I agree with all of this, but really I'd be ok with the torture too.

https://youtu.be/sfLN8yH2aSI?si=Fqk2aHNqMq48_qnD

Half of gun violence data isn’t violent , it’s people ending their own lives, as all Americans have the right to do


Mass shootings now include shootings where 3 people got shot, that’s not a mass shooting imo and most of those are done by people who are involved in lives of crime

and 100% by people with guns

In more than 99% of those cases they had shoes or boots as well.

I don't follow you around so I can't say for sure, but I would suspect you are far more likely to be killed by a criminal with a gun than someone who has never been charged with a crime, just bought a gun to shoot up a nightclub, grocery store or some other public place you are in. There are more gas station, bank, convenient store and other retail store holdups than you think plus you could get held up walking down the street or while idle in your car - each one of those seems more likely than someone who never committed a crime going crazy in public.

100%

I don't know, aren't most armed robbers hoping to get away with money without killing anyone? I don't hear about many customers getting killed in robberies of businesses. And in an individual holdup I don't think anyone not putting up a fight is likely to get shot. And as a larger than average middle aged man I'm not exactly the target most likely to be chosen.

I haven't heard of any mass boot killings, though.

I'm not saying that there wouldn't be downsides to drugs being legal but do you really think there are people who aren't doing crack just because it's illegal?

All (literally ALL) the money being spent on drug enforcement should be funneled to rehabilitation. Of course that would never happen and our corrupt politicians would just steal it somehow but I think it's the clear way to approach our drug issue as a society.

There are definitely people who would try more drugs if they were legal. Maybe mostly because they could get it easily and safely instead of hoping to find it somewhere.

I live in Portland where small quantities of drugs have been decriminalized, but I still have no idea where I could go to buy crack. I know where I would easily buy MJ because there are stores on every street with large billboards pointing out it is sold there.

Well, I can't argue with the first paragraph as there certainly would be more people who would try crack. My counter would be that number is not very high.

As for you not knowing where to buy crack. I think if you wanted to do crack you would indeed be able to find it. As a matter of fact if I were to offer you say 100k to go and buy street crack within 24 hours you would succeed. Well, you might get robbed at first but eventually you would succeed.

I'm a former addict. I was clean for ten years when I relapsed in a new city where I knew zero addicts. Upon making the decision to start using again, within two hours I had secured both heroin and cocaine off the street at seven in the morning.

Granted, I can spot a user a mile away but it's really not hard at all.

However, for all Americans, there's about a 1-in-18,989 chance of being murdered. For comparison, an American has a 1-in-517 chance of dying from heart disease.May 17, 2021

It's not the same people, murder kills working age people, young even more often than not, heart disease either kills very old people, or very fragile people who already know am have a very short straw in life for several reasons.

What's the heart disease death rate for people with 0 heart problems or correlated health problems at 35?

This is the COVID debate 2.0, framing deaths all the same as if the life of a demented 88y old with 4 chronical health problems was the same as that of a 29y old in normal health.

It isn't, and the latter life is worth hundreds or thousands of times the former.

I agree it probably wouldn't be a lot of people for crack. It depends on the drug. There are plenty of people who have tried MJ and its derivatives in places where it is now on every street corner. I even got some THC gummies myself! (I tried the minimum dose recommended for new users, didn't feel anything).

Until a few years ago I was always on the side of legalized drugs. Have had second thoughts now that I've seen some of the results of decriminalization here in Portland.
Of course, it's still not the same as full legalization, and unfortunately coincided with the coming of Covid, making it very difficult to know what exactly resulted from what causes.

Okay compare with car accidents instead.

There are nearly 43,000 fatal crashes a year in the U.S., but there's at least a glimmer of hope: The actual deadly car crash rate is less than 1%. Let's dive into the numbers: In 2021, there were an estimated 6,102,936 police-reported vehicle accidents in the United States. Of those, 39,508 were fatal.

Is there a drug thread?

Just curious what results you're seeing? It would seem that people are using out in the open and not concealing it like before but that the use hasn't gotten higher but appears as it has.

use in areas that legalize can get higher if other areas don't legalize, because people who want to use might move there (see the Netherlands in Europe when it was the only place to decriminalize).

even in that case it isn't causing more people to use, but it might appear as such from outside

Yeah, but there are no crack and heroin coffeeshops in Portland. However, that was the case when Colorado first legalized cannabis recreationally. All of a sudden with weed shops around people found Colorado as a more attractive vacation spot.

Not only public drug use, but there definitely has been lots more homeless people on the streets as well as more garbage everywhere vandalism, shoplifting, car (and car parts) theft, small businesses being robbed, etc.

In the last year things have improved somewhat, but downtown/inner city Portland is still not as inviting a place as it was before 2020, and it's tough to get lots of people who live in the suburbs to even be willing to go into the city for cultural events; what they saw a few years ago will stick in their minds for a long time.

You sure the decimalization of hard drugs caused that? What you've described sounds like the same changes in every large city over the last few years.

No, that's why I said it could have been partially caused by Covid and related shutdowns.

I don't have before and after 2020 experience with many other big cities to compare it to, but I didn't notice any similar changes in Las Vegas or San Diego.

When I visited Portland many times (before moving here) between 2013-2019, I was always impressed by how nice the downtown area was. I remember telling people it was the only downtown I had ever visited where I would consider living.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Though it's nowhere near as scary as some right wing sources want to make it seem; really now it's more of a typical downtown instead of much nicer, like it used to be.

Unfortunately, this isn't unique to Portland. Louisville, like Portland, saw a lot of violence during the BLM riots and it is a ghost town now. A lot of businesses have moved out of downtown and people aren't doing there much anymore. The KY mayor Andy beshear supported BLM as long as they respect the CDC covid guidelines.

Cool study showing which cities have recovered the best/worst:

https://downtownrecovery.com/charts/rankings

Just to be clear: People not wanting to go downtown Portland or any other city is not caused by covid. It was the shutdowns and violence.

There wasn’t much violence

Unless you’re talking about Bezos making the shutdowns occur so his competition couldn’t survive?

Small businesses were violently put out of business, benefiting Amazon and taking away peoples reasons to go downtown.


But what violence are you talking about exactly?

There wasn’t much violence where? Before you answer please keep in mind that we all have the internet. I was talking about physical violence in the streets of louisville and Portland.

I agree with you that the government shutdowns hurt small businesses far more than they hurt big businesses. Democrats should be help responsible for pushing shutdowns so hard and for so long.

this is going on a bit in multiple threads almost like it might be worth it's own thread. the internet isn't a real place. saying you have evidence from cherry picked nypost articles that are trying to fearmonger you into clicking isn't the win you think it is.. the internet thinks large chunks of portland and other cities burnt down during the protests.. the internet thinks there is an "invasion" at the southern border. so a bunch of redneck truckers went down there and realized it was all made up..