OT. Why do you consider yourself a "conservative"?

dcsipo said:

Guns do not cause suicide, I think we can agree on that. Suicide prevention is not gun control. But having a gun is real punctuation in that discussion. Suicide prevention is talking people off the ledge they find themself pushed up against. I still maintain that people contemplating suicide should not have access to a gun. How you manage to do that is not clear. One issue is legal, the other is moral. There is no current law that would allow the forced removal of weapons from their possession. The moral part is the balancing of their right to defend themselves, vs preventing them to harm themselves. A suicidal person is not suicidal all the time, they are just teetering on that ledge, and when something shoves, they fall, The number of attempted suicides when a gun is involved is near zero.

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Right. So to avoid solving a complex problem you can redefine it, don't solve the problem you think you have to solve. Solve the precursors instead.

DDoug said:

The OP, being a bible thumper, and his ilk have all but shut off compassion towards their fellow man.

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Doug,

If a heroin addict is in extreme agony from withdraws, would it be compassionate to give them heroin to relieve their pain? I don't mean special treatment programs either so please do not manipulate the question.

Is it compassionate to socially accept pedophiles?

Is it compassionate to decriminalize theft if the accused individual lives below the poverty line? If yes; would you feel the same if they stole from you?

The answer is no, these things are never ok. It doesn't matter how murky and complex the situation becomes or how strong your compassion is for the person. There are moral laws that are absolute for a reason and there are a million different ways to help someone. Why is it that today the first solution proposed is always to radically modify absolute morality in the name of perceived compassion? Nope, sorry find another way.

People these days get too caught up in battling over the complex moral dilemma of the day - not our own mind you... the percieved dilemmas of society- created and inflamed by "advocates" and projected onto us through media.

Nobody wants to break below the hard bitter surface, look in the mirror and ask themselves "what is morality?, what is compassion?"
Or the biggest; "what does it mean to be a good person; what sets the standard; how can I improve?"

Are you a compassionate person Doug?

You should not scoff at things that you do not understand. A quick read of the gospel would reveal to you a level of merciful compassion that no human being is capable of. You do not have to be a Christian to read the bible.

It is in fact a collection of the oldest text ever recorded. One might assume that alone would spark enough curiosity to actually see what's inside.

Its a myth that people on the left dont own guns.
off the top of my head, I can think of several pretty left wing guys I know- well to the left of "liberal"- who own a dozen or more guns each.
I have a friend who was a draft dodger, moved to Canada, and still lives there, and he owns a lot of guns- he is the guy I trusted to teach my kids gun safety.
I know gay married couples with shotguns.
I know left wing duck hunters, deer hunters, black powder rifle fans, and plenty of left wing vets who are familiar with large bore weapons.
And yes, I have known liberals who understand exactly how fun it is to shoot a Barrett .50 Cal.
and yet, many of these guys are still in favor of tougher gun laws.

Freedommachine said:

If a heroin addict is in extreme agony from withdraws, would it be compassionate to give them heroin to relieve their pain? I don't mean special treatment programs either so please do not manipulate the question.

Is it compassionate to socially accept pedophiles?

Is it compassionate to decriminalize theft if the accused individual lives below the poverty line? If yes; would you feel the same if they stole from you?

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Answers to these aren't limited to the binary choice, so here is my take

1) Yes, give the person heroin of whatever else they need. Then try to help them with rehab. This has worked in Portugal, for example.
2) Yes. It's not even a specific enough definition to derive a particular position. Let's not forget it's not uncommon for the states to allow marriage with individuals under age of 16.
3) No. But it doesn't mean that we should give petty thieves long sentences and ignore the underlying problems.

dcsipo said:

Guns do not cause suicide, I think we can agree on that. Suicide prevention is not gun control. But having a gun is real punctuation in that discussion. Suicide prevention is talking people off the ledge they find themself pushed up against. I still maintain that people contemplating suicide should not have access to a gun. How you manage to do that is not clear. One issue is legal, the other is moral. There is no current law that would allow the forced removal of weapons from their possession. The moral part is the balancing of their right to defend themselves, vs preventing them to harm themselves. A suicidal person is not suicidal all the time, they are just teetering on that ledge, and when something shoves, they fall, The number of attempted suicides when a gun is involved is near zero.

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I agree with you on not accessing a gun but what determines they should or not own a gun. Make a claim you feel bad and that you may hurt yourself? If deemed suicidal what else should they not own? A car, drano, gasoline and lighter, knife, a rope etc.

Shawnrs said:

I agree with you on not accessing a gun but what determines they should or not own a gun. Make a claim you feel bad and that you may hurt yourself? If deemed suicidal what else should they not own? A car, drano, gasoline and lighter, knife, a rope etc.

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Life! They clearly can't be trusted with one!

barbter said:

I remember the old days when you could die from covid.
Now you just go out and about.....

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It was a different virus then, with about a 6 to 7% mortality rate (especially among us oldsters.) Now it's down to something like .2% (best I can figure from the crappy stats being published).

Influenza killed millions of people in 1918 - 1920. Now it's a minor annyance. Viruses evolve (unlike internet posters and the shanghai government )

dcsipo said:

I am a nonbeliever, beyond agnostic, but not a militant atheist. And I have a hell of a lot more compassion for my fellow man than the bible thumpers. I think medically assisted suicide for the terminally ill should be legal. But that is not what we were discussing. Get your facts straight. BTW Propanol works better than morphine.

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Ever heard of a morphine drip? Do you understand what that means? Unlike a regular IV which has a constant percentage of drugs, a drip gradually builds the concentration, especially as the volume drops. When my dad was in the final stages of cancer they put him on a drip. We knew then that he would be gone within hours at best.

No problem with helping people pass VOLUNTARILY but the dirty little secret of the euthanasia crowd is eventually the choice would not be left to the patient or family, as people in the much ballyhooed Weimar Republic eventually found out.

Big B said:

How much taxes do you think someone making minimum wage should pay in taxes out of their paychecks? That's $290 a week gross pay.

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Good question.
Say that I want to start a tow truck business.
First I create a holding corporation called Freedommachine enterprises. I then create another corporation called FM towing - owned by the first corporation.

Next, my brother starts a fleet leasing corporation from which I will lease all my tow trucks. My shop is a property owned by my holding Corp and leased to the towing business. All of my employees are paid through a staffing agency.

Now, all finances and assets are strictly corporate AND isolated and protected from seizure because they are owned by separate entities - most importantly, all completely separate from me.

I would directly benefit from being the person in control of all of these assets. My shop, my vehicle, my home, my whatever... all mine but not "mine" in the eyes of the legal system at all.

The only real requirement is that any of the corporations I am involved with running must pay me a "reasonable salary". If individuals who make less than $30k per year do not have to pay taxes... I will make my salary $29,998.

Nothing you can do about that if the company didn't have enough end of year profit to pay me more.

Now what?

dcsipo said:

BTW Propanol works better than morphine.

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Did a quick look, says overdose causes seizures. I'll stick to morphine when it's time to go, thank you.

And I don't appreciate people deciding when I can finish my life. Butt out.

barbter said:

Did you teach it to?

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No, but im teaching it to bite Dagos.

EmanuelGoldstein said:

It was a different virus then, with about a 6 to 7% mortality rate (especially among us oldsters.) Now it's down to something like .2% (best I can figure from the crappy stats being published).

Influenza killed millions of people in 1918 - 1920. Now it's a minor annyance. Viruses evolve (unlike internet posters and the shanghai government )

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6-7% meh. Lets not forget there was a time in the UK when if you tested positive and died for any reason with no time limit, you went down in the Covid column. 100% mortality rate baby!!!

barbter said:

LoLzzzz!
Yeadon said there's less than 3% deviation of change throughout these "variants"....which in medical terms is sweet Fanny Adams....

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I'm happy for your idiot yeadon, but will note there's less than 2% dna difference between a human and a chimpanzee.

p.s. these less-than-brilliant comments are why most people can't take "conservatives" seriously.

Im with George, hes bang on about freak show freak

crickets said:

Right. So to avoid solving a complex problem you can redefine it, don't solve the problem you think you have to solve. Solve the precursors instead.

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The precursors are being solved or at least attempted to be solved. I think this gun horsey is pretty pulpey by now, but you got the point.

A couple of additional points of information, there are more male Vets suicides than females, but the per capita rate is higher in the male population, and homelessness is a large contributing factor. Vets who can be reached and interacted with on a regular basis are many times less likely to commit suicide.

Here is an interesting snippet from last year's report conclusion:

...Veteran subpopulations known to be at elevated risk, such as female Veterans, Veterans ages 18-34, Native Veterans, Asian American/Pacific Islander (AA/PI) Veterans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and others (LGBTQ+) Veterans, Veterans with serious medical conditions, and aging Veterans. ...

doesn't that make one go ...hmm?

"Its a myth that people on the left dont own guns. "

Ah but it's such a CONVENIENT myth for the right-wingers. They're different. They hate guns. They hate AMERICA!!!!

Right wingers, painting every complicated issue in black and white since, well, forever. A democrat who goes to the range - who'd a thunk it. They can't wrap their minds around such a thing.

Shawnrs said:

I agree with you on not accessing a gun but what determines they should or not own a gun. Make a claim you feel bad and that you may hurt yourself? If deemed suicidal what else should they not own? A car, drano, gasoline and lighter, knife, a rope etc.

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Not sure, and the research is not conclusive. There is one thing for sure, that suicide with a gun is a large percentage of Vets gone. And as I said earlier, there are almost zero attempted suicides by gun. Most other methods take a few tries.

I do believe the research is mostly on effective preventative measures, including medications and therapy. There is an ongoing effort to identify the economic, social, and mental factors contributing to the decisions Vets make. It is a freakin sticky situation, because no matter what the decision is to remove tools of self-harm they are invasive, and get into the issues of privacy. it is almost like declaring someone a mental case and locking them up, not as drastic, but for an already stressed psyche, it may be an unbearable intrusion. To clarify my cursory involvement, my company is in a partnership with a university working with VA researchers. We provide the tech that allows the Vets to check in, provide the mechanisms to fill out online questioners, and collect and analyze the data. We are not setting a policy.

dcsipo said:

Yet the same GOP fails to fund any suicide prevention measures in the VA, general community outreach programs, etc. But you promote the false notion that if you take away guns, they find another way...let me put this in perspective. a suicide with overdose gives someone 20 to 30 minutes to intervene and get the victim to the ER. A slit wrist gives you 15 minutes, an hour with tourniquets. You have no grace period with a gunshot to the head. But hey you have a hobby to protect.

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Funny how you present your extremely biased opinions as facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suici...un_versus_non-gun_-_high-income_countries.png

I tried inserting that as an image and it did not work, maybe the software did not like the extension. Click on the link it, it kills your associating increased suicides to rates of gun ownership. The developed country with the highest suicide rate on the list has next to no guns available to the general public.

latheman78 said:

Funny how you present your extremely biased opinions as facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suici...un_versus_non-gun_-_high-income_countries.png

I tried inserting that as an image and it did not work, maybe the software did not like the extension. Click on the link it, it kills your associating increased suicides to rates of gun ownership. The developed country with the highest suicide rate on the list has next to no guns available to the general public.

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Guns do not cause suicide but make them much easier. If guns were not available we would have fewer first successful suicide attempts, and that is a fact.

Further information: Gun control and Overview of gun laws by nation
Reducing access to guns at a population level decreases the risk of suicide by firearms.[64][65][66]

Fewer people die from suicide overall in places with stricter laws regulating the use, purchase, and trading of firearms.[67][68] Suicide risk goes up when firearms are more available.[69][70][71]

Gun control is a primary method of reducing suicide by people who live in a home with guns. Prevention measures include simple actions such as locking all firearms in a gun safe or installing gun locks.[20] Some stores that sell guns provide temporary storage as a service; in other cases, a trusted friend or family member will offer to store the guns until the crisis has passed.[19][20] When a person is going through a crisis, red flag laws in some places allow family members to petition the courts to have firearms temporarily removed and stored elsewhere.

More firearms are involved in suicide than are involved in homicides in the United States. A 1999 study of California and gun mortality found that a person is more likely to die by suicide if they have purchased a firearm, with a measurable increase of suicide by firearm beginning at most a week after the purchase and continuing for six years or more.[72]

The United States has both the highest number of suicides and firearms in circulation in a developed country, and when gun ownership rises so too does suicide involving the use of a firearm.[73][74] A 2004 report by the National Academy of Sciences found an association between estimated household firearm ownership and gun suicide rates,[75][76] though a study by two Harvard researchers did not find a statistically significant association between household firearms and gun suicide rates,[77] except in the suicides of children aged 5–14.[77] Another study found that gun prevalence rates were positively associated with suicide rates among people aged 15 to 24, and 65 to 84, but not among those aged 25 to 64.[78] Case-control studies conducted in the United States have consistently shown an association between guns in the home and increased suicide risk,[79] especially for loaded guns in the home.[80] Numerous ecological and time series studies have also shown a positive association between gun ownership rates and suicide rates.[81][82][83] This association tends to only exist for firearm-related and overall suicides, not for non-firearm suicides.[82][84][85][86] A 2013 review found that studies consistently found a relationship between gun ownership and gun-related suicides, with few exceptions.[87] A 2016 study found a positive association between gun ownership and both gun-related and overall suicides among men, but not among women; gun ownership was only strongly associated with gun-related suicides among women.[88] During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strong upward trend in adolescent suicides with a gun,[89] as well as a sharp overall increase in suicides among those age 75 and over.[90] A 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis found that access to firearms was associated with a higher risk of suicide.[91]

A 2006 study found an accelerated decline in firearm-related suicides in Australia after the introduction of nationwide gun control. The same study found no evidence of substitution to other methods.[92] Multiple studies in Canada found that gun suicides declined after gun control, but methods like hanging rose leading to no change in the overall rates.[93][94][95] Similarly, a study conducted in New Zealand found that gun suicides declined after more legislation, but overall suicide rates did not change.[96] A case-control study in New Zealand found that household gun ownership was associated with gun suicides, but not overall suicide.[97] The authors attributed this finding to the highly stringent firearm storage laws and very low prevalence of handgun ownership in New Zealand. A Canadian study found that gun ownership by province was not correlated to provincial overall suicide rates.[98] A 2020 study also found no significant correlations between provincial firearm ownership and overall provincial suicide rates.[99]



let me help with it the image



And the caption:
Comparison of gun-related suicide rates to non-gun-related suicide rates in high-income OECD countries, 2010, countries in graph ordered by total suicides. The US was the only OECD country in which gun suicide rates exceeded non-gun suicide rates.[58]

Big B said:

Do you think if Democrats called off the January 6th hearings prices would just drop?

I'm glad that Democrats finally decided to move forward with the hearings to put it on record that we had a sitting president try to overthrow our government by force. And that former sitting president is an embarrassment and traitor to this country.

This may shock you but the January 6th hearings have zero to do with the economy and inflation but I can see why republicons would like to have them go away. The hearings expose what the republicon party is made of and it isn't pretty.

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What? Your post makes no sense. Funny how you are talking down to me and you are 100% lost on what diversion means when it comes to the Jan 6th hearings. I will try to explain. The Jan 6th hearings are nothing but theater to "divert" people's attention off the real issues voters should be focusing on.