truth on hold

It was probably more motivated by killing Indian "savages" than anything else. Anyway Jefferson wanted the constitution to be re-written every 20 years so current generations wouldn't be burdened by no longer relevant considerations or worse threatening legacy issues from previous generations. Not a bad idea really, and would most certainly apply here. Guns back then were very crude compared to today's. So innacurate that British and American troops would line up a mere 200 yards from each in open fields and blast away. Knowing many would be left unharmed. Today we have gas operated, automatically loading, laser siighted guns where one man from well over 500 yards would kill them all in a matter of seconds. I have a hard time imagining the founder father's envisaged such destructive power when drafting the 2nd amendment. And the indians are on reservations now too.

@ TakeYouTasker, plagiarize? The sources are all cited. Unlike you. You telling me you're the primary source of the statistics you posted? LOL you really are a fool. You know your posts are so lacking in merit they're not even worth the miniscule 15 or so KBs they take up on the server. And all anyone needs to know about that stanky ass of yours is it probably houses more gray matter than your brain.

Oh geez, so you selectively cut and paste snippets trying to demonstrate gun control doesn't effect crime rates, WHILE NOT AT ALL CONSIDERING THE MULTITUDE OF OTHER FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO CRIMES RATES. So here now the additional information YOU FAILED TO PROVIDE which ISOLATES THE EFFECTS OF GUNS: The problem with guns is fairly straightforward: they make it`easy to kill or injure a person. In Jeffrey A. Roth's (research director in the Bethesda, Maryland, office of the Law and Public Policy area of Abt Associates, Inc.)"Firearms and Violence"(NIJ Research in Brief, February 1994, found at http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/guns/gun.viol), he points out the obvious dangers: Approximately 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. According to estimates, firearm attacks injured a.other 70,000 victims, some of whom were left permanently disabled. In 1985 (the latest year for which data are available), the cost of shootings--either by others, through self-inflicted wounds, or in accidents--was estimated to be more than $14 billion nationwide for medical care, long-term disability, and premature death. In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed. Residents of homes where a gun is present are 5 times more likely to experience a suicide than residents of homes without guns (Arthur L. Kellermann, MDl MPH; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH; Grant Somes, PhD; Donald T. Reay, MD; Jerry Francisco, MD; Joyce Gillentine Banton, MS; Janice Prodzinski, BA; Corinne Fligner, MD; and Bela B. Hackman, MD, Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327, No. 7, August 13, 1992, pp. 467-472.) The simple fact is that a gun makes it easier to commit suicide in a fit of rage, depression, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Furthermore, there is conflicting evidence as to whether any kind of substitution occurs. Dr. Roth argues that "Self-defense is commonly cited as a reason to own a gun. This is the explanation given by 20 percent of all gun owners and 40 percent of all handgun owners contacted for a household survey conducted in 1979. (Decision-Making Information, Inc., Attitudes of the American Electorate Toward Gun Control, Santa Ana, California: Decision-Making Information, Inc., 1979). But research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.(Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm Related Deaths in the Home." The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 314, no. 24, June 1986, pp. 1557-60.) The use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actually increases the victim's risk of injury and death(FE Zimring, Firearms, violence, and public policy, Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48). Dr. Roth does cite that there may be some self-defense benefit: victims who defended themselves with guns were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent. (Kleck, Gary, "Crime Control through the Private Use of Armed Force," Social Forces, 35 (1988):1-22.) But he goes on to argue that these statistics are "an insufficient basis for the personal decision whether or not to obtain a gun for self-protection.... First, the decision involves a trade-off between the risks of gun accidents and violent victimization. Second, it is not entirely clear that the relatively few robberies and assaults in which victims defended themselves with guns are typical of these types of crimes and that the lower injury rates resulted from the self-defense action rather than some other factor. Perhaps offenders lost the advantage of surprise, which allowed victims not only to deploy their guns but also to take other evasive action." Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman has shown that keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one. That is, excluding many other factors such as previous history of violence, class, race, etc., a household with a gun is 2.7 times more likely to experience a murder than a household without one, even while there was no significant increase in the risk of non-gun homicides! This study (Arthur Kellermann et. al., "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home," The New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 1993, pp. 1084-1091) has been much maligned by the gun lobby, but despite repeated efforts to tar it as non-scientific, its publication in one of the most respected peer-reviewed journals in the world is just one indiciation of its soundness. Obviously, there is a problem with criminals having access to guns, which is why so many people feel they, too, need a gun for self-defense. But this is a vicious cycle: FBI Crime Reports sources indicate that there are about 340,000 reported firearms thefts every year. Those guns, the overwhelming amount of which were originally manufactured and purchased legally, and now in the hands of criminals. Thus, the old credo "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is silly. What happens is many guns bought legally are sold or stolen, and can then be used for crime. If those 340,000 guns were never sold or owned in the first place, that would be 340,000 less guns in the hands of criminals every year. Part of the reason there are so many guns on the street in the hands of criminals is precisely because so many are sold legally. Certainly, there will always be a way to obtain a gun illegally. But if obtaining a gun legally is extremely difficult, the price of illegal guns goes way up, and availability goes way down. Thus, it is much more difficult for criminals to obtain guns. "People kill with knifes, too. Do you want to ban knifes?" From Dr. Roth's study: The overall fatality rate in gun robberies is an estimated 4 per 1,000--about 3 times the rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders. (Cook, Philip J., "Robbery Violence," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 78-2, (1987):357-376.) For assaults, a crime which includes threats, the most widely cited estimate of the fatality rate is derived from a 1968 analysis of assaults and homicides committed in Chicago. The study, prepared for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, reported that gun attacks kill 12.2 percent of their intended victims. This is about 5 times as often as in attacks with knives, the second most deadly weapon used in violent crimes.(Newton, G.D., and F.E. Zimring, Firearms and Violence in American Life: A Staff Report Submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Washington, D.C.: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1969.) With one exception, more recent studies have generally concluded that death was at least twice as likely in gun assaults as in knife assaults. (The exception is Kleck and McElrath, "The Effects of Weaponry on Human Violence.") An offshoot of this argument is the old classic "cars kill more people than guns, but we don't ban carsn" The response to this irrelevant argument is that cars have other usage, whereas guns basically just kill, or threaten to kill. Their one potentially valid use, self-defense, is undercut by the statistics by Kellerman and Zimring previously cited, as well as fatal weaknesses in the arguments of Lott and Kleck. ------------------- You act like you're some kind of self-righteous well informed individual, when you've been exposed as nothing but a mentally and morally challenged blatant hypocrit, pursuing an irresponsible agenda which endangers the lives innocent civilians everywhere. So FO Elvis, go back to pounding down a six pack and shooting the TV screen for kicks. The only thing you have left to offer the board at this point is your ability to permanently leave it. You douche bag, put your hat back on

No, they're unique utility is derived from portability, ease of concealment and great potential to cause death and serious injury. Any other purpose beyond killing attributed to them can be gotten from non-lethal substitutes (e.g. paint ball, tazers, etc.)

Nice work, back to the vague unsubstantied claims, concluded with convenient labels attached to me. You're a real "pistol" aren't you?

I don't speak for any party or platform, partly because I don't know who ultimately defines their positions. It's true I favored Paul in the latest Republican primaries because of his foreign policy, which I see as the #1 issue right now. Beyond that I couldn't tell you much about Libertarians other than they consider themselves strict defenders of the constitution, which again opens some serious room for interpretation. Now are you going to offer any legitimate analysis of the gun control topic at hand? Or will you continue to try defeat mine by attaching labels to me, trivializing a highly important issue related to the slaughter of at least 12 innocents yesterday.

You're just spouting out theoretical BS trying to sound smart. With no supporting evidence or logical test because when the rubber hits the road (bullet hits the bone in this case), your position is immediately cratered. Let's consider your latest drivel: by your thinking there should be no vice laws whatsoever, none, nada, nunca. Because after all "Black markets always lead to more crime rather than less." Which means the capacity of legalized weaponry would have no limitation. And everyone can stockpile tactile nukes in their backyard, so they can be "disinfected by the sunlight". Yeah get em' all shiny and clean right before the armegeddon. Jerk

This guy is awfully smooth, indirectly sets up TSA & the media to broadcast his calling card to all the ladies out there: "Jonah Falcon, 41, has an organ which is 9.5 inches long when flaccid and 13 inches (33 centimeters) erect, according to Rolling Stone magazine. He has featured in a number of documentaries about the world's biggest penises. He was returning to New York from San Francisco on July 9 when he was stopped, after Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents saw a bulge hanging down over his left upper thigh." My link

The case for legal guns is to arm law abiding citizens for personal defense huh. So how come no one yesterday did that? Should movie goers be packing heat and putting in time at shooting ranges? And what if everyone in the audience was packing and started shooing in the darkened theatre amid all the chaos? Probably more people not less would have died. The idea of turning everyone into a mini-sharp shooting rambo self defense machine wih legal guns is absurd. If it weren't why do so many innocents get shot dead every year? Making private gun ownership illegal would drastically reduce the number of guns out there - legal and illegal - by making enforcement a lot simpler. Right now there are just so many guns it's impractical for law officials to check them all. Making them illegal would mean any time they spot one on someone or anywhere inside or outside, they're 99% certain it's illegal and should be confiscated

Norway homicide rate per 100,000: 0.68 United states: 4.8 US rate > 7x greater

And you really think that's a decisive factor especially when it comes to the Veep? How much influence does the president even have on overturning roe v wade? A 7 - 2 supreme court ruling that abortion is a right under the constitution, that's stood for 40 years thru several republican administrations.

SOB now we see how this sh#t can happen in broad daylight. Attempting to kidnap and likely rape and kill a 10yr old girl while her baby brother watches. I'm staunchly in favor of going medieval in cases like this. Hind and quarter him and put his body parts on telephone poles around Philly. Let other potential scum of the earth see what awaits them

I don't know how it would shake out, neither do you, i'm just saying its something that would need to be analyzed and assessed. Especially considering it wouldn't take much to move the needle and lose BO some states. Consider n Carolina for example which BO won by the narrowest of margins 50-49%. a significant black vote and seemingly small black attrition rate could be the difference maker. Furthermore consider that McCain actually took the lions share of male voters but got stomped on by females, and BO could be looking at a double hit. But anyway as I concluded earlier he real reason i believe from both sides for keeping her off the ticket is the carpet licker factor. Now if she kept everything the same and added Michelle's mother and wifr background, different story. I don't see how she wouldn't be on the short list.

And they have good taste in women too, that chick in the video is fine ... something I'm sure not lost on poojer.

When it comes down to something like that I usually go with the one with the hotter looking wife. So I'm favoring Romney

Not necessarily the worst song, but a solid candidate for worst song and video combo. Butthead pretty much summed it up at the end

CNN just reported he's a Phd candidate in neuroscience at university of colorado. Just keeps getting weirder

Here http://m.quickmeme.com/meme/3q6288/

Well after 4 years of living full time in a house with a husband who has absolutely no sexual interest in her, she probably will be desperate to get back out again

F@ck police just confirmed via video probes that his apt is booby trapped with a sophisticated system of highly flammable and explosive materials.

Seems to be accelerating doesn't it. I wonder if that's true or just seems that way in immediate aftermath of something like this.

People who can't afford sitters and seek entertainment. Makes me cringe a little too when I see it. But for the most part infants seem to sleep in theatres anyway.

That's a good regional analysis except for failing to account for eatimg into obamas lock on the black vote. But there's a bigger problem with her being a single never married childless woman. Worst case she'll be proven or suspected as being a lesbian, and I'm sorry but the country isnt ready for that. Better but still problematic she'll be viewed as cold and somehow unfeminine for not having children. Again probably not fair, but you can kiss goodbye the ticket's claim to all-important "family values" theme. Things like this don't count when you're a presidential appointment bureaucrat.

What's this "lie about his own gender" reference to Romney?

Suspect has been identified as James Holmes. It's at times like this that an otherwise agnostic like me hopes there really is a hell. So he can f@#}Ing burn in it for eternity.