foyrkopp

Question from someone outside the US who's genuinely curious about why law-abiding citizens feel the need to carry guns to begin with:

If you're aware of this, how often are you carrying a gun in the first place? When/Why?

Following what you say, there's obviously the scenario where you have to defend your life (not your property).

On the other hand, as I see it, the victim in the article would not have benefited from a gun in the car and the odds of a shell-shocked BF turning the whole thing into an actual shootout would've been >0.

I'm not trying to argue crime statistics or morals here, I'm genuinely interested in a gun owner's perspective.

Suburbs can't be a ponzi scheme

Genuine question: Why not?

While the article indeed barely touched on its headline, the way I've seen the "suburb infrastructure upkeep problem" described seems indeed reminiscent of a ponzi scheme.

The way I understand it:

Suburbs have a relatively low initial cost (for the city) compared to the taxes they generate. However, their maintenance cost is relatively high because Suburbs are huge.

Thus, US cities have long had a policy of paying the rising cost of their older Suburbs by creating new Suburbs - which is pretty analogous to a Ponzi scheme.

A subjective perspective from outside the US:

If I follow your argument that illegal firearms are the problem, I still believe that the amount of illegal firearms in circulation is a direct function of the legal arms market's size.

And as long as the threshold for acquiring a firearm is low, so is the threshold for injuring someone with one.

This goes for a criminal using an illegal one in a robbery, a frustrated teenager emptying their uncle's poorly secured gun locker for a school schooting or even for suicides: An abundance of guns makes these things easier, so they happen more often.

Mandating stricter controls, safety training or weapon-lockup procedures can alleviate this some, but any process that relies on a lot of not strictly organized individuals to be applied will be fallible and permeable by nature.

Selling more weapons to private citizens will always lead to more gun-related deaths and injuries.

The only way to reliably reduce the amount of weapons in circulation is to sell less of them (and keep removing illegal ones).

Naturally, this is unpopular with an industry that relies on selling as many as possible.

(I'm also aware that something like this would have to be a very slow process. Even if the pool of legal weapons were drained overnight, all those illegal guns would still be around.)

Right.

Neither is bigger. Even "∞ x ∞" is not bigger than "∞". Classical mathematics sort of break down in the realm of infinity.

I usually just copy paste historical (flawed) stuff I find interesting.

While I like goofing around with stuff like "modeling functioning government", I believe it distracts from the PC's stories (and leads to ideological discussions at the table.)

In particular I really like the episodes that deal with interacting with other civilizations, diplomacy, and exploration more-so than say, an anomaly episode.

In light of this, and since you were able to work through the not-so-stellar episodes of ST, I'd strongly argue that Babylon 5 should be your next stop.

It has a slow start, some more mixed episodes, dated special effects and both main characters (they switched after season 1) are plain "heroic American leader" types, but virtually everything else is top tier even today. An excellent political plot, humor, great characters with genuine growth.

Just be aware that it is different from DS9 (personally, I like both).

Battlestar Galactica (the new one) and The Expanse are probably worth pointing out, too. To me, they're the best high-production-value sci-fi shows that didn't sacrifice their plot. Nevertheless, both are far more grim than the shows you've mentioned and overall "feel" different.

I genuinely like this idea, because it would allow to reach both goals.

The problem I see is that this would probably go down the same as the bodycam idea, with inconvenient recordings vanishing due to "technical issues".

You'd need an independent third party doing life recording and delayed release. Subjectively, the US don't have a great track record with these.

Easier idea: Just publish last week's encryption key. Probably won't happen because some tech supplier will lobby for a more expensive solution.

My comment wasn't related to sex but more generalized, but, umm - yeah?

People having heterosexual two-person sex (preferably with a single, consistent partner) are the "in-group".

Everyone else is the out-group.

If anyone ever made i.e. a study to something like police behavior experienced by a "regular" pick-up bar and a gay bar, I'd expect to see some stark differences.

Found the morality relativist.

Except at that point the Mafia are somehow supposedly the good guys?

(Warning: Might be coded by German extremism culture)

Right-wing extremists burn immigrants. Left-wing extremists burn cars. The latter is worse, because it could be my car while I don't own any immigrants.

(from the Cangaroo Chronicles)