2024 US Presidential Election

[moose eater]

the result of destablizing venezeualan and south american democracies and economies. the west creates it's own problems.

Guatemala in the 80s and the delayed ripple effect now.

 

[greyfader]

our history in Latin America is despicable. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11/busi...liable-paramilitary-group-colombia/index.html

United Fruit Company - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[greyfader]

"out of all the known reasons you could name as to why crime is dropping.... this isn't one of them lol.

increase in video games and a reduction in lead exposure i guarantee plays a larger role."

around here, in the Deep South, the possibility of getting shot while committing a crime is a real consideration.

because, seriously, everyone has a gun. some states here have "Right to carry" laws with no concealed permits or licensing required. felons are allowed to carry if they have no history of violence and have successfully completed their parole or probation.

the shooting ranges are packed, more people going to defensive firearm training than ever before.

i think it is a deterrent.

 

[Microbeman]

the result of destablizing venezeualan and south american democracies and economies. the west creates it's own problems.

True dat - although my comment was a trifle tongue in cheek

 

[Microbeman]

Guatemala in the 80s and the delayed ripple effect now.

Montezuma's revenge these days is meth and fentanyl

 

[moose eater]

"out of all the known reasons you could name as to why crime is dropping.... this isn't one of them lol.

increase in video games and a reduction in lead exposure i guarantee plays a larger role."

around here, in the Deep South, the possibility of getting shot while committing a crime is a real consideration.

because, seriously, everyone has a gun. some states here have "Right to carry" laws with no concealed permits or licensing required. felons are allowed to carry if they have no history of violence and have successfully completed their parole or probation.

the shooting ranges are packed, more people going to defensive firearm training than ever before.

i think it is a deterrent.

Alaska has some of the greatest concentration in the US of personally owned firearms, class III weapons, unlicensed -legal- concealed carry, etc.

We also have (per capita) among the highest violent crime rates and murder rates, domestic violence rates, and sexual assault rates. It's not working the way some claim.

The frequency of gun carry (and I carry myself and have been a class III collector in years gone by), coupled with 'stand your ground' mentality in some of its twistedness, and relatively liberal self-defense and Castle Doctrine laws (though a bit constricted from what they were in the early 1980s and before), has led, imo opinion, to far more bloodshed than it's stopped.

And most of the Bubbas who talk 'preservation of freedom/liberty' through 2nd Amendment rhetoric, largely sat on their butts and did little to nothing when stuff like the USA PA was passed in the dark of night without even getting a final reading on the floor re. amendments put in place at 4:00 A.M. that morning.

Add in a whole shitload of firearms owners, week-end warriors, firearms fondlers, and gun-counter droolers, who do -not- practice sufficiently, or remain proficient with their firearms, and the stats reveal many people, gun owners, who will empty a firearm at an intruder and hit nothing but air, their own walls, or, far worse, their neighbors' homes.

This is actually born out in research.

Everybody's an adept Rambo until they have that surge of adrenaline and 'time warp' in perception that can take the most practiced firearms owner and turn them into a fumbling idiot unable to hit the side of a barn.

If the sight of a moose, deer, or elk in hunting season can (and does) do that to practiced folks who spend time at the range, imagine what happens to those 'other people' and even the hunters, during a home invasion with intense adrenaline in the perceived presence of life and death decisions.

Our Troopers here have to routinely qualify at the gun range, and I can think back on absurd moments involving what began as welfare checks with, in one such case, a suicidal woman out on Sheep Creek Road with a handgun, who popped off an inconsequential round, and three State Troopers all opening up on her, with only one bullet from one Trooper grazing her nose. And these are supposed to be folks who qualify and practice, practice, practice.

Adrenaline and hesitation are motherfuckers.

 

[moose eater]

Montezuma's revenge these days is meth and fentanyl

The USA and other major players have a habit of fucking up others' places mostly for nationalist/DoD/State Dept. and corporate reasons (Allende's Chile for example), then crying in their beer when those people either retaliate or come to those major players' home countries via emigration seeking asylum or (??), or both.

A complete inability and disconnect to applying common sense in assessing trickle-down, blow-back, or ripple effect. Dominoes, as it were.

"What have we ever done to those people? Why would they want to do this to us?"

*Absurd questions from those removed from worldly awareness and reality after, 9/11, for example, not having considered the results, for example, of building US Military bases on Holy Land in Saudi Arabia, and on, and on, and on in 100 other examples in 100 other countries.

Bribing the Central American leaders in the 50s and since with both 'foreign aid' and private money from the corporations themselves, to allow export of tariff-free shipping of bananas by Dole and others, and no one in the US asking how we can ship fruit from a hemisphere away and still buy it at .79 cents/lb. USD.

The CIA sponsored/supported coup in Chile in the early 70s, supported by the likes of serial mass murderer Henry Kissinger, that saw a duly elected leader, Allende' eventually murdered.

"WhY Do tHeY dIsLikE Us? WhAt hAVe wE EvEr DonE tO ThEm??!!

We've repeatedly (the US and other Western regimes) often supported despots resulting in the abuse, injustices and torture of their own people in many of those places.

The average comfortable Westerner is often disconnected from the reality of where many of our luxuries and comforts come from and how we obtained them.

 

[igrowone]

Alaksa has some of the greatest concentration in the US of personally owned firearms, class III weapons, unlicensed -legal- concealed carry, etc.

We also have (per capita) among the highest violent crime rates and murder rates, domestic violence rates, and sexual assault rates. It's not working the way some claim.

The frequency of gun carry (and I carry myself and have been a class III collector in years gone by), coupled with 'stand your ground' mentality in some of its twistedness, and relatively liberal self-defense and Castle Doctrine laws (though a bit constricted from what they were in the early 1980s and before), has led, imo opinion, to far more bloodshed than it's stopped.

And most of the Bubbas who talk 'preservation of freedom/liberty' through 2nd Amendment rhetoric, largely sat on their butts and did little to nothing when stuff like the USA PA was passed in the dark of night without even getting a final reading on the floor re. amendments put in place at 4:00 A.M. that morning.

Add in a whole shitload of firearms owners, week-end warriors, firearms fondlers, and gun-counter droolers, who do -not- practice sufficiently, or remain proficient with their firearms, and the stats reveal many people, gun owners, who will empty a firearm at an intruder and hit nothing but air, their own walls, or, far worse, their neighbors' homes.

This is actually born out in research.

Everybody's an adept Rambo until they have that surge of adrenaline and 'time warp' in perception that can take the most practiced firearms owner and turn them into a fumbling idiot unable to hit the side of a barn.

If the sight of a moose, deer, or elk in hunting season can (and does) do that to practiced folks who spend time at the range, imagine what happens to those 'other people' and even the hunters, during a home invasion with intense adrenaline in the perceived presence of life and death decisions.

Our Troopers here have to routinely qualify at the gun range, and I can think back on absurd moments involving what began as welfare checks with, in one such case, a suicidal woman out on Sheep Creek Road with a handgun, who popped off an inconsequential round, and three State Troopers all opening up on her, with only one bullet from one Trooper grazing her nose. And these are supposed to be folks who qualify and practice, practice, practice.

Adrenaline and hesitation are motherfuckers.

 

[armedoldhippy]

around here, in the Deep South, the possibility of getting shot while committing a crime is a real consideration.

i see this in the news here fairly often.

some states here have "Right to carry" laws with no concealed permit

"constitutional carry" like here in TN.

i think it is a deterrent

i think you are right. most criminals want the odds on their side, and trying to rob/mug/carjack someone that has a firearm is a much dicier proposition.

 

[greyfader]

Alaska has some of the greatest concentration in the US of personally owned firearms, class III weapons, unlicensed -legal- concealed carry, etc.

We also have (per capita) among the highest violent crime rates and murder rates, domestic violence rates, and sexual assault rates. It's not working the way some claim.

The frequency of gun carry (and I carry myself and have been a class III collector in years gone by), coupled with 'stand your ground' mentality in some of its twistedness, and relatively liberal self-defense and Castle Doctrine laws (though a bit constricted from what they were in the early 1980s and before), has led, imo opinion, to far more bloodshed than it's stopped.

And most of the Bubbas who talk 'preservation of freedom/liberty' through 2nd Amendment rhetoric, largely sat on their butts and did little to nothing when stuff like the USA PA was passed in the dark of night without even getting a final reading on the floor re. amendments put in place at 4:00 A.M. that morning.

Add in a whole shitload of firearms owners, week-end warriors, firearms fondlers, and gun-counter droolers, who do -not- practice sufficiently, or remain proficient with their firearms, and the stats reveal many people, gun owners, who will empty a firearm at an intruder and hit nothing but air, their own walls, or, far worse, their neighbors' homes.

This is actually born out in research.

Everybody's an adept Rambo until they have that surge of adrenaline and 'time warp' in perception that can take the most practiced firearms owner and turn them into a fumbling idiot unable to hit the side of a barn.

If the sight of a moose, deer, or elk in hunting season can (and does) do that to practiced folks who spend time at the range, imagine what happens to those 'other people' and even the hunters, during a home invasion with intense adrenaline in the perceived presence of life and death decisions.

Our Troopers here have to routinely qualify at the gun range, and I can think back on absurd moments involving what began as welfare checks with, in one such case, a suicidal woman out on Sheep Creek Road with a handgun, who popped off an inconsequential round, and three State Troopers all opening up on her, with only one bullet from one Trooper grazing her nose. And these are supposed to be folks who qualify and practice, practice, practice.

Adrenaline and hesitation are motherfuckers.

so, moose, what do you suggest? no one carries or everyone carries? i have owned firearms since the age of 7, when my dad, uncles, and granddad all got together and gave me a 20 gauge shotgun. i grew up hunting and fishing. i, too, have owned a collection. i bought my first handgun at age 13. a Ruger Bearcat 6 shot colt style single action revolver. i rode my bicycle downtown to the Western Auto store and paid 49.95 for it. i got the money cutting grass all summer. 1963. a few years later i bought a Ruger single-six with the convertible mag cylinder. i lived on a farm and practiced a lot. i hunted squirrels and rabbits with both of them. i hit what i shot at.

i think most of what you say is probably true, but you still don't have a solution.

i don't have any fantasies about what gunfights are. they hardly ever go as people think they will.

how do i know? i've been shot twice. both from coke deals gone bad before 1975. the first was just a 22 wound through the right hand ring finger knuckle when i took a gun away from this coked-up kid.

i could have shot him with it but i didn't. i let him run away.

the second time was with a 38 special snubbie at about 3 ft. the bullet passed through the upper right lung, the center of the upper lobe of the liver, nicked my right kidney, and exited my back.

i was sitting and was shot in the middle of trying to get up. he fired all 5 rounds at me at 3 ft and only hit me once. the impact knocked me down and i can remember being really pissed that i was going to die and wasn't through living yet. he was trying to reload without a speed loader using loose rounds he had in his pocket and shut the cylinder when he saw me coming. i think he thought he had at least a round in it because he raised it as if to fire just as i jumped on him and took the gun away from him. i pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger as i thought it was loaded too. i pulled several times and nothing happened. he had not gotten even one more round in it.

so, i knocked him down with it and went to my car and tried to drive to a hospital but i passed out and wrecked somewhere. rolled my car. to this day i can't remember the exact place.

i wrecked right in front of a county road crew, who called an ambulance and got me to the hospital.

i needed 23 units of blood in the emergency room and this was in 1975 before they were checking the blood for diseases. this is how i caught hepatitis C.

it was also why i quit selling blow.

i carry now and i know exactly what i will do if someone ever pulls a weapon on me again.

i won't be a victim again.

i understand your points and agree with most, but again, what do you suggest people do? meekly go down without a fight? hope that if you cooperate they won't ultimately shoot you anyway?

surely you don't expect people to go around unarmed with a target on their back.

the guy that shot me with the 38 was perfectly willing to kill me for a little coke and cash.

 

[moose eater]

so, moose, what do you suggest? no one carries or everyone carries? i have owned firearms since the age of 7, when my dad, uncles, and granddad all got together and gave me a 20 guage shotgun. i grew up hunting and fishing. i, too, have owned a collection. i bought my first handgun at age 13. a Ruger Bearcat 6 shot colt style single action revolver. i rode my bicycle downtown to the Western Auto store and paid 49.95 for it. i got the money cutting grass all summer. 1963. a few years later i bought a Ruger single-six with the convertible mag cylinder. i lived on a farm and practiced a lot. i hunted squirrels and rabbits with both of them. i hit what i shot at.

i think most of what you say is probably true, but you still don't have a solution.

i don't have any fantasies about what gunfights are. they hardly ever go as people think they will.

how do i know? i've been shot twice. both from coke deals gone bad before 1975. the first was just a 22 wound through the right hand ring finger knuckle when i took a gun away from this coked-up kid.

i could have shot him with it but i didn't. i let him run away.

the second time was with a 38 special snubbie at about 3 ft. the bullet passed through the upper right lung, the center of the upper lobe of the liver, nicked my right kidney, and exited my back.

i was sitting and was shot in the middle of trying to get up. he fired all 5 rounds at me at 3 ft and only hit me once. the impact knocked me down and i can remember being really pissed that i was going to die and wasn't through living yet. he was trying to reload without a speed loader using loose rounds he had in his pocket and shut the cylinder when he saw me coming. i think he thought he had at least a round in it because he raised it as if to fire just as i jumped on him and took the gun away from him. i pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger as i thought it was loaded too. i pulled several times and nothing happened. he had not gotten even one more round in it.

so, i knocked him down with it and went to my car and tried to drive to a hospital but i passed out and wrecked somewhere. rolled my car. to this day i can't remember the exact place.

i wrecked right in front of a county road crew, who called an ambulance and got me to the hospital.

i needed 23 units of blood in the emergency room and this was in 1975 before they were checking the blood for diseases. this is how i caught hepatitis C.

it was also why i quit selling blow.

i carry now and i know exactly what i will do if someone ever pulls a weapon on me again.

i won't be a victim again.

i understand your points and agree with most, but again, what do you suggest people do? meekly go down without a fight? hope that if you cooperate they won't ultimately shoot you anyway?

surely you don't expect people to go around unarmed with a target on their back.

the guy that shot me with the 38 was perfectly willing to kill me for a little coke and cash.

Crime dropping has nearly nothing to do with citizens possessing firearms. (*Not necessarily so for rising crime rates, btw). It has more to do with fickle fluctuations in crime rates, uncharted subtle changes in human behavior, social contentedness or discontent, and fewer people willing to take it to the limit. Otherwise just random fluctuations, as stated. No silver bullet exists.

I never heard anyone say, "I'd really like to get high today, but it's illegal". and I worked with many clients in many settings.

Same goes for those prone to resolving whatever urge by robbing a bank or getting revenge or making a statement of one sort or another.

Like most criminals, many, including corrupt politicians, rarely seem to let the likelihood of getting caught interfere in plans. They figure that's the other guy who does stupid shit and gets snagged. A flaw in narcissism; "I'm better than that...."

If people are going to wield lethal force, then they need to be held accountable for those choices, by/with other sources of judgement, such as juries making the decision whether the force used was legit or not.

Stand your ground laws and racism (as well as other 'isms', prejudices and biases), sometimes skew that otherwise attainable justice.. We like to believe what we like to believe, even when we're dead wrong... Just look at partisans and/or the Trump cult.

Also, one reason I support use of lethal force where necessary or permitted, but don't support the death penalty, by the way, as applied by Systems..... The System never does time for negligent homicide, which is exactly what they've committed when they permit less than solid evidence to end another's life through a court trial. You and I share responsibility for our actions in a very real way if we take another's life or harm them. The judges, juries, witnesses and prosecutors do not.

I've testified for over 45 years to my State's legislature when they've gotten on the pro-death penalty band wagon, telling them, fine, if you want a death penalty, then make it mandatory that every juror, judge, prosecutor and prosecutor's witness sign a waiver at the outset stating that if it's found post mortem they've sentenced the wrong person to death, that they all agree to do the maximum allowable sentence for negligent homicide/manslaughter with no early parole. If they still want to consider a death penalty, then fine. Do it...

But none of them agree that's a good idea... The way it is now, they have no skin in the game...,. And apparently don't really want any. Power without consequence. Bad idea all day every day.

Answers? Stop glorifying violence in video games, nationalist rhetoric, teaching by parents or schools, etc.

That might mean coming to more realistic terms with what violence really looks like, outside of Call of Duty and other bullshit games that marginalize its significance.

Otherwise, create a social existence where disparity in quality of life isn't so stark, where people can get needs met without sacrificing their lives to a workday or work week where someone else raises their children on a subsidy through people they don't even really know most of the time, so they can have more credit cards, and lacks the quality of parental time and bonding that might otherwise be possible.

Short of those things/ideas, which will be an uphill battle in the age of full-tilt corporatism and legalized predatory crony capitalism, then maybe waiting for humanity to evolve (It's been how many million years now?) is likely a realistic option.

If we're going to be around the invasive self-serving and poorly spiritually grounded human aggregate, then we're going to have Caine and Abel. Period. You're going to have crime. And the greater disparity in quality of life some experience, the more crime you'll see.

None of that takes into account sociopaths, necessarily, who no matter how fair something is, they'll want more than is theirs.

But we know about many of them; they run for office on corporate funds and paste their photos with disingenuous slogans on telephone poles every handful of years.

But this exchange didn't really start out as a quest for answers to social ills. It began with what some have identified as interpretations of causality of those ills, or 'cures', lacking in a real or factual basis.

 

[RobFromTX]

My daughter still distances me subtly by dating military and cops. With the exception of one civil engineer, and she just dropped him.

thats got to be hell for you moose. Dont feel bad man. My daughters dating a walmart crisis specialist thats never even fished a day in his life. And hes from minnesota

 

[moose eater]

thats got to be hell for you moose. Dont feel bad man. My daughters dating a walmart crisis specialist thats never even fished a day in his life. And hes from minnesota

Never fished??!! Is he an android? A fictional being? Lacking soul?

Fuck, that's THE original meditation format! That, and waiting for wet firewood to light in a dark cave.

 

[RobFromTX]

Never fished??!! Is he an android? A fictional being? Lacking soul?

Fuck, that's THE original meditation format! That, and waiting for wet firewood to light in a dark cave.

Hes kind of a dullard. Doesnt smoke the herb either but he brews his own beer so not all bad

 

[moose eater]

Hes kind of a dullard. Doesnt smoke the herb either but he brews his own beer so not all bad

There's a 2-stouts and a porter entrance fee when he visits, right?

 

[RobFromTX]

There's a 2-stouts and a porter entrance fee when he visits, right?

Haha there certainly should be buts hes an ipa enthusiast. not too bad either. but theres always room to learn how to make a nice chocolate stout for sure. You can replace meals with that drink

 

[moose eater]

Haha there certainly should be buts hes an ipa enthusiast. not too bad either. but theres always room to learn how to make a nice chocolate stout for sure. You can replace meals with that drink

"A pork chop in every bottle", or so a southern friend has told me. My Canadian carpenter friend says there's a meal in every bottle.

 

[GOT_BUD?]

Alaska has some of the greatest concentration in the US of personally owned firearms, class III weapons, unlicensed -legal- concealed carry, etc.

We also have (per capita) among the highest violent crime rates and murder rates, domestic violence rates, and sexual assault rates. It's not working the way some claim.

The frequency of gun carry (and I carry myself and have been a class III collector in years gone by), coupled with 'stand your ground' mentality in some of its twistedness, and relatively liberal self-defense and Castle Doctrine laws (though a bit constricted from what they were in the early 1980s and before), has led, imo opinion, to far more bloodshed than it's stopped.

And most of the Bubbas who talk 'preservation of freedom/liberty' through 2nd Amendment rhetoric, largely sat on their butts and did little to nothing when stuff like the USA PA was passed in the dark of night without even getting a final reading on the floor re. amendments put in place at 4:00 A.M. that morning.

Add in a whole shitload of firearms owners, week-end warriors, firearms fondlers, and gun-counter droolers, who do -not- practice sufficiently, or remain proficient with their firearms, and the stats reveal many people, gun owners, who will empty a firearm at an intruder and hit nothing but air, their own walls, or, far worse, their neighbors' homes.

This is actually born out in research.

Everybody's an adept Rambo until they have that surge of adrenaline and 'time warp' in perception that can take the most practiced firearms owner and turn them into a fumbling idiot unable to hit the side of a barn.

If the sight of a moose, deer, or elk in hunting season can (and does) do that to practiced folks who spend time at the range, imagine what happens to those 'other people' and even the hunters, during a home invasion with intense adrenaline in the perceived presence of life and death decisions.

Our Troopers here have to routinely qualify at the gun range, and I can think back on absurd moments involving what began as welfare checks with, in one such case, a suicidal woman out on Sheep Creek Road with a handgun, who popped off an inconsequential round, and three State Troopers all opening up on her, with only one bullet from one Trooper grazing her nose. And these are supposed to be folks who qualify and practice, practice, practice.

Adrenaline and hesitation are motherfuckers.

FBI released a study a few years ago researching officer involved shoot outs and they came to the conclusion that bad guys have an 11% hit rate. The police on the other hand had a whopping 20% hit rate. That's right "trained to make life and death decisions" has a 1 in 5 chance of actually hitting their target.

And people think putting armed guards in schools is a good thing. smdh

 

[Cannavore]

homie thinks bitcoin is a tangible physical object that is manufactured or something lmao

 

[moose eater]

FBI released a study a few years ago researching officer involved shoot outs and they came to the conclusion that bad guys have an 11% hit rate. The police on the other hand had a whopping 20% hit rate. That's right "trained to make life and death decisions" has a 1 in 5 chance of actually hitting their target.

And people think putting armed guards in schools is a good thing. smdh

But it might help to ventilate some of those stuffy humid southern-region classrooms. Providing the walls aren't brick or concrete-filled block.