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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, July 02, 2012
My favorite play in baseball is the second base steal. In the play, the base runner watches the pitch, and at just the right moment, he sprints toward second. The catcher snatches the pitch, springs up and rockets the ball to the second baseman who snags it and tries to tag the runner as he slides into the base. As the dust clears, all eyes are on the second base umpire who, in a split second, calls the runner safe or out. When the play is over, the players dust themselves off, and the game goes on.
Some on the field may disagree with the umpire’s call. However, the umpire’s decision is final, and arguing can get you ejected. To stay in the game, great teams simply adjust their strategy based on the umpire’s call.
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Just because it didn't deter this one person doesn't mean that it never deters anyone.
As others have noted, if you're set on killing a bunch of people, you'll figure out a way to do it.
The mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan are two of the most heavily armed societies you will ever see. It was that way long before 9/11.
If that's the model you want to copy, be my guest.
greater availability of guns to people who do stupid things when they get angry or drunk. Since they are more likely to take it out on people in the general area who are just like them, it benefits the gene pool in the long run.
Question: Where does an unemployed, introverted medical school student get the training to deploy sophisticated booby traps, tactical body armor, weapons systems and more? Certainly not in graduate school!
Wait, a blogger who's never heard of the Internet?
We agree that it won't prevent random killing sprees. The people who commit those expect to die anyway. Good.
So then we're talking about when someone kills certain, specific people. Crimes of passion or a premeditated murder of a particular person. A jilted lover, a gang hit, someone who feels wronged, etc. An armed public is not going to stop a person from killing that specific individual. If you're set on killing a specific person, then you'll figure out a way to do it. Crimes of passion will still occur and premediated murderers will just take into account that shooting the guy in the middle of the street isn't such a good idea anymore (as if it ever was), so instead the murderer will kill them another way. They're not giving up on killing someone that easily.
I would like to see some research done on this claim. It's relatively easy to rank societies by how armed they are. It's harder to objectively rank politeness, though.
"Guns per capita" seems like an adequate metric for how armed a society is, so here's that list. The top three are the United States, Serbia, and Yemen.
I have done handgun training, taken a concealed-carry course (though I do not have a CC license), and shot at the range. I don't own a gun and would never keep both a gun and ammunition in the same place. (I don't even own any ammunition anymore; I used to keep some to take to the range, but I'm out of practice.) A handgun has no real purposes except sport, and to shoot somebody. I don't want to shoot somebody.
Crosby, I think your point about deterrence is logical, but somewhat abstract. If it were possible to train a large number of citizens to police standards of firearm proficiency and judgment, then the streets might be safe in an eternal-vigilance sort of way: but you know yourself that hard-to-arm New York is safer than guns-are-everywhere Fort Worth, so lots of practical factors clearly intervene. And besides, concealed-carry laws as they actually exist are not really para-police quality. When you take a CCL course, you listen to some numbnuts lecture for awhile about the joy of weaponry, take a multiple-choice test, and then go out to the range and fire at a target. My confidence in my armed fellow citizens is not increased by this culture :)
There are 90m gun owners in this country. No one has ever called Americans polite.
In state after state, including Texas, studies have shown that crime rates dropped in the years following a state's allowance for concealed carry.
When Texas was one of the first states to liberalize its concealed carry laws, the anti-gun crowd warned that Texas would turn into a big shooting gallery. Didn't happen.
Hell, Vermont has concealed carry without a license, and it's one of the safest states in the country.
I don't know that. There are still plenty of places in NYC where you wouldn't want to be wandering around, especially at night.
Most of Manhattan is still very safe, but there are areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx that can be very dangerous. I was once driving through a neighborhood on my way to a service call and I stopped a police car for directions. I was told repeatedly not to get out of my car for any reason, and just to keep driving until I got to my destination.
New York City is a very strange animal. The city is very large and densely populated, and the neighborhoods are economically and socially diverse. I would wager that the relatively low crime among large cities has much more to do with a massive police presence and a relatively crowded existence than lack of gun rights. Brooklyn is about as dangerous as Fort Worth according to a little web research (Fort Worth: 1 in 172 people are crime victims; Brooklyn: 1 in 175 people are crime victims), but there are neighborhoods that are wealthy, well-policed, and remarkably safe for any city, which means that bad parts are really, really bad.
EDIT: Didn't flip and missed 2902. But I have other examples, so at most a small coke.
It's silly, even by BBTF standards, to invoke two lawless, uncivilized places where criminals operate with impunity as a "gotcha" on gun rights.
I noticed none of the lefties have mentioned Switzerland, where it is (or was) a requirement for every household to have at least one functioning firearm.
Exactly: the factors that contribute to safety vs. danger are many, and the cities in this comparison are vast and various. (What you say of Brooklyn – there are neighborhoods that are wealthy, well-policed, and remarkably safe for any city, which means that bad parts are really, really bad – is equally true of Ft Worth and Dallas. Arlington, where the crime rate is considerably lower than Dallas or Ft Worth, is much more homogenous economically.)
It's just that the picture is way more complicated than our colleague Joe would have us believe :)
Well, the only places with more guns that the United States are lawless, uncivilized places. What real-world examples would you like to use?
Might want to do your homework. It's not the wild west in Switzerland. There are restrictions on ownership of guns
(including tests), ammo (restricted to militia peeps) and the ability to transport weapons (can't just carry the ###### around for no reason). They have many fewer guns per person than the USA - fewer murders, too.
They have many more gun murders per person than UK where almost no one owns a gun.
And In 2001 Swiss citizen Friedrich Leibacher entered a regional Swiss parliament building and used a rifle to kill 14 people before killing himself.
So there's that.
We lead by an enormous amount - USA, USA, USA!
I mentioned one in the same damn post:
***
Not really. There's no evidence that the availability of firearms suddenly turns law-abiding people into crazed murderers. It's like the old canard about the availability of guns in Virginia being to blame for the gun violence in D.C.: If it was true, how come Virginia's rate of gun violence is so much lower?
The overwhelming majority of gun crimes in America are committed within relatively small geographical areas of large cities and within narrow demographics (gang members, drug dealers, etc.). We should focus more on ways to disarm this group rather than spout P.C. platitudes about "America's gun culture" and "the evils of guns," etc.
I did do my homework. Switzerland ranks No. 4 in the world on the list of guns per capita, but it has very little gun violence. Guns don't magically turn normal people into short-fused, homicidal maniacs.
And yet Switzerland supposedly has the lowest crime rate in the world, according to some sources.
So would-be criminals in Switzerland leave their guns at home because it's the law, but would-be criminals in the U.S. and elsewhere don't feel similarly constrained by their country's laws?
If the availability of guns translates into a high crime rate, then Switzerland should be a blood bath.
The list your quoting has this rejoinder ****While the United States is ranked for the highest gun ownership rate unambiguously, Yemen based on the margin of error may rank anywhere between 2nd and 18th, Switzerland anywhere between 2nd and 16th.***
The estimate they are using is near the high end and the difference in ownership between the Swiss and the USA is 2:1 favoring USA up to 6:1 favoring USA, which would match the 5:1 advantage the USA holds in murder rate per person.
This has nothing to do with gun ownership. Nor is it true but what did I expect.
Meaningless to this argument. Whether Switzerland is No. 4 or No. 16, no one would mention Switzerland as being the fourth-most or sixteenth-most dangerous place on Earth, which would be the logical conclusion if crime rates correlated with per capita gun possession.
It doesn't? The anti-gun people constantly claim that there's a correlation between the availability of guns and the crime rate. Switzerland, among many other places, seems to prove otherwise.
I am not pro gun control, but i do think that if someone accidentally gets killed with your gun (loaned, borrowed, or stolen) then you should be charged with manslaughter or worse. Owning a gun -- a device whose sole purpose is killing -- that somehow gets insecured -- is wanton disregard for human life.
Even in librul california lots of my buddies have guns. Guns are cool. But they are dangerous.
it's akin to my coaching to people who want to get a dog. i tell them you have to be 1 percent smarter than the dog. only most people fail that standard.
i have been off and on in my membership in the nra for various reasons namely the passion leadership has for letting anyone who wants to have stuff beyond a shotgun or a simple handgun. i get both of those. shooting practice. hunting. personal safety.
but the heavy duty stuff is for whackos and people with bad thoughts. just is.
i see those wingdings at the gun shows. give ponytails and tattoos a bad name they do
They also have more regulations and restrictions, a point you are ignoring.
just a heads up that folks are going to jump on the above statement because of you using your personal example demonstrating how easy it is to get away during the work day.
better be warmed up.
The poverty rate seems like a distraction. Violent crime started to spike in the U.S. in the '70s at the same time the poverty rate was at an all-time low.
I'd probably sign on to America being full of violent, un-evolved, less-civilized lesser mammals.
Also, the point about poverty is absolutely valid, especially in regards to the Swiss.
Anyhow, I saw Dark Knight Rises. It was spectacularly top-heavy, and not altogether notable. I mean, still fun, but no real masterpiece. To be honest, the dialogue and characters were way less nuanced than I imagined they would be. Even Inception, which I didn't think was OMG super, had better dialogue and character-building.
Do you understand the argument? You said the Swiss all had guns - False. They have guns at a rate that is between 45% of the populace and 15% of the populace. They murder at either 20% of the US or equal the US.
They have more extensive laws than the US, especially when it comes to ammo.
Strawman ALERT!
High crime rate is determined by less violent crimes - car theft, drug offenses. UK has a high crime rate but almost all determined by drug busts. Switzerland has a higher crime rate per person than US.
The U.S. has thousands of federal, state, and local gun laws. People inclined to commit violent crimes don't care about laws.
BTW, I have nothing against gun ownership. I have a thing against looking in the mirror and saying that we may have a problem with guns in this country.
As a many time dog owner, I find the biggest problem is not understanding the breeds. Some dogs are couch potatoes, others need to work. As soon as you understand who you are, finding the dog which matches you is easy.
12 spree murders in last 12 years. Fluke seems to have left the building.
This doesn't include the many multiple murders where someone kills their family or serial murderers.
That is an extraordinarily low number, on the order of how often there is a major plane crash around the world despite all the planes taking off and landing every day from everywhere.
If you get hit by a spree murderer - just like if you are in a commercial airliner that goes down - you have been the victim of an extreme fluke. Nobody sane and objective bases policy on this.
.3% violent crimes per person in the US in 1970, .5% in 1980, .7% in 1990 .5% in 2000, and .4% in 2010.
No, they would probably base it on the statistical evidence about the insanely high levels of gun violence in this country, of which those sprees are merely the most prominent examples.
I never said "the Swiss all had guns." I said every household had one.
No matter how you slice it, if violent crime tracked along with the per capita gun rate, Switzerland should be a very, very dangerous place. It's not.
***
????
According to your own numbers, violent crime more than doubled from 1970 to 1990.
This has nothing to do with gun murders. Thanks for playing.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? back at ya.
Fixed.
***
A 45 percent increase in the violent crime rate from 1970 to 1980 doesn't constitute a "spike"? Seriously?
edit...it doesn't list the 50's. Your original post didn't include the word "started". It said "spiked". Nice edit.
Anyway, your contention that violent crime spiked in the 70's when poverty was at an all-time low is dubious. Cite a source showing poverty levels at an "all time low" in the 70's, and forward from there as your edited post implies.
I was already looking at the decade-by-decade trend line as per the FBI data, not cherry-picking individual years. The trend lines from 1970 to 1990 and then 1990 to the present are as plain as day.
Booond said spree murders aren't a fluke, which is the point I was addressing.
And your link is without definitions of "gun murder" and "gun death," and as such is completely non-helpful.
From your link:
I don't even know what that means, "the gun murder rate in the U.S. is at 19.5 percent."
EDIT: If it means that 19.5% of all murders are with guns, well, whoop dee doo. What does it matter if people die with guns or with, say, knives? This is the exact point being made. It's as relevant as saying that Nick Swisher strikes out too much, and if only we could convert his strikeouts into pop ups, we'd have something.
But it does have to do with the concept of fluke, which clearly you need help with in order to play.
I posted #2931 at 5:36 PM and you replied with #2938 at 6:04 PM. Unless it took you 28 minutes to write those two sentences, my minor and immediate edit shouldn't have affected you much.
This page has the official Census Bureau numbers in chart form:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
As you'll see, the poverty rate nosedived from 1960 to 1970, and the 1970s had the lowest average poverty rate of the 50-year period from 1959 to present. Despite this, violent crime increased dramatically throughout the 1970s and '80s, peaking around 1990.
No, it didn't. It was 12.5 percent in 1970 and then ranged from 15 percent to 11 percent throughout the 1990s. Even with a few recessions, the poverty rate has been essentially flat for almost 40 years (i.e., never lower than 11 percent and never higher than 15 percent).
There is the occasional exception - in your neck of the woods, Whitman springs to mind.
Civilians were at least able to help to keep him pinned down, while the two cops and one civilian (IIRC) went up to the top of the tower after him.
What percentage of criminal gun-related deaths come from illegally obtained weapons? Gang wars and drug-trafficking-related shootings tend to be performed with unregistered weapons. I'm not trying to argue that it's a good idea to allow unlicensed and unregistered gun ownership, so a lot of what goes into those statistics doesn't strike me as particularly relevant.
The only really worthwhile comparison is one where the same locality is compared with and without a particular law. Switzerland has an entirely different population and culture as compared to the US, so it's a complete non-starter (for either pro- or anti-gun arguments). Fort Worth is a very different city than Brooklyn (part of NYC, but certainly large and populous enough to be considered a city for basis of comparison).
There really isn't evidence of a link between gun ownership and violence. In fact, if this study is to be believed, there's not even evidence of a link between criminal gun ownership and violence.
If you reduce the supply of legal weapons, you can also reduce the supply of illegal weapons.
Let's take the Chris Rock hypothetical, where guns are cheap and plentiful, but ammo is a thousand dollars a bullet, with illegal ammo carrying proportionate fine. Do you think that would have no effect on gun violence?
This is just a gun ban pretending not to be a gun ban. It's like allowing people to own cars but not tires.
Okay, do you think it would have no impact on illegal gun crime?
Only if you reduce it everywhere or very tightly control the borders. There are many, many guns in NYC even though it's fairly hard to get a license.
Let's take the Chris Rock hypothetical, where guns are cheap and plentiful, but ammo is a thousand dollars a bullet, with illegal ammo carrying proportionate fine. Do you think that would have no effect on gun violence?
I think it would result in a very successful underground market, since bullets can be hand-made much more cheaply than $1000 a pop. It might be worse than Prohibition in terms of building up criminal organizations.
According to the Census Bureau, the median age in the U.S. increased by 2.5 years from 1990 to 2000, while the population of people age 18 to 34 decreased by just 4 percent. It's hard to see how a 4 percent decrease of people in the high-crime 18-to-34 age group resulted in a ~33 percent drop in the violent crime rate over that same period.
***
Yes, if all the guns not owned by billionaires were essentially turned into dangerous-looking paperweights, there would likely be far less violence involving guns. But I don't see how this has any real-world applicability to this debate.
This would have been an interesting way for Ray to go a few pages ago.
Ray: What if, in addition to a bus ride and a couple of hours, voter ID's cost a thousand dollars a pop?
BBTF commentariat: You have got to be ####### kidding me. That's the most unconstitutional thing I've ever heard of in my life.
Ray: Okay, do you think it would have no impact on voter fraud?
Where I live (Wisconsin) just recently passed concealed carry, so you would not see any affect in statistics to this point, assuming there was any. Crime has been decreasing since 1990, though it's been decreasing less here than the national average. Wisconsin is below the national average in all crime statistics. Aggravated assault has actually been up (high water mark was in 2008) but is still below the national average.
Looked at a couple of the rural states. Who knew that North Dakota had a rape problem. 15th worst in the nation in 2008. This has been a recent issue for them. They are low on everything else.
Alaska has the worst rape rate, apparently year after year. They have lowered it some, but they are still worst. One could certainly speculate as to why rape would be high in Alaska. They have done a lot better on the murder rate, which is half what it was in 1960, pre-surge, and that includes a healthy population increase.
Due to rent-seeking, it would still raise the average cost of a bullet. Prohibition, as silly as it was, was successful in changing the drinking habits of the country.
Well, some people are pretty big on staying within the grounds of the second amendment. A $1,000 tax on bullets is pretty clearly constitutional.
The difference between effectively using firearms and those other device is simply the cost-benefit analysis. For firearms I need a great deal of training in different situations. First I would need to carry a loaded weapon at all times. Body armor and a helmet would seem to be at least as important as the weapon. I would probably need to go to the firing range on a regular basis to keep my skills up, since this is a skill, unlike something like driving a car or climbing the stairs, that I have not once had occasion to put to use. So it's off to the firing range. I also need to be prepared for different scenarios, which would include situations where I really need to draw first to have any positive impact, those where my firing upon someone will improve the situation, and those where it will make it worse.
Now we all need to prepare for things that may never happen. I plan to teach my kids what to do in a fire, even though that will probably never take place. I just don't think that the training required there is nearly as intensive to have the positive impact. Perhaps I'm wrong, but in the cold light of reason toting a loaded gun 24/7 makes little or no sense for me.
LOL. If this is true, why hasn't some liberal jurisdiction tried it yet?
Last week, you liberals were claiming health insurance wasn't affordable because ~5 percent of the U.S. population doesn't have it. But now you have no problem pricing 99.9 percent of the population out of exercising a fundamental constitutional right. It's comical.
Promoting any argument that has the phrase "you liberals" in it is kind of a non-starter.
Guns aren't affordable. We know that, because some people can't afford them. This is a big problem. We need to pass a law requiring everyone who we don't exempt to purchase a gun. If someone does not purchase a gun, we will fine them. The money will be used to purchase guns for everyone who wants them, because it's a fundamental right for people to have a gun. This is all constitutional, because it is simply a tax.
We will call this the AGA. Affordable Gun Act.
I was going to say "you people," but I didn't want the Ann Romney treatment.
Better to use a gun in a drive-by than a bomb, where even more people could get killed.
But I'm shocked that making drive-by shootings illegal didn't put a stop to drive-by shootings.
Because crime has been down significantly since 1990, so gun control is a relatively low priority. I mean, I wouldn't push for that kind of policy as a top priority. In addition, if someone can drive to the next state/town/whatever, it makes things a lot more difficult to enforce.
Hey, I'm happy to give every citizen 10 bullets for free.
I think it's interesting that you seem to think that people being able to own/operate semi-automatics makes us a better society than one in which poor people don't have to worry about dying from treatable diseases.
No, he's talking about the consistency of the argument, not making an attempt to equate the underlying subject matter one way or the other.
It would have been interesting to see Washington, D.C., fresh off losing Heller, or Chicago, fresh off losing McDonald, immediately respond by passing a $1,000-per-bullet tax on the sale or possession of bullets within their respective cities. I'm guessing the Supreme Court would have been less than impressed.
TNSTAAFB
I want everyone to have health care. I want no one to have guns (well, 22's for target shooting and hunting with a permit are fine). I don't particularly care what John Madison thought about it. What part of that is inconsistent?
Jurisdictions have typically been given very expansive leeway on taxation issues. I think a $1K per bullet tax probably wouldn't work for a number of reasons both political and societal, but a 100% tax on the cost of bullets might reduce consumption at the margins.
I think it's more effective to more closely regulate the gun market, but that's me.
Edit:
Embarrassed to say that this took me a moment.
And the ratio of spree murders is pretty equal between Western Europe and the US, not like other violent crime, which would be expected if gun control was a factor.
*) If you dispute that, how is the gun control law going to differ from drug laws in that respect?
**) Fascinating case, a charismatic priest in a sect brain washes the girl into killing his wife. The Achilles heel of the plan being the thousands of texts from him on the girls phone.
As far as the gun debate, my GF said that she'd be fine if everyone was allowed only the guns that were being made when the 2nd Amendment was written. Guy in CO would have gotten exactly one shot off and then been beaten to death, probably.
I rather be talking about the Dark Knight Rises. Bane/Tom Hardy was terrifying.
I actually think they didn't give him enough screen time, kinda.
I have a terrible admission - while I really really liked Dark Knight, I have found altogether the Nolan Batman films to be, personally, just too top-heavy and self-important, and this last one was the perfect example of that. While I realize these are subjective arguments, it sadly gives me a lot more time to focus on all the annoying plot holes I would otherwise ignore. There were, obviously, some doozys in this recent one. It was a great summer blockbuster, but the idea that these Batman films are art or statement is tiresome. I may spend too much time on nerd sites, I guess, maybe only they think Nolan is the new Kurosawa.
Sorry for the delay on reply.
As I recall the narrative in 04 (and sadly, the narrative matters more than anything else), Dubya had done a great job in handling 9/11 and nobody questioned attacking Afghanistan. However, anti-Iraq sentiment was still something like 49/51, and that 51 was a whole lot louder and more convinced of their position than the 49 against the war. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Cindy Sheehan's views on Iraq were considerably more mainstream by 2008. The changing rationales hadn't yet become a meme, and Dick Cheney wasn't yet Darth Cheney.
Obviously, few saw what was coming for the economy, but I distinctly remember the refrain of "THESE DEFICITS!" coming from the left. Even so, Bush was clearly inept. His economic policy was blatantly skewed towards the wealthy, Iraq was still an obvious war of choice, and both wars were going poorly.
One happy circumstance is that I think that if Mitt Romney came out as fiercely homophobic as Bush did in 04, he'd lose this election in a snap.
It is absurd, for instance, that infantry weapons with enormous magazines are so widespread in this country. But almost all of their owners – even Harv's whackos and wingdings – use and keep these weapons responsibly, and as several people have noted, a really deranged killer isn't likely to balk at illegal means to carry out his deathwish. On the other hand, it is absurd to claim that a bunch of armed citizens is going to have much impact (deterrent or tactical) on a nutjob shooter. Arguments for concealed-carry are not much helped by such scenarios; I'm far more likely to be convinced by the "general deterrence" effect of carrying on muggings and holdups and what-not.
NTNGod makes an interesting point, that Charles Whitman was pinned down by civilian shooters. It's been a while since I read about that incident, so I can't remember what weapons the civilians used. The UT tower is very high; I can't imagine handguns being of much use against a sniper up on the observation deck. I'd assume people brought out hunting rifles to fire at him, and they had some time to do so (they weren't reacting instantly by drawing concealed weapons). The other factor (which indeed supports NTNGod's point that perfect tactical situations do materialize) is that Whitman was alone in a highly exposed place. One could fire at him without much danger to anyone else. So yes, sometimes dramatic and precise scenarios do take place.
2. Until the "armed society" cohort admits in plain English that I, Sam Hutcheson, deserve my own suitcase nuke, so I can tie it to a saddlebag and do my best imitation of Raven from Snow Crash, we will know that their defense of the "fundamental right" to bear arms is so much wailing and ########.
I've enjoyed the first two (haven't seen Rises yet) Nolan films well enough, and they do the darkness of the "Dark Knight" version of Batman pretty well, but as superhero movies go, The Avengers was far better.
Sounds like a "well-regulated Militia" to me.
Does your girlfriend work for Colonial Williamsburg or something? That's a fairly unusual interpretation.
It's like arguing that you're fine with free speech as long as it only covers printed pamphlets and books made by 18th century technology and speeches in the town square. Or that convicted criminals are only entitled to a jail with 1787 technology (so no TV, electricity, air conditioning, antibiotics). Sorry, Dave, your lawyer has to come by stagecoach, can't access Westlaw, and that suit better not be made using modern textile methods!
Though on the other side, I guess it would destroy Obamacare, given that the medical care right would only involve involve things we could cure in 1787. I'd definitely have to pare back ZiPS considerably, though, and I don't think I would be able to publish updates very often in Mr. Appelman's Daily Sporting Almanack.
I think you're focusing to much on the snark about the historicism rather than the underlying point. No one - and I mean absolutely no one; you could summon the ghost of Charlton Heston and bind him in a circle that requires him to tell the absolute truth, and even he would have to come clean on the issue eventually - believes in an absolute right to bear arms. No one thinks I should get a suitcase nuke. No one thinks Kehoskie has a constitutional right to his own Predator drone (excepting perhaps Kehoskie, I suppose.)
We limit access to types of arms already. It is illegal to own a fully automatic assault weapon. That fact almost certainly saved lives in Colorado this week. If the nutjob in question had had access to fully automatic guns - think the 'hold the trigger and spray bullets like in The A-Team' variety of automatic, repeating fire - far more people would have died in that theater. The fact that he was limited to guns where he at least had to pull the trigger to fire - semi-automatics - saved lives. I don't think that can be argued against, honestly.
So, the question at hand for the 2nd Amendment "fundamentalists" is simple. If we are willing to draw the line of what "arms" we have a "right to bear" on this side of nukes, or drones, or Abrams tanks, or in point of fact automatic fire guns, then what is the "fundamental" argument against moving that line back a half step and banning war-grade ammo, or 100-round clips? You can't make an argument to fundamentals there, any more than the woman that has accepted the "indecent offer" to put out for a million can make a principled argument against spreading for $10. You've already established that you're whoring the "fundamentals" out, at this point we're haggling over price.
Ok, we can apply this to the ACA. Only health care that was available when the framers were alive is covered!
I kind of thought the Batman films themselves were tiresome, by this point. But obviously YMMV.
Yay?
I think it's a good thing, and have said so from the very start. Too bad for Penn State, and I have nothing against the institution, but the idea that a sports program is so sacred, and the people running the program so untouchable as to foster the idea that heinous crimes need to be covered up and the perpetrators left at large to continue their crimes, needs to be wiped out as loudly and violently (metaphorically) as possible.
Agreed. Hopefully young fans coming of age in the next decade will react to conversations of old people about PSU's football program the way I did when people a generation older than me used to talk about SMU's death penalty.
"SMU had a football team?"
I feel like this is where one pulls out the "why you mad, bro?" graphic. But I might be too old to have that right.
I assume your girlfriend is also OK with not being able to vote?
***
Re: Sam's #2983 and #2988, other than the absolute lunatic fringe among libertarians,* no one advocates for completely unregulated gun rights, and no one argues that it should be lawful for private citizens to possess "suitcase nukes" or Predator drones, etc. Unlike liberals' non-stop redefinition of the Constitution's plain language (and their invention of language that doesn't exist), Second Amendment supporters don't consider the phrase "well regulated" to be dead letter or pretend the words don't appear at all.
No one who's taken seriously among RKBA supporters is opposed to laws forbidding violent felons and the mentally unstable from owning firearms, and the overwhelming majority of RKBA types take the responsibility of gun ownership very, very seriously. But our idea of "gun control" is keeping and taking guns from criminals rather than keeping and taking guns from everyone.
* Yes, yes, I know: "Isn't that all of them?" etc.
Fine, we've established what you are. Now we're negotiating price. (All of your blather about "plain language" is smoke screen at this point.)
See #2992.
Utter nonsense.
I have to restrain myself from gushing. Tom Hardy was fantastic. Ann Hathaway owned the screen. I only wish Gary Oldman got more screen time.
I agree with the statue coming down. The juxtaposition of honoring the man aside the negative images conjured up of what the man did to enable a child rapist is simply too much, like it would be too much to honor Pete Rose with a HOF induction while putting his baseball crimes on his plaque.
That said, this has to be a bitter pill for the Paterno family to swallow -- not only have they had to endure the man dying, but they've seen his reputation and legacy destroyed as well -- but swallow it they must. Paterno made his own bed here. It was one thing to discipline players privately and discreetly for minor infractions rather than letting the Dean's office do it via the normal processes, but that approach was completely out of bounds in dealing with Sandusky, and Paterno's legacy should bear the cost.
There is a certain irony to this, that the man who was revered for 60 years because of what he did for the football program and the school ultimately became a big part of the reason why the football program and the school are going to suffer immensely.
I saw it. Can you point me to a post that is actually responsive?
Pretty much everything you write is, yes. But we'll continue to try to pry some semblance of rational discourse out of you nonetheless. It's Sunday. We're feeling charitable.
You admit that "other than the absolute lunatic fringe among libertarians,* no one advocates for completely unregulated gun rights." Your words, quoted from @2993. So, given the fact that you have established your position as "no one advocates for completely unregulated gun rights" we are now to a simple point of establishing where the regulations should exist, where the line between "okay, access to this is protected" vs "no, you can't mount a 130 cal turrent gun to the top of your SUV you nut!" Your position, one assumes, is that current regulation is okay (or do you think existing bans on full-repeater assault rifles are tyranny or something?) but moving that existing regulation back a baby step to ban large magazine clips or armor piercing ammunition would make Charlton Heston's ghost cry as he sits on the right hand of G*d?
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