That is part of the issue.  It's not about the guns, it's about the basic human right to defense of self.  It has very little to do with a small metal object that makes loud noises.

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

You're too close to the issue, and obvious to everyone by yourself, well conditioned. While it's true that most public schools actually can pay higher wages than private schools, there are mitigating factors that result in a great many of the very best teachers choosing to teach in a private school setting, or simply leaving the profession.  My wife went to public school for 12 years, and is very well educated.  I won't imply that it cannot happen.  But I went to a private school for 12 years, and have had teachers that were considered the best in the entire state in their subjects, some of which had PhD's.  Today, my wife has a BS degree in Biology, and worked for a time as a microbiologist for Proctor & Gamble; but she is a stay at home wife & mother who homeschools five children from age 13 down to age one.  I'm not required to do so, but every few years I have my older kids take standardized tests, just so that I can compare their progress against their age peers.  When my oldest daughter was 10, she tested equal to an average (nationally, not state) high school junior (second semester) across all subjects.  My oldest son (who might literally be a genius, like my brother) took the same test at aged 8 (while running two grades ahead) and rang in as a first semester freshman.  In college.  (My little brother once took a IQ test with me, that was also a application exam for Mensa.  While both of us passed; the test was geared for a young adult.  I was 18 starting my first year of college, while my brother was 11.  I just squeeked in with an IQ of 136 and a percentile of 98.5 or so.  My little brother rang the bell on that test, and maxed out it's measurable range at 160+ IQ and a percentile of 99.9.  Today, my little brother has two degrees and is working on a third; but also has a mild case of Asberger's Syndrome, and has never held a job that pays more than $9 per hour, never been on a date with anyone as far as anyone in my family is aware, and is morbidly obese with absolutely zero career ambition; while I have five kids and have earned six figures for the past 6 years straight.  Raw IQ is no indication of success in life.)

This is not to say my kids are particularly smart (which could be true, but), it's to say that a homeschooled education is the only way to get the quality of education in this country that compares on equal terms with the quality of the public education systems in most of Europe or Asia.  At least for any reasonable tuition level.  You will one day look back on your public (and private) school career and either feel like you've been cheated of a quality education, or feel like those were the best years of your life. Either outcome is sad, IMHO.

BTW, I have a mild case of dylexia, so if I start moving letters around, it's because I'm tired (and MS Internet Explorere doesn't handle long form entries well) not because I'm illiterate.  When I went to (private) school, they tested for dylexia but didn't find mine, but when my father attended the same exact school decades before I, they treated his left-handedness as a mental dysfunction, and spent a great deal of time and stress on forcing my father to write with his right hand.  It's not like modern medicine didn't already know better by that time either.  All schools are institutions, and all institutions suffer from bureaucratic inertia and entrophy.  As a homeschooling parent; however, I can change my childrens' curriculum at any time, should I learn something new or discover an error.  In fact, I do this regularly.  Google, Wikipedia and Youtube are regular contributors to my childrens' education.

What if there was a uniformed policeman who was in the room with the mother and children, and had fired the five shots at the same man under exactly the same conditions.  Would your culture have considered that man a hero for doing his job, and for being in the right place at the right time?  If not, why not?  If so, then why not the mother under the same conditions?  Really, I'd like to know.

Ever considered the possibility that it's your cultural upbringing that's in the wrong?  Because I certainly have, and concluded otherwise. 

I'm not sure that I agree with this, and I'm a long running bitcoin bull.  It might happen, but I would think that before any particular society were to abandon their local fiat currency and commit the work necessary to both learn about bitcoin and price goods locally in bitcoin, that local fiat has to have some kind of crisis of confidence.  I can see this happening in many developing nations rather without much additional motivation than what the recent history has provided; but as to places with a long history of a well respected central banking system (I.e. The US, UK, Germany before the Euro, not sure about the Euro now) I doubt that even a minor crisis of confidence would motivate even a small minority of the general pubic to trade bitcoin in meatspace for a loaf of bread.  Certainly, so long as Bitcoin stands the test of time, such a crisis must come for all fiat; but I would consider it unlikely to occur in my own lifetime.  That is, so long as the US doesn't erupt in another civil war; which at this point is still a low, but rising, risk factor IMHO.

Would you care to elaborate?  What part of this story would you disagree with? 

To clarify my own position, I'm not opposed to gun regulation per se; but I am opposed to efforts by anti-gun political factions attempting to impose social contraints that are presented as "sensible regulation".  For example, while the 2nd amendment most certainly does grant me the right to own & carry a weapon, that doesn't mean that I get to do so without conditions.  The CCW license movement that swept across the US during the 1990's is an excellent example of such.  I don't have to ask for permission to buy the handgun, but a formal process that notifies the police of my intent to carry concealed for my own protection is in my own interests, whether I were to call it a permit or a notice.  But the idea of people who don't understand how firearms actually work attempting to dictate the maximum number of rounds that I may have in my handgun is not "sensible regulation".  As noted, I carry a Sig Sauer Mosquito handgun, which is a medium compact framed semi-auto chambered in the very small 22 Long Rifle.  Statisticly speaking, a single shot from a 22LR isn't even lethal enough to even be considered a "lethal weapon" under the law, because less than 20% of adult single gunshot wound victims actually die, at least not from the initial trama.  (impact trama is the 'one-shot stopping power" that large caliber fans harp about)  So, should I ever get into a real firefight, I'm either going to have to be accurate enough to hit a vital organ (i.e. headshot through the eye socket, not likely under the influence of adrenaline) or I'm going to have to be able to hit my attacker several times rapidly to approximate the level of trama that a larger caliber weapon can achieve in a single shot.  Up to four when comparing a 22lr to a 45 Mag.  So artificial limitations on shot capacity only serves to favor the larger caliber handguns, is unlikely to ever have any non-negligble effect on the lethality of some crazed gunman on a rampage, which is the official reason for such a "sensible regulation".  Spend enough time listening to the anti-gun crowd and their ideas, and anyone who has any real experience with firearms will learn that the group is composed of two types of people; one group that doesn't understand how firearms work or how they can actually be used as a defensive tool to the improvement of socity, and another group that does know but is opposed to firearms for some political or ideological reason that is unrelated to their professed motivations.  It's the latter group that thinks up the details of the "sensible regulations" they then can easily sell to the former group, since the former group doesn't actualy know enough about firearms to know better and have long been conditioned to believe that pro-gun rights types are wrong in the head and shouldn't really be listened to.  I know that it's cliche, but it's still very true in politics.  Gun control isn't about controlling guns, it's about controlling the public debate; and the pro-gun crowd tend to be the least manipulatable group.  Even the long conditioned anti-gun crowd in Australia and Britain are starting to second guess their own presumptions, since they are finally acknowledging that they have a rising rate of violent crime while the US overall has a long running trend of falling crime.  While it's not fair to presume that the increase in CCW license holders is the only cause, or even the major cause, of such a falling crime rate; it is certainly a positive contribution to the net trend.  A fact that can be proven in every single state that has already passed such laws.

I'm going to answer this question in two parts, because there is a short answer and a long answer.

The short answer to "would you like a society in which everyonhe carries a gun?" is probably not.

The long answer is because we live in a society that, historicly speaking, has defaulted to permissiveness with defensive weapons, and as a result of that those who choose to carry a firearm in public are a self selected group.  Since they are self selecting, those same people make their daily choices based on the perceptions of risk versus inconvience.  When in an area, or choosing to proceed into an area, with a reputation of elevated risk of violent crime; such people are likely to carry.  The corrolary is that those same people are generally likely to leave the weapons at home when they travel in or through an area with a reputation of safety.  The percentage of people who carry all of the time is very small, and usually related to their occupation, i.e. cop, prosecutor, corporate investigator, etc.  The vast majority of this self-selecting group is very trustworthy with weapons, as my prior article should demonstrate.  As previously stated, I have a concealed carry license that is valid in upwards of 30 states today, but to be honest I rarely actually carry a weapon in public.  I live in one of the safest cities in the United States with over half a million residents, and it also happens to have one of the highest per capita rates of CCW license holders and the hightest per capita rate of class III weapons ownership in the United States.  So excluding the mandatory gun possession in Switzerland and like places, the highest rate of machine gun ownership on the entire planet, probably across all of human history.  Like Switzerland, crazy people are not unheard of, but misuse of those weapons is so rare that such incidents can be counted on one hand, if it's even happened here at all.

In summary, permission to carry a weapon is not equal to the practial reality that all adults would actually do so; and if a majroity of adults ever felt they needed to, then there are other things wrong with that society that gun control couldn't possiblely help resolve anyway.  I can see of no logical reason to not trust those who choose to carry that they know what they are doing.  Stats show that they are at least as trustworthy as the uniformed police in this regard, and gun control isn't going to improve that issue.


Those who choose to carry are under the same obligations as the police to not harm bystanders, and it's also a leap of logic to assume that every CCW gun owner is 1) carrying in the resturant and 2) willing to intervene on behalf of the store owner, or even other patrons.  Being robbed while heeled becomes a risk versus benefit calculation with regard to responding with force, since the robber doesn't know you're armed also.  Some choose to hand over the cash and deal with it latter.  But not having the gun means that is never an option if the situation were ever to arise.  I'm in favor of defaulting to the condition that my daughter has the choice to defend herself using whatever technology is available to her, at least until she personally demonstrates that she is not really an adult.  After all, we all know people who are just children walking around as adults; and if they should ever show that they are willing to harm others then they shouldn't be able to retain the right to carry a weapon.  But that is not most people.  That is, in fact, a very small fraction of adults; even in our childish and violent modern culture.  Again, history shows that those who are willing to go to the trouble and expense of getting a CCW license are exactly the kind of people that a free and safe socity would prefer to be in the majority among the armed in public.

That's also not true.  And whatever industries that you work in are, by definition, of limited scope.  You can't rationally assume that your personal experiences are indidicative of the market as a whole, although I won't contest the point.


I suppose that would depend upon what industries we are talking about.  I'm sure that manufacturing for international markets would have an advantage in metric, simply because that market is larger.  Still, if that were universally true, then why does every car that I've ever owned have both metric and American standard parts, regardless of where it was made?  There are metric automotive tool sets that have oddball sizes (9.5 mm wrench, anyone) that are actually metric conversions of commonly used AS part sizes.  For the most part, Americans just have full sets of both AS and Metric, which is wasteful in some ways.  But we're Americans, so waste of resources is what we do.

EDIT:  For those who don't know, a 9.5 mm wrench is the same as a three-eights inch wrench.  Intended for a rather commonly used nut size for cars made in Japan, and to some degree cars made in Germany; for the simple fact that the size of nut is economicly and structurally ideal for it's use.  In part, because it's commonly used in the United States, and therefore mass produced to great economies of scale.

BTW, in some markets the AS continues to dominate, even in Canada.  Such markets are usually local in nature.  One great example is the trade in bulk firewood.  The standard way to measure bulk firewood in the US and in Canada is by the cord. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_(unit) Historicly (and often legally) defined as a stacked volume of wood measuring 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet, or 128 cubic feet.  To this day, your government continues to recognize the cord as the standard bulk measurement of wood, while also continuing to discourage it's use, while encouraging the cubic meter.  (A measurement of volume that is, notably very close to a "face cord" which is usually one-quarter (half and half again, base 2) of a full cord)

The cord is the commonly used standard for bulk firewood in a great many European nations as well, that also officially use the metric system.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mc-mc.nsf/eng/lm03963.html

I didn't claim that it was a conspiracy.


Again, I'm as familiar as anyone else is in the system.  I'm employed in a job that requires it's use.  I know what it's good for.


This is false.  It's the dominate choice because Europe was so screwed up with slightly different versions of the Imperial System beforehand, and it's the dominate choice today because developing nations have a vested interests in conforming to their primary markets.  The domiance of computers help keep it in use, but it's far from a market based victory.  Most of the nations that employ it today were forced to by government edicts.


And a pint is a pound of freshwater.  The major advancement of the Metric system was using base 10, which is good for mathmatics.  Like I said, AS is primarily a base 2 system, which is easier for the human mind to conceptualize withut calculators or pen and paper.  Notablely, however, caluclators didn't exist when the Metric system was in accendency; which is why it had to be forced upon most populations.  Although it did encourage the study of arithmatic among the masses.


Which, pratically speaking, isn't a particularly widely used mental calculation, in the real world.  Think about it; while it's trivial for you to convert distances that you measure in centimeters (the width of a table, for example) to distances that you would travel in a car (in kilometers) how likely are the average perosn to ever do such a shift of scale outside of the context of a math class?  Yes, it would be very difficlut for me to change thes same scale in AS; moving from inches (or feet) to miles,  shifting between scales of measurements is not a regualr use of either system by common people.


America does compete with the "Imperial system", and every American child learns metric in school; but there are very good reasons that the American Standard dominates within the US itself.  One of which is that base 2 is easier to do practial calculations in your head in, beyond simple changes of scale.

I question that.  I see the Feds arrest a guy that lived with roomates, and couldn't really afford a car.  One who walked to a internet cafe to access the website for maintaince issues.  And yet, the feds say this guy is the one in charge (among at least six admins) and claim that he is the owner of an $80 million encrypted bitcoin wallet that they can't seem to break into.

I, for one, think that this guy was an employee.  While he wasn't starving, he certainly didn't act like a guy that had access to 80 million dollars in an untaxable format.

The P90 is hard to get, because it requires a Class III weapons license, due to the fact that it's manufactured with a 12" barrel.  Perhaps you intended the PS90?

And it's very expensive compared to a 38 special handgun or a 22 rifle, both of which would serve quite well with practice.  And the price difference can pay for a lot of ammo for practice.  I personally carry a Sig Sauger Mosquito, a compact semi-auto chambered in 22lr.  The ammo is cheap and I can hit the target quite quickly, and I don't have to worry about a red mark on my forehead from recoil.

And it's better to conceal a weapon if you're leaving your house, because one doesn't really want to either alarm the liberals in a crowd or to alert the criminal to your defensive capacities.  Or do you think that defense of one's family only applies inside the home?

And damned expensive, hard to get in the US, and not very concealable.

This study, by it's design, excludes any shooting that the police themselves can claim is justified.  So this only includes cases of homicide by police, that even the police weren't willing to sweep under the rug.  Intuitively, the real odds of being killed by a police officer are higher if one were to also include on the job shootings.  Since CCW license holders don't have an on-the-job justifiable shooting catagory, such a comparison wouldn't really be valid.

Is that what your government tells you?  Mine has been telling me the same thing, even to the point of requiring that it be taught in my school and forcing me to use it in the military.

The natural rise of the American Standard was haphazard and still has strange artifacts of history (such as the mile), but most of the measurements (particularly volume and weight) are base 2 (halves and/or doubles) and are much easier for actual humans beings to conceptualize without the aid of a computing device.  It will take nothing less than being conquored by a foreign power to stop Americans from teaching the AS system to their children and using in daily business.  There is a good reason that a measuring tape manufactured in China will have both Metric & American Standard printed upon them.  Americans will use both, but generally only use metric when forced to by circumstances, or when talking to Canadians.  American construction workers hate metric, and every young architect quickly learns to produce prints in AS, regardless as to how great the metric system is to his trade.

American cars have Km's printed upon speedometers as a matter of law, but they are small print because Americans don't want them.

No

Notablely, I stumbled upon this article...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/dean-weingarten/cops-more-likely-to-murder%e2%80%a8/

That attempts to compare the murder rate of sworn police officers against the murder rate of licensed concelled carry permit holders.  The not very official rate of police officers that committed unjustifiable homicides, while working or otherwise, is around 1.5 per 100,000.  Which if they were a nation amongst themselves, would make them safer and more trustworthy than Germans.  One would expect such a law & order group to be upstanding.  But here's the unexpected part, the rate of concelled carry permit holders that commit homicides (with a firearm or otherwise) is just over 0.5 per 100,000; making the self-selecting lot of those who pursue such a permit the most trustworthy group in the world.

EDIT: In the interests of disclosures of biases, I am among that self-selecting group.

EDIT: It appears that those above numbers were for domestic homicides, not all homicides; but the trend remains true.

I'm still waiting for the pro-Obamacare posters to tell me how well their experiences went.

Then move.  Canada would be glad to have you.