VaporTrail

I think "desire" would be a better word for what you're describing. That is fucked up. And I don't think that anyone would say that you're lacking courage because you're unwilling to give up your guns. Sorry, I could have been more clear. Fixing the opioid epidemic is a Herculean task, but it would be child's play compared to fixing the cultural issues plaguing urban and rural America. To answer your question - I don't know. I don't really think decriminalizing drugs would lead to an increase in usage. But just because something is legal, it doesn't mean people won't stoop to crime to satisfy a habit. I'm also not sure it would lead to a reduction in use of street drugs with unknown components. If you're broke and can afford fentanyl cut with x/y/z instead of the pure stuff from the pharmacy, I think most people would stick with what they can obtain. Agreed. That's the only way guns could be get rid of here, but it's a logistical nightmare to the point of being unrealistic.

I reject those explanations just as you do. I think your first question is a valid one, but I think it is very difficult in this political climate to have the conversation to fix it. But take a look at the total number of gun deaths in that link I posted above. You're on the same order of magnitude as getting in a car accident, which is way too high, in my opinion. 1 - The sheer amount of guns our country has is not comparable to anywhere else in the West. It creates the obvious logistics problem if trying to track/license/disarm 2 - Culturally, society is getting sicker. There were much more dangerous guns available pre-1986, but the homicide rates are going up. More money into mental health initiatives is great, but does nothing to address the root cause of why people can get to the point where they are willing to kill another human. 3 - Here is the latest data from the CDC on racial disparities on gun violence. Woody, you might be shocked to learn that I actually voted for funding the CDC to study gun violence at the Ohio State Medical Association and at the American Medical Association. As you can see, the Black community rates are on par with places like Honduras, whereas White/Asian communities have gun homicide rates comparable to western European nations. For suicides, it's the White and Native populations bringing the average up, whereas Black/Hispanic/Asian communities are comparable to European nations. Unfortunately, due to the political climate today, I'm not touching this one with a forty-foot pole at our medical meetings. There are systemic inequities that do explain some of this - SES, crack/opioid epidemic, distrust in authorities. One thing that I don't think gets talked about enough in this context is the culture of toxic masculinity. It's the common denominator between urban black and rural white culture, where homicides and suicides are most prevalent. Men are raised to be stoic, and it's unacceptable to show any weakness. It's a cultural norm in the inner city to not back down to someone who slights you. It's a cultural norm in rural America to refuse to ask for any help for your mental health. Fixing these particular issues is going to take generations. It's a Herculean task and, by comparison, fixing the opioid crisis seems more likely in the short term. Getting back to the homicide/suicide rates. What do we do about it? Advocating for the disarmament of the most affected populations would rightly earn you the nickname Hitler of 2022. Limiting everyone's access to guns is punitive to responsible gun owners who shouldn't be held accountable for the actions of psychopaths. Compulsory training sounds more reasonable now that states are moving to constitutional carry, but can you imagine the outrage if the gun range was a mandatory class required to graduate high school? I think that'd be the next best step at this point. It's a compromise from mandatory gun ownership. But what other options are there?

Drawing the line between conceal-carry and open carry is demonstrating that you don't really have an understanding of how crime happens. The vast majority of it is a crime of opportunity. Another gun crime that happened on my block is an attempted hijacking of some old lady's car - probably the same kid who held up the dad. They go after targets they think are easy. If you have a gun in a holster, you might find that people are going to think a little longer about the consequences before they fuck with you. What is reasonable for protection is dependent completely on where you live. If you live in a place like Fairlawn or Hudson, you really aren't going to worry about this shit. Walking my neighborhood in Shaker, I apparently have to worry about some jackass 14 year old holding people up. No amount of laws or gun buybacks is going to convince me that the state has removed the firearm from this kid's hand. From the 2015 data I posted last month, the 8.9*10^-5 lifetime odds of dying due to a mass shooting is an acceptable number to me. I'm sure the number has increased since 2015, but I'm guessing it's still going to be at the same order of magnitude as dying from a foreign-born terrorist. I would rather not chase trying to get that number down by putting the focus on stopping mass shootings. If you want to talk about all-cause gun deaths, then I'll be happy to have that conversation. Once again, you miss the point completely. You're equating the ability to kill a person or vaporize a city block with the ability to control a population. 1 million Iraqis and 1 million Afghanis were killed by the US military during the occupation. The US government still didn't win and are hated in those regions for what they did. Taking someone's constitutional rights away for the rest of their lives because of something they did as a child is not a "tiny little action." Sorry dude, the country had a PTSD response to 9/11 and went full retard. Freedoms came off the books, they didn't come back, and continued to be abused by both parties of government. The country is worse off now than it was on September 10, 2001. The country is on the cusp of having a similar response, and I am wholly against a knee jerk reaction because you want to lower the 10^-5 odds that you'll die from a mass shooting.

Why weren't there any mass killings with fully automatic weapons when they were legal to buy before 1986?

The overthrowing a tyrannical government argument isn't something I'm personally on board with. I'm just demonstrating why your dismissal of it is wrong. Yeah, I agree with everything here except the last sentence - if there are 4 guns per person, how much ammo do you think is out there? Anyway, anyone clamoring to overthrow the government with their guns is deluded. The point the guy made about the limits of the military on subjugating an entire nation is the main point I'm trying to get across. My issue on this topic is that people think that personal defense should be left to the government. The cops' response time to the Texas shooting is reason enough to not go that direction. Did you know that Black women are the fastest growing group of gun owners in the last 3 years? Sorry man, the reality is that many people live in shitty, unsafe neighborhoods, and a lot of them also have systemic distrust of the authorities. I started carrying because some piece of shit held up a dad who was walking with his 4 year old kid 3 houses down from mine. I actually have a thought based on these last two shooters. It's some slippery slope shit, and I don't feel good about even suggesting it, but it would have possibly prevented these particular shootings. Felons can't own guns. Both of these shooters turned 18 and didn't have a felony history to prevent them from legally obtaining them. However, both of them did have a history of torturing/dismembering animals. There is a big correlation between conduct disorder, torturing animals and it proceeding to antisocial personality disorder. These people are psychopaths, and there is no drug or mental health counseling that exists to cure it. You could potentially use this as a red flag criteria. Here is the DSM 5 for conduct disorder https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/conduct-disorder-dsm--5-312.81-(f91.1)%2c-312.82-(f91.2)%2c-and-312.89-(f91.9) I think the criteria I'd consider would be use of a weapon to harm others, physical cruelty to animals, arson, sexual assault, but it feels fucked up to deprive someone of their constitutional rights because of something they did as a child.

Calm down. There are instances where these things get stopped early on and they don't make the news. As I said, it's rare, but you have a puncher's chance. Are you equating irresponsible gun ownership with open carry? I'd love to hear your reasoning. So can you clarify which of the above you'd consider responsible gun ownership, if any? I think the bigger joke is people using a statistical rarity to take away constitutional rights from law abiding citizens. Do you really think we lost control of Afghanistan because of the terrain? The missiles, artillery, and drones that we're supplying them with are making headlines, but make no mistake, the majority of Russians being killed are being killed from small arms fire. Yes, let the hate flow through you.

Found the copypasta. Listen, you fantastically retarded motherfucker. I'm going to try and explain this so you can understand it. You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drones or any of these things that you so stupidly believe trumps citizen ownership of firearms. A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3AM and search your house for contraband. None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrannical assholes in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington D.C. into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of shit. Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why in a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while the people have nothing but their limp dicks. BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out the fucking window because now the police are out numbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them. If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency the the U.S. military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick up trucks and improvised explosives because these big scary military monsters you keep alluding to are all but fucking useless for dealing with them. Dumb. Fuck.

The "good guy with the gun" was the team who put the shooter down. If you're carrying a handgun and happen to be present when a mass shooting goes down and the perp has a long rifle, you're more likely to be a speed bump than a hero, but you've got a puncher's chance. The retired cop reportedly put a few rounds into the Buffalo shooter's body armor. And again, these mass shooting events are a statistical rarity. If someone is carrying in the hopes of stopping a mass shooting, then they're a delusional retard who can't do math. If you're carrying because you live in a bad neighborhood, that's another story. Curious what your opinion is on this one - Do you feel the same about Jews and Blacks who arm themselves because of the threat of white supremacists? Not sure why you'd think this, given what the might of the US military "accomplished" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Further, the urban fighting in Ukraine is giving the Russians hell. Here is some relevant wisdom from 4chan that can better articulate my point.

From my understanding, if it's proven (good luck figuring that out) that Twitter knowingly lied about their value by undercounting the number of bots, then the offer Musk made is null and void. If Twitter's value is what it is because it has 230M users, then its value is probably less if there are only actually 200M users (or however many bots there are). Further, if you get caught lying about the value of your company when it is publicly traded, then you're inviting the FTC to come after you. If Musk is right about them lying about the bots, then there is a clear financial incentive for him to take this route. If lies cannot be proven (I'm guessing this is what happens), he still tanks the value of the stock and would probably happily walk away with egg on his face because it hurts the people he loathes.

Runaway inflation. Oil prices through the roof. The Soviets Russians invade Afghanistan Ukraine. A neoconservativeliberal US president praises the Afghanistan Ukrainian government as democratic freedom fighters and gives them state of the art weaponry. Now there's a scary new disease that might be associated with the gay community? I think they rolled the simulation back to 1981.

Great post. The craziest thing of the last 10 years is to see Obama liberals who bashed on Bush for shitting on the Bill of Rights do a complete 180 on the topic now that Biden is pushing for it. There are politicians calling for the shutting down 4chan, policing of Discord servers and people put on watchlists for wrongthink. No one is going to want any of that shit when the political pendulum swings the other way.

You'd mentioned an ulterior motive earlier. To crash the price and buy it for cheaper (or, alternatively sending the company into a tailspin while never having intent to buy) seems pretty consistent with what a billionaire would do.

Thank you, Rand.

Have you bothered to look at who is paying the people who write these articles for Foreign Affairs? The author of that article is an employee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. CSIS is a think tank that was founded during the height of the Cold War for the purpose of understanding an enemy that doesn't exist anymore. These people get paid 6-7 figures, with our tax money, to sit around and circlejerk about military scenarios, 99% of which never happen. Their well would be the first to dry up if defense budget was cut. We remain decades ahead of our rivals, militarily. I have a buddy who was an Abrams driver. About 5 years ago, he told me that the Russian T-90 was the most advanced piece of hardware in the world. He said it was better than the Abrams. I think the recorded performance of Russian armor in Ukraine disproves that theory. The new Excalibur artillery that we are sending the UA has the power to decapitate in-theater Russian military leadership. It's accurate to within 18 feet on the first shot. There is already footage of it hitting a moving Russian mechanized column with multiple direct hits. And if you're worried about Chinese expansion, imagine what these will do to a bigger and slower target moving across the Formosa strait. We have spent enough money on R&D to the point where the US military versus anyone is like turning on god-mode in a video game. We can afford to back off on the spending and focus on domestic issues. And even if we did not have that technological advantage, we still have a shit ton of guns. No invading force would be able to subject any of our major cities to their rule without razing it to the ground.

That degree of funding makes sense when you are fighting against the Soviet empire. A lot less sense when they dissolve and you're fighting insurgencies in backwater countries. And even less sense when you're fighting a proxy war in another backwater country, in which your sanctions have had enormous effects on the global economy. Yeah. Highlights the problem with lobbying. All these retired military "analysts" that they put on the evening news are on Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing payroll. Would be nice if the news introduced them as lobbyists, but that's probably too much to ask. The defense budget needs to be slashed.

Yep, it's an interesting thought experiment to try and predict the effects of Ohio enacting a ban. Crime in the cities will skyrocket in 15-20 years - Ohio City, Over-the-Rhine will look like the Flats in the 2000s. You'd get a brain drain of liberals and moderates leaving for Chicago or NY. I'd expect the growth in Cinci and Cbus to reverse. Black Ohioans disproportionately get abortions (accounts for half of all abortions performed in Ohio), and this community is actually trending up in voter participation. The GOP is going to have to change their strategy if they want to retain their electorate. I used to think balkanization and secession in the US was a ridiculous notion. But now it's starting to feel plausible.

After hammering Biden for the inflation crisis, only 57 GOP House reps voted against this. The uniparty and their military industrial complex win again. Will be fun to see how prioritizing the Ukrainian meat grinder over the American working class works out over the next decade.

Banning ___________ won't do anything to stop _____________ I swear I have heard this logic before, but I can't quite put my trigger finger on it. 🤪 I've always been pro-choice. Still am. However, I'm more and more starting to understand the states' rights side of the argument. The overall poll numbers skew toward the cities, which heavily lean liberal. I don't want policies that the average New Yorker wants to dictate what the average Clevelander gets. Giving rights to the states is a beautiful compromise baked into the Constitution. If Roe v Wade got overturned tomorrow, blue states would loosen abortion laws, while red states would restrict them. Across the country, I feel like this would average out. While it's economically retarded to ban abortions, the states should retain the right to do so. Personally, I am okay with that tradeoff if it means less coastal voters moving here to escape the policies that they voted in. I don't want to move to a state with draconian gun laws, and coastal snoots don't want to live in states with draconian abortion laws.

I voted in Nan for her first term as mayor when she ran against some dude who badmouthed me in Dayton City Paper. Was glad to see her win. I don't think she or anyone else has a shot at dethroning Dewine. I voted Vance as his views on Ukraine more or less match mine. I don't think we should be spending billions of taxpayer dollars funding an insurgency against Russian orcs, but this an issue that neocons and neoliberals seem to have an identical stance on. The wall is a dumb idea, but surely that money could be better spent to improve things at home.

Let's talk about the Horn of Africa. About 150 million people live in the area consisting of Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia. These folks haven't exactly been dealt a good hand, and life over there is about to get significantly harder. Looking at the map, you can see that the western areas of the horn are forested, and as you go further north into Sudan and Egypt, it turns to desert. This region is a powder keg of water and food conflicts, and they're about to get triply squeezed. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam The Nile River is the largest source of freshwater for much of the region and beyond, and you can see it dividing Egypt and flowing through Sudan. One of the major tributaries that feeds the Nile is the Blue Nile. This river runs through the greenest part of Ethiopia and flows into Sudan. Ethiopia has started a major engineering project called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This dam was built on the Blue Nile. It will affect the 13 countries in the Nile River basin and the 300 million people living there. Damming this river has been a contentious issue for Egypt and Ethiopia for about 100 years. In July of last year, the Ethiopians said to hell with what the Egyptians and Sudanese want, and they started filling it. It is expected to take 4-6 years until the filling is complete. 90% of Egypt's water supply comes from the Nile. 30% of the country's working population is in Nile-based agriculture. The looming water crisis is an existential threat to both countries, and diplomatic compromises have been scarce. The Ukranian Conflict I've talked at length about how most of the surplus grain from Ukraine and Russia goes to Africa. 80% of Egypt's wheat imports came from the two countries. They've secured some exports from India to make up for the supply disruption. 60% of Sudan's imported wheat was from Russia and Ukraine. In Ethiopia, 45% of their imported wheat is from Russia and Ukraine. These countries aren't particularly wealthy to begin with, and here is what has happened to the price of wheat over the last 5 years. Historic Drought The Horn is currently experiencing the worst drought in about 40 years. When a similar drought hit Ethiopia in the 80s, approximately 1 million people died. The UN has called for donations, and the world community has pledged $1.4 billion dollars. So, what does this have to do with anything? There will be refugees. Some will flee to Kenya. The Middle Eastern countries might take a small number. Turkey has historically taken a bunch from Syria/Iraq, but the conflict in Syria would be a barrier for refugees. I would bet that many of them try to take a trip across the Mediterranean where Europe is already struggling to take in refugees from Ukraine. Look at the response to current riots in Sweden over some troll burning a Koran, for example. More Europeans are starting to question if taking in massive amounts of refugees from a different culture is worth the clashes that follow. Even in France, where Macron just won his election, the nationalist party candidate Marine Le Pen increased her vote share by 10% compared to the election in 2017. As of last year, analysts suggested that proxy conflicts over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam were likely. An open war between Egypt and Ethiopia was considered to be highly unlikely. Now that the region is dealing with all 3 of these issues at the same time, the probability of an open war increases. If this were to happen, Egypt would likely target the dam. Ethiopia would target the Suez Canal. Remember how big a deal it was when the Evergreen container ship got stuck there for a week? Remember all the delays that caused? This would be considerably worse, as container ships and barges would be avoiding the area completely instead of waiting nearby for it to reopen. This is a major shipping route for LNG and oil from the Middle East to Europe, who already lacks the resolve to stop buying Russian fossil fuels and is funding the Ukrainian invasion. It's also the most direct route for getting Russian oil to China. Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I am certainly starting to get concerned about things snowballing. On the one hand, you have Russian aggression galvanizing the rest of Europe into sanctioning them into the stone age. On the other, these sanctions are about to amplify the European refugee and energy crises. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but when you have people like Boris Johnson shouting that the sanctions will continue even if Russia ceases hostilities, it doesn't really give Putin a reason to stop.

I think it's an apt comparison. A town square is something that everyone in the community has some interaction with, whereas the bar is just for a niche group of people. I personally do not have a Twitter account, and I don't intend to make one because of Elon's buyout, and I do not visit the website. In spite of this, I huge portion of my news still comes from this cesspool. Every media outlet embeds tweets onto their webpages. Screenshots of twitter posts make it to other social media like these forums, reddit, and 4chan. I avoid the site like the plague, but I can't escape its influence. I'm not sure where exactly you sit on the topic of Twitter's utility, but I'd bet that you get a decent amount of your news from it too. Just looking at this forum, we've got people from 3 generations, all across the political spectrum, who will post screenshots from it. Not sure who any of those guys you mentioned are, but I hope Musk does not enact any politically motivated retribution. Though if he did, I would certainly laugh my ass off at it. Trust him to do what? Fix twitter? Time will tell. I'm optimistic.

I did not know interest rates ran that high for housing way back when. I'd like to see if the end cost of a home is comparable after being adjusted for inflation. For the current rates, they're back up to 5%. I locked in at 3.2 before it got crazy, but the house would have sold for 75% what I paid if I had the opportunity to buy it pre-pandemic.

I'm more concerned with his weak arm in Cleveland once the November gales start. He didn't look that good the last time he played in Cleveland, and I'm convinced that one of the TD passes he completed was intended for another receiver.

I was being facetious. The podcast was an interview for every team in need of a QB. One of them saw it and signed Geno Smith the next day. When the league has questions about your ability to lead, why on earth would you go on a podcast to complain about fans booing you and confirm how fragile your ego is?

Do you disagree with what I said about the story of the cop being bludgeoned to death by insurrectionists?