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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 3534750 times)

dragdeler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34860 on: February 16, 2020, 02:56:28 pm »

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« Last Edit: November 24, 2020, 12:08:13 pm by dragdeler »
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da_nang

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34861 on: February 16, 2020, 03:23:47 pm »

My contribution, as a European, to the 2A debate:
I'm of the opinion that it is possible to combat firearms deaths and gun murders (and murders by extension) without restricting gun rights. Majority of firearms deaths are suicides, accidental discharges, misfires, and justified discharges (e.g. self-defense).

Firearms safety training (free and time-compensated), certifiably-secure gun storage units and locks (provided for free or cheaply, without compromising justified access time), improved firearms safety standards...

And finally, free physical and mental healthcare (dental included); and overall a strong social safety net (welfare) that reduces desperation and people's propensity to enter or create dangerous situations.

Tried and tested gun 3D-printing is coming; weapon restrictions just won't be viable when that Pandora's box opens.

They may already no longer be viable given the manuals on homemade firearms out there on the internet already...
« Last Edit: February 16, 2020, 03:28:00 pm by da_nang »
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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34862 on: February 16, 2020, 04:34:25 pm »

Coming? I mean, there are lots of ways to make a working firearm without needing a 3d printer if you can do some fairly basic metalworking. Like 99% of the difficulty is in making it accurate within a certain range and reliable/repeatable over a certain number of shots.

Youtube has lots of 3d printed gun testing and whatnot, but it's also got dudes with the equipment to straight up cast and bore and finish an engine block, if you can do that you can make any firearm you want really.
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Lord Shonus

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34863 on: February 16, 2020, 05:48:28 pm »

My contribution, as a European, to the 2A debate:
I'm of the opinion that it is possible to combat firearms deaths and gun murders (and murders by extension) without restricting gun rights. Majority of firearms deaths are suicides, accidental discharges, misfires, and justified discharges (e.g. self-defense).

Firearms safety training (free and time-compensated), certifiably-secure gun storage units and locks (provided for free or cheaply, without compromising justified access time), improved firearms safety standards...

And finally, free physical and mental healthcare (dental included); and overall a strong social safety net (welfare) that reduces desperation and people's propensity to enter or create dangerous situations.

Tried and tested gun 3D-printing is coming; weapon restrictions just won't be viable when that Pandora's box opens.

They may already no longer be viable given the manuals on homemade firearms out there on the internet already...

I confess that I don't have the statistical training to comprehend those graphs, but the wordy part of your argument is... exactly correct. The only important factor you leave out is media contagion, and that's more of a sarlaac pit than a rabbit hole.
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WealthyRadish

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34864 on: February 16, 2020, 07:24:12 pm »

The first set of posted graphs appears to suggest that the rate of legal firearm ownership is well-correlated with deaths from accidents and suicide while legal firearm ownership has no significant correlation with firearm murder rate. An R2 of 0.57 naively means around half the "accidental" death rate is expected to be predictable from rate of gun ownership rate alone, while the correlation in the second graph is so weak it's safe to say there's no relationship in that sample.

The second set of box plots separately seems to suggest that legal restrictions on gun ownership are correlated with accidental/suicide death and have little effect on murder, and it looks like the subsequent graphs attempt to predict the expected death rates if the restrictions were implemented broadly (the red lines).

The most obvious confounding factor against this that I can think of would be the possibility that gun legislation is passed in places with lower rates of ownership for political reasons, and so the correlation with legislation is incidental to the much more important factor of ownership rate. In other words, this counter-explanation would be that the laws are useless but the presence of laws is inversely correlated with gun ownership, which is the real killer, so a spurious relationship is created between laws and accidental gun deaths (across the board gun murders look unaffected by either factor).



If the Dems gave up on the issue entirely I personally wouldn't be too ruffled, but I'm not sure what the gun nuts really think they stand to lose. The usual cycle seems to be another sensational shooting, calls to do something, doing nothing, and then later maybe if the local party thinks they need a win they'll pass some ineffectual performance piece that makes the lifestyle marginally more inconvenient. America in general seems well beyond the point of being capable of sweeping legislation on just about anything, so I imagine even the worst conceivable "blanket-ban" scenario would probably include the 400 million or so existing guns getting grandfathered in just as the automatic weapons were. Even that is an unrealistic fantasy.

In my personal view the relationship with suicide, domestic violence, and accidental death is enough to ban them in any reasonable society with a reasonable civil and criminal system, but the US isn't any of those things and the political cost is so enormous that for both the supporters and detractors I think the issue is largely a waste of time relative to other problems.

My pet theory is that it's only a persistent and earnestly pursued issue at all (from the democratic leadership that is) because the nationalistic aspects of the establishment don't like the way the regular massacres reflect on their own self-image built around playing politics near the helm of "the greatest country on earth."
« Last Edit: February 16, 2020, 07:28:35 pm by WealthyRadish »
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34865 on: February 16, 2020, 07:28:59 pm »

If you want another thesis on the extinction of the megafauna I'll refer you to Randall Carlson.

I googled Randall Carson. If it's the "sacred Geometry" guy then he seems like a right whacko on the time-cube level. I don't trust people like that when they concoct wholesale their own science that opposes everything that the trained people say.

EDIT: I looked into it, it's an interesting hypothesis, but the Younger Dryas comet hypothesis fails to explain the evidence, since megafauna in different continents went extinct at different times, but it correlates well to modern humans arriving. For example, south america's megafauna went extinct half a millenia after north america's, which matches immigration patterns, and Australia's went extinct 30,000 years before the Americas, which fits with evidence that modern humans arrived there about 40,000 years ago.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2020, 07:41:22 pm by Reelya »
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dragdeler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34866 on: February 16, 2020, 07:50:46 pm »

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« Last Edit: November 24, 2020, 12:08:16 pm by dragdeler »
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Doomblade187

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34867 on: February 16, 2020, 07:56:36 pm »

So, I actually know Randall Carlson (not Carson), personally. And, he's not a nut, at least by my standards, just very new-agey. I don't personally agree with his historical interpretations of geology on a lot of fronts (primarily climate change) primarily, he's a guy who studies ancient construction and drafting techniques, like from cathedrals, and teaches them.

Edit: yeah, the stuff about proportions in old construction is like most of what he does, iirc. And as per not metric, most of the things he looks at predate metric. :3
« Last Edit: February 16, 2020, 08:03:24 pm by Doomblade187 »
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In any case it would be a battle of critical thinking and I refuse to fight an unarmed individual.
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wierd

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34868 on: February 18, 2020, 04:25:46 am »

Hey, my state is switching to ranked voting for the primary this run.

https://www.thekansan.com/news/20200217/changes-coming-to-democratic-primary


Should be interesting.  Not like my state has a huge impact or anything, but I find this interesting.  I wonder if the establishment democrats are trying to pull a fast-one by switching to ranked voting for this cycle to avoid winner-take-all outcomes because they fear Bernie *THAT* much?


I guess I will found out in 4 more years.
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Iduno

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34869 on: February 18, 2020, 09:28:50 am »

Like the only thing vaguely geometric I ever saw on geocosmic rex (another cancerous title and the only place I watch the man) was a lecture on some the measurements of some church in england and how some specific proportions relate to eachother supposedly meaning something. The jist of it was that humans are proportianal to the earth's size but it all relied heavily on using not using the metric system  IRC :D... Again I click him in the hope to hear talk of drumlins and shit...

God I never fail to undermine my actual argument with a distraction do I?

You're online. Being off-topic is common enough that there are rules specifically addressing how far off-topic you can be and/or how long, and you can find the answers to half of your questions without asking. You're good.


Edit: Anyone else get tired of the right-wing 2/3 of the Democrats making arguments that boil down to "the only way to stop a bad guy with a fascism, is a good guy with a fascism"?
« Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 10:51:50 am by Iduno »
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nenjin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34870 on: February 18, 2020, 11:02:08 am »

That's basically short hand for "We want power." Nobody that actually cares about what the president does to the rule of law and society wants another Trump. There has to be an entire class of democratic politician that's seen what Trump was able to get away with and is literally foaming at the mouth for the chance to do the same.
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Iduno

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34871 on: February 18, 2020, 11:18:39 am »

Mayo Pete responded to protestors from the LGBTQ... community by calling them all homophobes.


That's basically short hand for "We want power." Nobody that actually cares about what the president does to the rule of law and society wants another Trump. There has to be an entire class of democratic politician that's seen what Trump was able to get away with and is literally foaming at the mouth for the chance to do the same.

Yeah, I guess it goes back to the old "politics as a team sport" that undermines actual democracy. You shouldn't be allowed to vote unless you have skin in the game. "Things are fine" is bullshit. At least "I'm a billionaire and don't want to have to pay my fair share" is a personal reason to care about things. "Insurance cut me off because doctors found a tumor" is better, though.
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sluissa

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34872 on: February 18, 2020, 11:37:52 am »

Mayo Pete responded to protestors from the LGBTQ... community by calling them all homophobes.

Note, that was his supporters saying that, not him. Unless I missed something. Don't start pulling that shit out on Buttigieg if you're not going after Sanders' supporters for doing exactly the same sort of shitty things.

Also that mimics the whole "Obama not doing enough for black people" shit that went on. Some people you'll just never make happy, and you can't just be president of black people or LGBTQ people. You have to consider all of the people who you want to vote for you, and at the end of the day, as loud as they may be, LGBTQ people are a VERY small minority. They deserve to be treated equally to anyone else, but it's going to piss a lot of people off if you start catering to them.
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Doomblade187

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34873 on: February 18, 2020, 11:46:19 am »

Who's it going to piss off if you start catering to LGBT rights? Besides bigots, I suppose. I understand that there's always internal divisions, and Obama receiving criticism on his record for the black community is a good example of that. I guess I'm just confused by what you mean by "catering"
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In any case it would be a battle of critical thinking and I refuse to fight an unarmed individual.
One mustn't stare into the pathos, lest one become Pathos.

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #34874 on: February 18, 2020, 11:56:43 am »

"Catering"= Doing anything for on a policy level, instead of saying nice things during the campaign and then focusing on austerity and job training programs for toddlers once you get in.
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