This percentage is much smaller in other countries, so actually it is... if you don't live in the USA, which is a large majority of the world's population.
Many countries in Europe have tons of older hunting guns, on top of newish guns for... personal protection? Sport? Or whatever reason people feel the need to have them.
Tens of millions as per wikipedia [1]. Also check other countries and continents. A very valid argument.
In most European countries you have to store the firearm in a locked safe, often with the bolt removed or the weapon disassembled and - quite often - with the ammunition stored separately in another locked container/safe.
It’s a lot more “steps to take” to commit suicide than “take the weapon from your nightstand and shoot yourself”, given you have to unlock usually more than one safe/lockbox.
I assume that's not any of the concealed carry countries as that would completely defeat the point of having the gun. Definitely not the case where I live.
The countries allowing CC are - unfortunately - in the minority in Europe.
Among the ones that do allow CC, most of them that’s a special permit that seems to have an exception to the storage requirements for personal protection.
Personally I wish more of Europe would emulate the Czech Republic in this matter…
And that's the problem. It's not particularly useful to write it off, particularly absurd that you do so on the grounds that it's an extremely prevalent problem.
I think your point is well made. Unfortunately, there are a substantial number of drug users in Oregon (and Portland in particular) who do not have a private place to do drugs. They live in tents on the sidewalk[1]. You see people smoking fentanyl on the sidewalk or in parks all over town.
One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business.
> I think your point is well made. Unfortunately, there are a substantial number of drug users in Oregon (and Portland in particular) who do not have a private place to do drugs. They live in tents on the sidewalk[1]. You see people smoking fentanyl on the sidewalk or in parks all over town.
Yes, and that's why the state also needs to provide injection sites, non-shelter housing, and all sorts of other programs that were supposed to happen under Measure 110, and which the state refused to fund, and which never had the time to get off the ground before this bill was passed.
> One example of how this negatively impacts non-drug using citizens is that summer camps have been having trouble because the kids can't use the bathrooms at the local parks. People are smoking fentanyl in the park bathrooms (which is not currently illegal), and so the kids have no where to do their business.
There are lots of ways to solve that issue without criminalizing drugs. And in fact, as proven by countless other cities across the country, criminalizing drugs doesn't even solve that problem either.
> And in fact, as proven by countless other cities across the country, criminalizing drugs doesn't even solve that problem either.
It doesn't solve the problem.
However, criminalization may be a less worse way to mitigate the impacts of the problem.
This feels like "no true Scotsman" at policy-scale: it's unscientific to point out the flaws in actual sausage making as the reason the Platonically ideal sausage turned out poorly in reality.
Those political characteristics are inherent to the process! If one path to utopia requires pissing voters off, then it's more logical to engineer a different path to get there while placating voters, because the former in untenable in a democracy.
> However, criminalization may be a less worse way to mitigate the impacts of the problem.
There's no data to support this claim, and copious evidence against it.
> This feels like "no true Scotsman" at policy-scale: it's unscientific to point out the flaws in actual sausage making as the reason the Platonically ideal sausage turned out poorly in reality. Those political characteristics are inherent to the process! If one path to utopia requires pissing voters off, then it's more logical to engineer a different path to get there while placating voters, because the former in untenable in a democracy.
It's not a "no true Scotsman" to point out that the measure that voters passed was never actually implemented. Some of the provisions weren't even due to kick in until later this year!
Ironically, your statement is a great example of begging the question (in the correct usage of the term): by your logic, any world in which decriminalization is not already implemented is "proof" that it's a bad policy, because if it were, the Logical Politicians™ would implement it, as that would surely appease voters.
In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure".
> It's not a "no true Scotsman" to point out that the measure that voters passed was never actually implemented. Some of the provisions weren't even due to kick in until later this year!
If the voters passed a measure, that caused substantial negative perception before it was fully implemented, then who's to blame?
Maybe the voters should have been clearer on the implementation sequencing.
> In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure".
How does this not suffice as an excuse for any bad results from decriminalization? What constitutes a sufficiently perfect implementation to validate negative outcomes?
> If the voters passed a measure, that caused substantial negative perception before it was fully implemented, then who's to blame?
> Maybe the voters should have been clearer on the implementation sequencing.
This is, again, begging the question. You're assuming the consequent.
Voters were clear on what they wanted. They directly voted for and passed a specific bill. Elected officials - not voters - refused to implement what voters chose. Then, elected officials - not voters - repealed the bill.
It's not like this was repealed by popular vote. As of today, there's not even any evidence that the same voters who approved this in 2020 have somehow changed their minds and oppose it today.
You're arguing from a position of pure speculation to support an a priori conclusion, and that's simply not logically sound.
> How does this not suffice as an excuse for any bad results from decriminalization?
This is ridiculous. You can't judge the effect of a policy that's not implemented. If you're willing to do that, you've left the realm of science altogether and might as well argue for policy based on astrology, or augury.
The only real solution is to discourage drug use in the first place. Early education is the best deterrent but with our modern pluralistic society you can't even get people to agree on what is "good" or "bad." Not only that but these chemicals are extremely physically addictive and cause a derangement in higher executive brain functions. Often the most effective repellent is a threat of negative outcome for the targeted action. Impulse control (internal or external) is the only thing that really separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Unfortunately, if the new laws are enforced there will be a "correction" that takes place and I imagine that will include fines, arrests, and jail.
Well, we just got a great natural experiment to see if it works that way. I don’t think so but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. I think it’ll just move where they use. If the effects of heroin on your life aren’t a strong enough deterrent I Don’t think a rap sheet is. I don’t know why we default assume otherwise and perhaps I’m missing data that shows it but I haven’t seen any.
If the FPGA contains a hard PCIe IP that can act as a host and the proper transceivers and the CPU implemented all of the necessary things to interface with it, it'd be about as difficult as writing a driver for any other machine. Actually building a board for the FPGA with all of the required power supplies, peripherals, and a PCIe host is not a trivial undertaking however, and an FPGA with a hard PCIe controller generally isn't cheap!
The dilemma parents are grappling with is this: tablets and smartphones, while beneficial for children's learning and socializing, also expose them to constant marketing and propaganda, even within the confines of their bedrooms, as they attempt to connect with peers or complete tasks.
Previously, children's exposure to marketing and propaganda was mostly confined to their entertainment hours, during which they watched television or read magazines. There was at least some hope for moderation. However, "apps" have blurred these boundaries, as the same devices used for education and social interaction are also channels for persistent advertising and messaging, making it harder to limit exposure to just "entertainment" time.
> The dilemma parents are grappling with is this: tablets and smartphones, while beneficial for children's learning and socializing
Recent reports from teachers indicate that many children are intellectually behind their peers. A concerning trend is that these children struggle to hold conversations, a problem attributed to their parents phone/social networks addiction. Rather than engaging and raising their children through conversation and interaction, these parents often resort to pacifying them with tablets or phones.
What do you mean they struggle to hold conversations? I was an awkward kid and you could say I struggled to hold conversations but it wasn't due to an addiction to tech. I'm also socially well adjusted now, as an adult.
There can be multiple reasons for the same outcome in a complex system. Prevalence of social awkwardness at certain developmental stages due to variances in individual immutable developmental schedules should remain stable over short time frames. Unless you think the researchers/teachers are incompetent enough to have not accounted for the baseline levels of social awkwardness, then the fact that some people are awkward because genetics or whatever is an irrelevant point to make.
This isn't Wikipedia. It's a casual internet forum, and you don't need someone to come armed with mountains of proof for casual (and obvious) statements.
BTW: One of my kids learned to read by playing a Cookie Monster word game during the pandemic. We've had enough "edutainment" software for a few decades that you don't need to ask for proof in a casual atmosphere.
It's definitely harder to socialize when all your classmates have smartphones and you don't, but you mostly need access to personal messaging apps. TikTok or a Facebook/Twitter feed full of people you don't know IRL are where the problems come from and they aren't needed. If only there was a way of splitting those out into separate apps.
Basically we need more things like Facebook's push a few years ago to show more personal updates from close friends and less mass-shared political posts from organizations.
This is not what needs to be argued. What needs to be argued is that the form of socializing and learning that can only can come through phones/tablets is worth the negative aspects.
As someone who grew up just before smartphones became a thing, I kinda also managed using books and shit.
Yeah, and doping makes it easier to win the school soccer game — still few would consider letting their kids do it. That is because the trade offs involved are not worth it at all compared to winning by just training harder.
Don't get me wrong, I am not dogmatically against smartphones/tablets for kids and I understand the pressures parents operate under, but if you want to figure out whether it is good to let your kids do X vs not doing it, you should probably take into account:
- what are the benefits? (claimed: easier learning and socializing, but also: parents don't need to deal with their kids)
- what are the downsides? (there are man studies linking e.g. depression to excessive smartphone use in kids, also: parents don't deal with their kids, smartphones are mostly used for consumption, hard to monitor where the algorithm takes them)
- are there any alternatives that have similar advantages while having less of the bad stuff? (I mentioned books, but of course it might be even feasible to limit the amart phone use to certain times of the day etc.)
And then you weigh those for yourself and decide. This was the point of my post before.
education is debatable, but I don't think there's any argument to be made that social life isnt degraded without a phone. High schoolers won't be invited to things if they don't have access to a smartphone.
Let's assume that the lawsuits are poorly constructed. That does not necessarily mean that Facebook is harmless. It just means these lawsuits aren't sufficient to prove harm.
Consider this analogy: Just because the DA doesn't have enough evidence to convict in a murder trial, that doesn't mean that the defendant is innocent. I just means they haven't been proven guilty.
Presuming innocence doesn't make him actually, literally innocent. The reality of what happened is what it is, regardless of whether anybody can prove it to a legal standard.
Also, when you say "We tend to presume innocence", that's not really true. It's true (or is supposed to be true) for the government and people who want to be civically responsible, but a whole lot of the general population does not actually think this way. People think OJ did it, have various theories about who killed JFK, etc. People read the news about somebody accused of murder and think "yeah, that guy probably did it."
In your original comment, you suggest "misplaced anger against Facebook". Many people hold the belief that Facebook's products are harmful to children.
Following from that, I can imagine a few viewpoints:
0) Parents are wrong, Facebook is awesome!
1) Facebook has violated existing laws (these lawsuits are exploring that space).
2) Parents should be frustrated with legislators for failing to regulate social media.
3) Parents should be angry with themselves for allowing their children to use Facebook's products.
I'm curious which (if any) of these viewpoints you hold.
Not in the court of public opinion. People are allowed to judge guilt/innocence for themselves well in advance of being legally proven. Cynicism about modern day capitalism is thoroughly justified. The track record of ad-tech companies to "do the right thing" is really bad.
It's up to Meta to handle PR on such things. Unfortunately when your company is accused of, for instance, contributing to a genocide, your PR department probably doesn't have a lot of options.
