Cuz Merica

[Draker]

Like I said earlier. If you want total protection from this stuff you will have to give up some of your rights.

 

Ain't gonna happen.

[Draker]

 

 

Given what's been meticulously laid out in the 13 indictments it's pretty easy to guess what the Dems are gong to say: No more hoax, no more BS excuse for losing the election, why isn't Trump protecting the US from Russia, etc. That's easy, but I'm curious what Republicans are going to say come Monday. Do they continue attacking the integrity of the investigation, or start dealing with Russia's act of social cyber warfare? Serious message retooling going on right now. Other possibilities? 

 

We all know the CIA has done the same but does that mean we should sit down and let this go, or should there be a price? Now if we continue to do nothing does that make Trump look strong internally and abroad? Irrespective of any possibility of collusion or obstruction, I know this brings the legitimacy of the election into question, but it's done and over. As president Trump needs to put that aside and act in response to this or it will be a PR nightmare for him and the party. Who's got their ball?

 

 

Full text from Rob Goldman (from his twtter):

 

Very excited to see the Mueller indictment today. We shared Russian ads with Congress, Mueller and the American people to help the public understand how the Russians abused our system. Still, there are keys facts about the Russian actions that are still not well understood. ...

 

Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was NOT the main goal. ...

 

The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election. ...

 

The main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us. It has stoked fear and hatred amongst Americans. It is working incredibly well. We are quite divided as a nation. ...

 

The single best demonstration of Russia's true motives is the Houston anti-islamic protest. Americans were literally puppeted into the streets by trolls who organized both the sides of protest. ...

 

The Russian campaign is ongoing. Just last week saw news that Russian spies attempted to sell a fake video of Trump with a hooker to the NSA. US officials cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian plot to create discord. ...

 

There are easy ways to fight this. Disinformation is ineffective against a well educated citizenry. Finland, Sweden and Holland have all taught digital literacy and critical thinking about misinformation to great effect. ...

 

We are also taking aggressive steps to prevent this sort of meddling in the future by requiring verification of political advertisers and by making all ads on the platform visible to anyone who cares to examine them.

[john510]

It won’t work in the USA.

 

Muricas attitude to firearms ownership is at almost polar opposites to us.

 

Add to this my previous equation eg number of peeps in possession of firearms, number of known (i.e. accountable for by licensing and serial number records) and unknown (never properly accounted for, passed on through generations, sold multiple times, stolen or illegally manufactured) firearms and the sheer volume of them and its too big for any gubment to make anything more than a minor dent in the problem.

 

Let me use this analogy, I (hypothetically) have 5 guns pointed at your head.

 

I take three away.

 

Are you really any safer?

I disagree,as these shootings keep happening people's minds are changing about guns.I know nobody will ever change the mind of those that think the 2nd amendment was written a few years ago but i would think most of us will sacrifice some gun rights to protect innocent people from lunatics with guns.That's a bad analogy about taking away 3 of your guns.Try this,we have 5 lunatics,each has an AR-15.Lock up 3 of them and destroy their weapons.Is society any safer ? i would think so.Maybe it's time the NRA start denouncing this shit instead of screaming about the 2nd amendment.

[Ratwagon1600]

Maybe it's time the NRA start denouncing this shit instead of screaming about the 2nd amendment.

Go back to my previous post where I spoke about the requirement for an attitudinal change that will likely take generations to implement.

 

The 2nd amendment right is just too deeply ingrained in the American pysche.

 

I dont disagree that the country has to do something, its a task however that I dont think senior lawmakers really have the stomach for (yet). You only have to look at the Presidents comments post the Florida massacre where he appeared to distance himself from the gun issue.

 

All many of the key decision makers appear to want to do atm is save their own political bacon.

[240zness]

Not sure about numbers but , how many millions of assault weapons exist.. the only card to play is armed guards. Or teachers that know weapons.

[Ratwagon1600]

Not sure about numbers but , how many millions of assault weapons exist.. the only card to play is armed guards. Or teachers that know weapons.

This is probably the only solution that will have some effect in schools. It cannot be a single entity; every good security system has multiple layers (in this case armed personell) also known as defence in depth.

 

Resource and cost intensive to implement and maintain.

 

All somethinh like this will do though is direct a threat actor towards a softer target i.e. shopping mall, outdoor concert (as seen in the Vegas shooting), public transportation hub etc.

[racerx]

Suddenly 4,000 dishonorable discharge vets have been added to a list that should not be able to purchase guns.

[Ratwagon1600]

Unfortunately a bandaid protection solution which wont mitigate against small or large caibre rifle fire.

 

Someones going to get mighty rich.

 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/bulletproof-backpack-sales-increase-in-wake-of-latest-school-shooting/news-story/d04a64b40470cd3a10c383c9ce53dcff

[Dguy210]

Wow. Pages of Canadians, Aussies, and Californians debating American gun rights. Some real comedy gold right here.

 

So foreign trolls trying to influence American's opinions and therefore their voting patterns? Sounds familiar  :rofl:

[racerx]

Unfortunately a bandaid protection solution which wont mitigate against small or large caibre rifle fire.....or if the child gets shot in the head, getting ridiculous.

 

Someones going to get mighty rich.

 

http://www.news.com.au/technology/bulletproof-backpack-sales-increase-in-wake-of-latest-school-shooting/news-story/d04a64b40470cd3a10c383c9ce53dcff

[racerx]

/\...getting ridiculous. Will not stop ar15 or what if the shooter shoots the child in the face or head.

[thisismatt]

Murica is just too far gone with its social fabric to ever rein this problem in. It would take multi generational attitudinal change and that just ain’t gunna happen. The Murican government will never fully get this under control IMLTHO.

 

Fixed.

[Ratwagon1600]

/\...getting ridiculous. Will not stop ar15 or what if the shooter shoots the child in the face or head.

These type of low level “body armour” style solutions also tend to give the user a (false) elevated sense of security and safety; and accordingly some persons who purchase these types of items will sub consciously “lower their guard” to any perceived or actual threat.

[Dguy210]

Really this is a "Long tail" problem.

 

Statistically the deaths in school shootings are trivial in a country of 323 million people. 

 

Now that is an inflammatory statement so let me clarify what I mean by this. The key word in that sentence is statistically.

 

I will focus on only "school shootings" for the rest of this statement and I realize this is only a subset.

 

I'm not saying the deaths aren't a tragedy, I'm just saying in an actuarial sense as a cause of death it is below lightning strikes (seriously 40-50 deaths per year), while only 138 people have died of school shootings in the last 6 years (6*40-50=240-300 so lets say 250 here vs. 138). You are literally twice as likely to die from lightning as you are in a school shooting.

 

Your chances as a child of being killed in a school shooting by some crazy person is incredibly small.

 

Here are the numbers:

 

In the last 6 years (including the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting) 438 have been shot and 138 have died. So lets put this in perspective as a cause of death:

 

The USA has 323,000,000 people in it. Half are under age 18 but we will ignore this for now as the shooting deaths are not all children anyways.

 

So out of a population of  323,000,000 people 2,626,418 people die each year. 

 

Which means in the last 6 years 15,758,508 (almost 16 million) people have died. 138 of those people died due to school shootings. 

 

This comes back to what I mean about this being a "long tail" problem.

 

You can not make the world perfectly safe, no matter how much time or resources you want to spend chasing an ever diminishing return.

 

You want to save lives? There are many many other causes of deaths, even in children, that the same resources could be spent on to save more lives than even stopping school shootings completely.

 

Or put another way, every dollar you put to stopping one school shooting death condemns several other people to a preventable death.

 

Here comes the BIG but though, school shootings make the news, they are flashy and unpredictable, and humans are very very bad at logically understanding risk.

 

Which comes back to what Ratwagon said about there being too many guns in the USA to ever stop school shootings. Looking at it from the opposite direction, there are around 300 million firearms in the USA or about 1 per person, yet only 138 people died in school shootings in the last 6 years. 

 

LET me repeat that: 300,000,000 vs 138.

 

1 single ISIS attack in Paris (a country with very strong gun laws) was 130 people. 86 people were killed in one truck attack in Nice. 1 truck attack killed more than half the number of people killed in school shootings in the last 6 years.

 

So now tell me from a statistical and logical viewpoint is this really what we should focus on? 

I realize it is a horrible thing and very newsworthy but this is not really a large cause of death. 

 

What I'm getting back to is if you want to prevent deaths focusing on a specific tool with bans it is literally NOT EFFECTIVE in keeping people from DYING.

 

If you want to save lives you must have PEOPLE FOCUSED policies.

 

Because you could ban every fucking gun and a crazy person could drive a truck into a crowd or use bombs and kill people.

 

The answer is we need to focus on the MENTALLY ILL people committing these crimes (through a variety of methods talked about earlier and of course based on due process etc... to prevent abuse).

 

EDIT: I'm stepping off the soapbox for now. I'm tired of this topic and I don't truly believe anyone is ever swayed to any great degree by an argument on the internet.

[Dolomite]

Not sure about numbers but , how many millions of assault weapons exist.. the only card to play is armed guards. Or teachers that know weapons.

The number of actual assault weapons is very small, cost tens of thousands of dollars, and are a complete bitch to aquire. What the media tells you are assault weapons are nothing more than semi automatic sporting rifles and carbines, they are large in number. Armed guards is a good solution but you’d have to vet the shit out of them.

 

People need to ask themselves this question; what is so special about a damn ar15 and why is it the posterboy for anti 2A types? Because it’s scary looking and people have seen it on tv since Miami Vice. The anti crowd has literally said fuckall about mini, m1, fal, even ak type weapons. All are as effective or more so than an ar, but the FEAR of them hasn’t been driven into the general public so their use in fear mongering for profit or re-election is minimal. The ar platform is used more simply because it’s popular as fuck right now and that’s what’s selling in shops. People are falling for these tricks when your chance of being caught up in an active shooter situation is far less than your chance of getting killed in a transportation accident on your way to work. But it’s taboo to suggest forms of transportation are the culprit because there’s no money or political gain to be had.

 

Am I willing to give up my god given right to live and protect my family so a damn flock of sheep can sleep easier at night? Hells the fuck no I’m not. A big part of this problem is the pussification of the average American. Americans used to be predominantly wolves, now speep abound. When the hell did it become bad to be the wolf? Trust me, if it’s between some asshole and my family, some asshole is taking a dirtnap. What’s the most efficient way to send said asshole for his dirtnap? A firearm.

 

Rant over.

[paradime]

Full text from Rob Goldman (from his twtter):

 

Very excited to see the Mueller indictment today. We shared Russian ads with Congress, Mueller and the American people to help the public understand how the Russians abused our system. Still, there are keys facts about the Russian actions that are still not well understood. ...

 

Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election. I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was NOT the main goal. ...

 

The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn’t align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election. ...

 

The main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us. It has stoked fear and hatred amongst Americans. It is working incredibly well. We are quite divided as a nation. ...

 

The single best demonstration of Russia's true motives is the Houston anti-islamic protest. Americans were literally puppeted into the streets by trolls who organized both the sides of protest. ...

 

The Russian campaign is ongoing. Just last week saw news that Russian spies attempted to sell a fake video of Trump with a hooker to the NSA. US officials cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian plot to create discord. ...

 

There are easy ways to fight this. Disinformation is ineffective against a well educated citizenry. Finland, Sweden and Holland have all taught digital literacy and critical thinking about misinformation to great effect. ...

 

We are also taking aggressive steps to prevent this sort of meddling in the future by requiring verification of political advertisers and by making all ads on the platform visible to anyone who cares to examine them.

 

Until I've read the 34 page indictment I'm in no position to dispute what Rob tweets. The ads he's referring to were one avenue Russians used among several others. Personally, I couldn't give a flying fuck if the "Main intent" of the ads weren't aimed at influencing the election. The fact that they DID that and many other things to influence our democracy is serious shit, to me anyway. I have no idea why you or Rob would want to downplay that other than it played out in your side's favor. I would imagine if the shoe were on the other foot you'd feel very different.

 

You must have missed this Draker, but 

 

What pisses me off more than anything is Russia sowing political and racial division in our society.  Not that it wasn't there all along but like tr8er said, starting fires and letting them burn can cause a great deal of damage. Before you jump on and blame the other side, consider your opinion may have been influenced by disinformation.

[thisismatt]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/186935/deaths-by-firearm-related-injuries-in-the-us-since-1970/

[Draker]

 

Until I've read the 34 page indictment I'm in no position to dispute what Rob tweets. The ads he's referring to were one avenue Russians used among several others. Personally, I couldn't give a flying fuck if the "Main intent" of the ads weren't aimed at influencing the election. The fact that they DID that and many other things to influence our democracy is serious shit, to me anyway. I have no idea why you or Rob would want to downplay that other than it played out in your side's favor. I would imagine if the shoe were on the other foot you feel very different.

 

You must have missed this Draker, but

 

First, i didnt miss anything.

 

Second,are you equally as pissed about the usa interference in global elections?

 

Why are you not complaining about Soros interfering?

[datzenmike]

 

 

 

So foreign trolls trying to influence Americans opinions and therefore their voting patterns? Sounds familiar  :rofl:

 

 

If only. Pretty safe bet nothing will be changed.

[Mattndew76]

For every indictment of these Russians the DNC and Hillary Camp committed the same crimes.

 

https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/does-mueller-indictment-mean-clinton-campaign-can-be-indicted-for-chris-steele/ 

[Draker]

Not everything is an attack.. just posting topical info for all to read.

[Draker]

For every indictment of these Russians the DNC and Hillary Camp committed the same crimes.

 

https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/does-mueller-indictment-mean-clinton-campaign-can-be-indicted-for-chris-steele/ 

 

You mean 3x the crimes.

[125 CSL]

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/374411-trump-dems-could-have-passed-gun-control-under-obama

 

Trump: Dems could have passed gun control under Obama

 

"Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!" Trump tweeted.

 

 

 

Trump as always pointing out the very obvious

[Draker]

Could have passed a daca bill too.

[paradime]

First, i didnt miss anything.

 

Second,are you equally as pissed about the usa interference in global elections?

 

Why are you not complaining about Soros interfering?

 

I didn't know they held global elections, but why is that a reason not to investigate what happened here?

 

Do you really think Soros or the Koch brothers are the same thing as Russia? How many times have I said I want corporate money influence out of politics?

 

It's so fucked up that defending our democracy from foreign influence has become a right left battle. I don't give a shit about sides, I want to know what happened in that 2016 shit show. If you find that threatening I can't help you there.