The criminals wouldn't necessarily know that the other houses don't have guns, just that they don't have legal guns.
Kl/eiman isn't a fan of this, on what I assume to be pretty standard J. S. Millian (the part where Mill expresses deep concern over even severe social sanctions being brought to bear on nonconformists) grounds.
1: Legal handguns only, apparently. Probably a state law issue. Anyway, I've owned a gun my adult life and there isn't a single government record of it and I neither broke the law or took steps specifically to dodge the law.
3: the gun is actually your mother, the icicle!
Did it get it right?!
Anyway, I'd imagine that the idea that newspapers might print names from a registry will have a small, negative impact on support for registration requirements.
To play devil's advocate, it does serve the purpose of reminding people that you don't own your gun in isolation. You're part of a community.
That's what the red diapers are for.
Yeah, I saw that M.A.R.K. didn't like it, but he recently moved down on my respectable list because he strongly defended McMegan's stupid post. (Rejoinder: Which one?)
Eh of course it's not a good thing to do.
In general though on this one, fuck a bunch of liberal squeamishness, the gun lobby groups are batshit insane and there's got to be some comeback on that front.
What's the problem with this? There are all kinds of interactions with government that are properly a matter of public record. I think it's entirely appropriate that, say, teacher salaries are public, for instance.
It's public business who the government allows to carry a gun. Period.
There isn't even support for having registries, period. Making registries public--and interactive--only encourages the paranoia. I don't know what the reporting law in New York State is like, or how it compares to the rest of the country, but this is the kind of thing that will make gunowners' hackles rise for no damn good reason.
surely not the "how many unarmed five-year-olds does it take to down a heavily armed 20-year-old man" one? cuz her math was waaaay off, and then she pretended her calculator was broken and that's why she had predicted first: ten, and then after pushback: a number of five-year-olds sufficient to pack into the volume of jupiter.
What's the problem with this? There are all kinds of interactions with government that are properly a matter of public record.
There really is a difference between a "public record" and a record that is indexed by keyword, name, and address, searchable, and publicized.
I think it's entirely appropriate that, say, teacher salaries are public, for instance.
I actually think all salaries should be public--although I'm not really interested in salaries; really, the goal would be transparency regarding total assets, but I'll take income as a decent proxy.
14: The math is easier if you assume a spherical child.
I don't think that individual teacher salaries should be public.
Mind you, it's very easy to make the argument that I have a right to know who in my neighbourhood posses a licence to sell alcohol, or to run a bar, or to possess hazardous materials, or to own a gun. So why is it a bad thing to make that information easy to access? What's the difference between gun licenses and alcohol licenses?
After all, arguably if you don't want your neighbours to know you've got a gun, don't own a gun.
"Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves? What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are," one commenter wrote on the newspaper's website.
Oddly, I had the exact opposite reaction. It's more like publishing which houses have nice stereos in them. The houses with expensive guns would be *more* likely to be targeted for robbery.
18: You may be not thinking of where current gun law is in the U.S. In general, the issue isn't how to use existing registries, but rather trying to obtain any information at all. There is no license to own a gun (except maybe a couple of states). The very idea that the government should try for such a thing in general (as opposed to for concealed carry) is novel.
Well, now if I need a handgun fast ...
20 -- yeah, I mean this isn't a super generalisable discussion. But there does appear to be a state maintained list here, and so there's then this quite generic open data case.
I dunno, it all seems pretty pointless to bother publishing this data, and I think it was the wrong thing to do.
Point: this is part of a shift, where gun ownership starts to be problematised. One commenter (via Facebook of course) says: this is what you do for sex offenders, not law-abiding gun owners. Which, yeah, rich text!
a number of five-year-olds sufficient to pack into the volume of jupiter.
Do you take into account that pressure will crush the ones in the middle into a smaller volume?
the goal would be transparency regarding total assets
We haven't had a thread where we posted that yet.
I emailed out a fine photo of my asset, once upon a time.
Oddly, I had the exact opposite reaction. It's more like publishing which houses have nice stereos in them. The houses with expensive guns would be *more* likely to be targeted for robbery.
Exactly. I'm a fan of things like open salary info. Anyone should be able to put my name into the city's site or whatever and see what I make as a public servant. Advertising my address as somewhere burglars could find small portable items with good street value would piss me off.
14. Yes, that one. He did get lots of pushback.
In about 5 minutes of searching, I found 3 prior incidents of the same kind of reporting...including one from the same newspaper, in 2006. The lack of publicity about consequences after any of them leads me to suspect that the fears on both sides ("they'll come for my precious guns" and "this may tip someone on the edge that much further move") are probably both ill-founded. I'm open to evidence, of course, because in the nature of things I wouldn't necessarily pay attention to coverage about such aftermath trouble. But nobody seems to be bringing any up, and there may well not be any to bring up.
19 has it right. The list opens up the gun owners to burglary, since guns are valuable and portable. As a non gun owner, publication of the list makes me less susceptible to burglary, so I approve.
Which reminds me of the crime prevention meeting with local police when I lived in a grad student ghetto. The policeman said that since most grad students don't have much jewelry, the most likely items to be stolen were your gun and your stash. Also, if a locked gun safe was stolen and recovered by police, you have to bring the key in to the police station and open it in front of them to prove ownership. So the most important tip was, do not keep your stash in your gun safe.
19 has it right. The list opens up the gun owners to burglary, since guns are valuable and portable. As a non gun owner, publication of the list makes me less susceptible to burglary, so I approve.
Which reminds me of the crime prevention meeting with local police when I lived in a grad student ghetto. The policeman said that since most grad students don't have much jewelry, the most likely items to be stolen were your gun and your stash. Also, if a locked gun safe was stolen and recovered by police, you have to bring the key in to the police station and open it in front of them to prove ownership. So the most important tip was, do not keep your stash in your gun safe.
There really is a difference between a "public record" and a record that is indexed by keyword, name, and address, searchable, and publicized.
Certainly this is true. I still say: So what?
The whole point of having public information is that it be available to the public. Why should this information be hidden or obscured? And when has mollifying the gun enthusiasts ever led to an improvement in public policy?
gswift, apo: Is driver's licensure a matter of public record? Should it be? Would it matter if licensure/car ownership were were less common? Or if cars were more valuable than they are, or had greater street value?
There's a positive value in knowing, say, how many folks licensed for gun ownership are on my street. I'm just not seeing the offsetting public harm.
33
gswift, apo: Is driver's licensure a matter of public record? Should it be? ...
The law in California was changed after this murder. There is a real downside.
My issue is that I don't want my address to be any easier than it already is to find. You are never going to stop the person who is determined to find you.
But, I do not want to make it any easier. There are a lot of dumbasses out there. Any small hurdle to find out where I live might discourage them slightly.
Change it to "a Registry of the addresses of anyone who shops at Target."
Change it to "a Registry of the addresses of anyone who shops at Target."
There's no reason the addresses of Target shoppers should be publicly available.
Having public registries of gun owners may or may not be a good idea. I don't know. Maybe the government should just collect that information and hold it confidentially.
But if we've collectively decided that information should for whatever reason be publicly available, then having it easily accessible seems to be a clear good (even "indexed by keyword, name, and address, searchable, and publicized"). If it's a good idea for the public to have this information, we ought to make it easy to find (and, consequently, newspapers who do this sort of work on our behalf are doing real public service). If it's not a good idea for the public to have this information, we should actually keep it private.
Why are you collecting it? Simply to discourage gun ownership?
Perhaps we should have a registry of anyone who buys cigarettes or cigars?
Or alcohol. I want to know how much alcohol my neighbors buy so that I know if the roads are safe.
Why are you collecting it? Simply to discourage gun ownership?
Why would it discourage gun ownership?
Gun ownership in the U.S. is written into the Constitution as a matter of public interest - "well-regulated militia" and all that. I think that's appropriate.
We license all sorts of activities that have an impact on public health and safety, and those records are routinely public. I think it's reasonable to worry about one's address being made public, but as you note, that's happening anyway. If I want to know where you live, there are easier ways to find out than to look at gun records - especially if I don't know that you own a gun.
14- Of course it was that one, but the more jaw dropping part was his intro (maybe the first sentence is damning with faint praise but that's not how he intended it):
She's way smarter, way saner, far more nuanced in her thinking, and a much better writer than most of her Red-team colleagues. She doesn't fawn on the rich or despise the poor. Her ideas about how to deal with failure fit no ideological mold, and imply policy positions that won't make her any friends at Cato.
gswift, apo: Is driver's licensure a matter of public record? Should it be?
I'm not a gun owner and have no strong feelings one way or the other about the article. It just struck me that the guy commenting on the HuffPo article had missed the point altogether. If you're looking to rob a house, you're going to do it when nobody's home, not figure out which home invasions would involve a somewhat less potentially lethal confrontation.
After our friends got robbed, l learned the lesson " say no when the police ask you if you want them to dust for fingerprints".
Their house got covered in an inch of that stuff, and it stained and ruined more belongings than were lost in the original break-in, and it didn't clean up very well.
And it did not locate the green thieves who left all the expensive guitars and stereo equipment and fancy computer cube but took the kids' piggy banks and generally ruthlessly destroyed the house for no apparent reason.
Nearly all the gun stuff -- including how well regulated the militia ought to be -- seems to me to be fairly well suited for federalism and states as laboratories. If some state wants to make lists public, let 'em. If another wants to keep them private, fine.
The only list we would have, I think, is of people who went and got permits, from the county sheriff, so they could cc within city limits (or a logging camp). There's a sample app, which calls for lots of information I sure would be useful to marketing types.
Bad move. This is what the gun nuts fear, and there are plenty of reasons someone might not want their address to be made easily searchable even if they want to own a gun.
Bad move. This is what the gun nuts fear, and there are plenty of reasons someone might not want their address to be made easily searchable even if they want to own a gun.
35, 36- If data is public there's nothing to stop someone from aggregating it and making it easily searchable. I did not know how to find all the gun owners in Westchester until Gannett put up a simple display. If it's public, it's public, you can't say, "Oh, but don't repost it with a simple interface, we don't want the Stupids to have access to it."
I agree with Cala on the politics. On the merits, though, I think I'd rather have cc permits be public so that busybody neighbors can report people who have permits but are ineligible.
There's a positive value in knowing, say, how many folks licensed for gun ownership are on my street.
There is? So far no one in this thread has articulated it, and several people have pointed out various ways it's harmful.
39: I'm awfully tired of Kleiman's schtick as the only reasonable voice on drug policy, which in practice tends to mean criticizing people for not scrupulously counting the potential extra deaths from hypothetical marijuana induced COPD post legalization, only occasionally admitting that locking people up ruins their lives and has to be counted as a negative, and almost completely ignoring the countries the Drug War has wrecked.
Also, giving a forum to an asshat like Matthew Kahn.
Register Communists, not guns anarchists!
I've often thought it would be salutary, as a professional burglar, to get the subscription lists for Guns & Ammo, Field & Stream, etc. and the NRA mailing list. Cross-reference those and I bet you'd have a pretty good idea of which houses would have lots of guns to steal.
Further to 48 -- and report people who are carrying concealed within the city limits and don't have permits.
Looking at our gun laws, I see that we refuse reciprocity to 7 states because their CC statutes aren't strict enough. Why should people who did go through the background check etc be opposed to the potential for people who are flouting the law to get caught?
Man, I wish I had some sambusas right now. Or mincemeat pie. Or Cornish pasties.
49.1 -- I haven't seen a reason that doesn't apply equally to having real property ownership records be public.
44: In a sensibly run country, people who fetishize gun ownership ought to be worried about sensible restrictions on gun ownership. In the U.S., there's no reason for such worry. Once you start letting irrational people dictate the terms of public policy, you get irrational public policy.
I'm also not seeing how Gannett's tool allows you to find peoples' addresses. If you don't know the person's address already, you can't find them. The only information provided by Gannett is the names of certain people who live at particular addresses. If I want to know Cala's address, I can't use this tool to find it. True, if I'm curious to know who lives at a particular address, and that person happens to have a permit, then I can use this tool to find out. But there are quite a lot of ways to get that sort of information - and those methods aren't limited to those with permits.
And it did not locate the green thieves who left all the expensive guitars and stereo equipment and fancy computer cube but took the kids' piggy banks and generally ruthlessly destroyed the house for no apparent reason.
Often these are done by druggies on foot or a bike and can only carry what can go in a backpack. And even the ones with a car aren't connoisseurs. I had a burg this summer where they carted off the husbands $150 cheapo acoustic guitar but left behind the wife's violin which goes for around 15K.
54 is a good point. The addresses of property owners are generally public already (assuming owner-occupied property); in fact, I routinely use land registries as a fallback to my address book. Given that, I don't think other name-to-address associations create additional problems.
Possibly illuminating situation:
About 10 years ago, the County Real Estate Office put everybody's assessment on their website, searchable by address, lot/block, or name. Real estate records, of course, have been public info since time immemorial (certainly as long as the County has existed), but a lot of people flipped at it being public and readily accessible. About 5 years after the site debuted, it became impossible to search by name. There may even have been a court case that forced the change, but I don't recall.
One thing I'll note is that, as a planner, it was quite useful to be able to search by property owner and find out whether or not it was one guy who owned all the run down rentals in a neighborhood - raising the bar on that search led to a clear reduction in public good, even as it led to a clear increase in privacy (famously, local sports stars and the like were by far the most searched names; then-TreasSec Paul O'Neill was also searchable).
So there's your tradeoff in a less fraught area than gun registration. Is it somehow obvious that RE info shouldn't be readily available? Why or why not?
The houses with expensive guns would be *more* likely to be targeted for robbery.
Then those people better go ahead and buy another gun, just to be safe.
58: I was about to mention that but too lazy to type that much on a phone.
My criticism of posting the information (and having it public at all) is that it enables nosey busybodies only some of whom have malign intent but all of whom are assholes. The rule for making this kind of information public (including real estate assessments and driver's license records) is that there should be a compelling public interest, which I don't see in this case. Sex offenders (the real ones, not kids who fucked at 15) ought to be registered and the records made public because they pose a potential ongoing danger. People who register their guns are a minimal danger to the general public.
There is not a simple answer for sex offenders. People consider their offense so much worse than anything else you could possibly do, it's seen as perfectly fine to make their lives unlivable. And I think it would not be straightforward to make a bright line between "oh they were just kids" sex offenders and "definitely going to rape my babies" sex offenders. I honestly think it would be less hypocritically self-absolving to lock them up forever than to release them and make sure there's nowhere they can live and nowhere they can work &c &c.
||
I think the only other person in the world who would be as unable as I to watch Les Miserables without constantly thinking "Why are you singing, Veronica Mars' dead best friend?" is of this blog, though perhaps unlikely to see the movie.
|>
Setting aside the gun-specific aspects, my feeling about (most) public records is that it probably makes sense to maintain a modest hassle factor as a privacy measure. Real estate specifically, I think there's great value to making that info public - it's part of a transparent market, as well as incredibly useful to community planning efforts.
Thing is, I'm a bit torn about the principle. It's sort of like how arbitrarily-enforced laws are invitations to injustice, yet strictly-enforced laws (for minor offenses, eg moving violations) are impractical and undesirable for all sorts of reasons.
So do we say, if it's public, then it should be public, or do we say that a reasonable expectation of privacy calls for semi-public info? Is it right to have a system in which info is readily available to those with resources, but onerous for those without extra time and/or money?
On the specific issue of guns, I've never read a rational argument for why they shouldn't all be registered, but in practice I have no idea how you could come close to making it happen.
64: I know essear gets all the VM credit around here, but... ahem.
(It is essear, right?)
Essear is kind of encyclopedic about it, you must admit. I guess he has all those turtles to remind him.
Played with the map for 10 minutes since my home town is on it.
Things I learned-
The percentage of owners, at least in that town, is so small that the whole "this will change the behavior of criminals" seems pretty unlikely.
A former House member from that district has a permit.
A HS friend's mother has a permit, which I already knew previously.
The cop who lives down the street from my parents has a permit, although the mapping software puts his location in the wrong place.
Husband of my mom's coworker has a permit.
A kid from HS who's probably not the kind of person who should have a gun still lives in town and has a permit.
I think the only other person in the world who would be as unable as I to watch Les Miserables without constantly thinking "Why are you singing, Veronica Mars' dead best friend?" is of this blog, though perhaps unlikely to see the movie.
It may not refer to me, but it's also me.
And me. Never seen one episode of Veronica Mars.
Also never watched one episode of Odd Couple or Quincy. I remember Klugman from four Twilight Zones.
Anybody show respects to Charles Durning yet? Omaha, Bulge, Malmedy, Pfc with Bronze & Silver Stars
56: well, they took off with my friends' car, which they promptly wrecked, which doesn't really preclude anything else you said.
I don't think there is any useful reason to make this info public overall. Frankly I think it's needless harassment along the lines of abortion clinic over-regulation, and will create far more ill-will and paranoia than it could possibly solve.
On a related note, there was a giant brouhaha here earlier in the fall, when Philadelphia city government published information about gun owners who had applied for a concealed carry permit, had the application denied, and then appealed.
The appeals info included their rationale for why they should be able to carry a gun. Some were laughably absurd; some were entirely understandable and indeed would have made the person more of a target by making info about their business and cash-handling unnecessarily public.
Unsurprisingly, the city may now be sued over this.
I guess with all of this electronic privacy stuff, I'm not so much worried about haxors doxing me as I am about amazon.com having access to every scrap of useful information about me.
"IntenSecure and DatAmerica were basically the same thing."
--Wm. Gibson, Virtual Light
I think the default should go the other way: the business of the public should be public, unless there's a really good reason for secrecy. And a state permit, whether to carry a concealed weapon, or dump pollutants into the river, or cut a Christmas tree, is a public act.
Obviously, collecting information on a promise of confidentiality and then publishing it -- as happened in Philly -- is not defensible.
|| So, what do you know: debt ceiling on 12/31. |>
Charley, with all due respect, that's an easier attitude to have when you have the luxury of being in the majority. It doesn't take a lot of harassment to start feeling as though you'd rather not have your personal details searchable at the drop of a hat.
I like owning a house, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't avoided writing a couple of letters to the editor on controversial topics because of it.
As it is, someone once tracked down my work address from an alumni magazine letter, simply to lecture me on how wrong I was. That's a lot less scary than things that have happened to other women I know.
Well, if a person wants to stay under the radar, they're going to have to actually stay under the radar. People with names that can easily be googled, and who, in their professional capacity, have an internet presence, are obviously always at risk for unwanted communication, completely independent of any state action.
I more or less have to have an internet presence. The same is true of a great many of us. I'm sure this has a chilling effect -- in my own case that's probably ultimately a good thing because what gets chilled the most are stupid things that I haven't thought through very well (you people see what I write: just imagine what gets weeded out) -- but it's simply unavoidable. And independent of the state.
77: You can't just answer this question once and then wave it away as if it's been decided forevermore. It's a question of how much information about you has to be available, and how easily findable. There are a series of decisions that can be made. We as a society can make those decisions differently in different cases.
Nothing about my work, or most people's work, says that my home address has to be easily findable. However, I live in a state where property ownership records are accessible. I'm OK with that, though I'm not thrilled.
I'd be a LOT less thrilled if someone could easily and legally search my car license plate and find my home address.
Or a voter registration list?
I see that many states let you search by tag: http://uslicenseplatesearch.com/?gclid=CNTh6LeNubQCFSmCQgodmEIARA You have to give a reason, and I doubt those are particularly policed.
77.last: It's not independent of the state if it's the state requiring that in order to function in society (by having a driver's license or owning a home) one has to give up basic privacy. Allowing every random nutter access to one's personal information is bad. See the case in 34, where someone got murdered due to it.
where someone got murdered due to it.
Maybe nosflow could share some feelings about having a disgruntled commenter showing up at his door.
72: would have made the person more of a target by making info about their business and cash-handling unnecessarily public
Yeah, when I was in Omaha I had occasion to meet with the owner of the city's largest haunted house/costume shop during his busy season. He was sitting at a desk in a back room counting the biggest pile of cash I'd ever seen and a nice big shiny M1911 pistol displayed prominently in a holster on his belt. He struck me as a singularly crass and mendacious person for other reasons, but his insistence on being very publicly armed made a lot of sense.
Conversely, at my old job I would frequently ride public transportation to the bank with envelopes of cash from $1,000 to $10,000 in my backpack. Never felt the tiniest bit insecure about that, though it was usually during the day of course.
It's awful that a mentally ill person became so fixated on a television star that he stalked her for years and then killed her. That's a real fringe case, though, and I think a society can decline to makes rules based on fringe cases.
Which is more common do you think: madmen stalking actresses, or hit and run drivers injuring persons and property?
but his insistence on being very publicly armed made a lot of sense.
Open carry was (is?) much easier in Nebraska than concealed carry.
84: Yeah, that may well have been a consideration too, but given that pretty much all of his business occurred after dark and his only other security was bored 16 year-olds, it made sense as a conscious deterrent.
or hit and run drivers injuring persons and property?
So people should be able to track down hit and runs themselves instead of calling police to do it? Seems like a lot of potential for bad outcomes there.
Ok, what about political donor lists? Obvious public benefit in preventing corruption, but some gun nut could look up all the Obama donors on his street and off them in the name of preventing the coming socialist revolution.
72: Frankly I think it's needless harassment along the lines of abortion clinic over-regulation
This gets it right -- or, wait, abortion clinic over-regulation? I'd have thought it was needless harassment along the lines of publicizing the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions. Godless lefties don't like it when that happens, in part because it's clearly done for harassment or stigmatizing purposes.
Which leads me to: I actually can't make out why the New York Journal News decided to request and report this information.
86 is grimly funny.
77 is completely missing the point in my world, because I think of Kathy Sierra's problem: because her biological-life details were findable, she had to give up much of her professional life. I have another dozen examples and I'm sure Witt and Natilo and maybe all of us have more examples that don't even overlap. I am generally in favor of a lot more gun control, but so against making it easy to track people down physically for their behaviours online that I think I'm against this law. (As a melioration, add one more layer? Any citizen can search the info, but everyone on the list is told who searched? That would get noisy. Also, it would always be Pinkerpoo Stalking Services. Never mind.)
It might be useful to have aggregate information about gun licences in a county or municipality. I know there are people working on testing for aggregate info that can't be reverse-engineered (though it seems fragile).
88.last: Because they could and because they want to make gun owners uncomfortable. There's no public interest served by their actions, merely perhaps a little filler for their newspaper and a chuckle at the freak out of the people having the spotlight shone on them.
87: Political donor lists are different because people aren't required to donate in order to exercise basic rights. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the opposing opinion, but if the choice is all or nothing I'd rather have political donations be anonymous by default than hand out my address to any bloody asshole who wants it just because I need a car to get to work.
90.1: That was my sense, yes. Agreed that in the absence of a compelling public interest, this information should remain private. It's not a question of "Why not?" but rather one of "Why?" I'd put the burden of proof, or interest, in the latter realm.
I'm going to insist that my conflicting values in 65 be addressed: was it OK for RE records and the like to be publicly available, but effectively obscured, in the pre-internet age? If the internet age has changed the dynamic, is it really acceptable for these records, publicly accessible for hundreds of years for very good reason, to suddenly become unsearchable? Is this purely an internet problem?
is it really acceptable for these records, publicly accessible for hundreds of years for very good reason, to suddenly become unsearchable?
Am I understanding the question? Is someone suggesting that they should become not just obscured but inaccessible?
Mm, I can say from experience -- totally anecdotal -- that being able to look up, online, the property records for my mom's house after she died was immensely valuable to me.
Real estate records were really easy to search from, say, 1890-1930 in Seattle; I've gone through the city index (I don't think that's quite the name) still kept in the public library. It was a double look-up, either name to address-and-maybe-phone or address to name (and profession, often). I assume the assessor's records were also available for real estate worth.
Of course, (a), the looking-up was done by people, and (b) enough people lacked telephones that there was a stronger interest in being available through a mail address (was junk mail more expensive to send?), and (c) there was plenty much social repression that we're glad to be shot of.
Sometimes one does need to know the owners' address for a dangerous property, but perhaps the state should do a grand-jury-ish filter on whether something was wrong* before sharing addresses.
*I want to say tortious because it's turtles all the way down.
90: Yes, I'll bet some people are uncomfortable now.
83
It's awful that a mentally ill person became so fixated on a television star that he stalked her for years and then killed her. That's a real fringe case, though, and I think a society can decline to makes rules based on fringe cases.
There are less extreme possibilities. Women would be subject to harassment from men who run their plates. And it could make road rage incidents worse. I can of like things being public but there are real downsides. Even if it just makes people feel insecure.
96
I can of like ...
I kind of like ...
95: That's significantly more dangerous and irresponsible.
Maybe nosflow could share some feelings about having a disgruntled commenter showing up at his door.
Did this really happen? Or is it a hypothetical?
98: Life can be stressful and dangerous at times, maybe they need to buy gun or two. What the fuck did they think was going to happen after they made that data easily available?
70 Damn, I missed that Charles Durning died. RIP. Great character actor. One of the few survivors of the Malmedy massacre.
Be warned: This is long.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a long and mostly very thoughtful dialogue on gun control up at his site.
There are a few parts that just confound me, though, and I thought I'd highlight them here. The quotations are from Jeff Goldberg, his partner in the dialogue.
Most people -- the vast majority of people -- with legally owned guns aren't George Zimmerman. The problem in this country, generally speaking, is not legal guns. It's illegal guns. The 400+ homicides in Chicago this year are mainly the byproduct of the illegal gun problem.
I believe the last sentence to be true. That said, the rest of the paragraph reads like sleight of hand to me. Is it actually true that most firearms injuries and deaths (NOT just "crimes") are the result of illegal gun ownership? That seems extremely farfetched to me.
Would you want a gun in hand to help keep us alive, and to keep the strangers around you -- each one a human being created in the image of God (I know you lean atheist, but you get my point) -- alive as well?
This seems so statistically wrong to me that I just can't understand it except as a statement of faith. Is there ANY data that shows that having an ordinary citizen who is armed has better odds of surviving the kind of shooting situation that Goldberg describes than one who is not?
Maybe I just get all of my gun stories from Philadelphia, but it's almost impossible for me to conceive of how this could be true, on average. More guns = more bullets flying, and that generally means more people getting hurt/killed, often including the person who is supposedly defending him/herself.
Goldberg's statement seems like the kind of thing that you believe in if you think you are going to beat the odds, or if you have an emotional attachment to feeling as though you are not going to surrender easily. It doesn't seem very reality-based to me.
I also have another view that, at least in our Northeastern liberal circles, is heterodoxical: I think most Americans can be trusted with guns. The proof is that tens of millions of Americans who do own guns go through life without ever hurting anyone. Not infrequently, these law-abiding Americans use their guns to stop crimes.
I find it hard to believe that it's true that "tens of millions" of gun owners "go through life without ever hurting anyone." Granted, my N of "gun owners I have known" is pretty small (fewer than 12, I think) but in general I would characterize them as fearful people, and in some cases very angry people. Regardless, they didn't need to pull out their guns, or even mention them, to succeed very well in scaring and intimidating other people, often repeatedly.
Does terrorizing someone else count as "hurting them"? I think so. Does it count if the fearful, angry person would be still trying to terrorize others even if they didn't own a gun? I think so, but here I have to admit that my own biases about guns are showing.
Now, it may be that Goldberg meant "without ever shooting anyone," which I would believe. But there are lots of ways to harm someone with a gun without shooting it.
The third quote is fine. Think hunters.
104: I was about to say. This is a case where I think regional differences are a big deal; I strongly suspect that the kinds of gun owners you find in a large metropolitan area in the Northeast are not at all representative of American gun owners as a whole.
I suspect that the frequency with which most gun owners use their guns to stop crimes is actually very low, though.
Did this really happen? Or is it a hypothetical?
Ha, I wasn't expecting you to get answered so quickly in 100.
I am thinking hunters. Of the three I can think of, one was poaching (well, technically, shooting deer on marked land that he was not supposed to be on). He was certainly a potential threat to the landowners and to the children who attended camp on the property.
One was as mild-mannered a person as you'd like to meet, and had a day job as an animal-control warden. I've never seen anyone more careful or responsible about his weapon. He was also as racist a person as I've ever met, and clearly harbored beliefs about the inherent criminality of young black men that would have made me terrified to have a student of mine encounter him by surprise in the woods.
The third one -- I can't remember the details well enough, honestly.
I find it hard to believe that it's true that "tens of millions" of gun owners "go through life without ever hurting anyone."
What? Nearly family had a gun where I was growing up.
And none of them ever hurt anybody with a gun, except for the guy who killed himself.
I strongly suspect that the kinds of gun owners you find in a large metropolitan area in the Northeast are not at all representative of American gun owners as a whole.
How can this be, though? I honestly don't understand how it's statistically possible. I mean, most Americans live in or near large metropolitan areas, so even if gun owners are more likely than average to be rural, I can't see how the majority of gun owners are rural -- unless we're using a really specialized definition of rural.
The deer poaching incident occurred in Delaware County, about 10 miles from Philadelphia, for example.
I honestly don't understand how it's statistically possible. I mean, most Americans live in or near large metropolitan areas, so even if gun owners are more likely than average to be rural, I can't see how the majority of gun owners are rural -- unless we're using a really specialized definition of rural.
"Northeastern" and "regional" are important parts of what I said. I doubt the majority of gun owners are rural by any definition, but I suspect many or most of them live in metropolitan areas in areas where hunting is much more a part of urban as well as rural culture than is the case in the urban Northeast.
Considering how drunk everybody was, it's kind of amazing in retrospect.
Ah, well, I'm not going to argue that most of the US lives in the Northeast, it's true.
There are over 100 million gun owning adults in the US. So it seems really likely that 10s of millions of them keep the law and don't hurt anyone. (Almost none of them have used their guns to stop crime though.)
I'm just saying, the fact that you can both count the number of gun owners you've known and generalize about their personalities strongly suggests that what you've encountered is not a representative sample. I couldn't come close to doing either.
Unless you are really shy, knowing fewer than 12 gun owners would seem to indicate that you move in social circles where owning a gun is an indicator of some sort of deviance from the norm or another. In other parts of the country, it correlates highly with "male who has disposable income."
I should have previewed. Sorry Teo.
How can this be, though? I honestly don't understand how it's statistically possible. I mean, most Americans live in or near large metropolitan areas
From wikipedia:
>As of 2011, about 250 million Americans live in or around urban areas.
From gallup, I guess:
Forty-seven percent of American adults currently report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property
So that would make it slightly implausible but not (given what is presumably significant measurement error) that a majority of gun owners do not live in (or around!) cities. Of course, that would require near 100% gun ownership outside cities.
On the other hand teo is of course (implictly) right that people in the burbs own shitloads more guns than people in cities proper, per this.
Sorry Teo.
For what? I totally pwned you.
I know very, very few people who I am reasonably confident are currently gun owners. Three? Four? Not sure.
I think this conversation does neatly illustrate the vast and probably unbridgeable gulf that separates gun people and non-gun people in this country and that makes guns such a fraught political issue.
I do know (I mean, I haven't seem him in years, but knew) a guy who went to prison for quite a while for a gun-related offense.
It has definitely always seemed to me if it was possible to have seperable gun ownership systems for cities and not-cities that would be fine. It does not seem a bit possible, though.
And since the cities don't want guns and also are where people mostly (increasingly) live, looks like too bad for everybody else. Sorry.
Actually I mostly want this whole thing to go away because 1. nothing is going to get accomplished and 2. a fuckload more people would have to be shot before it was anything other than a sideshow compared to, christ, a million other things but certainly climate change is specifically on my mind since it seemed so important just this past september.
125: you think we're going to have meaningful (as in, with teeth) gun laws sometime soon? I hope you're right, but I really doubt it.
The juxtaposition of 125 and 126.1 is making my head spin a bit. I probably shouldn't have had that third Vicodin.
Amen to 126. You may have noticed that I've been avoiding most of the post-Newtown gun threads here.
Also I would like an enormous, foul goat set to wreak flaming havoc on the mortal world to accost Wayne LaPierre and bonk him *doonk* *doonk* *doonk* on his head with its unearthly goat-dong until Wayne has suffered multiple concussions and is looking forward to a lot of near-term cognitive decline. Metaphorically.
127,128: oh, yeah, no. I was just briefly acting as dictator-on-behalf-of-my-neighbors.
131: ah, I see. The interesting thing to me -- well, in addition to all the other interesting things -- is how all of the people who have decided that gun control is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER are going to react when nothing at all comes of the current national freakout.
I suppose it won't be nothing at all, though, right? Some crap-ass, totally unenforceable piece of legislation will have to be passed so Joe Manchin can claim to have saved America's children while also protecting the rights of West Virginia's sportsmen, and then it will be time to move on.
127: See, this is the part that I get confused about. I really don't believe, as I said upthread, that illegal gun ownership is what drives most firearms injury and death. But people like Goldberg seem to -- witness his claim about homicides in Chicago.*
Under that assumption, it seems as though cracking down on straw purchasers and the fraction of gun dealers through whom many guns used in crimes are sold might actually result in a decrease in gun violence.
The Nate Silver piece linked in 119 is interesting, although I really wish Gallup asked people if they owned 0, 1 or more than 1 gun, and what kind of a gun it was.
*I actually don't think big-city homicides are such a great indicator of gun violence more generally, but they're certainly much more accurate than mass shootings.
Cynicism is so ugly, don't you think?
Faintly relevant, but basically just a thing I keep remembering so I might as well let it out of my head: I was at a party and got to hear a tiny bit of a discussion between a gay hipster gun nut and a gay hipster gun disliker who wanted to sleep with gun nut so he was nodding in fascination instead of yelling, and the part of the conversation that caught my ear was the gun nut saying "a person who breaks into houses knows that sound, that ka-CHUK*," and he paused and did the gesture of, uh, that gun thing, cock or lock and load or clean and jerk or abbott and costello or whatever, and again "ka-CHUK, and when they hear that, they are going to get the fuck out."
So, there. That is apparently part of the conversation. About guns.
*How much ka would a ka-CHUCK &c. essear's was funnier because nuns are actual things and it's funny to think of them being chucked at something.
I do think there is in theory an important national conversation to be had about both the gun and mental illness issues that were raised by Newtown, but a) I don't have any interest in participating personally in that conversation, nor do I feel like I have much of anything to contribute to it and b) it's not going to accomplish anything meaningful anyway (on either guns or mental illness) absent a massive and highly implausible shift in American politics and culture. Mostly it all just depresses me and makes me want to hide.
133: at Christmas eve dinner the question was posed, completely sincerely, "is Obama's second term going to be defined by gun control?" I (barely) restrained myself from saying "oh jesus christ I fucking hope not."
Then later the one (moderate, Obama voter) Republican at the table (from CT) responded to my question about what sorts of measures exactly he would hope get passed during Obama's second term (given, you know, the house, the SC, etc.) by sputtering "he [Obama] needs to show LEADERSHIP."
This is a man who has worked in the west wing! I do not understand people.
Under that assumption, it seems as though cracking down on straw purchasers and the fraction of gun dealers through whom many guns used in crimes are sold might actually result in a decrease in gun violence.
But, ironically, only in cities.
The hypothetical conversation in 137 would probably end up in reality as the actual conversation in 136.
This is a man who has worked in the west wing! I do not understand people.
I have to remind myself, over and over again, that even very smart people like stories about heroes.
If it makes you feel any better, Teo, I'm hopeful that as the ACA continues to roll out, we'll be in a better position to argue for mental health parity. Prevention is sexy!
Wait, that sounds wrong.
"a person who breaks into houses knows that sound, that *doonk* *doonk* *doonk* and when they hear that, they are going to get the fuck out."
To be fair to home-invaders nunchuks don't have a terribly characteristic sound when you're two floors and three rooms away. Sort of a soft whir? Not really dispositive.
141: yes, well, if I told you who he worked for during that time in the west wing everything would make sense again.
Back to the TNC dialogue referenced above, isn't it painfully obvious that Goldberg is using absurdly stylized scenarios to defend [hand]gun ownership? Drawing a gun to defend yourself and your friends from a crazed mall shooter is approximately as realistic a scenario as a ticking time bomb. An armed guard saving students at a public school is going to be a situation that rounds down to 0.00%, while situations of fucked up dynamics due to armed citizen volunteers [¿WTF?!?!?!?] roaming hallways will happen every fucking day.
There are, to a close approximation, 100k public schools in America. There's not even one shooting per year in them currently. So 0.0005% of schools per year have a shooting (that's rounding up). Is someone going to claim that the rate of fucked-upedness is going to be so minimal that it's less than that impact*? Especially since we already know, with 100% certainty, that armed guards will not prevent anything like 100% of school mass killings?
This debate is hopeless not because stupid northeastern liberals don't know the difference between a clip and a magazine; this debate is hopeless because everyone who owns a gun is apparently happy to sign onto a set of assumptions that is completely delusional (the odds of your handgun and/or assault rifle successfully deterring a crime is a tiny fraction of the odds of it causing accidental death and/or suicide). Letting the police protect you is no more an abdication of self-reliance than letting your plumber repair your leaking gas line.
* Just to be clear on the math, the odds are that your personal public school being the site of a mass killing in roughly 22012 CE. Between now and then, do you think that maybe there will be bad effects from random armed assholes roaming the halls?
142: Yeah, I think it's a lot more plausible that something will get done on the mental health side than on the gun side. That's not saying much, though.
Anyway, as you might expect, these issues have not been anywhere close to common topics of conversation in Alaska.
I really don't believe, as I said upthread, that illegal gun ownership is what drives most firearms injury and death.
Quite a lot of murders in this country are committed by males related to gangs and/or the drug trade. Below is our relevant code restricting who can possess a firearm and most states have something similar.
76-10-503. Restrictions on possession, purchase, transfer, and ownership of dangerous weapons by certain persons. (1) For purposes of this section: (a) A Category I restricted person is a person who: (i) has been convicted of any violent felony as defined in Section 76-3-203.5 (ii) is on probation or parole for any felony (iii) is on parole from a secure facility as defined in Section 62A-7-101 (iv) within the last 10 years has been adjudicated delinquent for an offense which if committed by an adult would have been a violent felony as defined in Section 76-3-203.5 or (v) is an alien who is illegally or unlawfully in the United States. (b) A Category II restricted person is a person who: (i) has been convicted of any felony (ii) within the last seven years has been adjudicated delinquent for an offense which if committed by an adult would have been a felony (iii) is an unlawful user of a controlled substance as defined in Section 58-37-2 (iv) is in possession of a dangerous weapon and is knowingly and intentionally in unlawful possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance as defined in Section 58-37-2
But hey, let's cheer up with a video of a drunk guy getting tased and remember that no one does this on weed.
Letting the police protect you is no more an abdication of self-reliance than letting your plumber repair your leaking gas line.
Speaking of home repair, I just finished fixing the dryer. Only three extra screws and it works.
That's what she said.
Letting the police protect you is no more an abdication of self-reliance than letting your plumber repair your leaking gas line.
One of the many annoying facts that became salient while I was living in the most gun-violent place I've ever been (St Louis City, too poor to live actually in University City) was that self-reliance involves actually doing things which often leave you poorly situated to draw your gun and defend yourself. Fixing a car engine in a public street, for instance. Digging. Walking to the clinic with a high fever.
I didn't do it for reasons of self-reliance, but because it costs $80 just to get some guy to show up. Let me just add that whoever designed the placement of the thermal fuse on Whirlpool dryers is probably where you should start to look when you want to find people who hate America.
My last tenants apparently didn't know that you can take the lint off a dryer-screen, lift the top of a range to clean underneath, or walk the dog at night when it wants to do its business. This is why I hate America. When the cleaner-solvent fumes have evaporated, I will probably be a gentle citizen once again.
Apparently, it doesn't hurt to remove the thing holding the dryer-screen and really reach down there to get out the lint from inside. If you don't, the thermal fuse can go. I suppose I should be glad the thermal fuse stopped a fire.
I think Skymall sells some sort of contraption designed to reach down into the dryer and clean out the lint.
Are you saying I'm so pathetic I need a Skymall product?
Actually I'm not seeing it on their website now. There are probably similar things available at less ridiculous retailers.
It was kind of an impacted, solid piece of pressed lint. I'm not sure if a brush would do. Anyway, it takes about 30 seconds to remove the thing and reach down in there.
Maybe if I ran some raisins through the dryer every week.
158: CU just reviewed one such gadget and were surprised at how much more crud it removed compared to using fingers or vac.
158: CU just reviewed one such gadget and were surprised at how much more crud it removed compared to using fingers or vac.
This one will probably be fun for the lawyers.
flee to the British Empire!
One of my cousins married a Ligonier woman who then turned nutty.
One hears stories about the area.
They all have fucktons of guns up that way,
Now I'm reading `area' to rhyme with `up that way'. Which is difficay.
The two lines don't really scan either.
Where was all this clew criticism when she was being wrong on nunchucks?
142
If it makes you feel any better, Teo, I'm hopeful that as the ACA continues to roll out, we'll be in a better position to argue for mental health parity. Prevention is sexy!
Prevention how? Easier mandatory commitment laws? For the most part the really dangerous nuts don't want to be treated. Not that there are effective treatments in many cases.
or, now that you're high from huffing solvents, you could just go buy some guns, legally, and fantasize about shooting your former tenants while caressing the sweet mother-of-pearl grips you got on your pair of vintage "lady's gun" .357 revolvers, cuz that's how you roll (kawaii desune!!1!1! so cute and lethal--like a venomous baby panda. why are there two? so you can drop one on someone? it doesn't matter. and sometimes they come in their original box, all satiny inside like it's made to hold expensive jewelry!).
do you have time to wait around for the cops to fantasize about shooting your former tenants? they're still jerking off to a heinous case that started in vice, that you don't even want to know about. it could be literally years before they have fantasies about pistol-whipping your good-for-nothing tenants, and that'll only be because the tenants' kids are going to break the window of a cop's wife's car at a gas station to steal her purse. clew, you need to step up and join the fight for your liberties. and your dryer, and stove and stuff.
Related to the original, gun ownership registration question, there is a similar thing in Scandiwegia, where income records are public,a long with housing records. The arrival of the internet meant of course that these became public, and easily searchable form anywhere in the world. So the totally unforeseen consequence was a bonanza for second-home hunters from the Netherlands and Germany. Norway, at least, then shut the thing down so it was available only to Norwegian citizens, or perhaps for a week after new year, or both. I can't remember the exact details. But the whole story spoke to JRoth's point about there being degrees of publicness.
Perhaps the answer is to hand the whole problem over to Google Plus - "These details will be shared only with people in your state" ...
Also, what does the mineshaft think about asking for credit scores on a date?
"Hah! I see from the comparison of our credit scrose that this relationship is going to delight me. It's the rich that gets the pleasure/It's the poor what gets the blame, donchaknow" [Twirls moustachios]
Does your credit score drop after too many dating-related inquiries?
95: I think that really points up the difference between what the newspaper did and "invasion of privacy." The newspaper published a big map with lots of datapoints, and allowed you to look to see in your neighborhood - or any neighborhood you were interested in - what the gun permit situation was. They identified the individuals by address, not by name, so that if you were looking for someone specific, you already had to know where they lived.
(Have I got that wrong? Many others on this thread are claiming otherwise, but I can't figure that out.)
The response you link was from someone who pretty explicitly wants people to be harassed. Don't get me wrong - I don't think the journalists have any business complaining about the disclosure. They conduct their business in public and thus necessarily are open to public scrutiny. But let's not kid ourselves about the newspaper's act of journalism, and the act of harassment perpetrated by the person you link.
I don't really know how many people in my family own hand guns. It's not a subject anyone discusses. You generally only find out when they use them to kill themselves, like Grandpa and Auntie Ann.
Actually fuck yeah journos have a legitimate reason to be fucked off about public disclosure of their residence. It's an occupation where you piss people off, many of whom are crazies. There's no reason at all to care where a journo qua journo lives.
`Public scrutiny' doesn't mean `no privacy'.
(If you don't want certain specific people to show up on a register, isn't the solution to have a list of non-disclosed addresses etc, and put people on that list, not to get rid of the register?)
138 --- I dunno, this might be something the President could legit show leadership on and it actually matter.
173.2: Kind if like a backward Jane Austen novel with debt instead of inheritance being the key to pairing off.
179
... There's no reason at all to care where a journo qua journo lives.
Maybe not the exact address but I think it can be useful to know in a general way a journalist's personal circumstances and lifestyle.
179 should be referencing 177.
b) it's not going to accomplish anything meaningful anyway (on either guns or mental illness) absent a massive and highly implausible shift in American politics and culture.
Implausible things do happen every now and then. Americans' tolerance for surveillance and torture*, for instance, have increased dramatically in a relatively short period.
*That sentence looks wrong if you add "gay marriage," but that too.
I would be really quite exceptionally pissed off if someone were to do that to people on my own dear organ. And indeed to me. I think it would be wickedly amusing to post a map showing where gurnadia journalists live, anonymised and to street level. That's one thing, making a point about our social backgrounds. But phone numbers, street addresses? That's just an invitation to crazies.
Writing articles does not actually mean that you could kill people in your neighbourhood. Owning a gun does.
If they are so fucking proud of their role upholding America's freedom, why be ashamed of where they live?
Maybe not the exact address but I think it can be useful to know in a general way a journalist's personal circumstances and lifestyle.
Right! Information is good stuff! Certainly there are tradeoffs - I don't think journalists should be required to make their tax returns public - but all things being equal, knowing more is better than knowing less.
In the case of Gannett, I'm not surprised to see people say that the tradeoffs aren't worth it, but I am surprised to see people contend that - even if there were no tradeoffs - people are no better off having additional information about gun ownership.
The NRA types aren't deluded about this, and that's why they do so much to stifle the flow of accurate, relevant information. Here's the NYT on the ATF:
For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions.
And the NRA knows damn well that the last thing they want is for the CDC to examine gun violence.
I would be really quite exceptionally pissed off if someone were to do that to people on my own dear organ.
Wait, what kind of exposure were we talking about here?
181
... Americans' tolerance for surveillance and torture*, for instance, have increased dramatically in a relatively short period.
This seems debatable, it seems plausible that some people have just been unpleasantly surprised to learn what average opinion really was.
The phone numbers are pure harassment, especially since people are more willing to harass electronically than in person (some present company excepted.) If you know someone's neighborhood it might have some value for knowing what they're familiar with, but there's no such value in phone numbers.
"I used to like this person's writing when I thought their phone number ended in 6, but now that I know that they have two 8s in their number they just don't speak to me anymore."
185: And in the exact same sense, people could be surprised at what the Americans' attitude about gun control really is.
126 was roughly my view for a long time (ie, reasonable gun control is obviously a good thing, but what's realistic isn't very important for saving lives and what might be useful at saving lives isn't realistic, and in any event this issue seems to get people stirred up in a totally non-useful way and so the right move is to just conveniently ignore the issue and kick it down the road a ways.
Maybe that's still the right attitude. But it's also true that (a) the gun culture is toxic (b) the self-defense handgun hobbyists (not you, hunters) clearly do have blood on their hands and (c) that we've paid a real price in lives for what amounts for a kind of substitute penis worship for a bunch of dudes. Honestly the legislative route still seems unpromising, but I'd like to see more social shaming for gun ownership, at least for everyone who isn't a legitimate hunter or trained security professional. The paranoid defense against home invasion crew should know that people find their hobby gross and don't like them because of it.
It's all about slippery-slope-ism. There is no limit to the limits.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm
189: In the real world, of course, there are limits on the limits absolutely everywhere. The fact that we restrict private use of howitzers, tanks and nuclear weapons doesn't have any bearing on whether we permit semi-automatic weapons. Conversely, the fact that we permit semi-automatic weapons doesn't mean we have to allow howitzers.
The real slippery slope is that if you start talking intelligently about public policy, you get more intelligent public policy - the NRA is entirely right to fear and despise the CDC. Did 189 link to a story about the government banning something? Nope. It linked to a story about people talking about efforts at harm reduction.
I don't know whether we'd be better off with redesigned knives, but it doesn't seem obviously ridiculous, and I don't see any harm in talking about it and studying the question.
Blunt table-knives don't seem like a problem, but a longish stiffish very pointed knife is what you need for jointing something even as small as a hen. More generally, most tools I can work wood or even wool with have to be strong and sharp enough to be dangerous -- awls, chisels, dressmakers' shears, rotary cutters... and I'm not even up to power tools. Once when my college house was being lightly stalked the police recommended that we find scary tools to have at hand, and one of us had already chucked a Forstner bit into a cordless drill, which the officer said was possibly too creepy.
A cordless circular saw would be good.
191: But think of the children! There's no particular reason why food fetishists couldn't take stuff to vetted and licensed cutters for the proper chopping.
|| Remember when I was looking to unload a teenager who'd recently wrecked a buddy's snowmobile? Repairs were thought to be less than 2k. Turns out there's more damage than originally thought, and the thing is totalled. Thing could be worth up to 5k. So, teenager still for sale, and you get the chance to recoup some of the purchase price by parting out a wrecked snow machine. No reasonable offer refused.|>
If you outlaw long kitchen knives, only outlaws will be able to dice vegetables efficiently.
Vegetables could be done on fixed-blade cutters or a food processor. Boning meat would be a bigger problem.
Obviously, the difference is that kitchen knivesor woodworking tools are (a) less lethal and (b) have a purpose other than killing human beings or serving as an extension penis.
198: (a) is mostly true but (b) clearly isn't. Hunting and target shooting may not be your preferred hobbies, but they do exist and don't involve killing human beings.
I already exempted hunting. Target shooting, you want to use a handgun, you are basically practicing for killing people, and you can keep your fucking substitute penis locked up at the range.
198: They're only less lethal 'cause we're not a knife culture. There's no need for processing any food in a kitchen, anything one needs is available already done in cans and plastic, frozen or otherwise, in the nearest supermarket.
And knives aren't penis substitutes? You're fuckin' delusional. Ever look at a rolling pin? A baster? Sick stuff, Halford.
Knives are only less lethal than guns because we're not a knife culture? That seems like a hard claim to defend with any weapon.
I had assumed that killing someone with a knife requires more skill than managing it with a semi-auotmatic. And now I am envisioning a well-regulated domitia of neighborhood cooks, led by the ghost of Catharine Beecher, mincing ten families' worth of meat every evening by the use of small arms. (Explosive charges in the popcorn popper, of course.)
If howitzers were legal, someone would make a hobby out of shooting them. This is definitely the case with the Thompson M1921.
I was tempted to say that posting those addresses pushed me into the public listing of gun ownership camp, but it's not really a symmetric response. The left really needs a group of heavily armed, paranoid followers prone to violence that we can hand enemies lists to.
At least we're not a weaponized smallpox culture. Anymore.
I think the best way to fight the popularity of handguns is to create a fashion for sword canes.
I just checked that my Van Hoy snap lock (left handed!) is less than 3" and possibly still legal in GB, so maybe they're bearable after all. Pterry should be able to keep his meteorite sword, though. Do I say that every time? Fine.
Why all the mopping and mowing towards hunters? I know there are people feeding their families, but the larger part of the market seems to use it as an excuse to buy bigger trucks and more beer and then threaten people on their own (closed, posted) land. (Yay. Drunkards with guns who won't even leave the road to dump their offal.) Now, walking back from that a bit, the subsistence hunters are a small market because they haven't any spare cash; but the laws are going to get noisy in defense of the big spenders.
Is The Stone Boy no longer standard school reading?
the larger part of the market seems to use it as an excuse to buy bigger trucks and more beer and then threaten people on their own (closed, posted) land.
Nah. Most hunters hunt because they enjoy hunting.
Yes, but to too many goddam people, `hunting' means `buying heavy stuff and bulling around aggressively'.
More than one guy has threatened my mother on her own land, I am not going to thaw a degree. (The subsistence hunters, on the other hand, asked permission, asked when and where she was out, were wearing and using about a tenth as much stuff, and went on foot. To where the legal deer were.)
Oo, and also, in a different county and twenty years ago, our neighbors' cows got shot twice although the second time they'd spraypainted ``COW'' on each side in International Orange. A lot of hunters shouldn't have fun hunting so much, IME, they should put some tedious work into being better at it.
206 ia excellent and I hope it's true.
More than one guy has threatened my mother on her own land, I am not going to thaw a degree.
Yep, you get a bit of that, especially from people who have no connection to the area in which they are hunting. The police should be called for something like that, but if they parked where you couldn't see their plates, the deputy will get there too late most often.
I know an awful lot of people who hunt, and none of them fit clew's stereotype. I do try not to know many assholes, though, so it's a badly skewed sample.
200: Target shooting, you want to use a handgun, you are basically practicing for killing people.
Not necessarily. Sometimes trying to hit an inanimate target is fun on its own. People practice archery and darts even though those are no longer state of the art weapons.
For that matter, fencers are literally practicing at striking live people with bladed weapons, but that doesn't mean that the purpose of practicing fencing is to kill; the purpose is to have fun and feel like a badass swordfighter for a little while. You may not endorse that, but it's not the same thing as genuinely preparing to go kill people. Presumably when we move on to phasers or some other more efficient method of one-on-one killing some folks will still enjoy playing with guns.
Although maybe I am biased because I have on occasion enjoyed playing with some (plastic-tipped) darts, which apparently makes me a sociopath or something.
213: Clew's sample is of course also strongly biased, in favor of people who hunt on or through private property not specifically designated as open hunting grounds
I think it's tendentious to make reference to hunters you know and then call my experiences a stereotype. How much evidence of shooting across the pasture do you need before keeping the kids indoors isn't based on a stereotype? (For the Cheeldrn! I resented the necessity, as a cheeldr.)
I'm not against hunting, especially where we've repressed predators more strongly than herbivores Invasive nutria, wild boar: have at 'em, just not across land other people are working on, or with mechanized equipment that probably destroyed more food-producing land than could produce the deer you're getting.
Most hunting is on private ground in farmer-type states.
Most hunting is on private ground in farmer-type states.
The divide here is that the west has ridiculous amounts of public land (IMO a good thing). Like Charlie I don't know any hunters like that either but Montana and Utah are a whole different type of land access vs. back east and the south.
The important distinction isn't private vs public, it's whether someone out mushrooming or repairing the fences is likely to get accidentally shot.
(In chanterelle country, mushroomers sometimes intentionally shoot each other, which I am counting as a different thing.)
Also, I'm so far West we're more like New England in density of rural uses.
214 is (typically for Benquo) moronic. It's tue that fencing and modern archery have their origins in combat sports, but the modern versions have specifically evolved to move as far from that and as far into genuine "sports" as possible. The one time I went target shooting with a handgun the targets at the range were of Osama Bin Laden and of shady looking characters trying to assault women. Biathlon style target shooting with a single bolt rifle is pretty extremely different from current US handgun culture, and anyone who doesn't recognize that is a fool.
I don't doubt your anecdotes for a moment, clew. It may even be true that on the Coast the larger part of the market seems to use it as an excuse to buy bigger trucks and more beer and then threaten people on their own (closed, posted) land.
221: I agree that silhouette targets are probably not good for folks who aren't planning to shoot someone, and it's unfortunate that they're used so often.
223: Eh. paper plates are head-sized and heart-sized. Can't see any difference in what the target looks like unless there's a point penalty for shooting the cute little kid the zombie is chomping.
And Halford must have missed all those martial arts places in L.A. training in unarmed and armed combat in a plethora of styles. They're almost as numerous as nail care places. The SCA is also into it for semi-realzies with "Heavy Combat". "The fighting is a full-speed, near full-force,[3] full-contact competition between two or more combatants,[1] and it is designed to resemble medieval combat dueling or melee."
I hold no brief for the SCA types, but their silly hobby doesn't have the bodies of thousands of dead people on its hands, and neither does martial arts. Neither is driven by the primary driver of the US handgun market, which is training to literally kill people out of a purported need for self-defense.
Jousting is amazing to watch and feel even though silly. HORSIES. (Spaghetti-and-glue lances, IIRC.) I will also go a long way for draft team exhibitions.
The SCA is two leaps farther from actual dangerous weapons than the most, uh, dangerous group, or was a while ago when I last knew a lot of fencers. Can't remember the really scary group's name. M-something? Male-something? I think they were working with full-weight but not edged weapons and rediscovering `a crushing blow'.
I will also go a long way for draft team exhibitions.
My dad's cousin keeps a team. I think that side of the family hasn't not had a team since they first acquired one back in the late 19th century. I've only seem them at family weddings where the tradition is that the bridal party leaves the church in a horse-drawn wagon.
The ones round Seattle are mostly owned by severalth-generation trucking families. There's a team of miniature heavy horse.
All those martial arts places exist to get your inner something aligned with your other something to attain peace. Yeah, right.
"Wedding wagon" sounds weird, but a wedding wagon sounds charming.
I don't think it's a business. I think he just does it for the cousins.
Small and miniature breeds are so adorable that I'm a little dubious about claims that they're practical for home farms. I want to believe! I want a tiny herd of Dexters! I mean, I also want a yak, I know I'm nuts.
The counter-counter argument is that there's still a lot of muscle on a mini steer, and traditional breeds were small. The counter-counter-counter is `traditional like in rural immiseration?'. I dunno.
231: All the better. I am Trollope-annoyed that we will be getting married in a rented hall, but I would rather have lots of relatives show and everyone dance than only a few people in our front hall.
Went through a lengthy annoying discussion with some relatives exclaiming that it's my day! I should have exactly what I want! while I was pointing out that my fantasies involve very steep roadless land and no plumbing for miles, whereas a wedding is about the rest of the community, who demonstrably often prefer plumbing, food, chairs, etc etc etc.
I may have to lure the Dwarf Lord out for a very, very traditional ceremony some pleasant summer night.
On hunting: There are certainly a lot of slob hunters out there. I very much doubt they are in the majority, or A LOT more people would be getting shot in hunting accidents every year.
On self-defense: I've mentioned the story before of the couple here in MN who were being stalked by the ex-boyfriend of the girlfriend. He broke into their bedroom, armed, and so the current boyfriend shot him with a shotgun. He was completely in the right, and faced no criminal charges, but the couple became pariahs to a large part of their rural community. Then, just last month, we had the case here of the retired State Department security officer whose house was broken into by a couple of kids apparently looking to score pills. He shot them each with a rifle, and administered the coup de grâce with a handgun. Public opinion in that rural community is split, but he is being charged with 2nd degree murder, last I heard.
On the prevalence of gun ownership: My acquaintances who own guns include a hippie painter/poet/mystic; an urbane, liberal hipster journalist; several financial industry clerks; a special-ed teacher who does crazy art projects; a housewife/grad student who does non-profit consulting; a retired, liberal Jewish college professor; a conservative, retired long-haul trucker who restores classic cars and tractors; a back-to-the-land hippie who works as a short order cook; a wandering environmental activist; and a whole bunch of other people who don't fit into gun-owner stereotypes. I think it is useful to remember that there's a large plurality of people in this country who are only a generation or two off the farm. 3 of my grandparents grew up in farm families. If your milieu is composed mostly of east coast urbanites who are white ethnics or Jews, you probably won't meet that many gun owners, but here in flyover country, it's pretty inescapable.
He shot them each with a rifle, and administered the coup de grâce with a handgun.
That sounds like some sort of murder to me, alright. That is one cold-blooded sonofabitch.
235: Yeah, it was some creepy shit. The guy's mugshot makes him look like Ed Gein's evil twin, but then so does everybody's. Lotta folx think he was in the right though. Well-liked in the community. Grew up there. Strong family connections.
Yeah, Jews don't own guns. We're too cosmopolitan.
What's dividing opinion in the first case in 234? "broke into their bedroom, armed" sounds like a case chosen for example.
I think my friends-and-family with guns are careful, cautious and peacable with them, coastal* though we are. (FFS.) If the asshole reckless behavior isn't representative, why so much pushback about enforcing rules non-assholes already follow?
*You can shoot varmints on your Berkeley city property legally, and at least one of my professors does. (His apricots are planted against an earth bank.)
237: I just said I know a Jewish gun owner. Probably more than one. But not East Coast, urban Jews. Except for the ones that do.
Kidding aside, gun ownership has become so much more common over the past twenty years that I'm not sure many of the old stereotypes hold true. Lots of people who, a couple of generations ago, wouldn't have owned guns -- because of the stigma -- now do. It really is the NRA's country and has been at least since the start of Clinton's second term.
Sorry, Nat, I wasn't picking on you. 240 and 239 crossed, I think.
238.1: My understanding was that the stalker guy was well-liked in the community and hadn't done anything especially heinous in the past. So his friends and relatives and their friends and relatives felt that he shouldn't have been killed. Nobody said they were being rational.
241: Okay, I wasn't sure. I mean, I think this is a stereotype with some grain of truth to it, but maybe all the Meir Kahane types skew the statistics. Hard to say.
why so much pushback about enforcing rules non-assholes already follow?
Because 2nd Amendment absolutists are absolutists, and they enjoy backing from a multi-billion dollar industry. Or are you talking about in this thread? In which case, I have no idea, though it seems like your anecdotes don't accord with other people's anecdotes, and that often leads to pushback.
I know tons of nice people who hunt, but I have no idea how they behave when they hunt. I imagine it to be camping crossed with a video game.
Is 240 true? Gun ownership has meaningfully increased in the last 20 years?
242: I know enough urbane, coastal Jews who now, for one reason or another, own guns that I think things have changed. Again, though, we're talking about anecdata, so who knows.
I traded my shotgun for a waterbed 30 years ago. Wasn't using it anyway.
I know of a local Jewish gun-nut who has a prepper web site and was running a store-front Obama-hates-Jews operation this election.
So his friends and relatives and their friends and relatives felt that he shouldn't have been killed. Nobody said they were being rational.
That's pretty much SOP. It never matters how obvious the situation is. We had the dad of one shithead actually say to the news "why couldn't the police just have waited until he ran out of bullets".
246: I don't know for certain, but I believe the last time I looked, the percentage of people who own guns has actually decreased, but the number of guns has gone through the roof. At the same time, the number of people who live in urban and suburban areas has increased by quite a bit. And from there, we're into the realm of anecdata, I'm afraid. So as I said above, who knows?
What I want is more stigma. If you own a handgun and aren't actually a police officer, you're probably a small-dicked fascist creep. Probably not true in 100% of cases but I want this to be the stereotype.
Yeah, I mean, my anecdata on ECUJ's consists of almost 100% queer anarchists, so that may not be representative.
254: Very rare. Almost nobody is 100% at either end of the Kinsey scale.
246: sorry, I just looked back at 240 and saw the source of the confusion. In case I wasn't already clear about this, I'm not sure gun ownership has become more common across the board. I do, though, think it's more common than it used to be among urban Jews. Now, it well might be that I've just aged into the demographic that buys guns. But I don't think so. None of my parents' friends, except the hunters, used to own guns. Now a bunch of those same people do for protection. And I know a number of people, and not hunters, in my age range who own guns.
So, you're saying your friends aged into the impotent fascist creep demographic.
No, I'm saying Nat knows queer anarchists, while I know impotent creep fascists. Different strokes, man. Don't be so judgy.
253: Too funny, totally delusional. That will never happen as long as the combined weight and wealth of the entertainment industry and the news media say the exact opposite.
Well, the news media seems to be siding with Halford's better angels. Unfortunately, his paymasters know that violence sells, so I think we'll keep seeing movies, television shows, and video games filled with bullet-riddled corpse. I'll do my part for gun control by pirating all the mass media I can.
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I'm kind of excited about this Idle No More movement. Probably going to observe at least one of the demos planned for this weekend. But I do not know that much about First Nations struggles specific to Canada. Anyone have recommendations of books or websites about that subject?
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I do, though, think it's more common than it used to be among urban Jews
Didn't the category of 'urban Jews' itself change considerably over the last 20ish years? There was a mass influx from former Soviet countries, and the ultra-orthodox have also grown in percentage terms, right? That might (but might not!) be part of it.
Paige Raibmon's stuff is good. Actually, almost everyone at UBC is very good.
264 to 261. Unfortunately, I know of no book about Canadian First Nations peoples like Wilkinson's Blood Struggles (please insert obligatory caveat about how there are problems with Wilkinson's book).
260: No, the news media is fueling the next mass-killing by making it the most effective thing, the act with the most impact, a resentful non-entity can perform. There's a difference in the effect of sticking a camera and mic in the face of someone who's suffered a severe loss to a tornado vs. a shooter.
(Re Jews with guns: My brother ignored mine for decades, never had the slightest interest, he's been a totally urban, "civilized" dude his entire life. Then he was mugged in his own driveway. He immediately went out and bought a Glock, ammo, and a bunch of lessons. I didn't drive that decision, I didn't know about it until he invited me to the range to show off his new skills. )
187
185: And in the exact same sense, people could be surprised at what the Americans' attitude about gun control really is.
Unlikely. Gun control has been a contested political issue for decades. Elections have been won and lost based on it. So there is plenty of evidence of what people's attitudes are.
Torture in ticking bomb scenarios was not a contested political issue until recently. And the increase in surveillance has a lot to do with improvements in technology.
246
Is 240 true? Gun ownership has meaningfully increased in the last 20 years?
Not if Erza Klein can be believed .
261: A good friend of mine has a joint appointment in F/irst N/ations. Is there a specific topic you had in mind that I could ask her about?
261, 164: Recommended Idle No More in Historical Context
People practice archery and darts even though those are no longer state of the art weapons.
Some people practice enough to (re-)invent impressive new techniques.
269: Well, of course I'm interested in resistance -- the Oka uprising happened just when I was getting radicalized. I feel like I have a pretty decent basic understanding of Native-US relations, the legalities and treaties and what have you. I took an Intro class when I went back to school, and of course have read In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and follow AIM news. So, more the political dimension, not that I'm uninterested in more cultural/philosophical/sociological information.
271: Holy shit!
That was my reaction!
The video starts off slightly slow but gets really impressive -- like the point at which he shoots multiple airborne targets while on the move.
The best part of the video is the narrator: Siri.
I'm so very glad that I'm not playing bullshit with jammies' family! What a terrible card game.
271 makes me think that wicked old SM Stirling needs to rethink all of his various ubermenschen archers -- that guy seems to have them all beat.
I would note, however, that nothing is said about the draw weight of the bows he's using for those trick shots.
275: I know, right? They couldn't find anyone in Lyngby who spoke enough English to narrate a 5 minute video?
I would note, however, that nothing is said about the draw weight of the bows he's using for those trick shots.
Low. On the credits card it says he uses 30 & 35 lb bows.
Reading comprehension: I cannot haz it.
I'm very glad that we're back home and can sleep in my big comfy bed with Lee rather than having to share a twin bed with a child and be on the particularly unpleasant downhill side of the slanted mattress to prevent child rolloffs. I love visiting my grandmother and I'm glad we went, but some of the logistics and sleep deprivation are hard on me.
In other news, it sounds like Mara's siblings can stay where they are until an aunt or cousin passes a background check to take custody. The checks are pretty basic (no major felonies, no child abuse cases, sometimes being able to pass a drug screen if asked) and so I hope this will work for them and they can stay with family. I'm going to call their caseworker in the morning to introduce myself and strategize about how I can be a support. For instance, this might be my chance to officially be out in charge of the oldest sister's college planning. I suppose it also helps that I'm working on creating a training for regular foster parents about kinship care. It's easy for foster parents to judge families who try and fail at it (as has happened for every child who's ever been in our home) but there's so little institutional support for the caregivers, much less than for foster parents, but I know I freaked out at the call and I wasn't even being asked to take 3-7 kids immediately a few days before Christmas. I'm so glad people have stepped up and hope the official state involvement can get their next placement started on a better foot, but oh those poor kids!
Unlikely. Gun control has been a contested political issue for decades.
And surveillance wasn't? Gay rights? The fact that being anti-torture was uncontroversial means more or less the opposite of what you think it means.
283
And surveillance wasn't? Gay rights? The fact that being anti-torture was uncontroversial means more or less the opposite of what you think it means.
The 911 attacks were an unprecedented event which changed the political environment and revealed latent pro-authoritarian sentiment. The Newtown attack (albeit tragic) wasn't unprecedented to nearly the same degree and hence seems less likely by itself to significantly change things
Opinions have changed about gay rights, I am not questioning that. This was a continuous process over decades and not prompted by a single event.
latent pro-authoritarian sentiment
I don't disagree with you about this. It's not just 9/11, though, but also a comprehensive propaganda campaign.
It's not just 9/11, though, but also a comprehensive propaganda campaign.
Although if memory serves, the "torture is awesome!" propaganda campaign didn't have to work very hard to succeed. Certainly not compared with something like gay rights that's taken decades of sustained effort to achieve results.
All it took was a season or two of 24 and ridiculous ticking time bomb scenarios were being thrown around by all the Deep Thinkers(TM) as serious arguments in support of torture (and besides, that Jack Bauer guy is totally all, like, cool and stuff).
287: I think people worked back from the answer. They wanted the government to torture terrorists as an end in itself, as a form of lashing out. That's why the rationalizations were so transparent.
There's a long history of the good guys torturing or threatening to torture the bad guys in action movies. I'm not sure which way the causation runs, but it didn't start with 24.
287 -- And working hard to suppress the treatment of men not honestly believed to have information about ticking time bombs. When the full scope of what was done, and on what premises, is known to historians of some distant age, we'll look pathetic indeed. (What's become public about Abu Zubaydah and Fouad Al Rabia should have made that clear enough, but people don't want to face the full implications of what they bought into.)
I'm still amazed that the people who don't think the post office can do anything right put such absolute faith in the intelligence services, despite a huge record of failures both large and small, but that's apparently what we are as a species.
289 is exactly right. Lord knows the Lethal Weapon movies feature a LOT of torture porn. Not clear if there's a straight line back to Dirty Harry type of "hero has to work outside the law" stuff; ISTM that there's a slightly different inflection that was either new (what the hell, let's just blame Mel for it) or else derived in part from something else.
Gun control has been a contested political issue for decades. Elections have been won and lost based on it.
This is CW, but it's entirely unclear whether or not it's true. The evidence, such as it is, goes back almost entirely to 2 events: 1994 and 2000. House Dems blamed Clinton's assault ban for getting them kicked out (and the NRA was happy to claim credit), and Gore's loss of his home state was widely ascribed to his stance on guns (and the NRA was happy to claim credit).
In truth, it's now pretty apparent that 1994 was going to be a GOP wave more or less regardless - the old Dem alliance was brittle, and 1994 was when it snapped. If there'd been no assault rifle ban vote, does anyone think there'd still be lots of white Dems representing Southern states in the House?
And, basically, same deal with Gore. No one thinks that Romney lost MA (or MI, or CA, or any other state where he has a home) because of his gun stance, and it's no more logical to think that Gore lost a red state like TN because of his*. But this CW was crystallized long ago.
Meanwhile, looking at the last few elections, there's zero evidence that NRA endorsements or money move the needle an iota. We can debate the reasons for that fact, but it's there, and it's incompatible with the idea that gun control is anything like a salient electoral issue in most constituencies. No, Diane Feinstein couldn't win Manchin's seat (nor vice versa), but it's not as if an NRA endorsement of her would change that.
*not to mention, no one would really care about TN if not for the butterfly ballot
I thought the Lethal Weapon movies had more of the bad guys torturing the good guys than the other way around.
293: The good guys being the audience.
It had a good guy shooting a bad guy through the head via a diplomatic passport. Which was pretty fucking dumb on the part of the bad guy, standing there holding his passport in front of his face.
@295
Without using google can you name which Lethal Weapon movie featured that scene?
293: I'm not sure you're wrong, but the torture was valorized, nearly eroticized. ISTM that it raised the bar of, "In this fallen world, we do what we must."
Torture rendered off-screen (in old war movies and the like) I think tended towards a portrayal of it as seedy, with no positive associations.
I may be totally off on this; it's just that, when I think "glamorized portrayal of torture on the big screen", I think of those movies.
296- Wasn't it the second, with the South Africans? "Diplomatic immunity!" Bang! "Just been revoked."
The Asian guy putting the electrodes on the bare, wet chest of Mel Gibson. Yep.
@297
I believe that 293 is right in that the LW films had the bad guys torturing the good guys rather than the other way around.*
Your right about it being eroticized to a new extent in the LW films however. I think that's some sort of weird Mel Gibson thing though.
*I haven't seen them all, thank goodness. But I worked in a movie theater when the first one came out, and the second one was a perennial favorite in the lounge outside my dorm room in college.
Returning to the amazing Dane and his bow: I said to my daughter this evening "You have to see this guy who can do just what the Seljuk Turks could: shoot three arrows in one and a half seconds."
And she seriously freaked.
[PAUSE]
Turns out she had heard me say "shoot three Arabs in one and a half seconds"
Come to think of it, that was what the Seljuk turks practised to do. But it's not on Youtube.
Maybe if Turkey decides Assad has to go?
Yes, but only if they use cavalry to throw him out
304: to throw him out
Does an onager count as honorary cavalry?
So, all the expertise comes down to WTF.
http://ktla.com/2012/12/28/crime-drops-in-l-a-for-10th-straight-year/
306: It's all about the lead. Actually, seriously, KDrum is apparently about to be on the cover of MoJo with this; maybe that'll finally kick it from Freakonomics-style pet theory to broadly accepted fact.
Lead may be a Freakonomics-style pet theory, but wasn't the actual Freakonomics pet theory abortion?
Freakonomists go where the Freakorrelations lead them! They have no theories, just facts and figures. It's called being open-minded.
I used my knowledge gained from blogs to describe precisely to my Dad over Christmas dinner why the freakonomics guys sucked, and he believed me. See, Mom, I haven't been wasting my time.
308: Yes. I was hoping that wouldn't distract from what I was saying. But now it's just like that time I presented my project bare-chested.
310: Well done, sir. I spent the last few days ignoring what anyone has said about the fiscal cliff because really, what does it matter?
our neighbors' cows got shot twice although the second time they'd spraypainted ``COW'' on each side in International Orange
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