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Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

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Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a slippery slope to every state having restrictive NY-like gun laws. I don't care about legal or cultural precedent in germany or the EU. This isn't germany. The US plays a far more important role in global affairs, and as such must take more dramatic measures to prevent it from falling into the hands of some regime, those measures include the right to bear arms as well as freedom of speech and freedom of rel…

Serious question (I also highly value personal freedom): Isn’t the freedom to walk down the street or go to school without fear of a deranged shooter or accidental firearm discharge an important freedom too?

>Isn’t the freedom to walk down the street or go to school without fear of a deranged shooter or accidental firearm discharge an important freedom too?

No. You have no right to not be in fear.

And even using your argument, I feel less in fear walking down the street with "protection" than not, which by your argument strengthens my right to carry.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#382
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest demographic (hundreds of millions of people), which you seem to have left out, is law abiding citizens looking to protect themselves and their families.

Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion. People in other countries where guns are illegal seem to do just fine without having to protect themselves using their own firearms.

>Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion.

Protect themselves from larger people with other weapons. Protect themselves from unarmed people who want to kill them. Protect themselves from crazy guy who made home-made shotgun with home-made gunpowder and home-made projectiles. Protect themselves from cartel members who smuggle weapons channeled by foreign militaries. Protect themselves from wild animals, including grizzly bears that inhabit the US and Polar bears that inhabit places like Svalbard. Protect themselves from rabid or poorly trained aggressive domestic animals, such as the many dogs that attack and even kill children annually.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#383
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can show you hundreds of news stories of defensive gun use from the past 6 months, or you can be satisfied with a single study, which also claims: >women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault I don't know why anyone would choose to believe something that is so easily falsifiable with a 2 minute google search[0] 0. https://www.kfvs12.com/story/9273275/accused-rapist-shot-kil...

As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. It's great that you read the page I cited, but you cherry picked your quote. Here's the full section: > 11. Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions > Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes, and women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault (in more than 300 cases) . Vi…

>(in more than 300 cases)

Yes, this shows the bias of the authors. They come to a conclusion that is only supported by undersampled data, yet their language is strongly biased towards that specific conclusion ("women never..."). Unbiased language would not read that way. I suspect the language flies under your radar because you seem to agree with the conclusions. But its a huge red flag that the authors are not approaching the subject in good faith.

Studies on DGU is an oft-treaded subject. I've looked at quite a bit of data, and if you have also, you would also know how and why it is so difficult to compile reliable data on the subject. Which is why I find it nearly futile to throw studies at each other.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there's no human in the loop for a basic sanity check? I mean, I'm not going to go to bat for Amazon's worker practices, but... how would you get a human in the loop for a basic sanity check without someone getting paged? Like, you have to alert someone so that they can do a sanity check.

That someone was me when I used to be on call as a Fab engineer. I took responsibility and my team relied on my alertness when shit hit the fan a couple of times during my career. Yes, someone has to do it. The negativity and cynicism on HN astounds me.

I find the grandstanding and They-ification nauseating and possibly mastubatory.

It is possible to have someone who can say "oh there's a world shaking event in Japan" before paging engineers.

In fact, wouldn't this be an obvious efficiency improvement at world-wide scale?

It is also possible someone believes that is possible without them being a "negative cynic".

In fact, it's unclear why having this idea for an efficiency improvement would make one a "negative cynic"

I suggest coming with curiosity and asking why people believe something rather than working towards explaining what it says about people if they actually believe exactly what your mindreading says they do.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion. People in other countries where guns are illegal seem to do just fine without having to protect themselves using their own firearms.

>Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion. Protect themselves from larger people with other weapons. Protect themselves from unarmed people who want to kill them. Protect themselves from crazy guy who made home-made shotgun with home-made gunpowder and home-made projectiles. Protect themselves from cartel members who smuggle weapons channeled by foreign militaries. Protect themsel…

I've never seen anyone argue against this that wasn't essentially, "oh well, deal with it I guess." The police can't make it in time, and have no duty to protect you. Any other weapon that doesn't provide distance and lethal force is a liability. So what is the expectation for innocent victims, especially the smaller or weaker ones? Just get beaten/killed? I've never seen a real answer to this.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are regular efforts to discredit Japan, and I think it has to do with them being the model for "done differently and to better success". Better birth rates, very very few cesarians. Far fewer health mandates, better health outcomes. Cash-based economy, fully functioning without being subject to mass surveillance. Even better litter outcomes despite no public trash cans. They're testament to the successes of a h…

Apart from the extremes of heteromorphic differences that can occur between different populations of humans, and the small chance that a very small woman might give birth to a very large baby.. What does any of that have concretely to do with society being Homogenous? What evidence do you have that Japan is actually Homogenous? How do you define that.. There is great diversity in Japan...

I wish 97.8% monoculture was considered diversity. My conglomerate can't get any cash from blackrock unless we're at least 65% diverse and make our advertisements about ESG instead of the product we're selling.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think in America citizens should shoot Bush or Obama to "hold their own government in check"? You think that's a valid exercise of the second amendment?

Are you asking me or the Founding Fathers? I think it's a terrible and apocryphal idea and America would be well served by repealing the Second Amendment. The perpetual loss of civilian life to violent urges consummated by easy access to deadly firearms is in no way worth the possibility that Americans may need to rise up and shoot a bunch of their own politicians someday. But among the reasons that it was put into p…

I don't think "you can just shoot anyone for whatever deluded reason you want" is a valid rationalisation of the second amendment, or a reason to have a gun.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics still matter. The odds of dying in a car accident throughout your life are about 1 in 100. If you take out suicide and gang violence, getting shot randomly is much less likely than dying in a car. Yet I go and drive around for fun some days and don't worry one but about it.

Guns are now the leading cause of death for people under the age of 24 in the US (and have been for several years). Yes, they exceed motor vehicle deaths. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/05/25/guns-are...

I stopped going to San Francisco and Oakland years ago, so my odds of death are not anywhere near that. I also wouldn't go to Chicago and several other cities. When I drove down Baja Mexico, I also avoided stopped at all in Tijuana. If you don't go where the murders are, it's pretty safe out there still.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking me or the Founding Fathers? I think it's a terrible and apocryphal idea and America would be well served by repealing the Second Amendment. The perpetual loss of civilian life to violent urges consummated by easy access to deadly firearms is in no way worth the possibility that Americans may need to rise up and shoot a bunch of their own politicians someday. But among the reasons that it was put into p…

I don't think "you can just shoot anyone for whatever deluded reason you want" is a valid rationalisation of the second amendment, or a reason to have a gun.

Not for any reason, but make no mistake: the militia was argued to be a check on tyrannical abuse.

"If there should be an army to be made use of as the engine of despotism, what need of the militia? If there should be no army, whither would the militia, irritated by being called upon to undertake a distant and hopeless expedition, for the purpose of riveting the chains of slavery upon a part of their countrymen, direct their course, but to the seat of the tyrants, who had meditated so foolish as well as so wicked a project, to crush them in their imagined intrenchments of power, and to make them an example of the just vengeance of an abused and incensed people?" ~Alexander Hamilton (as Publius)

I should perhaps clarify: the main purpose of the militia at the time of the Constitution's creation was to serve as a check on Federal power by providing the States with control of their own instrument of violence. But after, well, the states used that power to rebel against what they saw as a tyranny (the imminent end of slavery and therefore loss of what they perceived as their legitimate property in the form of other human beings) and the government crushed that rebellion, the Fourteenth Amendment pretty much extinguished that purpose for the Second Amendment. So the only aspect of this justification for its existence that remains is the individual conscience of the American citizen on whether their government is tyranny that should be opposed with violence. Every other check-on-tyranny purpose was nullified by the Fourteenth Amendment after the 1860s.

... And if that means 2A sounds stupid to keep around in 2022, we are in agreement and I would support repealing it.

Re: Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Unconscious After Shooting; Man in Custody

#390
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the school shootings, at least, there is always some unhinged person behind it. Deeper mental health checks before purchasing a gun (like as is required in Germany) could be very useful. Also, rules in place that your gun is stored securely in a safe, and spot checks to verify such (again, in Germany) can help with guns making their way into other people’s hands either by being given or by being taken. A friend of…

School shootings are an extremely tiny minority among shootings in the US. They just get a lot of attention.

That’s true. But high school student suicide by gun is much more common.
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