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NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

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Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#131

Post by bcraven »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #124
staunch wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ignorant can you be not to know that there are 21+ million U.S. military veterans? More (better trained) soldiers than there are males in Iraq. The claim that Americans don't know how to use guns is in the laughable category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides. Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64. This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming…

I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#132

Post by ceejayoz »

staunch wrote: post #106
lotsofmangos wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it goes down that way, if the military feels it needs to hold back and win the narrative, not just the ground. On home soil it may well do this, but equally it may go completely nuts if it feels subject to a genuine existential threat. Look to the end of the Tamil Tigers for an example of what a modern military is capable of against insurgents when it pulls out all the stops. - http://www.newyorker.com/maga…

Comparing the Tamil Tigers and a popular uprising of 200 million armed Americans is laughable. Your mistaken notion that a rebellion can't fight a sophisticated military has been decisively disproved over the last decade in the middle east. Plausibly debated 15 years ago but now we know you're wrong. ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms. They took over army bases and st…

> ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms.

And two days of American airstrikes was all it took to let the Kurdish militia make good headway into taking critical areas back.

> IDF has been throwing the best technology in the world at Hamas for decades. They're stronger than ever because they have popular support.

With Iron Dome, border fences, etc. their power to actually do anything to Israel has steadily decreased.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#133

Post by Graham24 »

bcraven wrote: post #131
lotsofmangos wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides. Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64. This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming…

I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.

the Atlantic Ocean is our friend.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#134

Post by maxerickson »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #100
zrail wrote: post #2

This is awesome. Not really sure why they chose to release it as an XLSX document on GitHub, but it'll work!

Is interesting that this has made itself on here and not been flagged yet. I have noticed that HN normally has an aversion to issues that are directly to do with contemporary politics outside the realm of telecoms, patents and copyright and I wonder if this seems more of an acceptable discussion for the site, given the wider issues raised, purely because the material being discussed is up on Github.

There were similar substantial discussions a couple times in the last year or so:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=police%20milit#!/story/sort_by_dat...

(the articles from the New Yorker, Salon and the Economist)

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#135

Post by wallarachel »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #51
barsonme wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Puyallup, Washington and we've received (what I believe to be) an MRAP. (It looks like one, but I've yet to see it outside of the building so I haven't gotten a very good look at it.) It's housed in the police/fire station downtown. Puyallup is a "city" of just under 40,000. Our crime isn't even too horrible ( http://www.piercecountycrimedata.org/NeighborhoodCrime/index... ) But we have an MRAP. It might be…

I live in Walla Walla and I don't see our MRAP in the NYT spreadsheet, but here's the article: http://union-bulletin.com/news/2014/apr/16/walla-walla-swat-... . Absolute madness.

Hey, I'm a reporter at the U-B and I was actually talking to the NYT reporter who got that data yesterday. The NYT's request was granted in May 2014, and we got our MRAP in April, so he said it's most likely we were just after the cutoff for the Pentagon's dataset when the request was filled. The mine-resistant vehicles are separate things, as far as I know, because other MRAPs were listed as such on the spreadsheet.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#136

Post by staunch »

bcraven wrote: post #131
lotsofmangos wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides. Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64. This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming…

I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.

Have you thought about why you have this irrational fear or does the fact that it's commonly shared among your society lead you to believe its not irrational?

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#137

Post by staunch »

Graham24 wrote: post #133
bcraven wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from the UK, and the fact that lines like, "You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64" are bandied round so readily is completely terrifying.

the Atlantic Ocean is our friend.

Sure is. It conveyed many brave Americans over to fight and die rescuing the UK from enslavement. They did it with guns.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#138

Post by staunch »

ceejayoz wrote: post #132
staunch wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the Tamil Tigers and a popular uprising of 200 million armed Americans is laughable. Your mistaken notion that a rebellion can't fight a sophisticated military has been decisively disproved over the last decade in the middle east. Plausibly debated 15 years ago but now we know you're wrong. ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms. They took over army bases and st…

> ISIS took control of a large part of Iraq and Syria and they started with small arms. And two days of American airstrikes was all it took to let the Kurdish militia make good headway into taking critical areas back. > IDF has been throwing the best technology in the world at Hamas for decades. They're stronger than ever because they have popular support. With Iron Dome, border fences, etc. their power to actually d…

The peshmergas are an example of armed citizens rising up to defend themselves. Not a counter example. There have been many of much smaller militias in Iraq run by reasonable people protecting their communities.

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#139

Post by lotsofmangos »

staunch wrote: post #137
Graham24 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Atlantic Ocean is our friend.

Sure is. It conveyed many brave Americans over to fight and die rescuing the UK from enslavement. They did it with guns.

To be fair, you also helped fund the other side first. - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworld...

Re: NY Times releases military surplus gear data on GitHub

#140

Post by staunch »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #139
staunch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure is. It conveyed many brave Americans over to fight and die rescuing the UK from enslavement. They did it with guns.

To be fair, you also helped fund the other side first. - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworld...

Some individual Americans supported Hitler early on. The men that fought and died never did.
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