Please remind me: What's the risk of being clubbed to death from dozens of feet or yards away? Compared to a semi-automatic rifle, how quickly can your average high-school dropout kill with just a knife?
In the recent
Isla Vista killings, the crazed madman stabbed three people to death but only managed to kill two people with his firearms. Looks like the knife was a wee bit deadlier than the firearm - he was 100% on knife kills and well under 50% on gun kills (he shot at more than 4 people and only killed two).
As for knife control, I'm perfectly at ease with banning switchblades and the like for everyone who doesn't have a very good reason to own one.
Switchblades, bali-songs (butterfly), gravity and flick knives are already Federally banned from import and carry and have been for 50 years. Ballistic knives are a recent addition to that list. People still get killed with them all the same. I can still buy all the above on the street.
I agree on the problem, but your idea that laws change nothing is asinine. Laws ended slavery, laws ended segregation and laws can certainly help against gun violence.
Funny, I was under the impression that the law against slavery ended up having to be enforced by a war here in the US. Segregation was not ended by laws being passed but by a court decision. And then by the military being called out to force compliance.
Nope. I just realise that a legal gun can quickly and easily become illegal if you have no registration of weapons and no records of sales.
We have states with full registration and tracking laws, full dealer-only sales. Even if you leave out weapons from other states that migrated in, they've had no effect. 'Registered' guns can disappear off the records fast - stolen, given to family members, owner dies, lots of different reasons. Just look at California (cites already upthread) - 'registered' firearms turn up at crime scenes all the time there, only to have the police find that the weapons were 'stolen', actually stolen, or that the registered owner was long deceased.
If you must... Anyway, I don't buy that none of those ever works, which is your main point.
And yet others and I have been presenting statistical evidence that they do not work under conditions as they currently pertain. Others and I have also said that we welcome *new* suggestions, but so far all you have presented are the same old tired ideas already proven to either not work or be unworkable/unenforceable.
...and we all know that good guys don't turn into bad boys, don't we?
And what law would prevent this, again?
I would have thought that corruption plays a huge part...
No, they actually raided the military and police armories.
A lot of the cartel 'soldiers' are actually ex-Mexican elite troops. Los Zetas is the 'best' example of that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Zetas
Oh, Autodefensas - that's a novel idea. Not. More often than not, those guys become part of the problem faster than you can pull a trigger; see Colombia for an example.
Perhaps. Specific citation to prove your assertion, please.
No, I don't, but
a) that photo is apparently from 2011 and Google Earth does show a narrow black line in the sand b) no barriers doesn't mean no patrols, no drones, no sensors, no nothing.
The patrols are few and far between and
nowhere near well enough staffed, the drones can only take
pretty pictures of the people getting away (when they're not being used to watch US citizens instead - by the way, there's only ten of them to cover over 3000km), and the
sensors don't work. Please note that all the above links are from this year.
Interesting how you don't post a map of the entire border, but just the part where the Rio Grande already forms a natural barrier. Any more of those that are included in the "not secured" statistics due to the lack of a fence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico–United_States_barrier
The 1,951-mile (3,141 km) border between the United States and Mexico traverses a variety of terrains, including urban areas and deserts. The barrier is located on both urban and uninhabited sections of the border, areas where the most concentrated numbers of illegal crossings and drug trafficking have been observed in the past. These urban areas include San Diego, California and El Paso, Texas. As of August 29, 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had built 190 miles (310 km) of pedestrian border fence and 154.3 miles (248.3 km) of vehicle border fence, for a total of 344.3 miles (554.1 km) of fence. The completed fence is mainly in New Mexico, Arizona, and California, with construction under way in Texas.[4]
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had more than 580 miles (930 km) of fence in place by the second week of January, 2009.[5] Work is still under way on fence segments in Texas and on the Border Infrastructure System in California.
Let's see. 1951 miles minus 580 miles in 2009 leaves... more than 1300 miles lacking a physical fence.
The border fence is not one continuous structure and is actually a grouping of short physical walls that stop and start, secured in between with "virtual fence" which includes a system of sensors and cameras monitored by Border Patrol Agents.
Remember, according to CBP themselves, the sensors and cameras don't actually work. Or when they do, they can't get someone out there to do anything before the people or smugglers are gone.
The Rio Grande is pretty much wadable or driveable through much of its length especially during the summer. It's not much of a barrier. Here is the mighty Rio Grande in Juarez, across from El Paso:
And the Rio Grande in summer in Big Bend National Park on the Texas border with Mexico:
Some 'barrier'.
As for the graphic, it's what I had to hand. Here's the 'whole border':
2006:
'Only
75 miles of fence now' - please note all the proposed fence locations.
Or perhaps you would like the BBC better as a source?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4987784.stm
Please note short existing barriers.
From this year:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/11/border-fence-texas-immigration-bill/8851595/
the 670 miles of U.S. border fence
Most of the border is still wide fucking open.
So what you need is monitoring, not a fence along the Rio Grande. Got it.
No, we need both. We've tried the 'virtual fence' with monitoring and by itself it doesn't work. It takes pretty pictures, but most of the time nobody can get there to apprehend the people in time.
A properly planned fence system does seem to work somewhat:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0401/p01s05-usgn.html
Except for the fact that the net direction of gun trafficking is into Mexico, not out of it, which shows just beautifully how quickly legal guns can become illegal ones.
The government tried to prove that with Operation Fast & Furious, where they illegally ran guns to the cartels in Mexico. Unfortunately, all they proved was that the direction of flow is generally FROM Mexico because
the guns are turning up in the US instead.
Community programmes... wasn't there some guy who ran for a high office - even got elected - who was ridiculed for being a former community organiser? IIRC, some of the words used were "communist", "lefty loon" and, strangely enough, "fascist". Rid the US of such nonsense (i.e. of the "Tea Party" movement) and you may get somewhere.
The fact that Obama was a community organizer has nothing to do with the other labels. Community organizing is not viewed as inherently 'communist,' 'lefty,' or 'fascist.' However, Communists, lefties and fascists can *do* community organizing. So can neo-Nazis/skinheads, white supremacists, Black Panthers, etc., etc. Community organizing in and of itself is none of these things.
On the other hand, hiring a 'community organizer' to be your President is a lot like hiring someone with a degree and professional experience in basket weaving (and only basket weaving) to be your surgeon. Their experience is not relevant and the results will be predictably terrible.
You may be able to drive a nail into a wall without a hammer, for instance using a large pair of pliers, but to get a result that's remotely comparable to the real deal, you have to be very lucky or truly skilled.
What does this have to do with anything?