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Interesting Facts About Gun Control

[meme-king]

I got this in an email from a well read relative
And thought I’d share it

There are 30,000 (33,636) gun related deaths per year by firearms. What is never shown, though, is a breakdown of those deaths to put them in perspective; as compared to other causes of death.
• 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws - 21,175 o4 63%
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons - 11,208 or 33% including law enforcement.
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths - 505 0r 1.5%

So technically, “gun violence” is not 30,000 annually but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation?
• 480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago
• 344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore
• 333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit
• 119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington DC (a 54% increase over prior years)

So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.

This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of the nation or about 75 per state. That is an average because some States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had 1,169. Alabama had 1.

Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California of course but understand, it is not the tool (guns) driving this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all cities and states are not created equal, then there must be something other than the tool causing the gun deaths.

What about banning assault weapons. In 2010 there were 358 homicides by rife or 5.6% of all gun deaths (not all were assault rifles although the term is quite vague) and 6,009 or 94.4% were committed with hand guns. In other words, over 95% of gun deaths were not committed by assault rifles.

Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery, death, rape, assault; all are done by criminals to victims and thinking that criminals will obey laws is ludicrous. That’s why they are criminals.

But what of other deaths?
• 40,000+ die from a drug overdose – THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT!
· 36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths
• 34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities (exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)
• 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical malpractice. You are safer in Chicago than you are in a hospital!
• 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. Time to stop the cheeseburgers!

So what is the point? If Obama and the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even 10% a decrease would save twice the lives annually of all gun related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.).

A 10% reduction in malpractice would be 66% of the total gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides. Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions!

So you have to ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns? It’s pretty simple. Taking away guns gives control to governments. This is not conspiracy theory; this is a historical fact.

Why is it impossible for the government to spill over into dictatorship?
Why did the Japanese not even attempt to attack California in WWII?
Because as they put it, “there is a gun behind every blade of grass”.
The founders of this nation knew that regardless of the form of government, those in power may become corrupt and seek to rule as the British did. They too tried to disarm the populace of the colonies because it is not difficult to understand; a disarmed populace is a controllable populace. Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the constitution. It must be preserved at all costs.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that gun control is about saving lives, look at the facts and remember these words from Noah Webster “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed”. “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States”.A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power.“

[grumpyvikingdidnothingwrong]

Damn good article.

[docprovie]

Quality

[crustyoltanker]

I’ll just put this right here.

Again.

[sindri42]

You frequently hear pundits ranting about how the NRA made it illegal for actual research into gun violence to be funded. The truth is that not only does that law not exist, but in 2013 Obama signed an executive order giving the CDC ten million dollars with explicit orders to study gun violence and how to prevent it. Why haven’t you heard the results of this study, you ask? Because the CDC concluded not only that gun control laws provided no benefit and prevented no crimes, but also that the most effective possible defense against any violent crime is to carry a gun. That’s not the result the government wanted, so they buried it and immediately went back to lying about how they weren’t allowed to fund the research.

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cnn.com

Doctors start movement in response to NRA

The feud between the National Rifle Association and the medical community still rages on, with the latest coming from physicians who released an editorial saying they disagree with the NRA.

Jacqueline Howard, CNN

[triggeredmedia]

Guns are used to kill ~9,000 yearly.

Medical malpractice kills ~250,000 yearly.

[ar-gangbang]

Notice that these virtue physicians have never put out a tweet offensive in regards to any other type of death, even if it’s far more common.

Where’s the tweets with puke all over you from the 5 year old that ate Dads heart pills? 109,500 KIDS are sent to the ER every year for poisonings that could have been prevented by cabinet locks. Where’s the National outrage at this parental negligence?? Where’s the demand for Federal laws in regards to securing poison in the homes across this country?Are the 730 dead CHILDREN per year somehow not worth a tweet?

Outraged about the 77 children who got ahold of dads gun and shots themselves this year? Yeah, me too, it shouldn’t happen! but why aren’t you also pissed off about the 390 that die in back yard pools every year? Where’s the tweets of you in your soaking wet scrubs talking about how the Fed should mandate protective fencing and Motion alarms around pools?? We’re talking about 4x more kids killed for the exact same reason, parental negligence… Do these two groups of dead kids not matter EQUALLY? Why are the 77 dead from gun shots more tragic than the 390 from drowning? Look hard at yourself on this and ask “how politicized do I have to be to care more about one than the other?”…

Where are these virtue physicians at with the “stop gang violence now!” Tweets?? 80% of the gun shot wounds they’re treating are gang related! Isn’t that odd? Gang bangers obtain their guns illegally, but yet here we are… Remember when those studies came out showing 50%-70% (depending on what seat you were in) of fatal injuries in car crashes could have been avoided by wearing a seatbelt? And after that almost every state setup seatbelt laws and fines to crack down on that 60% of deaths?.. Should we not address the 80% of gun deaths in the same way? Why no brutal crack down on gangs? You hate gun shot wounds, right? You hate mass shootings, right? You hate accidental shootings, right? WHY THE FUCK DONT YOU HATE GANG SHOOTINGS 80% MORE THAN ALL OF THOSE!!! WHERE’S THE TWEETS!!

The answer to all of these questions? You don’t care THAT people die, you only care HOW. And this is because you’re politicized. You care about what you’re told to care about and that’s it… The CDC and the FBI have shown you in black and white, what’s responsible for 80% of gun deaths, but you don’t care because you’re told not to. In fact, you’re even given a response to why you shouldn’t care.. “Cracking down on gangs and mandatory minimums for guns, disproportionately targets minority groups” BOOM. End of the conversation. Mass shootings is where it’s at, now #no more #NRA wants dead kids, and get yourself to the rally tonight, David Hogg is speaking… Fucking sheep.

[wolverinedoc68w]

@ar-gangbang laying waste to foolish anti Second Amendment arguments,

[ar-gangbang]

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[sarah-the-ninja]

Rejoice, “let’s fake a relationship for Christmas” fanfic season is upon us.

Originally posted by leave-me-colourless

[dealanexmachina]

Don’t forget “snowed in and have to share a bed” season.

[poppetawoppet]

Also there is a blizzard and only ONE BED at the inn

[lynne-monstr]

and of course the heat isn’t working. whatever will they do for warmth

[whitmerule]

also they were roommates

[the-past-tense-of-draw]

Oh my God, they were roommates…

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[castle-engineer]

Not going to argue with that guy anymore but something he said bothers me so I’ll rant a bit about it here.

His argument was that we can interpret our experiences however we want to, which is true. But that isn’t the point. The point os that we admit that we have experienced something that can not be explained. I am a christian, so of course I interpret my experiences through a Christian lense, which I believe to be True. There is the possibility that I am wrong, but at some point you just have to be decisive and live on faith. So until I die and dicover otherwise, I will be a Christian and interpret everything as such.

Also, he spoke of a test to study whether ouiji boards are real, and rhe conclusion was that it was all nonsense.

Ok so many things wrong with that. (Only one of which is the previoisly mentioned Raven Paradox.) So let’s just say for a moment that deamons and fallen angels and Satan are realand they want to drage as many people to Hell as possible, making sure that as few people find redemption as possible. If that is the case, then why the fuck would they willingly prove that a tool they use is legitimate and dangerous to use? Unless you are a real fucking sorcerer who actually knows about this shit, there is nothing you can do to force anything to appear.

“Well then why didn’t any angels show up?” I can already hear him asking.

Because you are using a damned ouiji board!!! Besides, angles tend to only reveal themselves to believers, or people whom God orders them to. Even if you used a different ritual or “holy object” Your intent makes all the difference.

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[castle-engineer]

My thoughts on spirituality vs science.

So people tend to get stuck with the odea that magic/spirituality is irreconcilable with science. They are complete opposites and magic can’t possibly exist because science.

The problem with that is that you are severely limiting your scope of reality. You are putting on paradigm blinders. Let’s say that magic is real for a moment. Wizards can cast spells, centaurs walk the earth, etc. What would that mean for science?

Honestly, it would mean very little. It would just be another thing to study, examine, and tear apart to learn how it works. Perhaps it would seem to be impossible at forst, but eventually, we would develop the right technology to understand it.

That is the real key though. Time. If you were to somehow make a hydrogen lazerbeam 3,000 years ago, no one would understand it. They would consider it magic. Does that make it magic? Or just a form of science no one understands? We can go even simpler than that, let’s make a steam engine 1,000 years ago. That is actually very possible if you know how. The materials would all be available. But no one would understand what it was or how it worked, especially when you get to the engine part. Would that be magic?

Magnets are a fun thing to study because whereas we know how to apply them in many dofferent ways and can even generate magnetic fields and explain how and why it is happening, we still don’t know what magnetic fields actually are or how they work. We think that we can predict magnetic interactions with a great deal of accuracy, but the bare truth is that in both larger and extremely small applications, we have no fucking clue what really will happen.

My point is that in the grand collection of total human knowledge, we really don’t know anything at all. There is so much we see that science tries to explain and fails, and so much that we can’t even try to explain because people insist that certain things are not possible or not true.

Recently I doscovered and shared the discovery of an engineer who built a fully functional fusion generator that is actually connected to the grid. He was able to do so by completely ignoring what all the physicists said about fusion and go at it from a completely different angle. It is incredible how efficient his generator is compaired to anything else on the market. But it doesn’t fit the idea of how physicists view fusion and what they want to do with it, so he is ignored. That is how I view spirituality. It doesn’t fit how scientists want to view the world, so they refuse to admit that it is valid and cases of the “supernatural” are ignored or discredited whether rightfully or wrongfully. It is something that we can not currently study or explain, but perhaps someday we can.

After all, if you believe in the Christian God, then He is the one who wrote the laws of physics. No one knows them better than He.

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[castle-engineer]

My thoughts on spirituality vs science.

So people tend to get stuck with the odea that magic/spirituality is irreconcilable with science. They are complete opposites and magic can’t possibly exist because science.

The problem with that is that you are severely limiting your scope of reality. You are putting on paradigm blinders. Let’s say that magic is real for a moment. Wizards can cast spells, centaurs walk the earth, etc. What would that mean for science?

Honestly, it would mean very little. It would just be another thing to study, examine, and tear apart to learn how it works. Perhaps it would seem to be impossible at forst, but eventually, we would develop the right technology to understand it.

That is the real key though. Time. If you were to somehow make a hydrogen lazerbeam 3,000 years ago, no one would understand it. They would consider it magic. Does that make it magic? Or just a form of science no one understands? We can go even simpler than that, let’s make a steam engine 1,000 years ago. That is actually very possible if you know how. The materials would all be available. But no one would understand what it was or how it worked, especially when you get to the engine part. Would that be magic?

Magnets are a fun thing to study because whereas we know how to apply them in many dofferent ways and can even generate magnetic fields and explain how and why it is happening, we still don’t know what magnetic fields actually are or how they work. We think that we can predict magnetic interactions with a great deal of accuracy, but the bare truth is that in both larger and extremely small applications, we have no fucking clue what really will happen.

My point is that in the grand collection of total human knowledge, we really don’t know anything at all. There is so much we see that science tries to explain and fails, and so much that we can’t even try to explain because people insist that certain things are not possible or not true.

Recently I doscovered and shared the discovery of an engineer who built a fully functional fusion generator that is actually connected to the grid. He was able to do so by completely ignoring what all the physicists said about fusion and go at it from a completely different angle. It is incredible how efficient his generator is compaired to anything else on the market. But it doesn’t fit the idea of how physicists view fusion and what they want to do with it, so he is ignored. That is how I view spirituality. It doesn’t fit how scientists want to view the world, so they refuse to admit that it is valid and cases of the “supernatural” are ignored or discredited whether rightfully or wrongfully. It is something that we can not currently study or explain, but perhaps someday we can.

After all, if you believe in the Christian God, then He is the one who wrote the laws of physics. No one knows them better than He.

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[bogleech]

I see some HEATED debates over the risks of “toying” with ouija boards in Halloween/horror groups I follow and I just want to say a ouija board is literally a toy for kids and if polterghosties existed I’d still seriously doubt that a piece of wood invented by Milton Bradley is a real magical conduit to their dimension

[bogleech]

“nooooo dont listen to OP dont fuck around with a ouija board youll opEn PasSageWAys nAwt MeAnT fOr hUmaN ComPreHEnsiOn~”

Caaaalm down there, Lovecrafts. A weejy board doesn’t even work right with all participants blindfolded. The plastic thingamadoodle is only moved around by your own hands no matter how much it feels like it isn’t.

Why?

Because that’s how the human brain works and keeps you alive. It is absolutely full of protocols to move your body without your conscious input. This is the reason you don’t just fall over as soon as you stop thinking about standing upright.

If ouija boards had supernatural powers then the hasbro factory would just be pouring goat blood out the windows 24/7. All the employees heads would be whirling around continuously barfing like a bunch of demon lawn sprinklers. Toys R’ Us would have had to close down decades earlier than it did when the entire board game aisle started eating children’s hands.

[kazooie]

I’d say there’s a real danger related to ouija boards, but it’s not ghosts, it’s paranoia. My friend’s aunt had a pretty serious psychotic episode after playing with a Ouija board, I don’t know the full details but I think if you’re already mentally ill, or maybe undiagnosed, you’re probably more susceptible to having a breakdown of some sort after playing with something you’re convinced is real.

I know I’ve had some pretty awful episodes in the past after watching too many conspiracy videos, paranoia fucking sucks.

So, no they aren’t gonna summon demons into your house, but if you’re in a little too deep it’s definitely not good for your mental state.

[volcel-official]

“Yea, it’s not really demonic, my friend just had a psychic episode after playing with one.”

You people really think there’s only this physical world, huh?

[castle-engineer]

It’s not the physocal object that is evil, obviously. It is the act of inviting unknown spirits to come into your home. The ritual and ceremony play a huge part in that, which the object plays a huge part in turn. You can do the same things without the board and have similar results, the board is just the center of the ritual and what your attention is on.

[darkmarxsoul]

Jesus Christ you people really do live in a supernatural horror novel 24/7 don’t you? I swear to God my faith in humanity dwindles by the day. Fuck my life.

[castle-engineer]

If you think that the supernatural is fake and only the physical os real, then I really feel sorry for you.

[castle-engineer]

Also, if you thunk that believing in spirituality means “living in a supernatural horror movie 24/7” then you have no clue what spirituality entails. There is just as much holiness and purity than there is evil. Even more so in fact.

[darkmarxsoul]

Believing in the supernatural is a failing of rational thought and scrutiny lmao. It’s genuinely worrying that people still believe in spirits, demons, whatever in 2018 Western society.

[castle-engineer]

Ah, you worship the religion of science. The religion that insists that it can explain everything while failing to explain a great deal of things.

Rational thought is a good thing to have, but when you insist that something is not possible despite having experienced or seen it, then how can you say that you are thinking rationally? Isn’t denial of Truth when confronted with it the most irrational thing you can do?

Perhaps you have not experienced such a thing, so I do not necessarily think that you are being irrational in that regard, but I do think that you are being irrational by telling others that their experiences should be denied and ignored.

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[paintmeahero]

Check out the rest of this (very long) tweet chain here: https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1062823813338091520

It is worth the click. 

[thottavius-rex]

[castle-engineer]

History is great.

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[teachingwithcoffee]

It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol

[bigbutterandeggman]

Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s. 

So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem. 

BUT! Let’s look closer! 

“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.

See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.

Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.

So it’s not actually a song about rape - in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.

[smightymcsmighterton]

Originally posted by vh1

[remissabyss]

remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.

[vorked]

This is actually really interesting.
I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.

[sweetteaandanarchy]

Making its annual rounds

[darkhairedgirlfromgallifrey]

I was thinking about this post this morning.

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kaiokenofjustice asked:

Hey Prompt Guy! Not sure if you remember me, but I published a new book. It's called Scorpion: the Rae Wars, and it's the start of a sci fi series. If you or your followers are into sci fi, I'd love it if you checked it out!

writing-prompt-s answered:

That’s amazing, amigo! Let me look it up and share it with the other amigos.

Nearly one-thousand years after humanity has left Earth and taken to the stars, a rift has opened in the center of the galaxy. 

The rift has been teleporting new planets, known as Nomen, into the solar systems.

A period of tense peace begins between formerly warring factions, as a galactic landgrab begins to claim and colonize these Nomen. But the mysterious Nomen carry a dark secret within them, a secret that could lead to the end of humanity.

This secret is stumbled upon by four unlikely heroes, each from a faction that hates the other.

Can these four overcome their differences and unite a war-torn humanity against this new threat?

You can get it here