I don't believe that is generally true.  It's certainly not true for myself.  I've never felt unsafe, before or after owning firearms.  That's simply statisticly untrue in general.  I'm much more likely to die in a auto accident, and I know it.  All my firearms spend the vast majority of their time locked in a rather large safe, because they are valuable.  The rest of the time, they are shooting at paper.  I don't hunt, myself.  I do have a concealed carry license, but rarely carry at all.  I have the weapons, and the license, in the event that I ever do feel that I should need to carry.  I've never seen civil unrest in this city, but my father has, and I strongly suspect that he participated.  My father is actually fairly anti-gun, being a product of the 60's peace/love culture.  I'm not anti-gun because I joined the USMC at 17, partialy out of rebellion to my childhood.  The military culture was not for me either, but I do enjoy shooting, and also understand that the judicious use of force is a cornerstone of civilization; and the rifle is the king of personal weapons.  I'm a sheepdog among a flock of sheep, and I'm fully aware of that.  Many of those here that defend the personal ownership of weaponry are also sheepdogs.  You might not like the idea that we are around, but we are necessary for your peaceful society to continue to exist; whether or not we may be wearing a uniform.

That said, you are no more "safe" in a society that prohibits you, as a common civilian, from owning or carrying personal weaponry than I am in a society with a long and deep gun culture.  However you might feel about that is actually quite irrelevant.

http://www.gleamingedge.com/mirrors/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

http://cogitansiuvenis.blogspot.com/2012/07/is-america-really-more-violent-than.html

Taken as a whole, the United States is safer than Europe.  Although this article doesn't touch it, this is also true for murder unless you are someone who has first hand contact with criminal elements, as roughly 80% of murders in this country can still be connected to people with a prior criminal history; and that stat is actually much lower in Europe.  (I admit, I do not have access to those stats right now)  This is not to say this is acceptable, since many of those people are simply drug addicts or family members and not otherwise inclined toward criminal activity themselves, but it does put the murder rate into perspective.  Furthermore, as is true in Europe, some individual states (and particular cities) are safer than others.  Generally speaking, those US states with lower crime rates also have lower legal barriers for a citizen to obtain a firearms license.  This may not be cause & effect, admittedly, as states with higher crime rates might be more inclined to pass weapons restrictions as a result.  However, in every case wherein gun laws were relaxed for the law abiding, crime rates have decreased.  There is one city in Georgia that famously passed a law compelling all households to buy and keep a weapon, due to a very high local crime rate in 1982.  That law is still in effect, and that city has the lowest crime rate in Georgia today.

Maybe it didn't actually backfire, but you were definately shooting blanks.  It's not like Myrkul and I see things level, so I wish some of you guys would try harder.  I might be entertained if some of you were on his level, but so far I think that most of you guys are engaging in a battle of wits unarmed.

Very little?  The confirmed market for bitcoins are not less than $10 Trillion in value worldwide.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/28/black_market_global_economy

And this is just the part that the central bankers can't actually prevent, because it's all already beyond their legal system's reach.

Dude, really.  You should try to educate yourself a bit more before walking in to our house and trying to piss on the dinner table.  I'm gentle compared to what you're about to experience if you continue to expose an unsupportable position.  Most of these guys would throttle you by experience alone.

One thing is certain, neither the gun dealers nor the government are worse off because of the stupidity of the debate.  The gun sales have never been higher than they have been over the past couple of weeks.  The taxes alone would be a perverse incentive for certain persons in government to stoke the anti-gun elements into saying stupid things, just to light a fire under the fear-of-a-ban sales.  It's working in that respect, as many people that I've talked to say that the gun shops are literally sold out of everything.

He makes a fair point.

First, he did not legally obtain them.  He succeded in defrauding the dealers into believing that he was not prohibited by law, which is itself an illegal act.  Point in case that laws do not compel moral behavior, and therefore cannot be depended upon to have the effects intended by their proponents.

Second, even if that were not so and he actually did purchase his weapons within the legal framework of the state he lived within, that would still not an argument make.  Such people are aberations, for there are at least 10K other law abiding gun owners for every nutter.  Such high profile cases do not make for sound laws.


The second amendment does not effect the government's ability to possess arms in any fashion.  There is no need for the 2nd if that were it's purpose.  Even the hardest anti-gun historian will not claim this.  If you are going to enter into a debate on a topic for which you do not understand, you would be well behoved to read up on the topic.

http://www.olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/arms/fetish_flogger_vz58_9804web.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

Hey Lethn, is this the kind of intelligent debate that you intended that a UK subject could interject?

The unknown section is largely the solo miners, which is why they are unknown.  Regardless, small scale mining does not have to be profitable.  If you live in a cold climate, perhaps in a small flat wherein your method of heating is not under your own control, running a couple hundred watts of mining simply exchanges your heat bill via baseboard electric heaters for heat produced by the mining rig; in which case the cost of electricity is a net zero burden, and any coins that might be aquired are simply a bonus.  This would not be true for a major mining operation, since the heat would far exceed the demand for same; but this is as good a reason to mine in your own home as any other, and could undercut the professional miners even if they use ASICs.  This is the only kind of mining that I've personally done, since I don't mine in the summer, when I would have to pay for additional air conditioning in order to remove that waste heat.  In the winter, the additional heat isn't wasted, it simply offsets a portion of the heat demand upon my central heating unit (although, for me, gas heat is a bit cheaper overall).

Well, there are some things that can be done that shouldn't cost too much.  For example, I have a modern security system for my home that can detect the sound of glass breaking.  Sound sensors placed in most rooms and halls in a public school could be tuned to detect the sound of gunfire.  If you've ever heard real gunfire, it's more distinct than is shown in the movies.  It's got a sharp tone, and an abruptness that firecrackers cannot really approximate; so sound sensors should be able to identify most common firearm reports from 22's up to high powered rifles, although shotguns might be more difficult.  If a security system can rapidly identify gunfire, (or air sniffers can identify the presence of gunpowder, but that would trigger anytime a police officer entered the building) electronic fire doors could be closed and potentially locked in one direction.  I.E. fire doors can let you out of a building on fire, but not let you come back in.  Also, the ability of the automatic security system to call the police computers and inform the dispacter that a firearm has been discharged in the school would shave minutes off of the response time of the police.

The reality is that every gun rampage ends early only one way, with the use of a gun in another person's hands.  The debate really isn't whether or not such guns are necessary in as diverse a society as the United States, the debate is on who should be trusted with said firearms.  If you believe that only agents of the state should be trusted with firearms, then let me ask another question.  Do you also believe that a badge makes a man act morally, or is the badge a recognition (by the state) that the man acts in the state's own interests?

1) I do not support the Selective Service, but I understand the need for it.  I am too old to register, and never needed too because I was enlisted at 17.  No, I was not drafted.


You didn't bother to look up the legal meanings of those terms, did you?  Let me help you.  "Well regulated" means well trained or well practiced.  There is no doubt that the framers believed that marksmanship training should begin in early childhood and be performed by the family.  Anyone who tells you differently is uninformed.  The term does not refer to the "regular" army as we understand it today, as even the "regulars" during and after the revolutionary war were local and state militia, trained by whomever was willing and none were 'issued' arms by any government at any level.  A militiaman owns his own weapon.  This remained true up until the civil war.

The term "milita" did have a military context to it, but legally refered to, and still does in most states (including Kentucky and Texas) to any able bodied male citizen of the state between the ages of 16 and 55.  Any of them.  If they didn't own a weapon, or know how to use them, they were simply not "well regulated", it did not mean that they were not part of the militia.

And this is the legal justification of the Selective Service.  Not that the federal government actually has a right to draft citizens into combat against their own will, but that it has the obligation to know who the milita actually consists of.

Based upon the common understanding of the terms "well regulated" and "militia" as they existed at the time of the 2nd's writing, we are both members of such, whether or not you believe that or not.  That is the legal justification for the Selective Service registration system.

I believe that the right to defend myself and my family is a basic human right, and that the possession of the most effective tools to that end (by my own perspectives) are an extension of that right.  The 2nd does not grant such a right, it only recognizes that one exists.  Therefore, the truth of the statistical risks or advantages of private gun ownership are irrelevant.  Human rights are not dependent upon the practical argument.

http://www.a-human-right.com/

Furthermore, there really is no debate in this country on gun ownership.  If the attempt to repeal the 2nd were ever to gain traction politically, Texas would secede and several plains states would follow.  Texas still has the right of secession written into their state constitution, and is one of the largest economies on Earth independently of the US at large. The US gun culture is very real, and would not settle for public debate as failed to work in Britain and Australia.  The final argument against repeal of the 2nd is a civil war, and we've still got the weapons.  And don't tell me that US citizens wouldn't stand a chance against the US military, for there are more former US trained military in America just on the pro-gun side than there are active military everywhere in the service of the US government; and we know their capabilities and tactics because we taught them.  A modern civil war in the US would be as bloody as if the Taliban in Afganistan had been trained & equipt by the United States Marine Corps.

The local Bitcoin network could transfer between local users just fine with intermittent and spotty Internet access, but mining locally would not only be futile, it could even be counterproductive if the locally 'mined' block rewards were to start circulating and intermixing with the existing coins.  This would literally take months at the hashrate locals would be able to maintain, and likely be reset every time that the Internet connection was reestablished for any significant period of time, but mining should not be attempted in this scenario, even if it made economic sense.  A regular modem call, even an international one lasting hours, would be cheaper and less resource intensive than mining locally; and be much more productive towards the goal of facilitating local transactions.  The bandwidth requirements to maintain an isolated section of the network, so long as it is not trying to mine, does not scale with the number of local nodes or transactions.  Also, bitcoin doesn't really need a live connection, if the goal is simply to keep the local network's blockchain as up to date as possible.  The occasional snail-mailed USB drive has more than enough bandwidth, and bitcoin doesn't mind the high latency.

Nope.  This is a known threat, and not a particularly high risk, either.  Even if it turns out that a quantum computer can rapidly outpace traditional hardware with regards to SHA-256; the bitcoin reference code includes 'hooks' to permit an orderly transition to another, more quantum resistant, algorithem.

While 5 gigs isn't really a big issue, bootstrapping is a serious issue already and I expect that the trend towards growing block sizes will continue.  Light clients are destined to be the most common method for an end user to interact with the bitcoin network regardless, but blockchain pruning will permit more people to run full clients for a longer period of time.  This has all been expected, I just didn't expect it so quickly.

Wow, that;s a lot of growth since I switched to Electrum a couple months ago.  Sounds like pruning is becoming more pressing

I see.

Half a motorcycle?