the police departments, the government, everyone's hurting for money

except the damn criminals

well drugs is a good case study. the war on drugs is an utter failure. Not only was it started in part to jail political opponents, it has had the unintended side effect of making legal drugs more expensive and illegal drugs less so.

but attacking drugs didn't even go after the problem

addiction is a health problem, and jailing people for having a medical condition is a horrible way to treat this.

not to mention, it vilifies medicine with legit uses.

I should've mentioned I do this not just with TV but with games

playing Mount&Blade Warband, I drew a sort of correlation between those criminal elements, deserters/looters/etc. and people doing drug startups irl

eventually, if they go unnoticed for long enough, they reach a size or gain abilities you can't do much about

you might want to take your head out of the games a bit.

games are love

games are life

well, then don't confuse them with reality

besides, comparing them like that brings out interesting things

if you think GTA is how people act normally IRL, boy do you have a low respect for humanity

ex. that specific comparison made me realize, what's to ever stop someone else from starting up the drug game?

say you have a plan to wipe the streets clean of every single drug dealer, even on down to the lowest ranking member

and it works

it works until there is demand, and someone low on cash but access to drugs

yet another reason the war on drugs fails

(aside from the fact people have been getting high since the start of recorded history and before then even)

but i could say the same thing about guns as i do for the war on drugs. Take the AR-15 for example. It is an amazing hog hunting weapon. Wild hogs cause millions of dollars in damages to crops each year. Then tend to come in groups, which is why the AR-15 works so well. A bolt action won't let you kill many hogs after you laid some bait before the scatter. And the hogs you miss will most likely eat some of your crop by morning. This is one of a few reasons it got the nickname of a varmint rifle.

yet people see scary black rifle and assume there is no legit use for it

the focus on a symptom, not the problem, then wonder why the problem doesn't go away, or gets worse but is slightly hidden.

I didn't know any of that, especially about wild hogs. interestin

but yes, I've noticed that as it pertains to gun control, I don't think I've ever seen a guy who was actually intimately familiar with guns aiding with the control side of the argument

I don't think that means anything specifically, but I find that interesting because you'd think there would be one and that he'd be very well-known

like i said, most people who see guns go "big scary black gun" and the only place they have seen it was on the news (and you only really see bad things on the news mostly), and in the hands of bad guys in movies or at war

and given that a large part of the population lives in cities, i don't exactly blame them for being uneducated. In a city, where the police are within walking distance most of the time as is another human who might help, guns are nearly as necessary a tool outside of a deterrent

but leave the city and the cops are not seconds away, they are minutes or sometimes hours away

and thats if the problem is human

i've lived in a wooded area as a kid. wild bears were a common day thing. If i moved back out into the country, a gun is wanted to deal with wild animals more than humans, but if i a human shows up to do me harm, its also my best chance because cops are not gonna be there in time, and i have no where really to run given how far away the nearest other person is

and what good is it banning guns if it doesn't noticeably reduce the overall homicide rate, or causes a sharp increase in violent crimes?

yeah, one person wasn't shot (which doesn't always kill. usually its lack of prompt medical response that kills with gunshots). But instead 1 house was broken into, 2 people mugged, and another stabbed (which a gut stab will have you bleed out dead in 10 minutes)

what I wonder is why people are so fixated on gun killing specifically

it gives some odd feeling as if killings of other kinds are perfectly fine

its "out of sight out of mind"

guns are loud. literally and figuratively.

I ask people that every now and then. the answer I tend to get is "guns are designed to fire hot metal slugs..."

how often does a stabbing make national news?

trade 1 shooting for 3 stabbings and people will say things are safer