San Bernadine Shooting

[Bouncer]

I love that none of the people for gun control will address the drug control comparison. Not very a very convenient truth is it guys? ;)

[Scrumhalf]

Guys, this is a not an all or nothing issue. You are not going to be able to prevent EVERY gun incident, not matter how many laws you have. But the question is - what is the happy medium? What is that middle point where *some* or hopefully *the majority* of gun violence is minimized? Could it be done with minimum impediment to the lawful owners of guns? That is the question that we need to have an honest debate about. And that is the question that we seem to constantly be ducking by stating things like "well, laws don't work because look, it didn't work in this instance despite all the laws being there."

In engineering and statistical sampling, there is this concept called alpha risk and beta risk. Alpha risk is where you, for example, decide to reject a part as defective when it really isn't. Beta risk, on the other hand, is where you declare a part to be fine when it really isn't. Alpha and beta risks are connected - the higher the alpha risk, the lower the beta risk and vice versa. As a part manufacturer, you have decide how much alpha risk and how much beta risk you want to tolerate. Obviously, if you are interested in outgoing quality, you will minimize your beta risk even though this means that you may be throwing away some parts that are really good.

Consider the parallel to guns and gun laws. Alpha risk is where you deny a gun to someone who is on the borderline but are really fine and law abiding. Beta risk is where you allow someone to have a gun who really shouldn't. Ideally, your laws are such that you can perfectly identify and classify every gun buyer into law abiding and having criminal intent, but real life is not so clean cut. So as a society, we need to make some decisions. We need to figure out where to place that threshold - do we make laws a little more stringent so that we minimize the chance that the bad guys get guns, at the expense of denying some people guns (or types of guns or whatever), or do we make the laws laxer so that nobody is inconvenienced in any way, at the risk of having more bad guys get access to guns.

Note that there is no such thing as zero risk. In manufacturing, if you sample, you will ALWAYS run the risk of some bad part slipping through the cracks. That's why you have customer returns. The goal is to minimize this, at the risk of throwing away more good parts (and profits). It's the same for this situation. We need to decide as a society if we can identify that happy medium where we tolerate some inconvenience, maybe more checks, whatever, to reduce the beta risk of people who should not be getting guns actually getting them. Again, beta risk will never be zero, so you will always have some people who slip through the cracks. But I think we can do better than what we are doing today, which is to say that we want to make the alpha risk zero, regardless of how high we make the beta risk.

I'm not saying I have the answer of where the needle needs to be set on this, but we at least need to analytically examine the problem. This is a problem that can be solved to a reasonable level of satisfaction, at least better than where we are today. We are just unwilling to do so.

[FitnessBrat]

so.much.ripper :)

[Bouncer]

Fb stop pushing off your beliefs onto ripper so that if someone disagrees you don't have to be in conflict with them. Stand up for what you believe in and post the fucken pic because its what you like and what you believe in! Tired of this pussy footing shit. Us gun owners gotta stick together god damn it!

[FitnessBrat]

Fb stop pushing off your beliefs onto ripper so that if someone disagrees you don't have to be in conflict with them. Stand up for what you believe in and post the fucken pic because its what you like and what you believe in! Tired of this pussy footing shit. Us gun owners gotta stick together god damn it!

Pushing them onto Ripper :laugh:


I'm not concerned about conflict today. I've already stated I don't have any solutions and am not even sure what I believe! But I think there is definitely some truth in that picture.

[Scrumhalf]

The problem I have is not that we don't have a solution. Drawing the engineering analogy one more time, in my line of work, being in research and development, I never have solutions to any of the problems I face. But what I have is the willingness to sit down, evaluate the data and the limitations and come up with a path to a solution.

The problem I have is that when faced with the issue, everybody just retreats into their ideological silos without actually problem solving.

[Mr I]

Ever wonder why noone else has tried to invade us ?:thumb:

1) You're an island, although Japan did and you'll have annihilated you but for their sense of mercy.
2) you have nothing anyone wants

[chuckz28]

And I guess my problem is I refuse to relinquish anything I legally own (so called assault rifles and high capacity magazines) because some group of people made the decision based on the easiest thing to do instead of actually trying to remedy the deep root of the issue.

[chuckz28]

1) You're an island, although Japan did and you'll have annihilated you but for their sense of mercy.
2) you have nothing anyone wants

Japan never attacked the main island because there was a quote something to the effect of "we couldn't win because there would be an American with a gun behind every bush"

[Bouncer]

America is an Island? I learn new geography facts everyday! Fucken imbeciles.

[Mr I]

Japan never attacked the main island because there was a quote something to the effect of "we couldn't win because there would be an American with a gun behind every bush"

They were dropping bombs you nugget lol

[chuckz28]

They were dropping bombs you nugget lol

In Hawaii 2500 miles of ocean away...
And I'm talking troops on soil.

[Turbo3000]

In case you didn't get Bouncer's sarcasm.

America isn't an Island.

I just couldn't watch that continue.

[chuckz28]

I'm pretty dumbfounded that they have already let an army of reporters into the house to contaminate one of the scenes. One day from the shooting and the FBI were satisfied with all the evidence they've gathered enough to let the whole house get packed full of reporters?

[Turbo3000]

I'm pretty dumbfounded that they have already let an army of reporters into the house to contaminate one of the scenes. One day from the shooting and the FBI were satisfied with all the evidence they've gathered enough to let the whole house get packed full of reporters?

Extremely odd.