prairiechickin

I've never fired one of those fake AKs, but just looking at it I can tell its fairly useless as a weapon. Its a short barreled .22 rim-fire and you wouldn't be able to hit much past 30 yards. Even the real Aks aren't good for much beyond spraying bullets at close quarters. So what they're selling is the look, not a really functional firearm. You can go in any gun store and buy replica pellet guns that look like real 9mm of Glocks or whatever badass handgun you want, so I don't see the difference. I'm sure the fakes drive the cops nuts, but what are you going to do, ban things because they look scary? Myself, I don't much care either way, I'm more concerned with real guns than the fake knock-offs.

Since NORAD was designed to counter the threat of incoming missiles or bombers, I'm not sure how failing to stop the hijacking of domestic airliners has any bearing on its usefulness.

I'm not so sure. As Bishop, was he not in charge of a number of priests in the Antigonish Diocese that have recently been exposed as pedophiles? How many 'individual' cases does it take before we can conclude that this sort of thing is systemic within the Catholic Church? I don't recall such scandals within the Anglican Church, or the Pentecostals, or any other religeon other than certain branches of the Mormon Church. But there seems to be no end to the scandals within the Catholic Church in many different countries. Are these just a few bad apples, or is there something more insideous here?

Yep, killing schoolgirls is all part of Allah's plan, but this urination thing is way over the line.

I agree completely, you've nicely summed up the entire argument here.

I gotta say, I don't know where you guys in Toronto found this guy, but for those of us not living there, he provides nearly non-stop entertainment. He's right out of central casting if you're making a comedy centered around a city trying to function with big stupid buffoon running the show. He's Gold Jerry, Pure Gold!

Don't forget the most left-wing government in Canadian history -- the Saskatchewan CCF under Tommy Douglas. From 1944 to 1964 those lunatics nearly ruined the province with 20 balanced budgets, sustainable resource development, and by intoducing a provincial health plan that was the precursor to universal health care. Crazy bastards.

Yes, the bibliography should be short and sweet on this paper.

You're an educated woman, right? You understand the difference between the public and the private, right? Here's the difference between registering my guns and registering my truck. I register my truck so I can drive around on public roads, seems to make sense. If I choose not to drive on public roads I can park my truck in the backyard and nobody will care. I am just one vehicle among many. When I register my guns, I go into a national database that will be used by police, which is not that different from my truck. But if they get called to my house for any reason, they won't care if I have a truck, but they're likely to approach guns at the ready when they see I have guns. And registering my truck doesn't get them in the door, registering my guns means they can demand to check safe storage, meaning they don't need a warrent to enter my home. Kiss that constitutional right goodbye. Registering my guns means they have to be stored in a certain way, and if they're not, I'm charged under the Criminal Code of Canada. And they take my guns away. Prior to this legislation I could pretty much do anything I wanted in my house as long as I wasn't hurting anybody, manufacturing drugs, or making bombs. This legislation crosses the threshold of my front door, and what's more I'd need a team of lawyers to sort out what's legal and what isn't, that legislation is a bloody minefield of clauses of what's legal and what's not. Just look at this most recent example of the fake AK47s, they were legal, now their not. So, short answer is, registering my truck and my guns are two very different things and this distinction seems to be lost on the non gun owning population. And its not quick and easy, it costs hundreds of dollars to file applications and take training that I had 30 years ago. But mostly its because that legislation crosses my front door, and not since Trudeau made the remark about the state having no business in the bedrooms of the nation has Canada gone back into Candian homes in such an invasive manner.

I was laughing when I watched that big protest in Washington over the XL pipeline. Tens of thousands of people from all over America -- how did they all get there? Bicycles I'm sure.

Exactly -- many factors unaccounted for -- "at least some effect" -- pretty fuzzy conclusions from pretty fuzzy data, but this won't stop some politician with an agenda from using this argument to dirctly correlate this conclusion into a bold statement about the gun registry saving hundreds of lives ect. ect. and turning that into real legislation that directly impacts my life insofar as I'm a gun owner. That's what pisses me off. What is a bit of an academic exercise for you is constantly used by gun-control enthusiasts as scientific proof that guys like me must be registered and regulated like I was a sex offender, or at least a potential danger to society simply because I like to eat wild meat. You and people in your field understand the limitations of these statistical games, but the average politician doesn't, and the average Canadian sure as hell does not either. All they know is that (Harper and Gundufson, 2006) said it was true, so it must be true.

I don't pretend to understand advanced physics, so I rely on the peer-review process to keep the physicists honest. I'm fairly well read across most of the other sciences so the language doesn't intimidate me. My beef is with the social sciences, and I use the term 'sciences' only because its a common term, not because they are real sciences. I don't worry about biologists tinkering around since they tend to stick to biology, and outside of gardening their work doesn't directly affect me. I don't worry about geologists since they are too tied up looking under the earth to bother anyone. Same with astronomers. Where I get concerned is when social scientists use this gibberish to justify public policy that may very well affect my personal life. Such as this thread, where certain people are arguing that the invasion of my personal space (that was entailed by certain gun control measures) is warrented and justified by their maipulation of numbers, and so shrouded in monkey-speak I can't understand the argument moreless mount an effective response.

I'd have to see this in writing to believe it.

Much like the decision to implement the long-gun registry. How do you like it?

See, this is what I mean about stats. And the end of all this gibberish is there some sort of logical conclusion, or is this just a game people play with statistics? As I said earlier in this thread, with all this monkey-garble and a myriad of numbers to play with, you can reach any conclusion you want. And what's more, the average reader can't argue with you because they haven't been trained in monkey-garble. I've always been highly suspicious of arguments that rely on insider language because they have the automatic failsafe -- you (the reader) have to accept my conclusion because you're too dumb to understand monkey-speak.

I don't care who did it, but I'd buy him a beer if I had the chance. Well executed, who's next?

The Taliban deserve zero respect, either in life or death. These assholes throw acid in the faces of little Afgan girls for having the nerve to go to school. They're not soldiers, they're fanatical lunatics from another century. Kill 'em all and piss on every one of 'em for all I care.

This is all part of America's grand plan, saddle the Chinese with a mountain of bad securities, then flush the toilet.

No, tortured to death over many days as I recall. Stoning or beheading would have been quicker and more merciful.

See post #489, previous page. I'm not exaggerating, its a direct quote from a standard undergrad history textbook. I only brought this up to show how the Royal Proclamation was not some Indian Magna Charta, but rather a blueprint for British intentions in North America following the defeat of the French. Natives were included to be sure, but the document was primarily directed at the English colonists to the south assuring them that the French would be de-Frenched. That program never took place because the southern colonies revolted anyway, and the British introduced the Quebec Act 1774 to mollify the French so Quebec would not seize the moment to rebel as well. All of this ties into this thread because some posters insist the Proclamation holds great significance as some sort of recognition of nation-to-nation understanding between the British and North American Natives. It wasn't -- the Natives were included to be sure, but only as one group in a much larger drama involving the French and the rebellious colonies to the south.

You're welcome, that's all I was trying to do. I don't know why waldo got in such a flap.

Clearly you've had training in statistics. I haven't, and have no desire to learn. All I can see from "waldo's regression", whatever the hell that is, is that the line was headed downward from 1990 on, which was five years before registration. All I can tell from your paragraph here is that you're making a lot of assumptions. I don't know stats, but I have done a fair amount of historic economic analysis, and I know one can wiggle those numbers around to support nearly any argument. Hence my distain for stats, which provides a lot more wiggle room with a lot more obtuse language that necessarily leaves the average reader incapable of assessing its validity. So I wasn't interested in joining this debate, I just thought the links provided by The Squid suggested this topic was much more complex than you were allowing, and I wondered why you chose to ignore that particular post.

Yep, sounds about right, confiscate guns because they look scary. Or is it because it looks commie?

cybercoma made a number of points that seemed to suggest a correlation between the gun registry and a drop in gun-related suicides. The Squid countered with several studies that contadicted this, or at least suggested the subject was much more complex than cybercoma suggested. I simply juxtaposed the two posts because cybercome either did not see The Squid's post, or chose to ignore it. Either way, I was wondering how she reconciled the two.