Mother Jones
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Debunking Gunloon Myths
Mother Jones
Constitutionally Protected Women's Rights in Jeopardy
Jimmy Lee Dykes - The Alabama Abductor
After four anxious days, only the slimmest of details has come to light in a police standoff with an Alabama man who is accused of holding a 5-year-old boy hostage in a bunker, a sign of just how delicate the negotiations are.
Police have used a ventilation pipe to the underground bunker to talk to the man and deliver the boy medication for his emotional disorders, but they have not revealed how often they are in touch or what the conversations have been about. And authorities waited until Friday — four days after the siege began — to confirm what was widely known in this age of instant communication: The man accused of killing a school bus driver and abducting the boy Tuesday was 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, a Vietnam-era veteran who was known to neighbors as a menacing figure.
Explanation of the Ammo Shortage
Student of the Gun via Ammoland
What are the conspiracy nuts saying? Maybe Orlin can tell us, he's got his finger on the pulse.
What are the conspiracy nuts saying? Maybe Orlin can tell us, he's got his finger on the pulse.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Atlanta School Shooting
CBS reports
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.The gun rights folks are right about one thing, armed guards in schools can be a good thing. The only problem is they offer that as the only solution while gun control folks want to know where a 14-year-old got a gun and what can be done to prevent that in the future.
Multiple shots were fired in the courtyard of Price Middle School just south of downtown about 1:50 p.m. and the one boy was hit, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said. In the aftermath, a teacher received minor cuts, he said.
The wounded boy was taken "alert, conscious and breathing" to Grady Memorial Hospital, said police spokesman Carlos Campos. Grady Heath System Spokeswoman Denise Simpson said the teen had been discharged from the hospital Thursday night. Campos said charges against the shooter were pending.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
The Definitive Comparison between the UK and the US
via Dispelling the Myth
DEFINING VIOLENT CRIME =====
United Kingdom:
“Violent crime contains a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Around a half of violent incidents identified by both BCS and police statistics involve no injury to the victim.” (THOSB – CEW, page 17, paragraph 1.)
United States:
“In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.” (FBI – CUS – Violent Crime)
We can clearly see here there is quite a
large difference in how both countries report and assess what qualifies
as “violent crime”. The UK’s approach seems to be a lot more
encompassing in scope and adds to its definition of “violent crime”
offences which are not matched by its US counterpart. This raises the
obvious question of whether UK violent crime rates can be said to be
higher simply because things considered “violent crime” in the UK are
not so in the US. One example is “assault”, all forms of which are
considered “violent” in the UK, whereas in the US only “aggravated” is
considered violent. A further example revolves around sexual offences,
only “forcible” rape featuring in the US definition, while the UK
definition includes rape and any and all forms of sexual assault.
Therefore, it becomes practically
impossible to draw any objective comparison between the two, unless one
trawls through the various definitions of crimes that can be said to be
the same in definition and execution in the UK and the US. I’ve actually
done this, and by going through the PRC and FBI – CUS it is possible, I
believe, to find a number of crimes which I think are fairly indicative
of the prevalence of “violence” in either country. To this end, I have isolated robbery, burglary, homicide / murder, knife crime, fatal shootings, rape of a female, grievous bodily harm / aggravated assault and theft of a vehicle in order to give us a fair idea of which country is more “violent.” The relevant definitions and rates for each crime will be presented below in their own sections.
However, before we proceed onto that
stage, I thought it would be useful to present the actual figures of
“violent crime rates” for both countries that has spurned this research
in the first place, and the mathematics involved in calculating the
figures and statistics for each relevant isolated crime.
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