Wabash82

I didn't say, or mean to imply that you support criminal punishment for woman. I don't, either. But that seems like a red herring to interject -- as far as I am aware, none of these new laws criminally punish the woman. They punish the doctor or other person who performs the abortion. It was simply interesting to me that you switched from talking about this issue as a statement of principle -- a woman control her own body -- to talking about what you are or are not a "proponent of."

How does the principle that the woman has sovereignty over her womb change just because the baby in theory could survive outside her womb? He's still in there, and if she wants her womb back, why does his potential viability mean she has to wait and let him live in her uterus for another few weeks and suffer the risks of labor or a c-section? Oh, and yes, I personally believe life begins at conception. That has little to do with my views on whether abortion should be legal in the U.S.

Unless the article is misleading, it appears to state thay it was the initial nurse eho received that information who made the fateful triage decision. And if she then also failed to include the information that the patient was transgender in the chart notes, she really blew it.

In your opinion, no, in the other side's opinion, yes. It is interesting, however, that you have now chosen to add in a time frame ("8-week old"). So does that mean that your logical conclusion that a woman has sovereignty over her own womb get less "logical" if the lump of cells in her womb is 35 weeks old?

I beleive that is a reference to the child inside the woman's womb.

I'm not a medical professional, but since the article states that the patient advised the nurse he was transgender, it would seem sort of obvious and logical that such information would lead the medical professional to assess the person's symptoms in the context of conditions that may affects males or females. Why would one just assume that a trans person had already had all their plumbing revised?

I think folks on the other side of this issue would respond with something along the lines of, Yes, a person does have sovereignty over their own body, until exercising that sovereignty negatively impacts the body of another person. They'd view it as akin to the old libertarian line about, "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose."

Gonzo -- Durham is a straight-shooting, even-handed, Republican-leaning, no- nonsense government servant... until he finds no evidence of any wrongdoing in the FBI's initiation of the Russia investigation, then he's a no-good, Dem-leaning, Deep State operative who needs to be the focus of the investigation of the investigation of the investigation....

You are leaving an important part of my argument out -- which is that we have actually a more peaceful society in general - fewer people who want to commit murder. The pattern we see -- fewer individual murders, but more mass killings -- suggests the fewer people interested in killing others have become more lethal, which is completely consistent with that smaller pool of killers having much greater access to better killing weapons that the larger pol of killers 40 years ago had. You are creating a straw man by implying that I somehow claimed that is impossible to cause "carnage" with non-SA weapons, so any example of a mass killing that invovled non-SA weapons therefore refutes my point. But, of course I didn't make the claim that it was impossible to kill a lot of people with a non-SA weapon. What I said is that it is much easier to cause more "carnage" with SA weapons, and so the significantly greater access to SA weapons in today's society in part explains why there are more mass shooting incidents, even as the total number of separate shooting incidents has declined. The evidence backs me up. First, to clarify, I did not refer to semi-automatic rifles only. My reference was to semi-automatic guns. The three largest mass shootings in the U.S. to date were in Vegas, Miami, and VA Tech, and in all three cases both used SA weapons. (VA Tech shooter used two semi-automatic pistols.) You are correct that the Columbine shooters did not use SA weapons, but, sadly, their toll doesn't even put them in the top 12 of mass shooters. (And by the way: one of the mass shootings that rank above Columbine in number of vicitms is the Texas Clock Tower shooting, where one of the weapons used by Whitman was, you guessed it, an M1 carbine.) So semi-automatic weapons were used in nearly all of the deadliest mass shootings in the U.S. The one or two exceptions merely prove the rule. Again, you are "refuting" claims that I never made. I never said that every single city and town in the U. S. has seen a direct decline in murder rate over the last 40 years. But, again, the few exceptions only serve to highlight the GENERAL rule that, in most places across in this country, murder and other violent. Crimes occur at lower rates today than they did 40 years ago. More relevant to our discussion is what has happened to murder and violent crime rates in the parts of America where these mass shootings have occurred.

Many of the kids caught up in gang violence have no past records of crime, either... until they commit the shooting that gets them caught. Every criminal has a first crime, and most all also have a "first time caught" crime; sometimes they are the same crime, but not necessarily. So not having a criminal record doesn't mean someone is not a criminal, just that have not been caught being a criminal. And if it is a sign of mental illness that a person who was never previously caught committing a crime decides to commit mass murder, then the surviving Boston Marathon bomber must have mental health issues and needs to be in a hospital. I know you are not talking about pre-Columbine shootings, because those shootings don't fit your hypotheses that recent (like in the last 40 years) changes in our society are what causes these shootings to occur. The fact that there were mass shootings before this current "immoral" age suggests that you are barking up the wrong tree in terms of causation. And I don't know why you keep referencing automatic weapons when I have never mentioned them as a part of the equation here. My points are that: (1) the substantial increase over the past 40 years in the number of guns in the general population -- of any type -- means increased opportunity today for someone who wants to use a gun to get his hands on one, versus 40 years ago; and (2) as I think you'd agree, a shooter armed with a semi-automatic weapon with a large capacity magazine (or with multi smaller magazines) has greater potential ability to cause harm than one who's armed with a double action type weapon like a bolt action rifle (with the same size magazines) or a revolver,; therefore, the increase in SA weapons as a percentage of the firearms in private hands over the past 40 years also means that the person looking to use a gun these days also has a greater chance of putting his hands on a more lethal one than someone 40 years ago. According to a quick internet search, (1) the sale of the 240,000 M-1 carbines you mentioned took place in 1963, and (2) in 1963, there were approximately 84 million guns in private hands in the U.S. I guess we may have different standards, but in my book a .3% increase in the number of guns does not constitute a "flood." There is a cost vs. benefit analysis here, just as there is with forks. With forks, that analysis really hasn't changed much from 40 years ago, especially on the benefit side of the equation. (Although exciting recent advances in spork technology may change that!) But back when the majority of Americans hunted, or lived in rural areas where varmint control was a necessary aspect of life, the utility (benefit) of gun ownership in our society was much higher and certainly more defensible to offset the cost to society -- gun violence. Today, the majority of the folks who own guns today do so for either self-defense (even though violent crime rates are lower) or for "fun/recreation." So the cost (gun violence) of widespread gun access today is not offset by the reduced "benefit" of gun ownership today. IMHO, of course. Increased since when? Increased as a per capita rate or just in total number? I am sure I could find you some select stocks that would suggest no one made a dime in the stock market since 1974. We are talking about general trends over a 40+ time span, and the general trends over that time in the U.S. -- and even in cities like NY and Chicago and Indy -- show violent crime in general is down and murder rates generally are down. The number of mass shootings is up.

Duh. No one can do it without the stork!

I don't understand how a person who opposes abortion on the theory thathuman life begins at conception -- meaning from day one the embryo is an innocent human life -- would still be willing to allow an abortion in cases of rape or incest. If the operative moral principle is that the child has a right to life, why do the circumstances surrounding the baby's conception matter?

I don't think that relative generational "optimism" has much to do with this. The decline in U.S. birthrate has been occurring over generations, and it follows a pattern you see in most nations as they gain prosperity. I think a common reason is that for most societies, modernization and prosperity tend to go hand-in-hand with women in that society gaining much greater autonomy. And for many, many of these women, autonomy means they control directly how many children they will have.

You must be so much fun at family get-togethers! Did you give them a deadline?

Only if you assume the percentage of murderers in the population did not decrease, but I am not making that assumption. To the contrary, there seems pretty strong evidence from looking at the decline in violent crime statistics in general, not just for murder, that U.S. society is becoming more and more peaceful. The phenomenon we are seeing is not that violent behavior is increasing, but that as it gets rarer, it sometimes gets more intense. Many fewer incidents of violence in the schools, workplaces, or the streets, but when they do happen, they are often lethal. Your narrow limitation to "a kid illegally possessing a gun" probably makes your statement correct, but overall it is not: in 2017, there were 15,000 shooting deaths after excluding suicides, while there were about 10,000 deaths in drunk driving incidents.

"Individuals, that are typically not considered as criminals with a very different motive, snapping and taking lives." That's all just supposition and your own unsupported conclusions. We've all gone over this same ground before in prior threads. People have trotted out examples of school shootings that occurred pre-Columbine, and mass shootings going back to the 19th century. Again, the murder rate was way higher 40 years ago -- so are you saying there were fewer nut cases but more "typical" criminals (whatever that means) roaming among the population back in the 1970s? It seems to me that the numbers are the numbers, and they tell a pretty straightforward story. The murder rate is much lower than 40 years ago. But we more mass shootings than 40 years ago. And we have many, many more guns in the hands of more people, and the "average" guns on the streets today is a semi-automatic weapon. Those facts seem to lead very logically to a conclusion that we don't have more murderous types among us than we used to, we actually have fewer, but those fewer murderous types these days typically has much better "tools" with which to work.

Yep, just like the drug manufacturers who worked to increase sales and build market share for their opiod products by misrepresenting the medical evidence re the benefits of pain management on healing, or the level of addictiveness of their products. Unfortunately for them, they were not smart enough to pay the right people to get themselves immunized from liability for the damage their products have caused as a result, like the gun manufacturers have done. Look, we (collectively this forum) have been down this same path enough times before. The conversation always starts with the "guns are just a tool" argument. Then someone will make the blindingly obvious point that the manufacturers of any other consumer market tool that 1) injured and killed many people each year, yet 2) its actual utility among the people who owned it was consistently decreasing (because of the decline in hunting, less rural population, lower violent ctime rates, etc.) would have been sued out of existence a long time ago. Then, suddenly, the argument becomes about "liberty" -- who are you to tell me what I want or need? To which someone will make the again obvious point, from Poly Sci 101, that whenever humans form these things called societies, there inherently will arise conflicts between the needs, wants and desires of some individuals and the needs, wants and desires of others in that society, and that human societies have come up with lots of different ways in the course of history to resolve those conflicts, ranging from the guy with the biggest club decides, to the King appointed by God gets to decide, to hey, let's all vote on it. But that whatever method is chosen, the decision to live in society with other humans means that, one way or another, you ability to always get what you need or want is subject to limits because the "decider" in your society is not always you. And so then the conversation goes to, "Yeah but this is not just my "want". It is my right. Ever heard of the 2nd Amendment, pal? And then we all become Constitutional experts and argue about what the 2nd Amendment means.... And then we get tired and talk about the latest Trump tweet until the next time a bunch of kids get shot up....

I didn't reference (fully) automatic weapons in my prior post, so I am not sure why you threw that "factoid" in. And I am aware that semi-automatic weapons existed in the 1970s and ling prior. My contentions were that the gun ownership per capita has doubled since the 1970s, and the percentage of the firearms in private hands that are semi-automatic weapons is much higher today than it was in 1974. Unless I missed something, I don't see anything in your post that contradicts those assertions. As for anecdotal experience at your high school, I am sure there are also (probably lots of) high schools today where kids have guns in their cars but no one has brought one to shoot someone. An individual example (or a handful of them) are not meaningful when trying to identify broad causal factors. Indeed, the idea that human life is less valued today than it was when you were in high school in the 1980s is belied by the fact that the overall U.S. murder rate was much higher back then.

Deep response. Why are #1 and #2 apples and oranges? Explain the salient difference you see. Obviously, we don't have your prior link to look at, so I don't know how you defined "mass shooting" or whatever standard you used (amount of media attention they got?) to select the pool of shootings from which you then selected your examples where there were psychiatric issues or drugs. But I don't see why a shooting by some troubled kid who self-medicates with dope (because he doesn't have any adults in his life who care enough, or have the resources, to want to take him to a doctor) is "oranges", while shooting by some troubled kid who medicates with prescription drugs because he has parents who cared enough, or had the resources, to take him to a doctor, is apples. The difference is that no one cares to consider the mental health of the kid in the first situation. I personally think that the mental health thing is overblown. The U.S. homicide rate today (well, as of 2017, last year of full stats) is close to half of what it was in 1974 9.4/100,000 in 1974, 5.3/100,000 in 2017). There is no logical reason to assume that some dramatic increase in mental health issues has arisen in the intervening 40 years that somehow makes those suffering from it LESS likely to kill people UNLESS they are guaranteed to be able to kill lots of people at one time. There is a principle in philosophy and science called Ockham's Razor, which suggests that, when given two competing explanations for something, choosing the simpler one over a more complicated one makes sense. The statistical evidence here related to murder rates, mass shootings, and the numbers and types of guns in private hands in America now, versus 40 years ago, suggests that the simple explanation here is that there are actually fewer murderers among us today than 40 years ago, but murders looking to kill lots of people are able to accomplish that goal easier today compared to 40 years ago because of the much readier access to semi-automatic guns.

Your comment goes both ways, obviously. Let's all agree we will look at all angles of the problem, which includes getting guns out of the hands of people who ought not to have them, by reducing the overall "supply." Since the 1970s, there has been a huge change in gun culture in America. The majority of the people who owned guns owned then because they hunted (and/or lived in rural area where varmint killing was a necessity.) Guns were tools. Today, less than 15% of Americans hunt, and the percentage of people living in rural areas has declined substantially. Yet the number of guns per capita has doubled. That has occurred through the concerted efforts of gun manufacturers and their lobbyists, such as the NRA, to make sell guns as (1) "necessary" for personal self-defense, and (2) fun, cool adult "toys" -- let's play army! As so many gun owners on here have suggested in the past, the functional differences between "assault"-style rifles and other semi-automatic rifles used for hunting or varmint killing are often small. But the gun manufacturers understand that the guy living in a subdivision in Carmel has no need for a varmint-killing rifle -- and based on crime rates in Carmel, little need for a self-defense weapon, either. But he may WANT a rifle that looks sorta like the one those Special Forces dudes were carrying in that movie or video game he likes... because it just looks bad a$$. And so another gun that the owner has no real need or use for is out there, available to be messed with by a curious kid, stolen by a burglar and re-sold, etc.

I get it. 1) It is a mental health issue if a 16 year old white suburban or rural kid high on Ritalin shoots another 16 year old because he is one of the "jocks" at school who bully him. 2) It is a law-and-order issue when a 16 year old black city kid stoned on pot shoots a 16 year old from the same neighborhood because he is in a different street gang. 3) It is not a problem that either kid had a gun; the problem is the paucity of good-guys-with-guns to "get the drop" on these kids.

I didn't suggest those themes are new. That wasn't my point at all. In 1974, when I entered HS, there were about 100 million guns in the hands of private citizens in the U.S., with a population of around 200 million. Today, there are about 350 million guns in the hands of private citizens in the U.S. with a population of 325 million. And in the 1970s, a very large percentage of the guns in private hands were hunting weapons -- bolt action rifles and shotguns -- or 5 or 6 shot revolvers. Today, a very large percentage of the guns in the hands of private citizens are semi-automatic handguns and rifles that are not used by their owners for hunting, and which are designed as "self-defense" weapoons -- i.e., designed to be used against human beings -- with magazines that can hold 10+ rounds. Troubled kids in the 1970s who wanted to take it out on the world could not easily get their hands on guns in order to do that. Today, many of then can, and the guns they get their hands on are easy to use (i.e., easy to kill or maim with).

Wha? Huh? Since Columbine the "narrative" on school shootings has been the shooters were picked on outsiders; outcasts and social misfits; weirdos with mental issues; mad at a girl, mad at the world. The notion that the prototypical school shooter is -- or is portrayed in the media as -- "conservative, straight male, stars and bars" is a complete fantasy. Now, there have been some recent mass shootings where the shooters were in fact "conservative, straight male, stars and bars" types, like the dudes who shot up the synagogues in Pittsburgh and California. But those stories didn't get any more attention in the media than the leftie guy who shot up the Republican Congressmen at the ballfield. The simple truth is that these school shootings have become so ubiquitous that, as with other "true crime" stories, the amount of media attention they get now depends on how many people died (a "record setter" get lots of coverage) and whether there is some especially pathetic or sad aspect to it (little children killed; a teacher just back from her honeymoon shot) to play up. This last shooting, sadly, was just run of the mill: only one kid killed, no babies or cute puppies involved. So a hot takes on Trump's latest tweet on the trade war with China quickly moved it off the front page...

What are the "these shootings" you are specifically talking about. School shootings? Mass shootings? Shootings where the shooters were kids? The only "theme" I see is people with grudges against the world, based on religion, politics, bullying, can't get a date, can't keep a job, mommy didn't love me, didn't get a pony, etc., etc., etc., took advantage of easy access to guns to kill or maim some people. Ultimately not any different that what happens almost nightly in Indy and other big cities, but that's 18 or 16 year old black kids shooting up other 18 or 16 year old black kids, so no one really cares about identifying any "themes."

I have seen plenty of articles about the 18 year old. Not sure why you think he is being ignored.....