US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1492

On November 28 2014 05:46 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Social spending in the US is comparable to European countries, and police equipment and spending is designed to protect the public, not keep people down.

On November 28 2014 05:49 Millitron wrote:

Tell that to the completely innocent people killed in SWAT no-knock raids.

On November 28 2014 05:46 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Social spending in the US is comparable to European countries, and police equipment and spending is designed to protect the public, not keep people down.

On November 28 2014 06:05 Sub40APM wrote:

I dont think handing out APCs is designed to keep anyone down, but I do think that the transfer of ex-military hardware to departments that dont need them leads to a issues like -- overuse of heavy equipment in instances that they dont need to and the transformation of police from members of the community, good police work isnt based on firepower but on intelligence -- to something else. If every day you kit out the same way as you used to when you used to patrol Baghdad -- 50% of police officers are veterans -- then you start treating citizens as Iraqis to ill results for everyone involved.

On November 28 2014 06:29 Nyxisto wrote:
"if all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail"

The heavier everybody is equipped the higher the standard will be set. If your civil class is armed like other country's police forces than it's not surprising that your police force looks like the military. As some people have already said I feel like the crazy gun fetish is one of the bigger problems when it comes to these violence issues.

On November 28 2014 06:44 Millitron wrote:

Except long guns in general are hardly ever used in crimes, let alone "Assault weapons".
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/crs-under-2-percent-of-gun-crimes-involve-assault-weapons/article/2516512

And many of these crimes listed aren't even violent crimes. They're things like having a 10-round magazine loaded when the state arbitrarily decided that only 7-round magazines are ok. As if those 3 more bullets made the thing a baby-seeking deathray or something.

On November 28 2014 06:48 Gorsameth wrote:

Its not about assault weapons.
Its about police having to treat everyone as being armed with a gun because well, a large portion is armed with a gun. It makes a "reached for his belt" from something to be cautious about into 'omg hes going to shoot me' and that in turn leads to police being quicker to shoot which leads to more deaths, more social unrest ect ect.

On November 28 2014 06:53 Nyxisto wrote:
Because population and inequality growth, and the war against drugs have come into the equation, too. It's one thing to have a heavily armed populace in a rural town where not much happens but in a city with heavy social problems and gang criminality this becomes a different kind of problem.

On November 28 2014 07:14 Millitron wrote:

It sounds to me like the social problems are the issue, not guns.If inequality and the war on drugs are causing the problems, having a backlash against guns won't solve anything. Cartels will always be well-armed as long as the war on drugs provides their funding, regardless of the state of legal gun ownership. Look at Mexico, their gun laws make California look like the wild west, and yet many of their police have to wear masks to avoid being identified by the cartels. And then there's the fact that police are just as vulnerable to knives as they are guns, maybe even moreso. Police-issue body armor doesn't help at all against bladed weapons. Basically, even if you magically made all guns not owned by police vanish, Detroit, L.A. and Chicago would still be urban warzones.

On November 28 2014 07:21 Paljas wrote:

Both are. But solving social problems is incredible difficult, restricting guns is easy in comparison.
You should try every option to reduce the violence. Dont just say "Oh, look at Mexico, clearly guns are not the problem".

e: @oneofthem: you made me suffer 50 pages of gmo talk

On November 28 2014 06:51 Millitron wrote:

This is a new problem though. We've always had a heavily-armed civilian populace, yet extreme police brutality is a pretty new phenomenon.

On November 28 2014 09:51 zlefin wrote:

is it? From what I've heard police used to be a lot more brutal than they are now; you just didn't hear about it as much.

SOCIAL EXPENDITURE UPDATE
Social spending is falling in some countries, but in many others it remains at historically high levels

New OECD data show that in recent years Canada, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom have experienced substantial declines in social spending as a percent of GDP, but in most countries social spending remains at historically high levels. Public spending in some emerging economies is below the OECD average, lowest in India and Indonesia but highest in Brazil where – as in OECD countries – pensions and health expenditure are important areas of social spending. New SOCX data also shows that income-testing in social protection systems is much more prevalent in Anglophone and non European OECD countries than in continental Europe. Finally, when considering the role of private social benefits and the impact of tax systems, social spending levels become more similar across OECD countries, and while France remains the biggest social spender, the United States moves up the rankings to second place.

It’s no secret that spending cuts (and tax hikes) have retarded America’s growth for the past four years. But data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggests that the era of austerity may finally have ended. ...

A little more than half of the total decline in government spending since the middle of 2010 is due to military cutbacks, some of which obviously has to do with the withdrawals of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the start of 2012, more than all of the decline in government spending can be attributed to reduced defence expenditures. For better or worse, this austerity also seems to have come to an end:

On November 28 2014 08:16 oneofthem wrote:
believe mehr mehr i was suffering too.

by gun ctrl hijack i mean the general way the issue is posed particularly how activists understand it, the specific question of getting rid of guns in innner city urban setting is pretty much not arguable.

so the gun advocates pls calm down