patrick.net

Goran_K says

This isn't the first time someone has tried to tell me on the internet that systemic racism exist in law enforcement agencies. I have never found any peer reviewed research that has proven, backed by credible studies, that law enforcement are more likely to specifically arrest or target black people over whites.

Then you haven't been looking.

First off, the entire War on Drugs was created with the sole intent of political gain by Richard Nixon. This fact is indisputable.
CNN: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Ehrlichman's comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.

This fact alone is evidence enough of racially motivated crime legislation and enforcement.

If you are stating that nothing less than the police admitting that they are the bad guys will suffice, then your standard is ridiculous. The police will never admit they do anything wrong even when they shoot a sleeping 9-year-old girl in the head and frame the grandmother for the murder and get caught in that lie. You might as well ask ISIS to make an official statement that they are the bad guys and that the "one true god" isn't on their side. It's a ridiculous false standard.

Statistics cannot tell you whether or not a particular criminal case is affected by racism. However, statistics absolutely can mathematically confirm that x% of criminal cases within a margin of error e% are affected by racism. If you don't understand why this works, you simply need to take a math class. The bottom line is that statistics absolutely proves beyond any doubt that racism does affect arrest and sentencing. Whether or not this racism is conscious is irrelevant. It is mathematically demonstrated, and math does not lie.

There are a plethora of articles and government reported statistics that demonstrate the War on Drugs is racially enforced. Here is an example.

The war on drugs remains as racist as ever, statistics show

The federal government released a new batch of data Monday about drug prosecutions in 2016, and the statistics show that African-Americans and Hispanics are still prosecuted far more frequently than white people for nearly every type of drug crime.

The report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that advises Congress and the White House about “the development of effective and efficient crime policy,” shows that of the 19,766 total federal drug cases in 2016, 50 percent of offenders were Hispanic, 23.6 percent were black, 22.8 percent were white, and 3 percent were classified as “other.”

Those stats are relative to an overall American population that is 77 percent white, 13 percent black, and 17 percent Hispanic.

Research has consistently shown that white people are actually more likely than African-Americans and Hispanics to sell drugs and about as likely to consume them, but they are still arrested and prosecuted less often than people of color.

“Higher arrest and incarceration rates for African Americans and Latinos are not reflective of increased prevalence of drug use or sales in these communities, but rather of a law enforcement focus on urban areas, on lower-income communities and on communities of color as well as inequitable treatment by the criminal justice system,” according to the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York City-based nonprofit that seeks to end the war on drugs.

So whites do drugs at the same rate as blacks and whites sell drugs at a higher rate than blacks, but blacks are arrested and imprison way the hell more often than whites. This is, by definition, racism. The math is indisputable.

And as for the raw data...
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/RHI225215/00
http://www.ussc.gov/research/sourcebook-2016
https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm
https://www.bjs.gov/nps/resources/documents/QT_age%20sex%20race%20distribution_counts_2015.xlsx

So yes, peer reviewed research that has proven, backed by credible studies, that law enforcement are more likely to specifically arrest or target black people over whites. And if you don't believe the studies did the statistics right, then do the damn math yourself. That's the thing about math, is that the right answer is repeatable no matter who does the math or when. So do the math and show me where everyone else went wrong or accept the math.

Goran_K says

Here what happened after the handgun ban in the UK:

Different law, different affect. The answer is simple. Don't adopt the UK laws. Adopt the Australian laws.

Goran_K says

Gun bans do not solve the core problem of people being murdered, it just changes the method of how people are murdered.

Your statement is empirically disproved by the Australian example. The only thing you have shown is that the UK laws did not go far enough to be effective and that stricter gun control is needed.

However, even the UK gun laws are clearly better than US gun laws. Gun violence rare in U.K. compared to U.S.

The gun homicide rate in England and Whales is about one for every 1 million people, according to the Geneva Declaration of Armed Violence and Development, a multinational organization based in Switzerland.

In a population of 56 million, that adds up to about 50 to 60 gun killings annually. In the USA, by contrast, there are about 160 times as many gun homicides in a country that is roughly six times larger in population. There were 8,124 gun homicides in 2014, according to the latest FBI figures.

Gun violence in the UK is far less per capita than in the US because guns are far more rare. The fact that a particular law didn't further diminish gun violence does not demonstrate that reducing guns is ineffective. You are cherry picking data to support a claim that the facts simply don't support.

Dan8267 says

Different law, different affect. The answer is simple. Don't adopt the UK laws. Adopt the Australian laws.

It's not so simple. The majority of gun homicides in the US are done with a handgun, not long guns. In fact more people die getting kicked or punched to death than getting shot by a rifle (of any kind).

Yet you want a blanket ban?

Perhaps white drug dealers are just better at being criminals than black drug dealers. Perhaps black or Latino drug dealers sample their own product way more and wind up so high they make bad choices that lead to their arrest.
Perhaps neither of these are true, but the point is that your numbers are only correlation and do not show causation! Any scientist could tell you the same, Dan, which is why you are not one and just a code monkey.

Goran_K says

Yet you want a blanket ban?

My only opinion on what the law should be is we should use what has been proven to work. I believe in empirical evidence and the scientific method. Where those two things lead me is irrelevant. I will accept the results of the experiments regardless of whether those results confirm or disprove my hypothesis. The scientific method is the only valid method for testing empirical truth.

Goran_K says

Okay I didn't read the whole study.

That's your first problem.

Goran_K says

Can you show me where the study claims it's simply not black people committing more crimes than whites/asians/etc and how it proves that?

I already did that. I even gave you links to the raw statistical data. What more do you want? Does the god of mathematics have to appear before you and show you his holy algorithm?

Goran_K says

Ah. So "bad PEOPLE" caused the spike in gun crime, not law abiding citizens.

Interesting point. I like where you're going with this.

Sorry, but every criminal is, by definition, a law-abiding person until he commits his first crime. Sometimes that first crime is murder.

The Economist: Data suggest guns do in fact kill people

There were 622 homicides in England and Wales in 2011. In America, with a population 5.5 times as large, there were 14,022.

How much of that difference should be chalked up to the presence of guns? Well, gun-rights advocates often argue that there's no point taking away people's guns, because you can kill someone with a knife. This is true, but in practice people are nowhere near as likely to get killed with a knife. In America, of those 14,022 homicides in 2011, 11,101 were committed with firearms. In England and Wales, where guns are far harder to come by, criminals didn't simply go out and equip themselves with other tools and commit just as many murders; there were 32,714 offences involving a knife or other sharp instrument (whether used or just threatened), but they led to only 214 homicides, a rate of 1 homicide per 150 incidents. Meanwhile, in America, there were 478,400 incidents of firearm-related violence (whether used or just threatened) and 11,101 homicides, for a rate of 1 homicide per 43 incidents. That nearly four-times-higher rate of fatality when the criminal uses a gun rather than a knife closely matches the overall difference in homicide rates between America and England.

Then there's the related argument that people have a right to defend themselves against aggressors carrying firearms, and that if you criminalise gun ownership, only criminals will have guns (which is perhaps what Ice-T was getting at). That may be valid in the abstract. In practice, 0.8% of victims of gun violence say they responded to their attackers by either using or threatening to use a gun. Not much of a risk for the criminal, it seems.

None of this should be particularly surprising. We know that overall, firearm deaths are lower in states with stricter gun-control laws. More recently, we've learned that the expiration of America's assault-weapons ban was responsible for a substantial portion of the subsequent increase in gun deaths in northern Mexico. It's really not terribly shocking that making it harder to get your hands on machines designed to kill people results in fewer people being killed. But we've worked very hard over the past few decades to convince ourselves otherwise.

Facts are a bitch, aren't they?

Dan8267 says

I already did that. I even gave you links to the raw statistical data. What more do you want? Does the god of mathematics have to appear before you and show you his holy algorithm?

I simply want you to show me that blacks are not committing the violent crime and murders that are being reported by the CDC/FBI every year, and show me that somehow this data is wrong and being misinterpreted somehow. Basically, show me systemic racism that somehow explains why blacks are committing 50% of the violent crime ever year in the United States despite being only 13% of the population.

NY Times: More Guns = More Killing

Scientific studies have consistently found that places with more guns have more violent deaths, both homicides and suicides. Women and children are more likely to die if there’s a gun in the house. The more guns in an area, the higher the local suicide rates. “Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death,” said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “There is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all.”

How much clearer can we make it?

Goran_K says

I simply want you to show me that blacks are not committing the violent crime and murders that are being reported by the CDC/FBI every year, and show me that somehow this data is wrong and being misinterpreted somehow.

If you reduce the prevalence of guns in society, blacks would be committing far fewer murders and violent crimes. Your conclusion is wrong. It is empirically wrong.

zzyzzx says

OK, so the real problem is overpopulation. Ban Overpopulation!!!

Actually, yes, we should do that, but such an effort is not mutually exclusive with strict gun control.

Think about it this way. Why should guns be exempt from the kind of legislative controls we accept on other pure weapons with high destructive power? No one calls to end laws prohibiting citizens from using land mines, tanks, nuclear bombs, biological viruses, or the vast majority of armaments. Why are guns the one and only kind of weapon that is sacred? Answer: they aren't.

Dan8267 says

If you reduce the prevalence of guns in society, blacks would be committing far fewer murders and violent crimes. Your conclusion is wrong. It is empirically wrong.

So why not just ban blacks from having guns?

errc says

When everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal

Ain't that the truth. :)

Goran_K says

So why not just ban blacks from having guns?

Some of us respect the Constitution and the principles of our country including the 14th Amendment.

Goran_K says

So I need a very strong argument to curb a civil liberty.

The liberty to possess guns infringes upon the liberty of others to live. That's a damn strong argument, and it's backed up with plenty of empirical evidence.

Just think about it this way. The liberty to possess nuclear weapons infringes upon the liberty of others to live. You believe that and there is damn little evidence to support that statement while there are mountains of evidence to support the similar statement about guns. The number of people murdered with guns far exceeds those murdered with nukes but only because people don't have easy access to nuclear weapons.

errc says

When everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal

Actually, that statement is empirically false, and it is important to understand why.

Many states, including the U.S., over-criminalize things and then selectively enforce the law. In essence, every citizen commits a dozen crimes a day simply by going through the motions of living. The police can then use those crimes to punish people for completely unrelated things like political views, personal grudges, sexual rivalry, or anything else. Every person is a criminal, but only the tiniest percentages of crimes are prosecuted, and then not for the sake of the crime, but for unrelated personal reasons.

It is illegal to have oral sex with your spouse in some states. Flirting or kissing for too long is also illegal in some places. Such laws are always highly selectively enforced.

Politicians can and do pass laws for perverted reasons. The entire War on Drugs was created solely to prevent minorities from voting and to demonize them. It is continued for other perverted reasons including profiting at the expense of the victims of that war. Cops, prosecutors, and judges fully take advantage of selective enforcement and arbitrary and inconsistent sentencing to push tribal, personal, and political agendas.

Discretion in the law invites corruption and abuse.

Dan8267 says

The liberty to possess guns infringes upon the liberty of others to live.

It does? How?

Dan8267 says

The liberty to possess guns infringes upon the liberty of others to live.

How the fuck? The mere possession of the weapon does not infringe on anything.

Straw Man says

How the fuck? The mere possession of the weapon does not infringe on anything.

So then you would have no problem with U.S. citizens or foreigners having nuclear weapons? Somehow, I think not.

Drunk driving infringes upon the rights of others by risking their safety. Same can be said of possessing weapons. Would you say that your right to safety is not infringed upon if random individuals around the world had doomsday devices capable of destroying the entire world at the push of a button? Would they have to actually push the button before the law could take action? Would you OK with North Korea or ISIS having nukes since neither has ever used one yet?

Dan8267 says

Drunk driving infringes upon the rights of others by risking their safety. Same can be said of possessing weapons.

Possession of cars infringes upon the right of others by risking their safety. Same can be said of drunk shooting.

See, I can play this idiotic game too.

Dan8267 says

So then you would have no problem with U.S. citizens or foreigners having nuclear weapons? Somehow, I think not.

It's funny that the only way you can keep your point salient is by mentioning "bearable nuclear weapons". Don't you think that's sort of telling?

Dan8267 says

Goran_K has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be an ideologue in this thread. He cannot be reasoned with. He can only be exposed as the ideologue he is. That is the only purpose of this thread.

I'm an ideologue because I'm asking you to explain your ideas?

So does smoking dope and driving...
add that shit into the equation.
Dan8267 says

Drunk driving infringes upon the rights of others by risking their safety.

Gun crime, murder by firearm in particular, is overwhelmingly a crime of the black inner city. It is too complex to solve the societal drivers of this fact so they default to reducing all of our liberties. I live in an area with a murder rate equivalent to Finland. You could come up here and take all of our fucking guns (as Diane Frankenstein would love to have it) and the crime rate would not budge, here or in Oakland.

Dan8267 says

Some of us respect the Constitution and the principles of our country including the 14th Amendment.

But not the 2nd?

Straw Man says

Possession of cars infringes upon the right of others by risking their safety. Same can be said of drunk shooting.

Really? So you are saying that either
- we should not allow cars at all
or
- we should allow drunk driving

Well, evidently the entire fucking world disagrees with you.

We make driving sober legal and driving drunk illegal. Do I really have to explain to your peanut brain why? Please say yes and I will. Or you can demonstrate some level of intelligence by explaining why yourself and thus why you are wrong.

Dan8267 says

We make driving sober legal and driving drunk illegal. Do I really have to explain to your peanut brain why? Please say yes and I will. Or you can demonstrate some level of intelligence by explaining why yourself and thus why you are wrong.

Cool. So we make lawful self defense legal, and gun murder illegal. Everything's good now.

Goran_K says

It's funny that the only way you can keep your point salient is by mentioning "bearable nuclear weapons".

Showing the logical conclusion of a statement, including all edge cases, demonstrates whether or not the statement is true. If a statement results in inescapable and ridiculous consequences, then the statement is ridiculous no matter how sensible it appears at first glance.

For example, the statement "babies who die go to heaven" may seem reasonable at first glance. However, the consequence of the statement is that allowing babies to live risks their eternal torment in hell and the best thing you can do for babies is to immediate kill them and send them to heaven. Thus, either murdering babies is a good thing or the premise "babies who die go to heaven" is wrong. It is completely valid to point out that the consequences of a premise are rejected by those making the premise. If you don't accept the consequences of your premise, then you are rejecting your premise. So why should I accept it?

Goran_K says

I'm an ideologue because I'm asking you to explain your ideas?

No. You are an ideologue because you ignore and discard any evidence that contradicts your dogma while cherry picking and distorting evidence to support that dogma.

BlueSardine says

So does smoking dope and driving...

add that shit into the equation.

The premise, right or wrong, that being high on pot affects driving is the reason it is illegal to drive under the influence of pot. Regardless of the truth of the premise, the logical form confirms my point. You do not have the right to avoidable and significant force risk unto other people against their will.

Goran_K says

Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate, they are not "bearable arms", and are not weapons of "self defense"

1. The Second Amendment says nothing about "self-defense".
2. All offensive weapons are defensive weapons. Nuclear arms especially so. It's called MAD, mutually assured destruction, and it's been the basis of preventing WWIII for the past 70 years.
3. Nuclear weapons are most certainly bearable. One can detonate a nuke in a suitcase, a so-called snuke.
4. There is nothing that draws a special line separating guns from all other types of arms including nuclear weapons. Arms fill a continuous and gradient space of weaponry. Guns are in no way inherently distinguishable from all other kinds of weapons and thus do not deserve any special kind of treatment. This is exactly why the Second Amendment says "arms" and not "guns". Any Second Amendment protection would apply to all arms including nuclear bombs as much as it applies to guns. This is why the Second Amendment is a bullshit deprecated amendment. It just hasn't been officially revoked due to politics. In practice, it was revoked a century or more ago.

Suitcase nuclear weapons?

Oh boy.

Goran_K says

I believe Americans should have weaponry necessary to the preservation of a free state. I do not think Nuclear weapons, Biological weapons fall under this statement.

Then you are a delusional fool. If the American public had to rebel against the federal government to restore freedom, they would need weapons that could level Cheyenne mountain. That's at least a MOAB if not a nuke.

The American citizens would need tanks, land mines, rocket-powered grenades, supersonic aircraft, and aircraft carriers to fight the federal government, which has all of these things in abundance.

Only the biggest fool in the world thinks that unfunded civilians with guns can take on a trillion dollar a year war machine. It would be a masquerader if you even tried to take on a state government with the pitiful guns you have. Don't believe me, try it. You'll find out how quick suicide by cop is.

The idea that men with pistols and AK-47s could overthrow a corrupt federal government is a ridiculous fantasy. Those weapons don't work on the Apache helicopters that kill your family from miles away using
- 30 mm articulated cannons
- 1,200 high-explosive rounds fire in less than 2 minutes
- 70 mm rockets that can be guided or unguided
- Hellfire missiles that can identify, track, and hunt targets that are miles away, even in the dead of night

Yeah, you really stand a fucking chance. An eight-year-old gamer could take out your entire resistance in five minutes with one of these.

Goran_K says

Dan8267 says

Some of us respect the Constitution and the principles of our country including the 14th Amendment.

But not the 2nd?

Like I said, the Second Amendment is defunct. If it weren't, you could have land mines, Hellfire missles, ICBMs, and nukes.

So yes, I have no respect for the Second Amendment. It would be a death sentence to the entire human race if applied today, and you clearly realize that. The founding fathers weren't so fucking stupid that they would think of applying it to our time. No one is that stupid.

I respect the entire rest of the Constitution, which still applies, or at least should, today.

Dan8267 says

Then you are a delusional fool. If the American public had to rebel against the federal government to restore freedom, they would need weapons that could level Cheyenne mountain. That's at least a MOAB if not a nuke.

The American citizens would need tanks, land mines, rocket-powered grenades, supersonic aircraft, and aircraft carriers to fight the federal government, which has all of these things in abundance.

Only the biggest fool in the world thinks that unfunded civilians with guns can take on a trillion dollar a year war machine. It would be a masquerader if you even tried to take on a state government with the pitiful guns you have. Don't believe me, try it. You'll find out how quick suicide by cop is.

The idea that men with pistols and AK-47s could overthrow a corrupt federal government is a ridiculous fantasy. Those weapons don't work on the Apache helicopters that kill your family from miles away using

- 30 mm articulated cannons

- 1,200 h...

Just like the might of that $1 trillion dollar machine was able to do so to Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Nusra, which eventually lead to the downfall of Islamic Extremism all over the world.

Goran_K says

No, once they deploy Apaches, you use your AR15 to go attack an arms depot, and you get some stingers.

That has to be the stupidest thing you have said so far. By then, it's too late. A government that is cracking down on its civilian population isn't going to let that population obtain arms that would threaten it. If the damn local gun store doesn't carry stingers now, then it isn't going to get them when the tanks start rolling.

Dan8267 says

That has to be the stupidest thing you have said so far. By then, it's too late. A government that is cracking down on its civilian population isn't going to let that population obtain arms that would threaten it. If the damn local gun store doesn't carry stingers now, then it isn't going to get them when the tanks start rolling.

So ISIS, Al Qaeda, running around with all those tricked out M4s, shoulder mounted anti-armor missiles, M1 Abrams tanks, and artillery created that themselves? I thought they captured them...

Goran_K says

5,000 armed citizens could absolutely take a weapons depot.

Any tyrannical state would simply simply kill all 5,000 armed citizens and destroy the depot using a missile or the MOAB. This would be trivial for our federal government to do. This is what would happen to your armed rebellion.

www.youtube.com/embed/j0BG_GBOFTw

Our government has no problem using such weapons for "their psychological effect" or what is commonly referred to as terrorism, the infliction of terror into a population to coerce submission. They use such weapons precisely to convince the opposition that there is no hope for victory. They would gladly use it to kill your rebel scum just to turn those rebels into an example for the rest of the population.

Dan8267 says

Our government has no problem using such weapons for "their psychological effect" or what is commonly referred to as terrorism, the infliction of terror into a population to coerce submission. They use such weapons precisely to convince the opposition that there is no hope for victory. They would gladly use it to kill your rebel scum just to turn those rebels into an example for the rest of the population.

Historically, Operation Linebacker only emboldened Vietnamese resistance.

Goran_K says

I would engage in guerrilla warfare and target convoys.

You would die in the first week when some navy seal sniper shoots your head off. No matter how tyrannical the government was, you'd be made out to be a terrorist and the guy who murdered you would be made out to be a hero. Strategist would be singing that guy's praises. That's reality.