anything. 25% of the time the shooter commits suicide. If you're to lazy to do the math, that means in the average case with a persistent shooter who doens't off themselves, it's a coin filp on if they get shot or accomplish something. Except in the average case the shooter is armed with a pistol, not a rifle, which kinda tilts the odds more. Seriously, the fact you're sitting here wanking yourself off over this is just fucking vile.

Oh just shut the hell up. A SRO is not in way trained or equipped to deal with an active shooter. Dude would have had a cotton shirt and a side arm. Jumping in with an unknown number of shooters, in unknown locations, with zero back up in a crowded and chaotic environment would have more likely than not resulted him getting killed and the next responding officer conga-lining in after him with no knowledge of the situation. An officers job isn't to be fucking dirty harry, no PD worth a damn expects an officer to run in like that, and there is a massive stack of court precedent that boils down to "no, this is not in anyway shape or form something that can be required". JFC could you two be bigger pricks?

I've played an hour or two or six...hundredohgod.

Screw that! They are the only other person with a gun. They should be running towards the gun fire, not hiding behind their desks waiting for backup. Otherwise, why the fuck are they even there to begin with? I beg to differ. I mean it's not going to stop something too big, but I've brought down deer with my .223. Aside from that, AR-15s come in numerous different rounds. Though I would never use one for hunting just because semi-auto and large mag seems like unfair overkill for most hunting. That is why I let my NRA membership expire years ago. Sadly, its mostly become all about marketing, building up hype, and getting donations. Seeing the NRA cave on certain issues, or hear them talk about doing something in a specific state and then doing absolutely nothing, really convinced me it was time to move on. Come to think of it, I don't really get why the NRA gets so much hate from Liberals. Because if you take a look at history, thanks to NRA support in one way or another, we have: 1934 National Firearms Act (NRA was all for this) 1968 Gun Control Act (NRA endorsed it in exchange for some provisions) 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act (The NRA helped write the Bill) 2017 NRA requested the ATF reevaluate the bumpstock ruling Those are all things on the Federal level, get down to the State level and it becomes even more apparent the NRA doesn't do much to enforce individual rights, except when it can be used as positive outcomes for the NRA. To an extent I still feel the NRA does some good. The Eddie Eagle Program, offering training to those who want to learn safe shooting fundamentals, and helping to preserve historic/museum grade firearms. But apart from that I don't have much love for the NRA. I've found GOA (Gun Owners of America), to be one of the few firearm organizations that actually seems to care about the right's of the individual. I do like their attitude of "Not one inch." No caving, no carve outs, no sell outs. All of which the NRA has been guilty of many times. I've never been an NRA member and never found them appealing. It is ironic how they are so hated by liberals despite their lobbying for gun control. The whole bump stock debate in particular was interesting to watch people ignore the NRAs opinion on. We already know from statistics that stricter gun regulations and bans do not reduce gun violence. The fact that areas with the highest gun control have the highest rates of gun violence is quite evident. And why are you so obsessed with mass shootings? Again, that is an almost irrelevant fraction of American gun violence. Oh for sure! This doesn't happen anywhere else! Stop gobbling up and regurgitating the medias lies. Europe is comparatively just as bad if not worse. I'ma keep this really short: The CPRC is yet another gun industry lobbying tool. It literally has the tagline "More guns" Frankly I can't even begin to describe how fundamentally flawed there. It equates general homicides, terrorists acts, cherry picks data across europe over 3, proceeds to then role in information from outside of europe, often dating to periods of political instability, jerks off about casualties, and and is littrealying lying in a few cases because no there were way more than 29 mass shootings in the USA between Even if you take that statistic, Europe has over twice the US's population. So yay 25 mass shootings (many of which were political/religious terrorism related and aren't comparable phenomena) compared to 29 in the USA. But massive population disparity between the two. Also your just... What the hell even is this? Any statistic that claims to measure if banning guns reduce gun violence is lying through its teeth. No such data exists. *no one bans guns*. Wana go to canada? You can have a gun. Wanna go to france? You can have a gun. Wanna go to switzerland? If you're talking to someone over 18, they probably can shoot better than the average american. Wana head anywhere in eastern europe? The rate of gun ownership out there is often higher than in the USA. Hey you know drunk driving is behind such a tiny percentage of america traffic deaths, why not repeal those laws, it's not a big deal. just really

My point. Right here. Spelt out. You CAN"T stop it, but you can redirect it or limit it. That's the goal. If you believe ridding a country of guns reduces violence, it doesn't. It REDIRECTS the weaponry of choice, or redirects how one goes about it. As far as the walrus statement, if you truly believe a hard target has just the same odds as getting hit as a soft target, it is delusional. The problems with organized terrorism and your run-of-the-mill domestic terrorist equal the same ideology, but with different means to obtain it. Organized terrorism can produce larger weaponry (usually illegal), but your domestic terrorist will just change routes. Like stated, banning guns won't stop an anger, mentally ill person from making a shit ton of molotavs and just tossing them at people. It wouldn't stop someone from driving a truck full of explosives into a building. It wouldn't stop someone from obtaining a knife. Running a parade over with your car/truck. It does not stop evil actions. Equating domestic terrorist to organized terrorist does equate to they will always find a way to do damage. Banning guns won't solve anything. This is why guns are needed. Exactly what you stated. An armed teacher can only respond after the first shot is fired. How much longer would someone wait for a police officer? An SRO at the school might have to wait for backup before reacting. Teachers can provide that initial backup since, at least around here, they are provided the immediate response training necessary. A long, buckled down gun fight? Probably not, but that gives time for SWAT and police to respond. A quick response is better than a prolonged one. If you were at the mall, and someone set the mall on fire. Nothing could stop the initial fire from happening, because someone in love with arson wants to start a fire. Does that mean you wait for the fire department to arrive, or does the mall have sprinklers to try and tackle the fire initially? Fire extinguishers to tackle it initially? You can't put out a fire that isn't there yet, but you can change how you react. Faster reaction = better. If that is a shit metric to follow in a world where violence won't ever go away, I'll take my shit metric every time. The reason why an AR-15 isn't traditional used as a hunting rifle is because it DOESN'T have the stopping power needed for bigger game. The irrational fear of it being the most dangerous weaponry available is unrealistic. It does, however, provide therapy. Myself included. Going to the range and having to calm down, take the time to watch your breathe, make far off shots, that is relaxing. Customizing a gun that is just yours is relaxing. It feels accomplished and prideful to look at something you made. This is that culture you speak of. It isn't a culture of fantasting about a gun to go out and shoot people. Anyone with that mentality shouldn't have a gun to begin with. The "man-card" idea is the same as cars. Guys love cars. We argue over brands and models. Ford vs Chevy, Camaro vs Mustang, etc, etc. We argue over Colt vs Sig. 1911 vs any other handgun. M4 vs M16. It's not a culture designed to be violent. It is a culture designed for our interests and hobbies. My girlfriend's brother and my girlfriend have been trying to get me and a few buddies into air soft. Haven't tried it yet. Interested to see how therapeutic that can be. I just bought a rifle the other day, though apparently I need a mask and stuff. lol. Most of what you've said either simultaneously fails the reality check, or is irrelevant to anything said in the thread. Despite having half the population the USA has seen more mass shootings this year (an i do mean since january) than europe has seen in the last 5. If you exclude what usually gets labeled as "terrorist attacks" in that they have some political motivation, from both the lists: The last major mass killing in europe was in 2013. The last one in the USA before this one...was January. The last one before that was november 2017. The last one before that was also november. The last one before that was october. On and on. or in short: "There is nothing that can be done to prevent this says only nation in the world where this happens on a regular basis" If you fail to make a distinction between a sports car and a weapon then I'm not even sure where to start. A gun if first and always a device designed to kill. It is not a toy. it is sure as shit not a surrogate dick by which someone can feel secure in their manhood. That sort of attitude frankly vile and disturbing and it's one that permeates much of american gun culture. Arming teachers is pure theater. It won't prevent this, it doesn't address the problem, and demands teachers take risks with their own lives and the lives of their students in an attempt to "stop" the attack. it's idiotic. You know why teachers being armed isn't a thing? Every time the proposal comes up, teachers, the teachers unions, parents, the educational board and bascily everyone involved goes "this is a bad idea" and then it dies. And again, *this doesn't happen anywhere else* the "solution" elsewhere hasn't been "draft teachers to do the job of an armed response team." The problem isn't guns, the problem isn't even mass shootings, the problem is America.

5% of the world's population, 33% of the mass shootings. And if you aim for any sort of "mass killing" and then exclude acts of organized terrorism, things tilt even worse for the USA. the US is literally the only country in the world in which attacks like this happen on a regular basis. There were more incidents of mass shootings in the USA in 2017 alone than Europe has seen with any sort of weapon in the last decade. You're also equating all acts of violence as comparable, which they're manifestly not. Treating a group of murderous bastards flying planes into the trade center as part of a religiously motivated terrorist organization that arose out of socio-political factors half the world away dating back to the cold war and this asshole kid shooting up his former school....not the same. They're just not. Treating them as equlviant makes as much sense as saying "Millions of people died last year from non trafic accident causes so we don't need to work to improve trafic safety because people die anyways." When you see people call out shit like the AR-15, it's not because ooooh scary gun kills more people but because it's marketed like this. That shit is bascily why it's on the restricted list in canada, it's not marketed as a hunting rifle, or something for target shooting, or hell even something for home defense. Instead it's....frankly i'm not even fucking sure what Bushmaster was going for there. You want a rifle that does bascily the same thing, you can find similar ones, all easily acquirable. And if you really really want an AR-15, you can still get one. A few of the rest on the restricted list are ones that bascily have no real purpose from a civil PoV; rifle and shotguns meant to be easily concealable for example. The model couldn't be wholesale ported over to america, but the net effect and the goal would be useful. It helps towards having guns being treated as tools (and dangerous ones) not toys, allows for people who are dumbfucks who shouldn't be trusted with a nerf gun to lose their access, and generally promotes culture of a greater responsibility. And similar models exist around the world. This isn't an untested hypothetical, this isn't some serious experiment, it works around the world. Canada has as many, possibly more gun owners than the USA as a percentage of the population, it has a lot of cross cultural pollination with the USA, shares many of the same ideals and yet doesn't have this problem. It's not a coincidence. I've a walrus repelling rock for sale. Guaranteed you won't be attacked by a walrus while you're holding it. All that security is reactive, if someone walks in with a rifle the best it can do is limit the issue, not prevent it. Unless you get very very lucky, an armed teacher can respond after the first shot is fired. Which you know, if you consider 15-20 kids getting shot instead of 30+ a good deal, may be worth it...but that's a pretty shit metric for a solution. For that matter, even if it did work what's gonna stop someone doing it before class whenever someone's outside. Or doing it at a movie theater with a field trip. Or shooting up the local library where the kids go to study. Or the community center. or the.... Unless you want to turn every single location where people gather in more than small numbers into a small military base, the approach fails. All you'll do it redirect targets, not prevent it. I think the same exact thing anytime someone blames the NRA for being a massive financial entity, then proceeds to complain about their donations controlling Congress. I will let everyone in on a secret. The NRA, really doesn't have that much money. It just appears to have a massive amount due to media hype. Traditionally speaking, whatever the NRA spends trying to get a candidate elected, it is often a paltry sum to what the Liberal groups/donors give to their candidate. Fortunately it takes very little money to buy a politician in the USA. Seriously, a couple thousand bucks in campaign contributions and the promise of some more or an "official endorsement" in the future can be enough to get support. It's kinda pathetic. The why of that is a whole other issue however. As well, net spending is not the net effect on how law gets shaped. We've seen this over and over again. To use a settled example rather than a current one: Look into the history of leaded gasoline getting banned. The issue had been well recognized since the 1960s, and had the first mandate to reduce it put in place by nixon in the 70s, but by lobbying a relative handful of the right candidates the oil companies managed to delay a full ban till freaking 1995. It's not about spraying money everywhere, you threaten jobs in a few states with influential party members, agree to help promote candidates in a few key states next election, withdraw support from a rival to to, maybe give somebody's kid a job and generally some basic horse trading and 50 fucking years of gradual phase out of freaking leaded gasoline in order to protect profits. Secondarily: while most lobbying and campaign finance in the USA is just legalized bribery, you can very much pick and choose who to criticize more and why. Pharmaceutical companies and the ACLU both spend money on political causes and lobbying. However right now the pharmaceutical companies are spending their money to bury their role in the opioid crisis, while the ACLU continues to deal with it's agenda of citizen rights issues.The whole system is filthy, but *one of these things is not like the other* The NRA is one of the greatest cons in the US however. They don't support individual rights, and they don't represent gun owners. They're a marketing and lobbying tool for gun manufacturers, and everything about it's current actions and tactics is literally borrowed wholesale from the tobacco industry. They're also just *one* corporate controlled political organ. Groups like ALEC and the influence they give corporations on drafting legislation are rather more concerning.

False. I have responded with the ultimate authority... you just don't want to hear it. Nothing can be done about the legal purchase and ownership of guns by law abiding US citizens. It's in the Constitution, and I told you why it's there. Congress can do nothing constitutionally to infringe on the right to bear arms. They must abolish the 2nd Amendment first before anything can be done, and there is no way the American people will go along with that. So all the crying about it, does nothing. It has nothing to do with race. ​False. Everybody knew Obama wanted to bring back the Clinton era ban on semi-automatic weapons, but this time he wanted it permanent. This caused an increase in buying those guns. We had an ammo shortage because Janet Napolitano used taxpayer money to purchase 1.6 billion rounds for Homeland Security in 2013 to drain the ammo supply from the population. Didn't work. It had nothing to do with race. It doesn't matter if I like your position or not. My contributing point is it doesn't matter how you feel about any of this. As long as the 2nd Amendment is included in our highest law of the land... nothing you feel means anything. It has nothing to do with race. There's the Schrodinger's Obama: Simultaneously doing a thing, but also not doing the thing. Lovely. Not that Obama has anything to do with the topic at hand beyond one off hand example used to illustrate my point. So you know, moving on. On the subject of such illustrations however, thank you for continuing to be a living demonstration of my point re: a minority of Americans holding the second amendment as somehow more absolute than any other right held by American citizens. You are literally repeating the gun lobbies nonsense wholesale. You're also fundamentally wrong. If you take the Heller decision as the ground (which is it's own issue, but whatever)...well even Scalia agreed: The second amendment prevents the US government from banning the sale or possession of arms, absent some significant compelling interest (ie, why you can't go out and buy a howitzer willy nilly). It does not prevent either the federal government, or the states from regulating the sale and ownership. And even then all of this remains off topic. The second amendment has little to do with the political and social influence of the gun lobby, the literally millions of dollars they've poured into lobbying groups and PR firms in order to maintain their bottom line or pretty much any other point anyone here has brought up.

This is like the third time you have called us racist. Through my life I have found that anyone calling me a racist is either using race as a debate tool in an attempt to create an indefensible situation for me... in other words, you can't win so you end it trying to make us look guilty of something morally repulsive... or you are a racist yourself, therefore it's best to accuse them of it first. Classic deflection tactic of the liberal left, and we see it playing out today. The Clintons, the Obama Administration, and the DNC, "colluded" with the Russians, and weaponized government agencies to influence an election... and then continued to do it in order to cover up their crimes, and undermine the authority, and the policies, of an elected President. In short... Whatever Democrats are accusing you of... it's a pretty good bet they are accusing you of what they themselves are guilty of. Sure does muck up the system. You realize you haven't actually responded to a single thing i've said. Like not one response you've made this is thread has actually addressed a single thing. You have contributed nothing. What you continue to do is latch onto a small, trivial verifiable, not controversial point and then treat it like a personal attack against yourself in an attempt to inject your own politics into a conversation that should have little to do with politics, because you're apparently so very insecure about your views you need to "win points" whenever possible. America saw such a massive fit of panic buying of firearms after Obama's election that you had a multi year long ammo shortage and this panic buying was driven by media whipped up hysteria, and that much of the hysteria around his election was driven by stupid racist bullshit because that was an easy way for his opposition to rally their base (kenya, birth certificate, muslim, how many times did he get called a monkey?) is not a controversial statement. If that statement offends you personally? Well then I'd question why you feel it hits so close to home. Otherwise if you dislike my position on the state of America's gun culture, my position on the cause of it, or any statement i've made around the influence firearm manufacturers have on the debate and discussion, do feel free to actually address any of those points. Or even contribute a point of your own.

100% agree. I'm sure there are parents prior to this shooting who shared the same exact view as you Lys. But what happens when they are directly affected by it? You think their views don't change? RH is essentially saying here what Lys himself likes to often quote. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Damn right. And people are influenced by the culture they live in. Not quite. More something to the effect of "the culture and laws around people shape their views and actions". Unforntally right now American gun culture looks a lot like this. American gun culture looks like a place where freaking Obama got reelected and gun sales go through the roof because the news told em the black guy's gonna take their guns. When gun control exists in most of the world, it's not about eliminating peoples access to arms. The objectives are to limit the black and grey markets and to shape the culture of ownership. When you apply for a restricted firearm licence here you're required to provide a couple references, complete a set of safety courses, and have a purpose for owning such a thing. Although "purpose" is rather loose, target shooting and collecting are both perfectly legitimate reasons. Although collecting here means you do in fact need to be a collector, not simply a person who has a lot of guns. ie you'd better have some solid knowledge of the technical features and history of your firearms. Of course most restricted firearms are bullshit...from a capability perspective. The Ar-15 is on that list for example, and you can buy pretty comparable non restricted rifles. A common feature of firearms on that list however is the stupid tacticool marketing wank *points up at that image*. You can still get one of course, but the process goes a long way to shaping a culture of responsible ownership and means that gun culture in general here isn't dominated and directed by that marketing wank. Something similar could be done in America without ever touching the second amendment. As with all rights, the ones granted by the second amendment are not unlimited. Unfortunately a section of Americans, in fact a minority of Americans, feel that the second amendment is more absolute and the rights granted by it more protected than little things like the right to vote. Which brings us back to the source of that opinion and how much of American gun culture is an artificial construction by corporate marketing teams so they can sell more guns. The reason why this debate dies in america isn't because of "the people of america", or the "the second amendment" or any other given reason, but because of a spectacular mount of lobbying by corporations and corporate controlled groups I mean generous campaign donors to ensure it goes nowhere. In this specific incidence, it seems the majority of the blame lies with bureaucracy and broken communication systems. In 2013, the Broward County School board started a program that stopped the relay of information to police in regards to bad student behavior. Therefore, the School did not notify the local PD of (insert low life's name) being a possible threat. The PD gets called to (insert low life's name) house 39 times in 7 years. (insert low life's name) begins posting photos online holding knives/guns and starts creeping people out when having physical, in person conversations. In September 2017, FBI gets notified about a YouTube comment that was made stating "I'm going to be a professional school shooter". FBI receives the information, does some follow up, then the case falls into a black hole due to hitting a dead end. Apparently the FBI failed to track the username to an actual person. Which seems odd because lets say (insert low life's name) used a VPN to mask his IP, he still used his full, real life name for his YouTube username. For those interested, here is a video of the guy who saw the comment on YouTube and reported it to the FBI. https://nypost.com/2018/02/15/youtuber-i-tipped-fbi-about-alleged-florida-shooter-last-year/ So apart from complete lack of communication in regards to LE agencies and school administrators, there are a couple other factors which allowed this event to play out. Lack of parenting/bad parenting. It appears (insert low life's name) had a rough childhood and was from a broken home. This likely contributed to his deviance. Broken mental health system. I am surprised the school Psychologist never got involved and sat him down to talk. A lot of his classmates believed if anyone was going to shoot up the school it would be him. So clearly multiple people were aware of his issues, and the school had documentation of his disciplinary actions. It seems odd that if the school adopted a policy of not reporting bad behavior to police, and that the school itself wanted to handle problems internally, then why was it a half hearted approach? Yes he was disciplined, yes he was expelled, but the school apparently failed to investigate further. In retrospect, hindsight is always 20/20, but their are clearly several glaring mistakes present which could have confronted this threat prior to the shooting. Countless people said something and yet the system to process information and subsequently react failed. So how many [more] times does this need to happen before you want to consider the issue as something more than a one off series of failures. Beacuaracy isn't why this happened . it happened because this is just the latest incident in a multi decade long pattern of similar incidents. Something *always* fails.

Because america (and in particular the rural southern population most likely to own guns) in it's valiant fight to not pay british taxes, and it's other vaillant defense of it's right to own people knows all about the need to be armed against oppression, Something which all of europe has no experience whatsoever with, certainly not any experience within living memory. And Because owning a gun in Serbia isn't common. Owning a gun in Switzerland isn't common. Owning a gun in Canada isn't common. Owning a gun in Norway isn't common. Owning a gun in France isn't common. Owning a gun in Estonia isn't common. Owning a gun in the Czech Republic isn't common. None of those...how did you phrase it? "Socialist that surrendered [their] weapons to an oppressive government a long time ago" are free. If only they could own guns. Despite your...interesting view of the rest of the world, gun ownership tends to be somewhere between 10% and 20% of the population for much of europe. In Canada it's actually about 26%. For your comparison the rate ownership in the USA is 22%. Fairly high rates of gun ownership is not uniquely American. Mass shootings though? 5% of the world's population, 2% of the worlds gun owners, 30% of the mass shootings. That's as close to a uniquely American thing as you can get. Which brings us right back to: "There is nothing that can be done about this" cries the only nation in the world where this happens on a regular basis. And so the issue goes nowhere. Because every time it comes up, a certain section of america, whipped up by the gun lobby, goes off about their freedoms. Because America admitting that it's gun culture is fundamentally broken would cut into the bottom line. And then 4 months later, someone shoots up another school and we do this all over again.

Denial that there is a problem is of course another aspect to the issue, thank you for your demonstration. Regardless that is a description of the vast majority of perpetrators of attacks like this: Reality disagrees with you. American gun culture is sick and broken, and when coupled with america's view of violence produces events like this. Although the fact shootings like this happen on a regular basis is just the most obvious demonstration of it. Frankly calling it a culture is even a stretch; Estonia has a gun culture, Canada has a gun culture, Switzerland has a gun culture, Norway has a gun culture, The Czech Republic has a gun culture, Serbia has a gun culture, Finland has a gun culture. America has a product, produced and marketed by corporations in order to get people to buy in and buy more guns.

Without going deeply into it, gun control in the US is not about access to weapons. It's about treating the utterly sick gun culture the USA has, and breaking the stranglehold the US gun manufacturing industry has on perpetuating that culture simply because it increases their bottom line. Comparing this to massacres like Nice, is not something you can do. Vastly different motivations and reasons. There is also a reason events like this are...I would use the phrase "more common" in the US, but it's more correct to say "only common" in the US. They almost all follow the same pattern: Middle class, young, white,male, possesses a over endowed sense of entitlement, etc. Access to weapons isn't the issue in the USA, at least not for this. It's still a major issue, America's gun laws make it trivial for the secondary market to folouish and have a continuing supply of illegal weapons, but this isn't about access. This is about the american view of guns as an expression of masculinity and the glorification of violence as a way to assert oneself in american culture. And until America cares to address that, every few months we'll have another incident like this, followed by another round of ""There's nothing we can do to prevent this" cries only nation in the world where this happens on a regular basis."

*eye rolls* Proportional Representation\Ranked Preferential Ballot\First Past the Post produce essentially the same result under a parliamentary system 90% of the time. The parties a change from FPT would favor would be the NPD and the Green Party. The party with the most to lose is the conservative party, but that's because A: it would reduce liberal/NDP vote splitting and B: Could Enable the P in the PC to split off, which is why the harder right conservatives are pissy about this. 2: Change in voting system absolutely would require a constitutional amendment (See the senate reform reference decision, ie why harper failed to ditch the senate) and right now about the only province likely to get onboard is BC and maybe Aberta. Wynne has been pussy footing around it and has taken zero steps in Ontario to do it despite saying she wants to and have a majority which...yea. Quebec meanwhile is making all sorts of noise about more recognition for Quebec in the constitution and oh god no one is opening that can of worms. And without Ontario And Quebec on board....it's not going anywhere. Technically you can get the 50% of the population,. but you'd need bascily every other province on board and lolno.

Nonsense. Its trivial to prove the earth isn't flat. If is was the cats would have already passed everything off it.

To be blunt, you are making a monumental amount of assumptions, and some rather baseless comparisons here. Space X is able to do what it is now because it's had the opportunity to piggyback onto a ton of expertise and tech they didn't have to develop themselves. The abbitly to land a rocket is not new, this is tech that has existed since long before you were born. NASA has been burdened with horrible under funding and saddled with stupid requirements to get that funding since the 60s. THe space shuttle was an over budget shitshow because of stuff like initial design being modified so that the airforce could a launch loads into polar orbit, and then modified again so that the shuttle was 20% overweight and now couldn't do that. Huge chunks of money went into designing systems so the air force could steal satellites, something that was as best as anyone can tell, never used. It was also required to be human rated, which most other launch systems aren't. The shuttle is also 1970s tech, NASA should have had a new launch system 20 years ago, no one bothered to fund it. The same issue is coming up again with the SLS with completely stupid requirements. The comparison to the apollo program meanwhile is utterly absurd. leaving aside the fact the apollo was cutting edge tech (They basically invented modern rockery during that time period), nothing spaceX has, comes anywhere close to the capabilities of the saturn V let alone capable of anything close to the moon landings themselves. And again, the Saturn V was human rated. Also this should be pointed out: Neither the STS nor the Saturn V were commercial launch systems. Commercial launch systems are things like the Atlas V, Proton, the Delta IV, the Ariane family and so on, all of which are far cheaper to operate than the STS. It's also absurd to claim that this is a private endeavour. SpaceX has been and will continue to be dependent on public funding for a very long time. While it is "privately funded", that means private parties coughed up the R&D cost in expectation of future profits that take the form of government contracts. Space X's biggest customer is...NASA. it's second biggest company (if you include all those interesting "classified" missions for northop etc) is the USA air force. US tax dollars is what's paid for the Falcon 9 and the Falcon heavy. Because apparently Congress will cheerfully demand NASA pay a private company out of it's tiny budget to do the work, rather than just give NASA the budget to do it in the first place (and do it 20 years ago).

Tesla's are overpriced because they're luxury models. Most major production models make money on secondary products (hello maintenance) and on sheer numbers. On the actual car...Toyota makes something like 2k on a Corolla. Telsa...doesn't move nearly enough product to do that. So they sell high performance (which is actually pretty easy to do for a electric vehicle) feature rich vehicles, and sell fewer, but for more money. They cost a lot for the same reason a BMW or a porsche costs a lot. Even then Tesla's main focus isn't the car (an electric car is pretty easy relatively speaking) but the battery tech, the deployment of fast charge stations and the potential of autonomous driving tech. The Model X etc exist to justify demand for better batteries, charging stations etc in the hopes that developing and deploying that tech creates a market for cheaper cars with less of a profit margin. They're probably betting on the right horse provided we see even fairly modest improvements in battery tech. Spacex meanwhile, yea fucking no one else is close to them atm, at least as far as "putting things in space" go. NASA could be but America refuses to fund them and NASA can't develop jackshit without the US military stanking the project up. If the Falcon heavy meets cost projections and manages to be reliable, they just put nearly every other heavy config rocket out of the market. If lifts more and costs less to launch than the Delta IV Heavy or China's Long March 5. It can get 5 times what the Ariane 5 can to LEO and do it cheaper etc. The SLS will be able to launch heavier loads, but see again the problems with NASA and we're not seeing the thing finished till 2025 minimum. Even then Space X has the BFR under development which, if they meet the design specs, will manage the same launch capacity as the SLS but also have reusable boosters etc (and be able to lift nearly twice what the SLS is spec'd for in a disposable configuration). Elon musk gets....way to much hype. But he's building some cool shit.

Shits and giggles. Also Tesla advertising. This is the firstl launch of a new rocket design. No one wants to stick anything important on it in case it explodes, but you still need a payload to test the thing ( you don't just need to see if the rocket can go up, you need it to be able to carry however many tons at the same time). You also can't really launch a bunch of low cost things, since new designs can easily be delayed. Like if tesla had offered to launch a bunch of cube sats for university students at the Falcon heavies original launch date...they'd have all graduated by now. Also if it does blow up, even if the financial cost isn't huge what the hell does anyone who's thesis was dependant on that experiment do now? You basically can't do anything useful with the first launch. So you launch dead weight. Which is why there are a fair few blocks of concrete and tanks of water floating about the solar system. Cheap, heavy, entirely useless. . SpaceX however...they like to launch silly things. The payload for the dragon capsule test was a massive wheel of cheese, because Monty Python joke. And yea elon musk owns both companies, and Tesla got the world's greatest car advert out of it.

How strange this may seem, you kinda hope it was a mechanical defect. Cause if it was just them miscalculating the return flight (core traveled further then normally on falcon 9 flights, hence atleast the drone ship needed to be stationed further) it would have made an entire room of engineers look like fools Still, hope they got images/video of the core doing a "pressure test" out in the ocean Core hit still doing 300mph and apparently managed to land close enough to damage the landing barge. So either they utterly managed to fuck up the altitude, the booster failed to throttle up or failed while doing so. The later two have happened in the past in various forms, and fucking up the altitude for throttle up that badly would be...spectacularly dumb. Mechanical failure of some sort would be my guess

Welp it didn't blow up, there is a car in space, side boosters are down safely. Still no idea what happened to the core stage but given the lack of info...