In the news

Oliver - if you want to discuss road use policy in the US I'm quite happy to share my experiences - it was job related for a while.

glutton for punishment.

glutton for punishment.

Come on, talking to Chris is not that bad. :)

But yes, always interested, Chris.

Give the boy some porn.

I am debating the levels of soft core availability. not sure fapdu at 13 is an education or a mind fuck TBH and veronica moser can >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When I was young and innocent at 13 I thought 'I wonder what porn looks like' and typed porn.com into the address bar. Nothing too hardcore came up but it did shock me into not searching for it again.

/csb

10 days later and the headlines would have been x-massacre

When I was 13 the only source of porn was a network of hidden spots in shrubs stashed with razz mags.

It was an invaluable resource. Each spot almost felt sacred. Someone even went to the trouble of laminating the mags. They didn't do a very good job though; it was a very opaque finish.

I remember porn in trees, kids don't even know they're born these days.

Right to own guns my arse

I'm all for civil liberties, but there is no excuse for owning a gun.

Not that I agree with it but there are some reasonable arguments for certain rifles with proper licencing and shit in remote areas with dangerous animals.. Handguns are anti personnel weapons though, solely for capping motherfuckers. Really shouldn't be allowed, ammo should be much harder to get as well.

Yeah, there are legitimate reasons... But there's still no reason

If you are going to allow widespread gun ownership, limiting magazine size seems a sensible first step.

It should also be noted that the guns where his mothers. She has been described as a bit of a gun but. I wonder if she changed here mind as she looked down the barrel...

It's a bit weird, I'm all for getting rids of them all but I can understand a need in certain places. Doesn't Australia have some reasonable laws, with only certain rifles and types of shotguns allowed? Nothing automatic, no pump action stuff.
If they are to be allowed somewhere then there needs to be strict control over weapon types, nothing concealable or automatic, small magazines, a provable need to own one (only one) and strict control over storage and ammunition. Should make them all bright pink too.

I don't think you can own a handgun here unless it's for sport.

A large proportion of gun crime in america is with unlicensed handguns, and particularly in states which have very high restrictions on gun ownership.

For example you can't carry a handgun in New York state, yet they have a handgun crime problem.

It seems that legal restrictions on guns don't work intuitively in the US. Calling them stupid for their gun laws is short sighted, but it's easy to think that seeing the shite the NRA, and civil libertarian twats come out with.

Surely ease of legal ownership makes illegal ownership easier too. State lines are a lot easier to cross with a car full of guns than national borders.

^^ I thought that NY's gun crime had seriously dropped in the last 20 years?
Here's some recent stats anyway.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20536201

Blackly humourous that Gary Younge can copy and paste this into this and just change around a few details. He'll be doing it again some time in the future, is my guess.

The reason 47% of US households own guns is because in such a large country ones household can be quite a significant distance away from law enforcement. Anyone who has spent time in the states knows that once you are fifty miles outside a major city there isn't really very much law enforcement. This is why rural Americans have guns. Try and relieve these Americans of their guns and it will be civil war. The best one could hope for is to limit the type of guns, the size of the clips & how guns & ammo can be sold. Good article in The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/2/

I wonder how many of the 27 or so households directly affected by these shootings possessed firearms.

For those wondering about gun ownership in the US - Wiki the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. It will set out the legal foundation for US gun ownership and why you just can't take them away.

Change the constitution then.

For those wondering about gun ownership in the US - Wiki the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. It will set out the legal foundation for US gun ownership and why you just can't take them away.

You still haven't understood that the stitution is just a con.

It's an amendment after all, amend that fucker.

Read up on the amending process, too.

Americans seem weirdly brainwashed into taking the constitution as being sacrosanct. If the second amendment is so important, where's this well regulated militia?

They are in a bit of a pickle with the gun thing tho'. It's somewhat understandable that 'good' people are reluctant to be disarmed when the bad guys would presumably hang onto their weapons. The odd mulitple-massacre apparently seems a price worth paying for constitutionally-enshrined individual freedom.