"Currants Bw..."

[Letters]

The US clearly has "a problem" with gun deaths, but I don't think it's solvable now, it's too late. There are more guns than people. Even if you stopped all further gun sales tomorrow it wouldn't sort out the problem.

[HCZ_Reborn]

As I just stated the amount of gun related homicides is completely out of proportion with the amount of guns it owns per capita when compared to another country. So the issue is less about how many Guns there are in the United States and more about the conditions which is causing people going round shooting each other.
The media narrative paints an unhelpful picture, you’d believe that Black people were statistically far more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts it simply isn’t true. If you take deaths as a proportion of encounters with police you are far more likely to die as a white person than a person of colour as a result of police shooting.
And let’s be fair colour is less of a metric than stupidity, if someone is pointing a gun at you and tells you not to move, if you resist in anyway you are running the risk of getting a bullet. Whether you think a potential arrest is fair or not is incidental, why risk death because you’re upset about being treated unfairly.
And then again statistically a standard beat cop will most likely spend their entire career without ever having to pull their weapon out of their holster, so the cops in question tend to be panicking jackasses (even more reason not to protest or make sudden movements)
The vast majority of Americans don’t own guns, I would argue that Guns causing more deaths than Motorists in 2020 might suggest you want to make getting a gun at least as difficult as getting a drivers licence

[Letters]

Depp

[Niall_Quinn]

Listening to the Sam Harris podcast about this subject yesterday, couple of points he raised was that mass shooting incidents be it in elementary/high schools or the type of incidents like the one in Buffalo are a “rounding error” of the overall gun homicide rate in the US (but for obvious reasons this are far more entertaining for the media to report on)
America has more gun ownership per capita than anywhere else in the world but it’s homicide rate is greatly out of proportion by comparison (for example it may have twice as many gun owners per capita than say Israel but ten times as many gun related homicides)
And whilst you can argue whether civilians should have potential access to battlefield firearms (AR-15’s) its kind of a moot point because most gun related deaths are the result of being shot with a handgun, and not even the most ambitious proposed restrictions would do much about the sale of hand guns. The Democratic controlled congress that was in existence for the first two years of the Obama administration actually liberalised concealed carry laws.
On the flip side, the proposals made by Republicans are just as unhelpful, Ted Cruz wanting to have fewer entrances/exits into schools (well done make it actually harder for students to get away from an active shooter). Having metal detectors and armed guards outside schools tend to be a solution in search of a problem (despite how much we hear about them they are still statistically rare events).
Same with getting school children to do drills about what to do in the event of an active shooter, advice that seems as unhelpful as the advice given to people on commercial flights during hijacking. In the past keeping quiet and cooperating with your captor might be the best survival advice, but post 9/11 not really.
Hiding in a classroom under desks is a completely stupid way of dealing with someone who’s intent is to kill people all you are doing is making it more convenient for him by placing yourself in one location without a means of escape.
Now one of the lessons we can take from January 6th is that it’s easier to be part of an unarmed crowd rather than a single armed individual, if a crowd decides to rush you…you simply aren’t going to have the time to get off more than one shot and possibly not even that with something as cumbersome as a military assault rifle and this is then the best way to ensure survival in a situation like that

Appreciate the fact you've informed yourself, unlike almost everyone else.

The best tactic to avoid a mass shooter is well known and very effective. Disperse, at speed. Police response times, even if they are not actively working with the shooter, are pathetic. So your best chance is to give the shooter too many simultaneous targets to hit, even if the psychotropic drug infested state hire (maybe you know what I'm talking about) has an auto weapon. It's extremely difficult for an untrained weapons handler to actually hit a moving target - the difference between responsible gun owners and big pharma victims. Some will die, yes. Most will evade and escape. The instruction to shelter is a deliberate design to get more people killed, for political reasons of course.

Too cynical? Only those without imagination will think so.

[Letters]

Went into London today to see the stuff

Couldn’t get on to The Mall but watched the flypast from Trafalgar Square

Pomp

Ceremony

[Xhaka Can’t]

So, you saw fuck all?

[Letters]

So, you saw fuck all?

See FB for further details

[Xhaka Can’t]

I will.

STFU while I check

[Xhaka Can’t]

Airplanes, helicopters and lots of people.

Mind you, Hamleys!

Any damage to the wallet?

[Letters]

Airplanes, helicopters and lots of people.

And about 7.4 billion flags.
Good to see all that St Totteringham’s Day bunting was finally put to good use.

It wasn’t quite how I imagined the day, I didn’t think The Mall would be that mental. But we did have a good view of the flypast which was the main thing I wanted to see.

Oh and no, we managed to position it that we’d go into Hamleys to look for things which he might want Santa to bring him. Us