Trump

[zip accident]

I'm beginning to think that if most gun owners in the USA are to the right of the Democrats, the next few elections could be won by the Republicans by bloodbaths.

Apparently is not just the US

Greek Super League suspended after PAOK Salonika president invades pitch with gun

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43369490

Since when football clubs' Presidents run around with guns?

Football (soccer) is nuts. Not political, IMO.

My point is that violence defeats pacificism every time. Sometimes it seems that that isn't so, but off-screen there are supporters of the pacificists with bigger sticks.

[Little stoned kiwi]

This is an open carry case, rather than just carrying a gun. If it was concealed no one would have felt threatened. But a controlled, secure environment like that doesn't warrant carrying at all.

The warrior chooses pacifism. Someone displaying a weapon is fearful or aggressive, and dangerous either way.

[merman]

Rex Tillerson gone. One of the vaguely same people surrounding Trump, who did not even know about the secret Korea meetings. What a mess.

[everklear]

Seen in and around twitter today in a number of variants:

"Last year Rex Tillerson called Trump a ‘fucking moron’ and was not fired. Yesterday Rex Tillerson spoke out against Russia and was fired the very next day."

It's true.

[phattslagg]

But also this: interesting take on Middle East influences

[F-ZeroOne]

Truly tragic case in the US, 9 year old has an argument with his sister over the use of a videogame controller. There was an apparently unsecured handgun in the house, guess what happened next:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43455550

Clearly violent videogames were the only contributing cause in this incident, the handgun was just an innocent victim. <sarcasm>

[PFVA]

Mass student-led protests calling for tighter gun control are under way across the United States.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43526413

In the poll chart they have there i would like to see a break up of the ones who oppose or favour gun control by age brackets.

[zip accident]

Mass student-led protests calling for tighter gun control are under way across the United States.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43526413

In the poll chart they have there i would like to see a break up of the ones who oppose or favour gun control by age brackets.

Well I want to see a breakdown by political parties supported. I fear pacifism is becoming political, and that would be tragic.

[KlaxonCow]

I fear pacifism is becoming political

Or is it that violence became political - NRA lobbying - and that this is just the necessary adjustment to that?

It would be good to get the stats on the political affiliations, because I've got a deep suspicion that, actually, these protests would show a far greater political diversity across the spectrum than the stats on the political affiliations of NRA / Second Amendment supporters, which would come out a large chunk conservative, without question.

Trump apparently now wants to meet videogame producers because videogames are of course the entire, sole, only possible cause of school shootings.

There's a bloody obvious counterpoint to this "violent video games" hypothesis.

America is not the only country that plays them.

Indeed, one of the ones they like to prominently parade - the "Grand Theft Auto" series - is actually made in Scotland.

So you've got the logical problem that if "violent video games cause real-life violence" but those violent video games are played everywhere, all over the planet, then why does that real-life violence only seem to be being caused very specifically in America?

And the thing is, Canada has an awful lot of guns too. They kind of need them to deal with the wildlife and also have their hunting traditions. America isn't the only place with a lot of gun ownership, so why does it so specifically only go so catastrophically wrong for them?

The only thing that I can see which is unique to America that could possibly explain its disparity on this with every other nation on Earth - as America is simply not unique on having "violent video games" or a violent past or "toxic masculinity" or any of these oft-blamed characteristics - is simply the very existence of the Second Amendment itself.

And, from that, the whole machinery - such as the NRA - that comes out of it, which we could call "the Second Amendment industry".

There might well be a fundamental problem with a country that sends out the mixed message to its populous that murder is wrong, but owning a murder weapon is right.

[zip accident]

And the thing is, Canada has an awful lot of guns too. They kind of need them to deal with the wildlife and also have their hunting traditions. America isn't the only place with a lot of gun ownership, so why does it so specifically only go so catastrophically wrong for them?

There are Mexico and Columbia too, and they have a fair bit of gun violence, perhaps without the same level of game playing.

[Harlequin]

And the thing is, Canada has an awful lot of guns too. They kind of need them to deal with the wildlife and also have their hunting traditions. America isn't the only place with a lot of gun ownership, so why does it so specifically only go so catastrophically wrong for them?

There are Mexico and Columbia too, and they have a fair bit of gun violence, perhaps without the same level of game playing.

This might suggest that access to guns is no more the source of the problem in the States than access to violent computer games.

[gravy]

And the thing is, Canada has an awful lot of guns too. They kind of need them to deal with the wildlife and also have their hunting traditions. America isn't the only place with a lot of gun ownership, so why does it so specifically only go so catastrophically wrong for them?

That sounds like a reference to Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine. He's pretty good for polemic but not so great for facts.

His claim in Bowling For Columbine that Canada has more guns per capita than the US is just wrong; the US has around 3 times more, 4% of the world's population and 42% of the guns. It has stronger gun laws than the US as well.

Even so, compared to the UK they do have a gun problem.

I'm not discounting cultural factors but the prevalence of gun crime does seem to scale with an availability of guns.

[KlaxonCow]

That sounds like a reference to Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine.

It wasn't intended to be.

I've seen that movie, though, so maybe there's some subconscious influence on my choice of example country there.

His claim in Bowling For Columbine that Canada has more guns per capita than the US is just wrong;

He might have claimed that. I wasn't claiming that.

The US definitely has more guns.

But many countries have a lot of guns, albeit not as many, and the exact expression of violence in "rampage shootings" is just disproportionate in America.

If it were just gun availability alone, then a third of the guns would roughly translate to a third of the school shootings. But that's not what the numbers say.

[Misfit]

More interesting charts on how guns in the US related to the rest of the World and other things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081

33.5k deaths by guns in the US in 2014 (21.5k were suicides).

[Misfit]

Deleted, double post.