Burgold

I was just thinking this. Wasn't it just last week that the Right were decrying "cancel culture?"

The bathroom isn't done yet? Get to work on the freaking bathroom!

Deion Sanders owes this man a nod of respect.

contract. contractors. What's the difference. The Marties and McClaurin's agent better get to damn work on my bathroom!!!

At this point, I would lock the Marties and McClaurin's agent in a room with a doggy door. Every six hours I would slide food through that door. No one leaves until a bathroom get done. They get food, water, and no bathroom breaks.

It’s very sad that this idea of ignoring subpoenas has been normalized.

It's so funny. Exactly one year ago, everyone thought Del Rio and the defense would be monsters. Now, everyone thinks it is monstrous. The D still could be very good. We still have a D line that could potentially terrorize quarterbacks. We do have questions in the secondary and linebacker though. Is Fuller good? Can Jackson recover his Cinci swagger? Do we have two or three decent safeties? Can Del Rio call a good game? Do we have two good linebackers on the team? We'll find out the answers, but it's crazy how almost all of us were sure that the D was the strength of this team a year ago and now we think it is the albatross holding them back.

Amazing how well something worked that didn’t do anything. In fairness, the lapse of the ban is only one factor. Since 2004, the NRA’s actions with their Republican accomplices have controlled the gun narrative in this country. Together, they weakened, defunded, stripped, and had had hundreds of working laws reversed. All their actions have made the situation worse.

Well, towards the end Shanny definitely felt no desire to shield his players. He was happy to throw everyone under the bus, pour gasoline on their remains, light it up, and then detonate dynamite he placed along the bridge as he drove off.

I don't really remember Gibbs actually criticizing a player publicly. I remember him going out of his way to put everything on his own shoulders.

I wonder if it was being gassed or the pressure of the moment catching up to them. So often in sports you see teams that get a big league play a little conservatively or a little tight at the end of the game and it opens the door for their opponent to try to begin a come back. (Disclosure: I didn't see or hear a second of this game) Congrats to all the Terps out there.

Cousins is old news. Man has been away so long the team has had the time to change its name twice.

With the price of gas, National Road Trip Day probably involves a lot of hitchhiking.

Kind of fun news that doesn't mean much. I entered a short story contest recently. They broke the submitted stories into eight groups and stripped any identifying material (the author's name.) Then, posted the stories. Top vote getters move on in March Madness style to the next bracket. My little story not only won its bracket, but it garnered more votes than any other story in any of the groups. I have no idea how it will do in the "playoffs," but it feels nice.

A Justice Department study of the assault weapons ban found that it was responsible for a 6.7% decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal. Source: Jeffrey A. Roth & Christopher S. Koper, “Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994,” (March 1997). The same study also found that “Assault weapons are disproportionately involved in murders with multiple victims, multiple wounds per victim, and police officers as victims.” The use of assault weapons in crime declined by more than two-thirds by about nine years after 1994 Assault Weapons Ban took effect. Source: Christopher S. Koper, “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003” (June 2004), University of Pennsylvania, Report to the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. The percentage of firearms seized by police in Virginia that had high-capacity magazines dropped significantly during the ban. That figure has doubled since the ban expired. Source: David S. Fallis and James V. Grimaldi, “In Virginia, high-yield clip seizures rise,” Washington Post, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204046.html When Maryland imposed a more stringent ban on assault pistols and high-capacity magazines in 1994, it led to a 55% drop in assault pistols recovered by the Baltimore Police Department. Source: Douglas S. Weil & Rebecca C. Knox, Letter to the Editor, The Maryland Ban on the Sale of Assault Pistols and High-Capacity Magazines: Estimating the Impact in Baltimore, 87 Am. J. of Public Health 2, Feb. 1997. 37% of police departments reported seeing a noticeable increase in criminals’ use of assault weapons since the 1994 federal ban expired. Source: Police Executive Research Forum, Guns and Crime: Breaking New Ground by Focusing on the Local Impact (May 2010).   This I agree with. But Diehard was arguing that there was definitively zero effects. I don't think it's possible to argue that. You certainly can say there were other factors, but you can look also looked at what happened before, during, and after and say... "Well, there seems to be some effect."

We have no idea whether they played "no role." What we do know is that immediately after the ban ended that the rates of casualties increased. As in, the very next year the rate more than doubled. Now, I can't tell you that there's a direct causal relationship, but it's a heck of an indicator that there was some impact especially since the level of casualties that happened during the ban were have been lower in absolute terms than every single year post ban. So, to me the question is... how big was the effect of the ban. Not if the ban had zero effect.

Grading on the curve must have been so hard I will stop. I'm just being very silly.

So, your logic is that the rate of shootings were significantly lower before the ban, doubled immediately after the ban ended and continued rising ever since, but there's no possibility that the ban did any goo I enjoy your sarcasm, but find your it uncompelling. I stick by what I said. Definitions can be created. Laws can be revised and improved after they were improved. As imperfect as the Assault Weapons Ban Law was... the rate of murder was much lower during the period and immediately and dramatically rose afterwards it was allowed to lapse. Was that because of this law ending? Was it because Republicans and the NRA have systematically attacked and forced other gun control measures to be weakened or stripped from the books? Does anyone think that the US is a safer or better place since 2004?

Note that the Assault Weapons ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. https://www.fbi.gov/about/partnerships/office-of-partner-engagement/active-shooter-incidents-graphics

You say this and yet the rate of mass murders after the Ban was allowed to elapse did what?

No offense, this is just lawyering. Simplest thing in the world is to create a definition. The legislators get together and say, "This is what we're doing. This is what it will effect and whom it will effect." Definition done. The definition will obviously be imperfect. Can you name a law that is? Can you name a law that people haven't found or drilled loopholes into? The wonderful thing about living law is that you can write a law. If it works, great. If it has unintended consequences then you can 1) challenge it in court or 2) amend the law to fix its weaknesses. So really we don't need a perfect definition that every marksman and gun owner in the United States agrees with before we address the issue. What we need is a definition that everyone can understand. That can take the form of a list (don't love this approach) that can take a function (any weapon that can shoot x number of bullets per minute or inflict x kind of damage or has x penetrating power),Once you decide that, you build the regulations around it. It's not that hard. It's actually really easy. The problem is that too many not only refuse to vote, but refuse to even entertain discussions. No middle ground and no definitions can be found if you won't even engage in dialogue.

Her graduating class was six people? Does that mean only six of the 200 people in her class graduated? (being a smartass)

I don't think that's how you define a red state. For example, Maryland currently has a Republican governor. No way anyone confuses that state with a red state.

Interesting. I wonder if they are including guns at businesses used for self defense or just guns at home (which was what I was thinking of) Both ways of looking at it is valid. Certainly, the shop owner is using the gun for self defense.