I mean abolish the police didn't work very well

That wasn't a "dem" thing. That was some hippy leftist thing. Those people are as touched as the MAGA brigade, just in a different place.

There is no mainstream "left" party in America. There is a centre right party, called the "Democrats", and a batshit insane far right party, called the "Republicans". "Abolish the police" might have been some fringe commie thing, but it definitely wasn't a "dem" thing.

In comparison to the UK - our tories would be their "dems" over there. Our labour party, which is basically a centre left party in the rest of the civilised world, would be some fringe leftist group over there. America just took the Overton window and shifted it by about 50% of its own width to the right in the last 8 years.

The radical abolish the police was ofc a radical extremist thing in a few places, but in many other places being told to under-police minorities after Floyd caused a ton more deaths among minorities.

And it caused a ton of cops to quit.

Data is hard to disentangle from COVID lockdown/reopening effects but it's fairly clear.

Trying to assuage BLM fanatical requests even a little bit costed many more black lives than police takes from unarmed black men in decades.

I get that they kinda had to given the absurd popularity of BLM among their voters for a little while but it was a lot of bloodshed which could have been avoided if democrat voters weren't so insane as to believe the BLM narrative of minorities being actually over policed (while it is clearly the opposite)

"Leftists extrimists exist so we should hear out rightist extrimists" is a hot take, but, just no. And, for the avoidance of doubt, I consider MAGA rightist extremists.

? I am saying even going -20% with police in minority neighborhoods means a ton more people die.

It's not about hearing any MAGA, just have the take on law enforcement of Bill Clinton, that's enough.

Do you realize a lot of Dem intelligentsia was actually out with claims than more policing doesn't reduce crime? It lasted 18-24 months

Cool, I think we're in violent agreement on this point then.

As an aside, I ****ing hate idologues and I hate groupthink. When that **** was happening in San Francisco and the hippies set up their own little fiefdom with so-called community policing, and a subset of the people here were supporting it and saying what a good idea it was, I spoke up. And whenever somebody goes off on one about abolishing police or prisons or whatever, I speak up. As an ex (hmm.. are we ever ex?) criminal, I know what a bad idea that is.

Ok so we should be in agreement in general that BLM costed a ton of black lives

That, I couldn't comment on. Sounds like a Fox news soundbite, but I really don't know enough about it to comment one way or the other.

d2 Goat

There should be a police discussion thread imo.

That's a great way to put it. It makes crystal clear what should be done - get the bad men off the streets AND minimize the number of guns. IMO, anyone who doesn't support both of those things has blood on his hands.

No, the Kulaks were simply deemed too successful (even as a humble middle class of its time, which also doesn't compare with a Billionaire's case). They were deemed fraudulent by the state for simply being too resourceful as a private entity - "orange man bad" applied to farmers who were the most successful category of the peasant.

I'm not sure if you're trying to strawman the Communist NY-takeover point I'm making with that comment.

TIL that a "businessman" who has committed fraud his whole career being prosecuted for fraud is "communism". That's certainly.... a hot take.



I'm sure you must feel the same way about Michael Avenatti going to prison for fraud - i.e. that his prosecution and conviction were politically motivated, thus communism. If not, please explain the difference.

Repiblicans: Vote for us, we are the party of law and order.
Also Republicans: Until you charge one of us, that is! Oh, we meant law and order for the other guys, duh. Charging us is cOMmUniSM.

You're probably being sarcastic, but just in case, there is one, which IIRC started off as the George Floyd thread but then morphed into discussion of policing in general:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...rm-us-1770782/

Also this one, mostly about sentencing and incarceration:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...hment-1830147/

Sure , but one of the options is fully constitutional, the other mostly isn't, so until you change the constitution it's kinda not close what should be done.

Btw approx one households every 3 has guns both in Switzerland and in Finland but "for some reasons" they don't have any kind of significant gun crime

It would be fully constitutional to only allow well regulated militias access to have access to weapons. Or at least it would be if the Supreme Court weren't full of corrupt people owned by the gun lobby.

Lol comon it's a list: a well regulated militia AND the right to keep and bear arms, shallnot to be infringed. That comma is an AND. And it's very clear from the drafting of the amendment itself.

Can you walk into a Walmart there and just buy one? Or is there some sort of more selective vetting process, perchance?

But yeah, I got what you were driving at, they don't have as much melanin per capita.

They don't have the same propensity to crime among the population.

And btw finland has 3x the murder rate of switzerland , with more white people as a % of the population (afaik).

Highest murder rate in the EU is Latvia which is perhaps the whitest country, or one of the whitest (many other countries have more non white immigrants)

I get that when murder rate is very low, if the population is small rare events can increase it temporarily a lot, but iirc significant differences remain even when comparing mostly-white countries.

The balkans for a while had very high murder rate (compared to say Spain or Italy).

Fact is that if you can pinpoint countries where guns are very common among civilians, and so easy to procure for criminals (stealing them isn't that hard), but still gun violence isn't high, it means prioritizing gun control can't be correct.

While afaik there are no countries with really high crime rates that don't also have high murder rates.

Tl;dr: reducing crime through policies always work to save lives, even at the margin. Reducing gun access doesn't necessarily unless it's done in a really extreme way

There is vetting, but once the guns circulate among the population, criminals will have them.

You think people are born with an innate "propensity to crime"? Could it be, perhaps, that wealth inequality contributes to this propensity?

Also, you didn't answer the question about how easy it is to obtain guns in those countries. Perhaps this "propensity to crime" is exacerbated by the fact that just about anyone can walk into their local shop in America and buy an arsenal?

It's definitely not a list - the militia clause gives the reason the right to bear arms was deemed necessary.

It can certainly be interpreted various ways, but IMO it's clear that weapons were expected to be regulated. And really I would be fine with any arms that existed in 1789 be unrestricted. Feel free to keep a musket in your house if you want to.

The SC has made an arbitrary line about what modern weaponry is allowed. So they say handguns can't be restricted, but nuclear bombs can be. Again it's just the court making up things that aren't really found in the constitution and should be able to be determined by voters. People like you think the states should be able to set their own rules for most things, but not for this.

Criminals in all countries have guns, so this is irrelevant. My question was how easy it is to obtain guns legally.