Someone else told me a vote for Gary Johnson is a vote for Donald Trump.

A vote Gary Johnson is a vote for post-apocalyptical society

Maybe a vote for Gary Johnson is in fact... a vote for Gary Johnson? *GASP*

As much as i would like to, i can't agree that gun-nuts should be lumped together in the same category as climate change deniers.

Australia had a mass shooting, banned guns, and then had no more mass shootings. But with a population of only ~30 million (i haven't looke this up, so it is from memory) Australia is like one american state.

You take new york city and place all kinds of fire arms bans (because the city has a high gun-crime rate) and the crime rate either drops, remains stable, or increases, but regardless you still end up with guns available just across the state border/cury boundary. So New Yorkers can still buy (hand guns, assault rifles, whatever else you can politically ban...) various weapons.

Politically it is impossible to ban guns actoss the US, and that leaves New York with a high gun-crime rate - despite implementing tighter gun control than everywere else.

Proof therefore that the gun control in NYC didn't work. Now maybe the crime rate came down, maybe there were less mass shootings, and maybe New Yorkers are better off, BUT unlike climate change, the facts show that cities in the US with the tigthest gun controls continue to have the worst crime rates.

So it does take a certain kind of political propoganda/brain-washing to belief this perspective. BUT, we're not talking about solid scientific facts. If you choose to live in a country of state with a certain culture of gun use, that is your choice, and if your politics supports that culture, then you should be happy.

If you don't like that gun crime rate, then that is a political issue which you may struggle with. Fine, struggle away, you are not wrong for holding different political views to mine. (Which, to be clear, are i prefer to live in a country where the majority of the police are not armed, because virtually nobody has access to firearms, i feel much safer)

Now climate change is based on fact. You can prefer to live in a society with guns, and your feelings (ie that you are safer with guns) are true, even if they are different from my feelings (ie that i am safer without guns) you are entitled to your own feelings. You are not entitled to your own facts.

You can disagree about what the appropriate responce to climate change is. You can even think that the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong. But that doesn't change the facts.

What does Gary Johnson need to get in national polling in order to male it into the debates? 10-15%?? That would be interesting...

I think a vote for Gary helps prevent anyone getting elected; which would be amusing. But then i also suspect it will be a tight contest.

He needs 15% for automatic access to the debate stage. Also, if nobody is elected, the House of Representatives picks the president from those three.

So the House of Representatives would pick Clinton.

Why would the House pick Clinton? The Republicans control it pretty solidly.

they hate Clinton, they hate Trump.

Johnson for Premier I guess

House of Republicans are republican. They would pick trump. Lol some people...

Pretty confident they'll actually pick Obama again. They're all massive fans.

They'll pick Jeb Bush because his mom asked them nicely.

Sorry, that should be Jeb! Bush.

Prado:
"The mentally ill actually commit far less crimes than the average."

Agreed. I was talking about suicides for the mentally ill. Gun crime is a substantially different problem.

It seems like (some) gun rights advocates wanted voluntary background checks by unlicensed dealers while gun control advocates wanted all gun deals to go through a background check by a FFL holder. Now, of course, the NRA's position on background checks doesn't say anything about private individuals' access to NICS and simply opposes mandatory background checks of the type proposed by gun control advocates. Which feeds into that whole "gun control advocates propose shit legislation and gun control advocates shoot it down and good legislation never gets seriously discussed" dynamic I was talking about. (Also, I don't know whether private background checks will have much of an impact anyway, which is a separate issue.)

Source for NRA position: https://www.nraila.org/issues/background-checksnics/

"House of Republicans are republican."
Well I assume a household which is predominantly Republican such that it is called House of Republicans would indeed be Republican.

"Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-unique-threat-to-american-democracy/2016/07/22/a6d823cc-4f4f-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html?postshare=181469219932617&tid=ss_tw

Oh wow I can't believe I called the House of Representatives the House of Republicans. My bad.

@Orathaic
It's good to read a reasonable and considered expression of a person's views, I may, or may not agree with your views, it's just pleasant to read your post in comparison with other posts
There's only about 24 million Australians, it might seem that there's more of us..we go for quality, not quantity.
The gun law reforms you mentioned occurred about 20 years ago, and that's enough of a time frame to see the effect in statistical analysis.. the effect is quite dramatic.. Shootings per capita and other gun related crimes per capita have reduced significantly.

But your point that making comparisons to the situation in the US is not simple is a good one.
However if ( and I'd emphasise the if ) gun controls that have been tried in say New York have failed, it's not axiomatically a sound conclusion to say that means gun controls cannot work...you indicate reasons why the gun controls in New York were not effective... So the solution might be a more effective set of gun controls.

I do like the comparison with climate change... All those hundreds of millions of guns in the USA tend to stay in the USA, so I can avoid the danger they pose by not visiting the USA...whereas "greenhouse gases" once emitted into the atmosphere do not necessarily stay in the atmosphere above the emitting nation. There's the example of Australia.. in absolute terms we don't emit as much gg's as other nations, but per capita we're high consumers and emitters, also we're a major coal exporter, which poses an interesting question.. we dig it up and export it, but it's burnt in China as an example, do we share responsibility with China for the "Australian" coal they then burn ?

One good thing came out of the convention. Trump released a footnoted version of his speech detailing where things were taken from. It'll make fact checking easier.

I am going to be reading through the leaked emails from wikileaks about Clinton and the DNC. Should be some good stuff in there.

ND, dont get sucked into the media negativity on Hillary Clinton. She is a good person. She wouldnt be a bad president. She maybe wont be amazing like Obama has been but she will not ruin America. Trump is absolutely planning to make us a joke. We will be insolvent in a week under a trump dictatorship.

Can they pick Obama? Does the term limit only prevent him from running?

Also is it the current House which picks or the new elected one after Nov?

Seems kinda shitty to have a bunch of lame ducks (who have already lost their re-election bids, and this have nothing to lose) pick the new president (any representative that didn't lose would still vote if it is the new House, so i can discount them as being counted already)

@" we dig it up and export it, but it's burnt in China as an example, do we share responsibility with China for the "Australian" coal they then burn ?"

Yeah, that is a good question. My only parallel is with my vegetarianism. I don't cause the animals suffering, but i avoid contributing economically to the system which does - however most people don't seem to think like this. So i suspect i would count Australia's coal exportsc but that most people wouldn't...

If you think about it economically, should australia stop exporting fossil fuels, then the proce globally should rise, and renewables will become more viable. Then how do you convince the Australian government that this is in their interest??

"it's worth investigating whether that can be done without fucking over gun owners as a whole"

You can kill yourself without any gun, not just an assault rifle.

"Someone else told me a vote for Gary Johnson is a vote for Donald Trump."

It depends on who you would have voted for if you not Johnson.

"I think a vote for Gary helps prevent anyone getting elected; which would be amusing. But then i also suspect it will be a tight contest."

The electoral collage would prevent that unless he outright wins several states.

"Shootings per capita and other gun related crimes per capita have reduced significantly."

Crime per capita as a whole has decreased around the world, including in the US. Gun control doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

*with any gun

Dear Leon.. that's the advantage of the 20 years that have elapsed since John Howard ( Prime Minister.. Federal government ) drove through sensible gun reforms with the State governments.. Experts can compare statistical trends.
Yes the various crime rates generally show a gradual decline, but that trend was happening before and after the gun law reforms, what is significant is the much greater reduction in gun related crimes, deaths and injuries that occurs after the gun law reforms.
There is a clear difference between the sets of data.

Some of the reforms were things like linking registers of guns that had been kept by individual State governments into a National gun register / data base. I remain a political critic of John Howard, particularly on economic policies, but I will give him credit for standing off the more conservative elements of his party and his coalition partners the National Party and forcing through gun law reforms. I won't claim his gun law reforms were perfect, but they've certainly had a beneficial result for our nation, imho

I think it's ludicrous that any person can argue that some of the types of weapons sold in the USA are for "recreational and sporting use", and I refer to military type assault rifles with semi and full automatic fire capabilities.
If a " hunter" needs an automatic weapon to shoot deer, he's probably a lousy shot, Michael Herr, one of the best writers on the Vietnam war wrote about the difference in "fire control" between the US troops and the Viet Cong..typically US troops would blast hundreds of rounds at perceived targets, the VC would use ammunition sparingly but accurately by comparison.
There's a real cultural thing about guns in the USA that is unique to that nation...and as a nation you pay a heavy price for your embrace of that culture..I've had discussions on the topic of children being shot by a sibling using a poorly secured family owned gun, and the classic, what I describe as red neck response that I experienced went like this...
I outline a scenario where a boy gets mum or dads pistol and shoots his sister because she's being a pest...
Red neck response...well if the sister had a gun as well then at least it would have been a fair fight..
Umm, how can this cork brained clown not see that if neither child had a gun, then neither child would have been shot.

Sensible gun reforms don't mean that no one can own a gun, and it's the continual misrepresentation of what constitutes sensible gun law reforms that is in part preventing any progress on this issue within the USA.

As I have remarked before, humanity's collective journey towards enlightenment is slow, arduous and incremental.

@_Orathaic... The real hot issue in Australia is Coal Seam Gas exploitation at present..and it's driving some interesting "political" alliances..Farmers, vignerons, traditionally conservative are suddenly realising that CSG represents a real threat to their farms and vineyards. Australia doesn't have the rainfall and water resources of Europe or North America, so pollution of ground water is a red hot issue. Unfortunately the billions of dollars involved have clouded the judgement of State Governments.. Queensland in particular, but there are some interesting alliances forming to fight to save our arable land resources

First result for a search of "violent crime in australia": http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847

The Australian gun ban has no obvious correlation with decrease of violent crime.

"Can they pick Obama? Does the term limit only prevent him from running?"
No, he is barred from being president again under any circumstances by the 22nd amendment to the US constitution. Ever since FDR domineering politics the way he did, though effective as a leader, many hold that such opportunity gives way too much power for presidents.
It's if you have been elected twice or served more than two years having ascended to the presidency (as in if the president dies or resigns with 2+ years left on the term), and then elected after, then you are barred from further terms.

Also yeah the DNC leak is pretty hilarious to read.