Bangkok Herps

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Amazing how folks can sense that .2 degree increase in temp from the last 20 years. You must be some really lame versions of x-men.

 

Cold season is still weeks away by the way.

I don't know what the data is for Thailand, but the summer increase in the USA has been close to 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1970s and due to local variation it can be a lot more in certain regions. In portions of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada it has gone up as much as 1.3 degrees a decade. If you'd been living in the same region for 20-30 years that would be quite noticeable. 

I ended up overstaying a few hours when we came in at 1am and the official stamped us with the old stamp from the previous day, ruining my carefully calculated stay length. It was no problem at all, we were not fined or stamped with an overstay stamp or anything. This was 5 years ago though. 

On 9/27/2018 at 8:07 PM, Speedo1968 said:

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it so far but, geckos can carry salmonella.

It's virtually impossible for anyone to catch salmonella from a wild gecko.

The only people who catch salmonella from reptiles are children who have small pet turtles or geckos, don't clean the cages so the reptiles get their own feces all over their skin, and then put the turtle in their mouth or put their fingers in their mouth after extensive handling of the turtle. 

Just handling a wild gecko won't give you salmonella because the gecko doesn't have feces all over its own skin, that would only happen in captivity. I've handled thousands of reptiles including dozens of geckos and never gotten ill in any way. You'd basically have to start hunting down gecko poops and eating them directly to have a chance of catching salmonella, and the average adult would probably have to eat a lot before it happened.

On 9/26/2018 at 11:44 PM, giddyup said:

Absolutely sickening way to catch anything other than flies. Whatever poor creature is stuck may spend hours trying to extricate itself, and then what do you do, hit it with a shovel, or throw it into a wheelie bin still stuck to the trap. Even with rats I refuse to use them, prefer the old fashioned rat trap that breaks their neck and they die instantly.

On 9/27/2018 at 12:11 AM, JimmyJ said:

 

Agree 100%.

 

Extremely cruel.

 

As someone mentioned, the geckos eat all the bugs.

 

I'd much rather have a gecko taking out the mosquitos than one mosquito in the house.

On 9/27/2018 at 12:15 AM, garzhe said:

Why you want to kill Geckos. They are harmless to you and they eat the flies, mosquitoes and other unwanted insects in your house. Good to have around.

This stuff blows my mind. People move into areas full of neat creatures and then kill them all in the most torturous ways just because they have some sort of weird urban hangup.

The lizards and geckos and snakes are eating the actual disease-carrying pests (rats and mice and bugs). If you want to live a completely sterile existence away from the real world, then move to a sterile place, don't kill off the few wild things left.

Be a differnt story if they were Black or Native Americans, would of already started shooting...

Never would have ordered them back to jail in the first place.

Yes, because Black people never get screwed over by the American judicial system, that's for sure. They're so timid about sending Black people to prison to serve long sentences for minor crimes. /sarcasm

I'm guessing you're not from America?

Let's do take a look at your numbers.

1. With the current US population standing at 318.9 million, your chance of being caught in one of the 353 mass shootings is...

----1 in 903,400----

2. Since 144 of the 353 mass shootings resulted in no deaths, that means total mass shootings resulting in death came to 209 incidents. This further means your chance of getting caught in a fatal mass shooting incident is now...

----1 in 1,525,838----

3. Now of the remaining 209 deadly mass shootings. a total of 103 of them resulted in only one death. You would have to be incredibly unlucky to become one of the single fatality mass shootings so far this year. You would be...

----1 in 3,096,117----

4. The total remaining mass shootings where more than one person died is now 106. Your chance of getting caught up in one of these is...

----1 in 3,008,490----

If you are in the US, the odds are certainly in your favor.

If you are not in the US, your odds are increased exponentially.

The sky is not really falling.

People incompetent at basic logic probably should not use numbers.

Your entire line of reasoning is derived from dividing the population by the number of shootings.

That's completely nonsensical. There are anywhere from 4 to 30 victims in each mass shooting. So from the very beginning your logic is off - if you want to actually measure your chances, you have to divide by the number of victims, not the number of shootings. With a range of 4-30 victims, let's cheat and say the average # of victims is 9 (probably a bit high, but not too much). Taking your first number, which is your actual chance of getting shot (apparently you're cool with getting shot if you don't die???) and the chance of being shot in a mass shooting drops to somewhere around 1 in 100,000.

That's just the basic ignorance in the post. But there are other things to think about.

That number is only your chance of it happening THIS year. If we stay at a similar annual rate of mass shootings because we don't address the problem, then the chances of getting shot over the next 10 years would drop to 1 in 10,000.

Of course, that's a completely self-centered figure. Do you only care if you're the victim? Let's say the average person has about 100 friends and family members that they really deeply care about. So now the chances of someone you really deeply care about being shot in a mass shooting over the next 10 years drop all the way down to 1 in a 100.

Of course, the average person lives about 8 decades, not just one. So the chance of someone you love being shot in a mass shooting in your lifetime could potentially be 1 in 12, if we do nothing and these trends stabiliize right where they're at.

Now, let's switch from "mass shootings" to simply "getting shot". Now the odds of it happening to you personally drop all the way down to 1 in 50, and the odds of it happening to one of the 100 closest people in your life approach 50-50. (And, for many people, it will be more than one friend.)

Does that make it the most significant thing to worry about? Of course not. But it is a far more significant statistical likelihood than being shot by, say, a Musilm terrorist or a random refugee.

Now, if you can climb down from your sarcasm laced high horse, let me point out a couple of things.

You will note I said getting caught up in the "incidents", not being a fatality.

I never intended it to be any other way.

If you want to do it another way, the forum is yours. Break a leg.

Personally, I was raised in Texas. Always carried a gun to kill rattlers.

Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.

Still failing at the logic test.

You CAN'T divide into the population to determine your likelihood of being "caught up in the incidents", because far more than one person is caught up in each incident.

Here's a parallel. It's like saying, "There are 100 million children in America, but only 100 thousand schools, therefore children only have a 1 in a 1000 chance of attending a school."

I hope you get what you did wrong now.

And the "shooting rattlers in Texas" story just digs your hole deeper. What, was the rattler gonna jump up and bite you but you just barely managed to shoot it in time? You'd have to be a total idiot to get bit by a rattler you already saw. You'd be much more likely to kill your wife while trying to kill the snake, or kill some little kid, or shoot your brother, or shoot your friend, or shoot yourself like this guy or this guy or this guy or this guy or this guy.

<snip>

Some figures.

"For the 17th time since he was sworn in as US president, Barack Obama attempted on Thursday to make some sense of an act of mass gun violence."

The statistics

US gun crime in 2015 Figures up to 3 December

353

Mass shootings

• 62 shootings at schools

• 12,223 people killed in gun incidents

• 24,722 people injured in gun incidents

Source: Shooting tracker, Gun Violence Archive

AP

Mass shootings: The attack in San Bernardino was the 353rd mass shooting this year. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting, which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

Source: Mass Shooting Tracker

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604

Let's do take a look at your numbers.

1. With the current US population standing at 318.9 million, your chance of being caught in one of the 353 mass shootings is...

----1 in 903,400----

2. Since 144 of the 353 mass shootings resulted in no deaths, that means total mass shootings resulting in death came to 209 incidents. This further means your chance of getting caught in a fatal mass shooting incident is now...

----1 in 1,525,838----

3. Now of the remaining 209 deadly mass shootings. a total of 103 of them resulted in only one death. You would have to be incredibly unlucky to become one of the single fatality mass shootings so far this year. You would be...

----1 in 3,096,117----

4. The total remaining mass shootings where more than one person died is now 106. Your chance of getting caught up in one of these is...

----1 in 3,008,490----

If you are in the US, the odds are certainly in your favor.

If you are not in the US, your odds are increased exponentially.

The sky is not really falling.

People incompetent at basic logic probably should not use numbers.

Your entire line of reasoning is derived from dividing the population by the number of shootings.

That's completely nonsensical. There are anywhere from 4 to 30 victims in each mass shooting. So from the very beginning your logic is off - if you want to actually measure your chances, you have to divide by the number of victims, not the number of shootings. With a range of 4-30 victims, let's cheat and say the average # of victims is 9 (probably a bit high, but not too much). Taking your first number, which is your actual chance of getting shot (apparently you're cool with getting shot if you don't die???) and the chance of being shot in a mass shooting drops to somewhere around 1 in 100,000.

That's just the basic ignorance in the post. But there are other things to think about.

That number is only your chance of it happening THIS year. If we stay at a similar annual rate of mass shootings because we don't address the problem, then the chances of getting shot over the next 10 years would drop to 1 in 10,000.

Of course, that's a completely self-centered figure. Do you only care if you're the victim? Let's say the average person has about 100 friends and family members that they really deeply care about. So now the chances of someone you really deeply care about being shot in a mass shooting over the next 10 years drop all the way down to 1 in a 100.

Of course, the average person lives about 8 decades, not just one. So the chance of someone you love being shot in a mass shooting in your lifetime could potentially be 1 in 12, if we do nothing and these trends stabiliize right where they're at.

Now, let's switch from "mass shootings" to simply "getting shot". Now the odds of it happening to you personally drop all the way down to 1 in 50, and the odds of it happening to one of the 100 closest people in your life approach 50-50. (And, for many people, it will be more than one friend.)

Does that make it the most significant thing to worry about? Of course not. But it is a far more significant statistical likelihood than being shot by, say, a Musilm terrorist or a random refugee.

Before all the cop haters jump in...

Lets wait for more evidence. Hands may appear to be up, but a sudden move (especially if he was still armed), would make any normal person react...as well. Any maniac that beats up his family on a rampage should be considered at least partially responsible., for a negative reaction....expecially when armed. I would be very irrate to see a woman and her kid bleeding from an abusive, armed, individual. I doubt seriously that this was cold blooded murder....probably many circumstances that are not fully explained by the video.

As if. It's cold blooded murder, and entirely unsurprising given the person taking the video was out of view.

I don't hate cops, I hate cops that abuse their power. Unfortunately, in my experience, that includes a large percentage of them.

Sounds like a personal problem as I have never had scrapes or problems with cops.

Another cop got shot and killed today in Chicago.

And...turns out the cop had shot himself.

Didn't stop it from being used for months to further the narrative about what animals live in Chicago and how justified cops are to kill 1000 civilans this year.

Guess ya'all shouldn't have "rushed to judgement".

We will teach the people that killing is wrong, by killing people !

An eye for an eye. May they all suffer in their dying.

Yup....let's use principles from a brutal Middle Eastern society of 3000 years ago to guide our 21st-century judicial system. Because it's worked out so well for them.

Even Jesus made clear that "an eye for an eye" was outdated and needed to be rejected....and that was 2000 years ago.

But keep on keeping on...because something that has worked out terribly for brutal societies for 3000 years and counting must just not have been tried hard enough yet, right?

Wow...you appear to be quite emotionally involved in this incident.

Do you think that might create some difficulty for you to remain impartial and open-minded?

I didn't read most of your post but skipped down to 6. Are you saying that the dead guy' might have had serious injuries prior to his arrest?

Thats quite interesting.

Cheers

You skipped the points you couldn't refute, but just happened to read #6 and feel like responding to that. Right.

He didn't have injuries before his arrest. He had injuries before he was placed in the van. You already knew that the arrest occurred before he was placed in the van, right? Think about it for a second.

Everyone, including the police, knows that there were already serious injuries before the van ride. That's why the arresting officers, and not just the driver, are all catching charges. Watch the videos here, look at how limp his body is, and note the witnesses who said that it looked like his legs were broken BEFORE he even got the rough ride that killed him.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3089495/New-video-shows-cops-taking-limp-Freddie-Gray-police-van-putting-leg-shackles-loading-head-bystanders-pleaded-officers-help-him.html

p.s. - Trying to demean other posters isn't a replacement for a logical argument. Half your post is you trying to make up stuff about me, half of your post is you badly misreading one point I wrote, and none of your post even attempts to refute any of my factual points. Doesn't speak well for what you think of the merits of your own argument.

A witness who was also in custody in the same paddy wagon gave a statement that the deceased was practicing self-harm in custody and banging his head against the steel walls.

One thing is certain--there is no way those six public servants can ever get a fair trial after the city gave out this award.

Wow, the amount of deception packed in that first sentence is amazing. Let's list it out.

1) The only reason you know about that claim is because of a leaked police report, one of the constant leaks to the public (half of them false) that happen every time officers are involved in such a case. The leak was clearly meant to influence the public and the potential jury pool. You're right - so much for a "fair trial".

2) It wasn't much of a "witness" - the two were seperated by a metal partition and could not see each other at all, and the "witness" wasn't even present in the vehicle for the first half of the ride. If he couldn't see Freddie at all, how could he supposedly know exactly what he was doing and what condition he was in?

3) On April 23, the police commissioner already publicly stated that this " witness" reported Gray was mostly quiet during the ride.

4) After the police department leaks, the witness came forward publicly and said that he heard some "light banging on the walls" for "about 4 seconds". He said he in no way indicated that Gray had done those injuries to himself. How does light banging on the wall lead to your spine getting severed, three vertebrae smashed, and your voice box crushed? It sounds more consistent with the feeble throes of a dying man.

5) The time between Gray getting driven away from the first location and the 2nd man being placed in the vehicle at the second location was 38 minutes, even though the two locations are only 2 minutes apart. What happened during those 38 minutes?

6) In the video of the police loading him into the van, you can tell that his legs don't work right. Something was seriously wrong before he was even placed in the van.

Of course, you bought their story hook, line, and sinker, without even checking to see if the witness verified the story himself or thinking about whether such a story made the slightest logical sense.

I love it when White Southern Democrats turned Republicans go into "I wasn't racist until really really recently, I swear!" mode.

A guy was literally tortured to a slow death, but the predicted future wages should be the only determining factor in the settlement. Right.

These whole "Settlement amounts are typically based on pecuinary value of one's life" is ridiculous, not based on any sort of legal or moral reality.

It assumes a world where humans are wage-earning production machines. Where some lives are worth more than other depending on how privileged their position in society was. Where being tortured to death is the same as being accidentally killed. Where penalizing the institution responsible for manslaughter is no part of the settlement.

In the anonymity of the internet, they're not even trying to let their racist motivations stay under cover.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Thaivisa posters in all their glory.

Pure racism combined with baseless claims and a complete lack of actual facts. All in a day's work for keyboard tough guys whose need a lift in life, and thinking their skin color makes them better is pretty much all they got.

The fact that a guy was beat to death for the exact "offense" that some of these same posters have been supporting in other threads (carrying a weapon), or that the family didn't even file a lawsuit, or that wild baseless stereotypes like these and the amount of melanin in one's skin has no causative relationship....nah, stop talking logic, you're making them think too hard.

Lol, talk about change of direction or change of subject compared to what prompted your initial response in the first place.

You guys are funny.

So we got about 20 gun homicides in Alaska and Wyoming out of 11,000 or 12,000 nationwide. Point is that most of these gun deaths, forget the incidence, BUT MOST of the gun homicides are occurring in crappy rural gang gilled inner city areas and rarely if ever impact the vast majority of people in the US.

21 gun homicides in Alaska and Wyoming changes zilch. You are the one that misused rates in inaccurate fashion.

Funny stuff.

Then why do ya'all need guns to defend yourselves, if this is such a non-issue for you?

Alaska and Wyoming actually have hundreds of gun deaths between them each year. Gun murders are not the only gun deaths. And it's not just Alaska and Wyoming - try to explain Arkansas and Montana up there near the top. Why are the gun death rates so much higher in Kentucky and West Virginia than in Illinois and New York? Why does Nevada and Arizona see so many more gun deaths/population than California? Why doesn't Washington state have the same gun death rate problem that Montana has? Gun deaths correlate extremely closely to gun ownership:

Actually, since your opponents have been posting so much evidence to counter you, can you even post one measly bit of proof that shows that most of the 30,000+ gun deaths a year are in "crappy rural gang gilled inner city areas", whatever that even means?

The NRA-blinded anti-gun control advocates on this thread seem to have three ways of responding:

1) One-off anecdotes. "It hasn't happened to me, so...."

2) Cherry-picked unrepresentative numbers. "Look! There's more gun murders in LA than in Wyoming!"

3) Wild baseless claims. "The only people who kill or die from guns are Black rural inner-city illegal immigrants!"

Meanwhile, they're getting hit with actual comprehensive statistics, study after study, and the dreaded...logic....in response. And not seeming to be able to come up with any of those three things in return.

I love how you just tried to use a store owner getting shot and killed as an argument against gun control. Ya'all really are blind when it comes to your guns, aren't you?

And that is just the type of gun owner I thought you would be. I try to keep an open mind, and learn new things. You have convinced me the Australian government was correct, to take away your firearms.

I'm 60 years old, always been around firearms of some type, and managed to raise my kids without any of us getting killed or injured.

And you've also never had to use one for self-defense, which proves that they are useless for self-defense, right?

You see how unhelpful one-person anecdotes are?

In your 60 years, while you haven't had a family member killed by a gun yet, something like 1,500,000 families have. That's why public policy decisions are made with compiled data, not one-person anecdotes.

Many people have shown clearly that when comparing like-to-like, developed countries with more accessible guns have more gun death than developed countries with less, US states with more guns have more gun deaths than US states with less, and, most significantly, American homes with gun ownership have far more gun deaths than American homes without.

I'm not looking to take your guns away. That will never happen in America, and I don't want them to take my guns either. But there are reasonable steps to take regarding gun control that can significantly reduce the overall gun supply and make it more likely that guns are kept out of criminal hands, that guns are less available to those committing crimes of passion, and that gun crimes are solved more quickly. We refuse to take those steps, which other nations have sensibly taken, because the pro-gun lobby here is so strong.

As I said, you have been misinformed, or, you are not properly comprehending the information on Obamacare.

As to gun control, I'm 60 years old, and have been around firearms all of my life, never personally had a problem. However, my stepfather and my mother ran a small store in a rural, small town. He carried a .38 revolver, and had positioned a .357, with the hopes he would never have to use them. Unfortunately, one day three idiots show up to rob them. He killed one, and the other two were captured and put in prison, and by the way they were all three black. The police said that they believed he saved his, and my mother's life. I suppose you think it was his fault for running an honest business, that served the community, mostly black, but he must be a racist for shooting a black man, even though he was armed with a shogun. Personally, I'm happy the 2nd Amendment permits the ownership of firearms. One person chose to do something that saved his life, and unfortunately one idiot chose to do something, that cost him his.

Of course they said that. As other threads on this forum have made evident, there are plenty of police who will say anything to justify taking a "bad guy's" life. Heck, it's not like he even needs to actually believe that he saved his mother's life - in America, we've idolized money to such a degree that it's perfectly accepted to take life for the sake of the money alone, even if the insurance was probably going to cover it.

But let's try working with facts. There are about 350,000 robberies and over 2,000,000 burglaries in the United States every year. You want to hazard a guess as to what % of those involve the robbers killing multiple non-violent, non-resistant, stranger victims? Small-time crooks robbing small-time stores don't waste time killing people they don't need to and casually adding murder raps to their scorecard except in extremely rare situations.

I'd be interested - that man who your stepfather killed, how many other storeowners and their families had he killed to that point? If we're making a reasonable deduction here, we should be working with data, right?

But, like I said, people always write their own justifications.

United States already has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. And research has shown that once you incarcerate over 2% of any particular community, increased incarceration actually increases crime:

* You increase the number of children going up without fathers, which dramatically increases crime rates

* You increase the number of people spending their time in the prison system, among hard-core criminals

* Most of all, you decrease the legitimacy of law enforcement and the justice system in the culture of the community. Once it seems like everyone you know has been getting locked up, getting locked no longer acts as a deterrent and law enforcement in general appears unfair and not worth respecting.

As far as what gun control would do to decrease gun violence, I already expressed that in detail, which was of course ignored:

I think there should be significantly stricter gun-control, primarily to reduce three major factors behind gun deaths:

1) Middle-men buying guns legally to then be resold illegally, without repercussions

2) Quick and easy access to guns increasing the deadliness of crimes of passion and attempted sucide

3) A huge unreguated gun supply providing a critical mass making it easy for guns to be present in crime, both because it's so easy for criminals to acquire guns with the huge supply, and because guns are often brought into the situation by non-criminals, which both increases the likelihood of criminals acquiring guns and increases the likelihood of criminals using guns when they otherwise wouldn't.

However, even more than gun control, one the biggest things we need in America is a different attitude towards guns. They aren't tools for keeping you safe, they make you less safe, as has been proved over and over again. Now, that doesn't mean that I think they should be banned - we allow cars even though driving in a car doesn't make us safe either. But we should regulate them as such - guns should be registered just like cars are, and we should be working to take measures that make them safer.

* Why should a driving license take far more work to acquire than a gun license?

* Why is there constant safety research to improve cars while gun death research is completely ignored, and even attempts to research are blocked by Congress under lobbying from the NRA?

* And too many traffic tickets and you can lose your driver's license, but it takes a felony before you lose your inherent right to own a gun?

I'm not going to try and stop you from owning a gun. But we should work to take measures that will make that gun less likely to be used in a crime or violence. And you should realize that the gun is a tool that makes life slightly more dangerous for you and your family and your neighbors, not less. That's true for accidents, murders, and suicides - all three are less likely if you don't have your own gun present, and there's a ton of research behind that. We can try to have a logical conversation about this, or we can continue with the constant emotionalism and immaturity that seems to only infect the American gun debate. If we as Americans were reasonable about this issue for even a single political cycle, it would change a lot.

Here are the gun death rates by state. But keep claiming that the problem is just "bad neighborhoods full of bad people" and "the occasional nutter".

It's all those bad areas full of evil Black people in Alaska and Wyoming and Montana that are leading to so many gun deaths.

I swear, I've never seen a place, even online, where racist claims expressed as casually and as ignorantly as they are here.

You made this about race more than I.

No doubt about it, there are some back wood, alcohol drinking, teeth optional, hillbilly, freeman survivalist hate the IRS gun toting types living in Alaska and Wyoming, but common . . . . . that is not the US or how the vast majority of how the US is. Not even close.

Number of homicides in 2012:

Alaska - 34 - (12 of which were firearm deaths)

Wyoming - 15 - (9 of which were firearm deaths)

I have lived in LA, Atlanta and Memphis.

I have also lived in some other really nice areas with almost zero crime rate. In fact, I have a house in one area where I can only recall maybe 2 murders since the early 2000s (one was a drunk vacationer from Memphis of all places, and a crazy local boy that raped and killed a young women on vacation).

Let's talk about LA, Memphis and Atlanta.

All three cities have areas that have virtually no crime. These suburbs are heavily patrolled and it keeps the rift raft out. You, however, can go a half mile or a mile outside of these suburbs and it is a war zone. People are getting raped, mugged and shot all the time. Literally night and day.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-20/table_20_murder_by_state_types_of_weapons_2013.xls

Los Angeles is a dense urban area of 10,000,000 people. Wyoming and Alaska are 800,000 people spread out over enormous states. Comparing urban populations to state populations for any sort of social statistic is ridiculous - the number of human interactions in one versus the other will differ by more than an order of magnitude.

The fact that Alaska and Wyoming have among the highest gun death rates in the USA (comparing state-to-state, like-to-like) despite their low population densities, should really be cause for concern.

Also, when you're trying to compare like-to-like, compare rates, not totals. California is the biggest state, so it has a big total, but by rate compared to population it has among the least gun deaths in the entire country.

As far as Los Angeles goes, don't be ridiculous. I lived in LA for 14 years, most of that time in Inglewood, South Central, and Gardena (on the edge of Compton). I never once saw a gun on the streets except when the cops were pulling it. That doesn't mean that there's no gun crime - there are tragic shootings, and there is regular crime like there is in every urban area, and they happened in my neighborhood - but calling it a "war zone" is ridiculous.

And you know one of the best ways to reduce the deadliness of street crime in Los Angeles? How about reducing the accessibility of guns?

Someone recently showed that there were 14,000 knife assaults in England last year. They lead to 300 deaths. You know the difference between England and the USA? In the USA, those would have been 14,000 gun assaults, not knife assaults, and there would have been 5,000 dead, not 300.

Here are some more helpful charts:

Gun ownership by state:

Deaths due to firearm by state:

Sort of seems...logical....and....obvious....doesn't it?

If someone breaks into my house in australia, even if he has a gun, it is very unlikely I will be shot because he knows I will not have a gun. In all probability just tied up while he takes what he wants. Police can deal with it later.

In US because people have guns a break and enter can have a gun death so easily.

In australia there are very few deaths from police pulling over drivers as they know the driver is very unlikely to have a gun, its usually a chat and a ticket and on your way. In the US because police must assume the worst they must consider ebery driver to be armed with a gun so it makes the police more aggressive and trigger happy so as a general rule, in a gun culture, more are shot.

Says a lot about society when even police are so scared they would rather shoot someone instaed of themselves being shot, simply because a person has a right to own a gun.

That mindset needs to change so that the norm is for the public not to have guns then the police are not prone to shoot.

If you dont have that then the police will continue to shoot for the slightest thing. A product of their own own freedom.

Not to mention how easy is is for accidental shootings by kids.

A product of their own wrongly perceived freedom that the rest of the world can see but the US is blinded by idiocy.

Yes, I'm sure a wife or daughter are on board with that, while being raped, when you're tied to a chair.

Gun advocates love bringing in ridiculous scenarios to support their claims. So how many wives and daughters are raped in Australia in situations where husbands were sitting right there and could have shot the perp if they had only had a gun in their closet?

Try and rationalize 30,000+ gun deaths a year with scenarios that rarely ever happen.

United States already has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. And research has shown that once you incarcerate over 2% of any particular community, increased incarceration actually increases crime:

* You increase the number of children going up without fathers, which dramatically increases crime rates

* You increase the number of people spending their time in the prison system, among hard-core criminals

* Most of all, you decrease the legitimacy of law enforcement and the justice system in the culture of the community. Once it seems like everyone you know has been getting locked up, getting locked no longer acts as a deterrent and law enforcement in general appears unfair and not worth respecting.

As far as what gun control would do to decrease gun violence, I already expressed that in detail, which was of course ignored:

I think there should be significantly stricter gun-control, primarily to reduce three major factors behind gun deaths:

1) Middle-men buying guns legally to then be resold illegally, without repercussions

2) Quick and easy access to guns increasing the deadliness of crimes of passion and attempted sucide

3) A huge unreguated gun supply providing a critical mass making it easy for guns to be present in crime, both because it's so easy for criminals to acquire guns with the huge supply, and because guns are often brought into the situation by non-criminals, which both increases the likelihood of criminals acquiring guns and increases the likelihood of criminals using guns when they otherwise wouldn't.

However, even more than gun control, one the biggest things we need in America is a different attitude towards guns. They aren't tools for keeping you safe, they make you less safe, as has been proved over and over again. Now, that doesn't mean that I think they should be banned - we allow cars even though driving in a car doesn't make us safe either. But we should regulate them as such - guns should be registered just like cars are, and we should be working to take measures that make them safer.

* Why should a driving license take far more work to acquire than a gun license?

* Why is there constant safety research to improve cars while gun death research is completely ignored, and even attempts to research are blocked by Congress under lobbying from the NRA?

* And too many traffic tickets and you can lose your driver's license, but it takes a felony before you lose your inherent right to own a gun?

I'm not going to try and stop you from owning a gun. But we should work to take measures that will make that gun less likely to be used in a crime or violence. And you should realize that the gun is a tool that makes life slightly more dangerous for you and your family and your neighbors, not less. That's true for accidents, murders, and suicides - all three are less likely if you don't have your own gun present, and there's a ton of research behind that. We can try to have a logical conversation about this, or we can continue with the constant emotionalism and immaturity that seems to only infect the American gun debate. If we as Americans were reasonable about this issue for even a single political cycle, it would change a lot.

With exception of the occasional nutter that goes of the reservation every year or two, the vast majority of gun violence is very isolated and limited to bad neighborhoods full of bad people. Cracked out gang banger with nothing to lose don't think twice about shooting up a house full of people.

Here are the gun death rates by state. But keep claiming that the problem is just "bad neighborhoods full of bad people" and "the occasional nutter".

It's all those bad areas full of evil Black people in Alaska and Wyoming and Montana that are leading to so many gun deaths.

I swear, I've never seen a place, even online, where racist claims expressed as casually and as ignorantly as they are here.

Do you want a list?

It's obvious that that may here have little to no knowledge of firearms/firearm training.

If you can't see it, then you are likely one of them.

How may guns have you owned?

Have you had any self-defense training? If so, how many hours?

Can you disassemble and reassemble a variety of firearms?

How much time do you spend at the range?

Can you name the various parts that comprise a semi-auto pistol?

Or a semi-auto rifle?

Do you even know that basic rules of firearm safety?

Are you familiar with the Tueller drill?

Have you ever reloaded your own brass?

It's also obvious that this discussion is veiled America-bashing.

My advice is that if you don't own a firearm and don't wish to do so, especially if you don't reside in the US, perhaps you should stick to subjects you have a clue about.

4 - but does an over/under count as two?

Safety training, not self-defense

yes

depends on what time period of my life you're talking about

yes

yes

yes

familiar, but never trained in it

yes

So do I get to play now? I think there should be significantly stricter gun-control, primarily to reduce three major factors behind gun deaths:

1) Middle-men buying guns legally to then be resold illegally, without repercussions

2) Quick and easy access to guns increasing the deadliness of crimes of passion and attempted sucide

3) A huge unreguated gun supply providing a critical mass making it easy for guns to be present in crime, both because it's so easy for criminals to acquire guns with the huge supply, and because guns are often brought into the situation by non-criminals, which both increases the likelihood of criminals acquiring guns and increases the likelihood of criminals using guns when they otherwise wouldn't.

However, even more than gun control, one the biggest things we need in America is a different attitude towards guns. They aren't tools for keeping you safe, they make you less safe, as has been proved over and over again. Now, that doesn't mean that I think they should be banned - we allow cars even though driving in a car doesn't make us safe either. But we should regulate them as such - guns should be registered just like cars are, and we should be working to take measures that make them safer.

* Why should a driving license take far more work to acquire than a gun license?

* Why is there constant safety research to improve cars while gun death research is completely ignored, and even attempts to research are blocked by Congress under lobbying from the NRA?

* And too many traffic tickets and you can lose your driver's license, but it takes a felony before you lose your inherent right to own a gun?

I'm not going to try and stop you from owning a gun. But we should work to take measures that will make that gun less likely to be used in a crime or violence. And you should realize that the gun is a tool that makes life slightly more dangerous for you and your family and your neighbors, not less. That's true for accidents, murders, and suicides - all three are less likely if you don't have your own gun present, and there's a ton of research behind that. We can try to have a logical conversation about this, or we can continue with the constant emotionalism and immaturity that seems to only infect the American gun debate. If we as Americans were reasonable about this issue for even a single political cycle, it would change a lot.

The funniest part is that you're acting like this knowledge should be pre-requisite for someone participating in a conversation about gun ownership.

Yet most people like you (and I assume you yourself) would never suggest that this knowledge be pre-requisite for, you know, owning a freaking gun.

stay home, would not have happend

what they want? europe to pay social welfare for everybody

while MUSLIM countries, their own religion, their brothers, don't want them ?

time for IS to finally invade SA

Terrible story but what are the other Islamic (oil rich) countries doing to help their brethren?

How many refugee"s are they taking? I believe the answer starts with a "Z"

always quick to blame the UK and Europe for not accepting an overwhelming number of immigrants from the hotbed of terrorism but whatabout all the oil rich Arab Nations surrounding Syria? How many refugees are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, The UAE and the rest of them, accepting into their own countries and helping?

It's sad that a little boy died but the future consequences of allowing all of these people into our country unchecked (and then all of their families in the future) will be much graver for us all.

Little dose of reality:

The vast majority of Syrian refugees have been taken in by the bordering Muslim nations:

If you can read a map, it's easier to get to other countries on the Mediterranean than to those distant non-bordering Arab countries. And Syrians don't have anything more in common with the UAE than they have with Greece - we're all human and we all should be looking out for each other. It's ridiculous to blame our lack of compassion on someone else's lack of compassion.

The number of refugees is NOT overwhelming. English-speaking nations (specifically the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand) have taken in barely any refugees compared to other nations. Right now the world leader in taking in refugees is Turkey, before that it was Pakistan. If each nation simply took in 2.4 refugees per 1,000 population, every refugee in the world would be covered. 0.24% of the population doesn't sound "overwhelming".

Indeed. The other Islamic countries are of course delighted to see hundreds of thousands of muslim immigrants join the 50 million already in Europe. This is a demographic conquest of Europe. Muslim armies have repeatively invaded and occuppied Europe over the centuries. Spain was occuppied for 700 years and Greece for 400. 150,000 Turkish soldiers got all the way to Vienna before being defeated. In most cases they were turned back by European armies. For the last 5 decades they have been conquering Europe through immigration; both legal and illegal. Europe has been betrayed by its own corrupt and incompetent " elite" class which has ignored the desires of the European people and allowed this invasion to happen. Don't expect Arab oligarchs to lift a finger to stop what their ancestors armies tried to do by force of arms. They despise us for our weakness and stupidity. I can't blame them really. If Europe wants to commit demographic suicide; why should they protest or prevent them from doing so?

Ridiculous fear-mongering. The UK is not in any danger of becoming majority-Muslim and never will be. If we want something other than cultural suicide, we should be attracting others to our cultural way of life rather than pushing them away.

That's for sure.

Truly depressing to be watching "Christian Europe" freaking out because they might actually have to really practice Christian Charity and live up to the ideals that they vocally proclaim constitutes their civilization and elevates it from the rest. It's now one the moments or epochs that the rhetoric is tested and it's determined whether the rhetoric determines behavior or is just a fig leaf for venality and fear.

Yep. The more of us acting like Christians, the more people would actually want to be Christians and take on our cultural values. The more we act like , the more they'll want to combat us. It's not a difficult concept.

And the other Islamic countries are doing what?

Providing support for the majority of the refugees:

http://www.mercycorps.org/articles/turkey-iraq-jordan-lebanon-syria/quick-facts-what-you-need-know-about-syria-crisis

Well perhaps you need to look harder.

3.8 million refugees from Syria (95 percent) are found in the following five countries. Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt:

Lebanon is host to 1.1 million refugees registered with UNHCR, which amounts to about 26 percent of the country's population

Jordan hosts 618,615 registered refugees, which amounts to 9.8 percent of the population.

Turkey is hosting 1.6 million refugees, which amounts to 2.4 percent of the population.

Iraq hosts 225,373 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.67 percent of the population.

Egypt has 142,543 registered refugees, which amounts to 0.17 percent of the population.

In Syria, about 190,000 people have been killed and 10.8 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside the country.

More than 10 million Syrians, or 45 percent of the country's population have been displaced.

Exactly. The sustained ignorance on this point is overwhelming.

Umm how many non Arab refugees have these states taken when other parts of the world were in trouble ?> How about zero ?

Completely false. The Rohingya come to mind immediately.

A photo of the Houston Sheriff's Department Deputy assassinated in the past few days.

No storm trooper here. He was dressed in his uniform.

Sounds like a personal problem as I have never had scrapes or problems with cops.

Another cop got shot and killed today in Chicago.

No cop got killed in Chicago. He was killed in Fox Lake, a good hour outside of Chicago and over on the Wisconsin border. It's closer to Milwaukee than it is to Chicago, but that doesn't fit the "narrative" as well.

So far this year 25 cops have been killed while on duty...exactly the same as last year, and lower than recent averages. I believe the peak was 67 cops killed during the Bush administration in 2006...but we weren't talking about any rash of cop-killings back then, it was just ignored.

That video only shows one hand in the air at the time he is shot.

The DA's office has said that the second video clearly shows both hands in the air, and it was standing still in place. What he said or was holding in his hand is irrelevant - he was not an immediate threat.

His arms went up....

I have seen fights where crazy people run at you and throw their arms up, screaming...you want a piece of this? They keep coming...

Video without voice is worthless. The police may have told him several times to get down and put his hands flat on the ground. That's pretty much routine. If a man throws his hands up...especially while shouting and presumed to have a weapon...It still does not clearly show he is not a threat.

People are told to get down... The only time hands go in the air is when they are told to get out of the car/house with hands in the air. This man was squirrly. If I was him, and the man did not follow orders to get on the ground, but threw hands up...and possibly had a weapon...I would give him two or three warnings... If he still came at me ..without getting down (so I could cuff him)...I would be quite unsure. Not saying I would shoot..but I just lost control of the situation.

Not trying to defend the police...just cannot believe it was an assassination...a planned murder. Police do have to follow procedures. I simply want to wait and hear the whole thing out. The cop may have become confused..it which case...it was a wrongful killing/procedure....but not a cold blooded murder.

I don't believe it was a planned murder, but can't be sure. (One friend of mine who was a cop says that sometimes the process can get so aggravating that even when the suspect gives up and its "over", it's not over. He was referring to beating up suspects after they've surrendered, though, not killing anybody.) I think it was more likely an accident - officer had his finger on the trigger and was getting a bit itchy, and he flinched at the wrong time. Clearly manslaughter.

According to The Guardian we're up to at least 788 people killed by cops so far this year in America. Since there's no reporting mechanism for police killings, that's certainly an undercount - some have slipped through the cracks, been kept quiet, or simply been covered up. So many horrific decisions are being caught on video (the murders of Dillon Taylor, Sam Dubose, James Boyd, John Crawford III, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Gilbert Flores, etc.)....imagine how bad it was before everyone had cell phone cameras and the police knew they could make up any story they wanted to explain the more suspect of the 1,000 killings/year?

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database

p.s. - the videos of the killings themselves are what is linked in each of those names - fair warning.