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  1. #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by FenceFurniture View Post
    I think now is as good a time as any to get back on topic. Arguments about gun culture never get anywhere. Just be glad we don't have much of one here.
    Very nice. "let's just get back on topic, and stop arguing. Just be glad I'm right and you're forced to agree with my opinion".

    Personally, I spent a lot of time target shooting as a kid, and then when I was single, spent a lot of time freely going back and forth to a rifle and pistol range. I reloaded my own ammunition and would prefer our setup here. I have the right to do, and avoiding gun violence of any statistical significance (compared to anything else that may be terminal) is pretty easy.

    The number of people running around here (a small minority) crowing about the chance of school shootings and paying no attention to children with depression or drug habits is appalling. There are a few who die in each district every decade from suicide or drug use, or drunk driving, but everyone is fixated on something that is extremely unlikely. It's sheer stupidity.

    However, if you cannot differentiate between being a small time drug dealer on the streets of chicago vs. living in a suburb and hunting deer and punching holes in paper while your kids are in school not being a small time drug dealer, I guess it could cause all kinds of irrational fear. I can name a handful of kids from my schools who committed suicide while they were in school, and some who have done it later. The anomaly here is that none shot themselves, but several did hang themselves from trees. My relative did shoot himself, but had been a life long alcoholic (drinking pretty much only beer, all the time, with everything -and he was in an incident at work where someone smelled stale alcohol on his breath. He quit drinking cold turkey, and had requisite issues as dry drunks do and went through a gaggle of psychiatric medications and ended it. If you're just looking for the conclusion that you want, you could ignore absolutely all of that and blame it on the hunting rifle that he rigged to end his pain. if he'd have lived long enough (and not been forced to stop drinking - he'd lost his license driving already and nearly gotten killed driving off the side of a road and under a bridge shearing the top off of his car), he probably would've had cirrhosis or an alcoholic stroke).

    Eventually, the guns will be taken away here (I have none now, no use for them in the burbs and I can play guitars here plenty easy) because people will fail to address the behaviors that get people into selling drugs (broken families, no teaching of children within the home about long term planning and self-building, enormous use of mind altering drugs that have severe side effects for a small percentage, including derealization, etc).

    The difference between us in the states and folks wringing their hands about what goes on in the states is that if australia has no interest in the same level of 2nd amendment stuff that we do, we don't care. there are a couple of sensationalist not for profits that barrage us with "look, it happened in NZ and it could happen here, too", and I generally tell them to shut up. This is an extremely small group that sends out things like mailers, and they're made from the same material as the folks who send out grandiose mailers saying things like "it's unlikely that your child will be able to complete school without witnessing a school shooting". I'd like to put both of those types in a jar and shake it. I'd like to add anyone else who thinks they have an opinion that is fact and then you should be forced to have the same thing because they can't address their own psychiatric problems (irrational fear of things that keep them from actually doing anything productive for other people).

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  3. #107
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    Let me give you a simple real statistical figure.

    Australia has about 6000 alcohol attributable deaths per year (accidents, cirrhosis, etc). That doesn't include low functionality or injury, or loss of familiy structure due to alcoholism, it's just death. I don't know if accidents include road accidents or not.

    If we were to extrapolate that number to the US (our non-traffic related alcoholic deaths are about the same rate. More in number due to our size, but a list of alcohol related deaths is within 10% for the two of us), that would be 84,000 deaths due to alcohol. This doesn't include opioids or any other substances (opioids commonly leading to other problems here - including heroin. I actually know people who have children who have gotten as far as heroin after becoming dependent on opioids after surgeries, so this is one where it doesn't sound like a bang, but it's far more common than death by homicide).

    The current death rate in the US for opioids (2017 data, there is lag in reporting) is 47000 nominally per year (opioids, and folks who travel from them to heroin, etc).

    In 2017, the number of non-suicide gun homicides was 11,300. Suicides were about double that figure. I would imagine the suicide rate would be lower without guns, but it wouldn't be zero. You are unlikely to be hurt in someone else's gun suicide.

    So, we have an alcohol and opioid death rate of more than ten times as high as the non-suicide gun deaths (as a percent, not a nominal rate), and we haven't excluded gun deaths due to drug trafficking, etc. But, let's say we don't exclude those. Your chance of being affected by just opiod-related and alcohol related death is 12 times higher than firearms, and you have not yet considered maybe not living in places where firearm deaths are high (you wouldn't be living in those places, anyway -there are other issues that would drive you out of them - property crime and theft).

    The CDC lists deaths by all accidental causes per year at 170,000 (falls, drowning, car accidents, poisoning).

    I am not in favor of banning alcohol and I don't really know enough about opioids to make a comment about it.

    I do know that the CDC provided a statistic that firearms related deaths have gone down as a matter of rate while registered gun sales have skyrocketed. This is zero indication that buying guns reduces gun deaths (as some people will state), there's no causal link. IT just suggests that non-criminals are buying more guns, probably for recreation.

    I am far more wary as my kids are growing up about watching them for traps of falling into depression or getting set up with friends who may drink or use drugs. It should be pretty easy to see why that is. I have little fear of them somehow getting mixed up in a gun incident that results in death (that's not related to suicide - covered under depression, or somehow getting really stupid and getting in the middle of some criminal enterprise). If my daughter should run into a spouse who does have firearms and seems like a crackpot, we'll address it then. She's far more likely to run into an abusive alcohol or suffer from depression.

    If you can't gather from that how obnoxious recreational shooters (or former recreational shooters like me) find internationally located know it alls on the whole gun topic, then maybe a class in stastistics is in order. If you have an irrational fear of death, then maybe you ought to focus your fear or something more likely.

    The father of one of my wife's friends tripped and fell down a set of stairs this year. He was 72. nobody was home, and the fall resulted in his death. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as the fall (not due to a heart attack or stroke and then fall). I didn't hear anyone saying "thank goodness he didn't die in a shooting". I didn't hear anyone crying for a mandate of slab houses without steps, either.

  4. #108
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    Quote Originally Posted by D.W. View Post

    Personally, I spent a lot of time target shooting as a kid, ....................................................................................keep them from actually doing anything productive for other people).
    And what has this continual fake news about the alleged great USA to do with the subject of this thread, which is :

    "Rob Streeper - a USA member here - got the C19 virus"?

    If you feel so proud of your country why don't you start your own thread.

    Peter.

  5. #109
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sturdee View Post
    And what has this continual fake news about the alleged great USA to do with the subject of this thread, which is :

    "Rob Streeper - a USA member here - got the C19 virus"?

    If you feel so proud of your country why don't you start your own thread.

    Peter.
    I have no idea how the "gun thing" got started in this thread. I don't have nationalist pride. I live in a country. I could live in the UK, Germany, australia just fine - I don't think it would materially affect my life. That's my point. It seems to be a popular thing on here to go on and on about the "gun problem" in the US, and now the same schadenfreude is coming up here with the corona virus.

    It's like a mental deficiency of some sort to celebrate that - one of the ugliest tendencies of human nature, to tout your own virtues and say "there, look, I was right, it's so satisfying". Even dumber when people are celebrating folks who have died because they were willfully ignorant of covid.

    Don't think we don't have it here, too, but the "schadenfreude superiority" force is strong on this board, and it's strong on the UK board. Unfortunately, the things that actually hurt people on a more regular basis or lower the standard of living for everyone are unaddressed, because they're not as fun for the folks lacking nerve endings to lampoon.

    I never hear (in the united states) this same kind of casting stones at other countries except for the celebration of the failure of communist and socialist systems in other countries (venezuela, etc), and I have no idea why anyone would celebrate human suffering in those places, either.

    It's not a nationalist country contest. Politics are stupid, no matter which side of the pro-wrestling-style psychology you're on.

  6. #110
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    When i first saw this thread in the forum listing - this isn't a subform that I generally read, but I saw rob streeper and covid. I had hoped that I would read that rob had covid and recovered, but I guess that was naive to believe that well wishing without a bunch of unrelated schadenfreude would be here. That's too bad.

  7. #111
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    Well I, for one, am glad that Rob has almost recovered from COVID19. I enjoy reading his contributions to this forum. I also enjoy reading D.W.'s contributions, most recently his 'unicorn' chisel sharpening method.

    As for politics and statistics, I just shrug my shoulders, take them with a grain of salt and get on with really important things.... like woodwork.

    Twosheds

  8. #112
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    Quote Originally Posted by FenceFurniture View Post
    Arguments about gun culture never get anywhere.
    That's a fact, not an opinion. Never have I seen one person from either side change their opinion.
    Quote Originally Posted by FenceFurniture View Post
    Just be glad we don't have much of one here.
    Another fact - we just don't have a big gun culture here.
    That's something to be glad about - in my opinion - and nobody is being forced to agree with the opinion part of that, but I imagine the vast majority would be glad (probably 2 dissenters in this thread).

    Therefore this (quoting only the relevant phrases, and not out of context)...
    Quote Originally Posted by D.W. View Post
    Very nice. "Just be glad I'm right and you're forced to agree with my opinion".
    ...is just a load of tosh, trying to manipulate two statements of fact into whatever you would like it to be, so as to be able to take offence. Just as you tried to with your "drama queen" response.

    Quote Originally Posted by D.W. View Post
    I have no idea how the "gun thing" got started in this thread.
    I can help there. Using Ctrl F,"gun", Highlight all, on the three pages of this thread gives a pretty succinct answer to that (and note that this does not include the very few mentions of "rifle"):

    Posts 38,43,46,81,90 show the word "gun" 1-3 times, if I have counted correctly, 10 mentions all up.
    There was not what I would call a "gun thing" going on through those 90 posts.

    Posts 93 (5 mentions), 96(2), 99(3), 104(1), 106(2), 107(11), 109(2), a total of 26 mentions.
    D.W. wrote posts 93,106,107,109 with 20 mentions - more than all other posts from 38 onwards put together, and 20/26 mentions from post 93 onwards can be attributed to D.W.

    Perhaps your answer to how the "gun thing" got going lies there? Telling all about your own previous gun culture, at length, at least twice.



    "Schadenfreude"? Really? Apart from virtually universal appreciation of any discomfort Trump might have, I haven't seen any enjoyment or gloating
    over USA people's discomfort or otherwise, especially from the pandemic. There are some posts I do not see, and that poster may have been showing a little schadenfreude - I don't know but wouldn't be surprised, but that poster only posts in the hope of getting a reaction from whomever and thus getting some attention.
    Another poster just likes the look of their own voluminous pixels.

    Maybe you just don't understand Aussie humour? It's pretty good if you can get the hang of it.
    If the thread is aggravating you then perhaps you need to stop reading it. That would certainly save considerable screen scrolling too.
    Regards, FenceFurniture

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  9. #113
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    Almost be better if the forum just got on with discussing woodworking.

  10. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by FenceFurniture View Post
    That's a fact, not an opinion. Never have I seen one person from either side change their opinion.
    Another fact - we just don't have a big gun culture here.
    That's something to be glad about - in my opinion - and nobody is being forced to agree with the opinion part of that, but I imagine the vast majority would be glad (probably 2 dissenters in this thread).

    Therefore this (quoting only the relevant phrases, and not out of context)...

    ...is just a load of tosh, trying to manipulate two statements of fact into whatever you would like it to be, so as to be able to take offence. Just as you tried to with your "drama queen" response.

    I can help there. Using Ctrl F,"gun", Highlight all, on the three pages of this thread gives a pretty succinct answer to that (and note that this does not include the very few mentions of "rifle"):

    Posts 38,43,46,81,90 show the word "gun" 1-3 times, if I have counted correctly, 10 mentions all up.
    There was not what I would call a "gun thing" going on through those 90 posts.

    Posts 93 (5 mentions), 96(2), 99(3), 104(1), 106(2), 107(11), 109(2), a total of 26 mentions.
    D.W. wrote posts 93,106,107,109 with 20 mentions - more than all other posts from 38 onwards put together, and 20/26 mentions from post 93 onwards can be attributed to D.W.

    Perhaps your answer to how the "gun thing" got going lies there? Telling all about your own previous gun culture, at length, at least twice.



    "Schadenfreude"? Really? Apart from virtually universal appreciation of any discomfort Trump might have, I haven't seen any enjoyment or gloating
    over USA people's discomfort or otherwise, especially from the pandemic. There are some posts I do not see, and that poster may have been showing a little schadenfreude - I don't know but wouldn't be surprised, but that poster only posts in the hope of getting a reaction from whomever and thus getting some attention.
    Another poster just likes the look of their own voluminous pixels.

    Maybe you just don't understand Aussie humour? It's pretty good if you can get the hang of it.
    If the thread is aggravating you then perhaps you need to stop reading it. That would certainly save considerable screen scrolling too.
    FFS Did someone pee on your porridge this morning (again)???

  11. #115
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    Folks, this is a COVID thread.

    If you want to push your point about gun culture - either side - please take it to one of the many threads on these forums that have taken themselves to the archives and died. Frankly, most of us here realise that no one is going to change anyone's mind, and are heartily sick of people banging on about it.
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  12. #116
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    From those of us who now need to wear a mask in public.

    I could not find a smilie with a surgical mask.
    Stay Well, Stay Safe. Remember social distancing.

  13. #117
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    Default A new record number of diagnoses yesterday

    Long lines at the local Costco (warehouse food club). Another wave of panic buying? There were no obvious shortages.

    Long line at Costco today 10-31-20.jpg

    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

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    According to what I just heard trump say on the radio, 99.7% of people that contract COVID recover.

    According to the Johns Hopkins site ~9 million people in the US have tested positive to COVID, and 230,000 have died.
    That works out to 97.5% recovery.

    If 10 times more people have really been infected then 99.7% is correct but chances are that many more than 230,000 people have died from it as excess deaths are close to 300,000.

    And what does it mean to be recovered? How many are suffering the (often severe) after effects?

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    My wife’s cousin is an Aussie working in England for the last couple of years and got Covid in March and has just recently had to resign from his office job because he never really recovered properly from the virus
    He is in his 40’s with no known health issues

  16. #120
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    Similarities are being drawn between long covid syndrome, lupus and chronic fatigue syndrome. My overt symptoms are gone but I don't feel as fit as I did before getting covid.
    Innovations are those useful things that, by dint of chance, manage to survive the stupidity and destructive tendencies inherent in human nature.

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