begemot wrote:

Two New York Times editorials: ‘Terror watch lists run amok’ — now let’s ban gun purchases by people who are on them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/vol ... e-on-them/

NYT has no shame.

KnightsFan wrote:Dianne Feinstein would've fit in well in the Stasi.

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential hopeful and real estate mogul Donald Trump is calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" following deadly terror attacks involving Islamic extremists in California and France.

"Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension," Trump said in a statement emailed to reporters on Monday.

"Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," he added.

We can't solve the problem unless we know what the problem is. And right now nobody's actually talking about the problem, which is that in many socioeconomic groups violence is seen as the first response to an interpersonal conflict.

If we want to solve violence then we should be supporting groups like the National Network of Safe Communities, http://nnscommunities.org/.

If we want to stop publicity killings then we have to stop giving killers publicity, and we have to start teaching people that they're more than how many social media followers they have, that they matter.

If we want to stop terrorism we have to stop demonizing people merely because they're different than we are or because they disagree with us.

We can't solve the problem unless we know what the problem is.

And right now nobody's actually talking about the problem(s), which is that in many socioeconomic groups violence is seen as the first response to an interpersonal conflict. It's that people consider fame more important than human life. It's that our rhetoric and speech and treatment of anyone different as subhuman or evil has inspired hatred in return.

If we want to solve violence then we should be supporting groups like the National Network of Safe Communities, http://nnscommunities.org/. This group is focused on preventing violence in communities through focused intervention, target the 10% of people involved in the majority of violence and you'll see a drop in the overall rate, because they won't be inspiring others. Or, better yet, take that 10% and convert them into acolytes of non-violent solutions to interpersonal conflicts. Focus on improving community and the true victims of gun violence, black urban youths, will be able to live free of fear.

If we want to stop publicity killings then we have to stop giving killers publicity, and we have to start teaching people that they're more than how many social media followers they have, that they matter. We've seen tragedy play out again and again. And we can't blame terrorism for it, there was no political motivation, instead we can only blame ourselves. As a whole we've become a nation of narcissists, trying to see who can get the most likes, shares and upvotes. And when this is combined with people who are already in a vulnerable mental state the outcome is tragic, either on a large scale, or on a small scale.

If we want to stop terrorism we have to stop demonizing people merely because they're different than we are or because they disagree with us. If you could ask daesh's leaders what they want more than anything, they would probably say the end to the West, but if you asked them in a private setting they would say they want this war to never end. Because they know that every time the US drops a bomb in Syria, flies a drone over a wedding in Pakistan or has a potential leader call for the registration of Muslims they'll gain a new recruit. If we quit these actions we take away their greatest source of volunteers.

Taking guns away won't solve a thing, and is politically impossible. So let's turn our focus to real solutions. Solutions that don't take a lot of money, political will or time. We don't have to sacrifice liberty for security. We merely must come together and decide to focus on the real problems we face.

begemot wrote:

Two New York Times editorials: ‘Terror watch lists run amok’ — now let’s ban gun purchases by people who are on them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/vol ... e-on-them/

NYT has no shame.

SilasSoule wrote:According to this article, if you take out drug and gang related shootings, the number of "mass shooting" victims in 2015 drops to about 180.

The shooter took the lives of at least four people.
The killings were carried out by a lone shooter.
The shootings occurred in a public place.
If the shooter died or was hurt from injuries sustained during the incident, he is included in the total victim count. (But we have excluded many cases in which there were three fatalities and the shooter also died, per the above FBI criterion.)
We included a handful of cases also known as "spree killings"

drigeba wrote:Why don't they run a front page editorial on income inequality rather than the so called "Gun problem". Much bigger issue for creating violence than availability of guns.

According to articles this week across the Internet, there has been an average of one mass shooting every day in the United States: 355 so far this year. It's a jarring statistic, and one that has gone viral in the wake of this week's massacre in San Bernardino, California.

But there are two problems with the number: It doesn't actually provide a clear estimate of how often the country has seen shooting rampages like the one in San Bernardino. And it obscures the broader reality of gun violence in America.

Counting "mass shootings" is notoriously complicated and contested, since there is no standard definition of what they are. Is it best to count shootings that injure or kill a certain number of people? Or should the definition focus more narrowly on attacks in which the motivation of the shooter "appears to be indiscriminate killing"?

KnightsFan wrote:Dianne Feinstein would've fit in well in the Stasi.

Yesterday, for the first time in 95 years, the New York Times published an op-ed on the front page, position A1, above the fold. The subject of that op-ed: “End the Gun Epidemic in America.” The piece is filled with tired arguments and moralistic fervor, and it even includes the most vacuous of all public policy arguments: We gotta do something.

The title itself is odd. By focusing on guns themselves as an “epidemic” rather than on the ever-decreasing rate of gun violence, the Times seems to confirm that its editorial staff has a problem with gun ownership per se, regardless of its effects on public safety. The placement of the piece on the front page also suggests that the Times prefers moralizing to simple fact-checking.

But it is even worse than that. At a time when the Times could have placed a meaningful and trailblazing op-ed on the front page, perhaps calling for an end to the drug war and the thousands of gun deaths associated with it, they instead chose to advocate for an impossible public policy goal that will have little to no effect on the problem at hand.