Bangkok Herps

On 10/13/2018 at 3:34 PM, sanemax said:

Thats not really a balanced view .

Now , is it .

Huge exaggerations and makes a complete distortion of the reality 

Name the "huge exaggerations" and "complete distortion of reality" in that post.

On 10/13/2018 at 9:22 PM, smew said:

What a load of crap... you actually believe anyone red your verbal diarrhea!....

 

You go on and on ....,,Simply put it get rid off all criminals no matter what .....

Did you miss the part where the black people being harassed weren't criminals?

On 10/13/2018 at 9:17 PM, p414 said:

You obviously did not live in London in the late 50's through the 60's..Churchill ,in Parliament 1954 [yes] stated  'The biggest threat to Britain.at this time, is the prospect of mass coloured immigration'...

Churchill repeatedly proved his racist attitudes, thinking nothing of killing tens of thousands of Kenyans and Malaysians to maintain colonial rule, not to mention the disaster in India and his lack of concern while millions died there. He was an inspiring figure during wartime, but I would think that the guy who was praising Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini in the 1930s isn't the sort of figure whose opinion on general matters you should take as definitive.

As each generation passes, the strongholds of your kind of racism diminish. We're seeing the last gasps now. 

A remarkable creature that can weigh up to 1,500 pounds and swim more than 10,000 km in a year. Sad that you need some sort of official status for people to realize that these are worth preserving. 

The "support from evangelical pastors" seems a bit overwrought - every article I read about him quoted that same one guy. I'm thinking most didn't want to be associated with him whether they were secretly going to vote for him or not.

If you know his backstory, he seemed like a pretty terrible, disturbed person. Not someone to admire or emulate. If you "envy" abusing women, then you might find something to like in him.

https://nypost.com/2015/03/08/the-bizarre-memoir-of-americas-most-famous-legal-brothel/

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/former-prostitutes-allege-unwelcome-sexual-contact-from-brothel-owner-dennis-hof

 

On 10/11/2018 at 6:59 AM, khaowong1 said:

The Thai Immigration authorities have all the right to check anyone that isn't Thai in their own country.  You can scream "racial profiling" all you want.  Who else are they going to check for visa's, some little old Thai lady?   

Are you saying that there are so few actual crimes in this country that the authorities have tons of free time to just go on fishing expeditions for hypothetical crimes?

Effective law enforcement works off of tips, reports, evidence, of ACTUAL crimes. When you profile, not only do you waste most of your time harassing people who haven't done anything, but the "criminals" that you do catch end up being the ones who weren't causing any real problems anyway. And you've lowered your chances of getting cooperation from those communities when real crimes are committed in the future.

You don't think there aren't tens of thousands of ACTUAL dangerous foreign criminals in Bangkok and elsewhere, engaged in human trafficking, large-scale drug trade, smuggling, and other crimes that actually hurt society? What do you think would do Thailand more good, the official who spends 100% of his time working to figure out who the actual bad guys are and hunting them down, or the official who checks the passports of 100 Black people at random hoping to find the one guy who overstayed his visa because he liked his life here, with all the incredible harm that visa overstayers do to society?

On 10/10/2018 at 11:44 PM, tagalong said:

it's just discrimination of the black, same what they do with farangs, for sure we are next, so don't go to church

 

What a load of rubbish...U mean because they r black or white, they should not be singled out for visa checks....

 

The Thai Imm av every right to single out anyone, n any color....they want..in their country....If u av been following lately the blacks av a record which speaks for itself...

On 10/11/2018 at 12:12 AM, smew said:

Get rid off all the criminals no matter where you catch them, no matter what religion no matter what colour their skin. Bravo to the boys on brown !

On 10/11/2018 at 12:26 AM, p414 said:

In the late 60's in England many females were targetted by 'muggers' ..[a new word in England]..In ALL reported cases the assailants were described as 'coloured'..The police began stop and search of young blacks that were the children of immigrants.. The left wing screamed racial profiling.and stop and search was ended...Go to England and see the result.

 

Hard to believe we're in the 21st century and the casual racism can just flow like this. I only hope the three of you are from an earlier era and your children (if you have any) have grown up past these ridiculous tribal mindsets.

Racial profiling is idiocy because it is incredibly ineffective. Only a small % of any population is criminal, so if you engage in racial profiling you spend 90% of your time dealing with non-criminals while also turning those very non-criminals against you because they don't think you can be trusted. It wastes police resources and it makes future policing more difficult.

This isn't just true with race. The British learned this in the 1960s when they began treating the Irish Catholic community as a monolith at the beginning of The Troubles. It only made things worse - every escalation of community-based actions by the police ramped up the reaction of violence and led the community to solidarity with their own violent members. It wasn't until after they backed off and tried a different approach that any sort of resolution was possible.

Same thing happens anywhere that Black, Muslim, immigrant, etc. communities are profiled. 

This article just proved it. A total waste of police resources, no criminals were found, plus now you got a community that trusts the police that much less. The whole principle was SHOWN in the very incident we're supposed to be discussing, yet you're blind to facts.

And the dumb statement "blacks have a record which speaks for itself"....so do I look at all the terrible wars and dictators and violence in Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Burma over the last 80 years, more dead in war and genocide than in any other region at any other point in history, and declare "Asians have a record which speaks for itself?" Or do I look slavery, oppression, genocide, and entire populations wiped out by colonial massacres on five different continents, more cross-racial oppression and violence by far than members of any other race have ever been guilty of, and say, "Whites have a record which speaks for itself"? No, I blame the individual persons and specific ideologies that led to those terrors. It would be stupid to blame an entire race. Mao, Hirohito, King Leopold, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot all killed more people than the worst Black person ever, and had tens of thousands or even millions of violent countrymen carrying out their agendas, but somehow their entire race doesn't get tagged with the stereotype by those people who only want to blame "the other".

Not to mention that grouping a stereotype by race is just factually inaccurate on any genetic or cultural level. There is more genetic diversity in Africa than in the rest of the world combined, you can find two South African groups (say the Zulu and the San) who are more distant relations than North Africans and Southern Europeans are to each other. And culturally, if you go to Ghana and then go to Somalia and believe that there is some close cultural connection, I don't know what you're looking at. It takes ignorance on all fronts to play into these particular racial divisions. 

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.

On 9/19/2018 at 6:54 PM, BritManToo said:

Never seen any 'forest mammals' there or anywhere else in the Thai jungle.

Barking deer on Doi Suthep, tree shrews in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, macaques, gibbons, barking deer, sambar deer, palm civet, crested porcupine, and giant squirrels in Khao Yai. They're there if you're quiet and go out at the right time. 

https://bangkokherps.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/khao-yai-national-park-around-the-dorms/

On 9/20/2018 at 6:43 AM, Tailwagsdog said:

Is it a burmese python? Apparently those things never stop growing and in Florida they eat deer & alligators

It's a reticulated python. They are more slender and tend to go after smaller prey than Burmese, mostly eating rats in the city. On occasion they do eat cats though. 

And there's no way that's 5 meters, obvious from the scale of the people next to it. It's somewhere around 2.5 to 3 meters.

I saw the headline and thought, "Oh, posted here? Watch a bunch of ignorant people without the slightest clue of the issues involved make ignorant statements."

Wasn't disappointed.

It's amazing how the strong the denial instinct is. I got my degree in biophysics and have friends who work as scientists for major petrochemical manufacturers, and even THEY believe the science behind anthropomorphic climate change, not to mention the actual conditions outside which have passed the point of reasonable deniability during the last 20 years. Even the experts whose bosses would most benefit from such denial are accepting it, while the "man on the street" who is afraid of the slightest inconvenience to his life will deny it solely because he doesn't want to have to bother.

Before you respond, ask me if you know.....

* What the typical speed of past temperature changes were.

* What the normal variation in CO2 levels has been during human history, and how that compares to CO2 levels now.

* What % of CO2 levels are produced by man, what % are produced by volcanoes, and why that would or would not have an effect.

* Who is going to benefit the most from climate change, and who is going to suffer the most.

* How many other negative effects that overconsumption, excess CO2 production, and other pollutants have in addition to AGW

Yes, Indo-Chinese Forest Lizard.

And I can't imagine ever getting bit by one unless you were trying to grab it, but if you do get bit it will be painful but probably won't break skin, and if it doesn't let go easily than the "holding under water" trick should work. 

Long dark snake of that length is almost always going to be a rat snake. The "long thin tail" makes it close to certain as neither pythons nor cobras (the other two fairly large snakes) have long skinny tails.

Those who labeled it as a baby rat snake are correct. Besides the coloration and shape, those massive eyes are a dead giveaway.

And yes, rat snakes are fantastic climbers, as well as one of the few local snakes large enough to produce a clutch of nice big eggs like that.

So far as killing snakes goes, I'll just point out that attempts to kill snakes are one of the most frequent ways that people get bit by snakes. Leave them alone and watch where you'll step and you'll avoid 99% of snakebites. They don't come after you.

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.