Boo! Even your buddy Ygleisas said that keeping weapons out of the hands of law-abiding citizens wouldn’t reduce crime. Not to mention the second amendment is the ultimate bulwark against a tyrannical state. And why can’t I put my blog in my FDL profile. What is this? A conspiracy!

Ackerman, you get invites to all those roundtables or just some based on topic ? Because this one looks like a cracking good time…
preview.tinyurl.com/5vtwqy

In related news, the tips link here doesn’t appear to work.

Jim Morin’s cartoon this week says it all.

Jeebus. I wanted to say to Ryan in thread:

There’s only one statistic that counts if your close friend is a firearm statistic.

Econometrics are irrelevant in the face of that kind of loss.

And until they experience that one statistic, no econometrics will matter to hardcore gun rights freaks.

But Ryan could start with this report, though, taking special note that a key factor in the percentage of gun deaths is social norms within a culture. (”Social norms may play a role in firearm-related mortality, homicide and suicide, in part by influencing if a weapon is used and what type of weapon is used,” from the report linked above). What constitutes social norms? Do not restrictions on gun ownership and usage qualify as part of social norms?

Income and health are also key factors; if income and health can’t or won’t be addressed by a society, then social norms play a larger role.

Ryan could also look at the data underlying this presentation from UPenn regarding impact of life expectancy due to firearms. There’s a correlation that makes me think of the old Gahan Wilson cartoon, “Bugs/Bugs Kept Away” — if there are guns, there are homicides and there are more of them. Period. If he wanted to contest the data, he ought to take it up insurance companies; they rely on this data, betting their business on it, and apparently they aren’t under-reserved.

So frustrating; this is Bowling for Columbine all over again.

Who I feel for here is the Kool Aid corporation.
Not only are they continually singled out for use as a casual instrument of villifcation, but it is done so on the most abhorrent terms. Is there really no other allusion that can be used than invoking this product’s unwilling participation in a mass murder/suicide to refer to something so common as ideological loyalty ?
I mean come on. What have they done to deserve this ?
Not even the Germans cop it this frequently. Think about it.

Well, here’s the thing. Should we vilify the makers of Hi-C instead? What other high-fructose product can we say runs through the veins of the fearful? You see the problem: we’re just swapping villains. Should we instead abandon the metaphor altogether?

And as for the invite: yeah, I get the blogger-roundtable invites, but I must have missed this one because OMG a fucking global warming DOD conference call? The Pentagon itself still has its solar-panel farm, and you can see it at the turn-off to the P-City Mall or (I think) National Airport.

I’d think that pepsi would be a pretty good bet on what wingnuts on the interwebs are full of. However the staging of a large scale loss of life involving the product may be necessary to shift this association.
I’ll let you know how I go with that.