1x08: We Don't Need Roads

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41

Yes this is a good point. Having no experience of dealing with a gun myself let alone teach my child I would have no idea how to go about it but I do believe that the right parenting goes 99.9 % of the way to prevent that child taking an AK47 and mowing down their fellow pupils with bullets. I can imagine that teaching gun handling and safety to kids plays a part, although i think a bigger part is teaching the sanctity of life and general empathy for others as well as the seriousness of hand-guns and the fragility between life and death that arises when you hold one in your hands. Those are less direct lessons and more lifetime ones that come from setting a good example. Unfortunately there’s a whole lot of people in the world that are incapable of that and they have kids anyway.

I also think that as a society we gloss over the immense pressure put on teenagers. It’s by far the most difficult time of your entire life and there has been a large amount of scientific evidence that shows that your risk/fear centre of your brain becomes a lot less functional when you are going through puberty which is why teenagers are a lot more capable of doing risky things than us boring adults. We hurd kids into state schools and then think its a low paid teachers problem to raise them while we go to work to pay for life… its seriously fucked up.

42

Agreed. Two things are being taught in our society today that are rather scary when combined into a world view. First, that human life is cheap. From abortion to very graphic representations of death on television, in movies, and in games, our kids are saturated, steeped, one may say, in violence. Here are some interesting statistics about television and health,

  • Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
  • Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
  • Percentage of Americans who believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem: 79

This does not even take into acount anything with movies, video games, or the interwebz (does that still annoy you, @sil? :smile:), but as repetition builds “muscle memory”, I can only imagine that seeing 200,000 murders before one is 18, could build up a layer of “scar tissue” over the part of your brain in which says Thou shalt not kill. In the case of video games, it is again a mental repetition building muscle memory…However in this case, it is as a virtual participant, rather than just an observer.

Add to this, our society’s attempts to make personal responsibility for their actions go away. I am 50 years old, and when I was growing up, the discussion of being a “product of one’s environment” started being discussed in school, courts, and society at large. As I have gotten older, I have seen the attitude creep into the schools, into the courts, into the government. From the widespread use of social programs (and don’t get the wrong idea, I am not against social programs, however, I am against situations such as the primary demographic for food stamps being able-bodied working age Americans. Something is terribly broken in a situation like that. In the US, it appears that we have moved from “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to “everybody has the right to be happy.” Whether that means everybody gets a trophy, or “we need to replace the grading scale in school because we can’t have kids feeling bad about themselves,” they are killing that drive to achieve in our society. And there are a lot of people out there who aren’t happy until they (and everyone around them) aren’t happy.

Even in the courts today, the “everybody needs a trophy” and “nobody is responsible”. Anyone remember last year, a Texas teenager got drunk, drove a car, and killed a family of 4? He should have gone to jail, but his defense was “I’m too rich and privileged, and I have never had to be responsible for my actions”…And thus the “disease” of affluenza was born. The kid never apologized, and he was sentenced to rehab, rather than jail, as most of us would in that situation. Also consider the teacher in Florida who was caught sleeping with a student. Her defense? “I’m too pretty to go to jail.” She got probation.

I, like some of you may, read the news aggregator fark.com. For many years, some story would appear on it with the tagline “personal responsibility surrenders.”

So I think it is a case being steeped in violence and the government effectively putting no limits on people by taking away personal responsibility is putting us, in general, on a bad path. And then the government sees this as a “gun problem,” which it then tries to remedy by taking away guns.

43

I ran across this article and wanted to post it here, as I found it interesting. (Hopefully folks will bear with me)

A lot of these mass shootings happen in “gun-free” zones, being either states or locations that restrict guns. The Navy Yard and Ft. Hood, military bases which don’t allow privately owned weapons, Columbine and Sandy Hook, schools, which are also verboten. But also consider the mall in Oregon, the mall in Columbia, MD (another gun-unfriendly state). I remember a saying that “criminals love gun control; it makes their job safer.”

Another thing which I did not know is that the worst mass shootings did not occur in the US, for all the talk about our second amendment. Norway, South Korea, and Columbia are the top 3.

There are a number of mass shootings that have been stopped by legal gun owners confronting the shooter. To hear the mass media tell it, this never happens, but there are multiple examples in the article. And according to this article, gun crime has dropped in gun-friendly Virginia as gun sales has increased.

44

I would like to point out that the US has tried a weapons ban before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapons_ban). It had no measurable effect on gun violence which is why it has failed to be renewed 4 times in a row.

45

This is really utter crap. I cannot tell you how many bots, friends, strangers, AI’s, dragons, skeletons, and humans I’ve fragged, stabbed, decapitated or otherwise ended in my lifetime, and many before I turned 18. To well adjusted (ok, reasonably well adjusted, I am a geek) folk who can separate entertainment from reality, this means nothing. The real issue is the number of people who are well adjusted is sadly fairly low. At least here in the US the stigma of seeking help for mental health issues is rather revolting. We have created a society that all but encourages unhealthy mental state, and then bombards those same people with all of the aforementioned violence. Those are the people who are most impressionable. Its not the young, its the young and damaged we create day by day.

46

Things I saw on my Commodore 64 which I don’t do:

The Decathlon
Ghostbusting
Karate
Dig for gems in a way that leaves me prone to boulders falling on my head.
Wizardry

In fact, the correlation is pretty difficult to escape. I wasn’t given a gun as a kid, and I don’t want to use one now. I was given a computer as a kid and… well… the results are self evident :smile:

Which leads to an interesting thought. @jonobacon (& @sil) at what age will you start encouraging your kid to programme (raspberry pi?) and if your kid said they wanted to learn to shoot because other kids at school were, would you allow them to?

47

In terms of coding, he can learn whenever he wants. I wouldn’t object to Jack learning to shoot so long as he is safe.

48

I have tried encouraging Niamh to write code. Note: I am not Jono, who came to this stuff late in life; my daughter is very nearly fourteen :slight_smile: Anyway, she’s basically not interested. She likes computers as a tool, and obviously we’ve discussed coding, but she’s tried a few times and finds it boring.

Shooting: nope.

49

I know this question wasn’t aimed at me, but…

Teach kids about gun safety (which includes how to properly handle a firearm) is critically important. Gun safety starts as soon as the kid can get around (starting with “if you see this, get an adult”). How to properly handle a firearm comes later, obviously. But is an important thing in my family.

For programming… whenever they are able.

50

As did I. But things were different back then. I’m not saying that violent video games or movies or whatever are the cause, but I believe that it, combined with other things, like mental health, like a drifting moral compass, an ever-expanding self-centeredness, and the like. Don’t think I’m not saying that mental health is not a huge contributing factor, but think about how many kids have said “I just killed him to see what it felt like”?

Exactly. But the number of well-adjusted people seems to be, for whatever reason, seems to be decreasing. Look at the road rage incident that happened in NC a week ago…No guns involved, but I feel fairly confident, looking at the car, that Gagon would have just as happily kept ramming them till the car (or the occupants) stopped moving. The driver of the Saab said he had no idea what he did to enrage the other driver.

In large part, our society has visions of becoming like the Jetsons. Big Pharma has convinced people that if it needs to be done, they can take a pill to do so. Look at all the advertisements on TV. Too fat? Don’t stop eating, don’t exercise, take a pill. The weight will fall off of you. They have a pill to cure all of your ills. Depressed? Got a pill for that. The pill not curing your depression? Here, here’s another pill to use to supercharge of your anti-depressant. And there are a couple of problems with that. One part is that people are diagnosed with some manner of mental illness, then put on these pills. First, the same pills that are supposed to help relieve their depression or whatever illness, can also enhance those very feelings. And if you go off of them, that can also have Very Bad Effects, which is the second part of the problem.

I have a neighbor that is a Fairfax County police officer, and we were talking last year about guns and other stuff. (He, as a police officer, is 100% onboard with legal guns.) He pointed out that the vast majority of his calls are domestic, usually involving someone gone off of their meds. He made the point that someone goes on these meds, get their issue under control, then goes on with their life. The problem is that in some percentage of cases, this person will go off of their medication, and revert to their previous state, or worse, have an episode. I think I read somewhere that Adam Lanza either had a reaction to his psych meds, or went off of them or something. I couldn’t find the article (though the state or Connecticut won’t release Lanza’s medical records because doing so “can cause a lot of people to stop taking their medications.” Another article documents 31 other school shootings that involved psychiatric drugs. Once a doctor puts someone on the drugs, according to my police officer neighbor, there is little to no follow-up to see if they remain on their meds. And now it has become politically incorrect to commit those who are a danger to themselves or others, except in extreme cases.

Then you pour on more and more graphic violence in media, and you wind up with an exceedingly bad combination of factors.

51

I enjoyed this episode a lot. Of particular interest, some very lucid thoughts on “gun control”. I agree with whoever was saying that both sides have it “wrong”. There’s no clear immediate fix for mass shootings. There’s no real way to remove the guns out there, it’s like unspilling the milk. I think the best compromise is to come up with a reasonable registration plan with background checks. I’m with Jono, I wish guns weren’t invented, but since they are, all citizens need to be aware of the dangers and agree on some kind of compromise to allows people to own them but to make it harder to just pop out to the shops and buy one to shoot someone in anger or in a psychological crisis state. FWIW, marriage should have the same restrictions :slight_smile: Automatic and assault weapons? There’s no reason to want to own these, they won’t worn if the sate decides they want to kill you.

52

By focusing on mass shootings you could reasonably make the argument prevention of said might be better aomplished with mental health work. On the other hand, the thousands of accidental deaths? the deaths of children shooting children? I think restricted access to fire arms is a pretty clear cut case there for reduction. The argument usually spins wildly out of control rapidly sadly with both side straw manning each other especially with cries of “they want to take away all our guns!!!”. But as was pointed out, Canada manages to have more guns per capita then the US and way less gun deaths. How? Better restrictions. It takes much more work than in the US to get a gun (and gun license) and the rules around sotrage are stricker. Therefore while Canadians may have a lot of guns, they less often accidently kill people and fall into kids hands. I’d also like point out that the endless stream of children accidently murdering each other with guns probably tends to disprove that just saying “most gun owners are pretty responsible about safety” is anywhere near sufficent to end the discussion.

53

In the US, pretty much every state has it’s own registration and background checks, including federal checks for legally purchased weapons. I question the need for more checks and more registration. There are plenty of laws in place, but many of them are not enforced… Instead of trying to restrict guns, which is doomed to fail, they need to punish bad behavior. Extra punishment for crimes involving a gun, for instance.

Aside from the fact that you have to get a special tax stamp from the federal government to even own an automatic weapon (note that the “assault weapons” that the left is going on about is nothing a semi-automatic rifle. An assault rifle has a very special connotation. From wikipedia, an assault rifle is a selective fire (selective between semi-automatic, fully automatic and/or burst fire) rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. So an AR-15 or AK-47 you can go into your local gun store and buy is not an assault rifle.

Statistically, firearms are relatively low. The following graphs shows the that firearms account for about 1% for fatal and even less for hospitalizations as a result of accidents. The original site has a bunch of information regarding how gun control laws affect crime rates and so forth.

The fact of the matter is that Canadians are more polite than Americans too. I think this has a lot to do with it. You also don’t see nearly as many cases of road rage in Canada, either.

The problem is that the restrictions only apply, by definition, to legal gun owners. Outlaws, by definition, are not going to listen to the law. They are willing to use a gun in the commission of a crime, up to, and including murder. Illegally having a gun is small potatoes comparatively speaking. And they are willing to maim or kill, why would they be concerned about whether their gun is legal or whether or not they have a high capacity magazines.

54

which has nothing to do with what i was talking about. I was talking about accidental deaths. I assume when “outlaws” kill some one it probably is intentional. that does nothing to address my concern that some stricker regulation would likely cut down on accidental gun deaths.

This is a fairly poor rationalization, that because other things kill more people more often we should just ignore this until it’s what? more statistically relevant to some points of view?

In programming terms it may fall into the category of what we like to term “low hanging fruit” with respects to optimization. It may not have the biggest effect, but if it’s easy and has some effect do it first any wya nad get it out of the way. It’s poor policy to only tackle one thing at a time, especially starting with the likely most intractable. If there is an easy solution to potentially save some lives, simply saying X kills more right now, lets ignore it, not do it, do it later (especially "do it later’, acknowledging it needs doing but we want to ignore that now??) is not so good

55

No. Not ignore. It is, IMHO, my a training and education question rather than a restriction issue. Teach people to properly use and store guns, instead of saying “you can’t have. Not yours.” Especially since the people who are all for restricting guns don’t know or understand the circumstances in which other people live, for instance this article. There are people out there who need guns for self-defense. People who carry around large amounts of money or valuables, people who live in places where nature is trying to kill them, whatever. And letting people who live in suburbia or ones with armed security details make that decision for them does them a disservice.

Plus, is it also a poor rationalization to focus on accidental gun fatalities or injuries, which is less than 1% of annual deaths, whereas motor vehicles account for almost 35% of the fatalities. I would think that if the goal is reducing fatalities, then focusing the top items on the list (as well as the lower ones) would be prudent. And if you are focusing specifically reducing accidental gun deaths and injuries, you should look at training and education rather than restricted access…And practice. Nobody recommends taking cars away if you have an accident in one, and you are not just put behind the wheel. You have to, in the US anyway, go through some kind of driver training before you can get a driver’s license. But no one is advocating legislation dictating “you can’t have a car because you might get into an accident and kill someone.” And a gun, like a car, is a tool. And a car, like a gun, can and increasingly are being used as weapons.

True. But having more guns out there (with proper training, etc) reduces the incidence of intentional outlaw shooting. There is an old saying that “criminals love gun control – it makes their jobs safer.” Given an armed (or unarmed) criminal, they would prefer to kick in the door of a house that doesn’t have any guns. That is one of the reasons that gun crime is higher in cities where gun laws are more restrictive.

So restricting guns would have the effect of (nominally) lowering accidental gun deaths and injuries, but at the same time increasing intentional gun violence by criminals, would probably increase the sum total of gun injuries and deaths by a rather large margin.

56

ah then we are in agreement more or less (my lack of clarity is a little at fault).
by restriction i merely meant more than a 3 day waiting period. i believe (but haven’t confirmed) many countries like canada require a class to be completed first before handing out a gun license. I think we can agree if that kind of “restriction” was placed on prospective gun buyers, who are free after a mandatory education session, to buy what they please, things may be better.
and also “restrictions” like: must be safely stored in locked safe, keys stored in safe locations as well, as I believe is a canadian legal requirement, with fines if caught in breech.

People are still free to have guns, and has been pointed out, canada has more percapita, but with these light and simple “restrictions” things feel a bit safer :slight_smile: That step alone in the US would make me very pleased :smile:

58

You can believe as much or as little as you want, but it appears as if one of the predictions from BTTF II has come true. Legit or camera trickery? :slight_smile:

59

Completely and utterly fake: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57619972-93/doc-brown-finally-admits-funny-or-die-hoverboard-video-is-fake/

–jeremy

60

That said, I may have to work the word “hoverduped” into a future episode…

–jeremy