On 1/31/2011 12:03 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Course, the problem there is, NJ is hardly isolated from any place else,
>
> Yep, that's certainly part of the problem, yes.
>
> BTW, it would be easy to enforce whatever gun control you want in the
> USA. Amend the constitution to overrule the second amendment. We have a
> legal process to do this. The problem with the people favoring gun
> control is that they *are* in enough of a minority that they can't get
> this to happen. Not unlike abortion, where no legislator is actually
> going to *vote* to outlaw it, but everyone wants the courts to decide
> their way. The only reason people argue about the meaning of the second
> amendment and to whom it applies is because enough voters like it how it
> is that the legislature can't get rid of it.
>
Yeah, the truly sad thing being, it doesn't even have to be changed to 
erase guns, just make the rules clearer. But, the invariable response is 
always, no matter what happens, or to whom, either claiming its a "state 
issue", or that its infringing on the right to ban/limit/control any 
guns at all.

>> rug and calling, "Just normal stuff, so we didn't put it in the report."
>
> You can go on speculating all you like. None of it actually means much
> until you show the extent to which anything like that actually happens.
> You can speculate that if the US changed our gun laws, Norway would have
> less violent crime, and you can speculate that if the US bought fewer
> violent video games, then Norway would have less violent crime, and
> you'd have about equal amounts of support for either stance.
>
Actually, no you wouldn't. The irony is, even though the issue of gun 
control may be fuzzy in the US, we are the #1 buyer of violent video 
games, and just about everything else similar, yet the violent crime 
rate actually dropped drastically about the time that such games hit the 
market, and its been in steady decline since. While correlation isn't 
causation, neither is it plausible to claim that the absence of 
something makes for the results in one place, while ignoring the fact 
that a similar decline/absence is happening where it is available all 
over the place. Same goes for all the claims about selling to kids. We 
have a few shootings and the like just about every decade, and someone 
manages to publish studies, and lay blame on what ever is popular at the 
time, while lacking "long term" evidence for any of it, yet.. 
restricting, or even banning, the thing in question never actually seems 
to *ever* result in the problem disappearing.

But, then, the real problem is abuse, mental health issues, and the 
like, and our refusal to deal with *those* problems, both as a nation, 
and as parents (the parents invariably always want it to be 
someone/thing else's responsibility/effect, never their own, or that of 
the child, just look at the whole MSR/Autism idiocy). But, banning shit, 
because some short term study implies that kids *maybe* get a bit more 
pushy after seeing stuff that is pushy, and concluding that this, in 
contradiction to all evidence otherwise is responsible for turning a 
measurable number of kids violent in the long term, while **nothing 
else** in their lives, apparently, have any impact, including the 
declining ability to schools to control/teach/punish for anything...

So, yeah, I personally find people that claim violence in games is a 
significant factor *at all* to be about as sound in their evidence, at 
this point, as climate change denialists. I tend to suspect, the real 
result will be something like, "If a kid already has serious issues, 
this may amplify them.", but, so can reading Catcher in the Rye, for 
some people. That doesn't mean you go around denying everyone under a 
certain age *ever* reading any books on the, "these might be dangerous", 
list. Well.. Unless you are one of the people that argues that even 
dictionaries should be abridged, lest someone under 18 look up the 
meaning of words like penis, and it have a picture of one, or something!

The solution is to deal with the problems, not stick everyone in plastic 
hamster globes, and only show them "safe" things, and never let their 
parents touch or discipline them, etc., all in some crazy attempt to 
prevent problems, by never exposing anyone to something that *might* 
increase an already existing problem. You go down that road and you get 
stupid shit, like giant hamster balls, and kids being sent to schools 
dedicate to, "protecting them", until they go out into the real world, 
and find that they have no damn clue how to deal with it. Which already 
happens, in some cases, in some of the more out of touch with reality 
religious schools.


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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