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This sounds like a bad move, but what were the cases that were prosecuted where no contact had been made?

I do believe the U.S. is less sexist, homophobic and racist than ever. However, that's not saying much - just that it was even more sexist, homophobic and racist in the past. There's always a period when it sounds like things are getting worse but in fact we're (the privileged people) just hearing more about it because people are finally being given a voice (or rather, people have finally found an outlet for their voice in the internet). Anyone who's not privileged can tell you that things have never been great for them. We can look at past advertisements, books, magazines and TV shows to see some of it for ourselves; I find a lot of pre-2000 shows to be pretty cringeworthy these days with the value of hindsight, for example. With regards to certain issues - mass shootings, police shootings, healthcare, warmongering and religious fundamentalism - the U.S. is a joke to much of the rest of the world, and that's speaking from the benefit of having actually lived in another country for 25 years. Of course no country is perfect and of course the U.S. has made more progress than other countries in many regards. The U.S. attracts more attention, though, for the size of its population, its nationalism and the power it wields worldwide. Regardless of what percentage of the population is responsible for each issue, they all affect the country as a whole.

I mean, it's hard to believe you don't believe birth control is an abortifacient when you keep harping on about murder and ignoring the many health conditions it can help treat. And this isn't even touching upon the hypocritical behaviors of the anti-contraception people (plus, of course, they are always simultaneously anti-maternity leave, anti-single mothers and anti-welfare). But it'll be interesting to see what precedent this sets with regards to other religions.

Why? How does any company feel the need to insert its nose into a health matter that absolutely does not affect the company in any way? And it's hardly a financial issue, since the cost of covering a pill isn't going to affect the premiums in any way.

Right, which I find awful, because as I said, there are plenty of non-contraceptive uses for it. And companies dictating morals (especially since I'd guarantee they're all hypocrites in some way or another)... it tends to go against the individualism and hands-off-government they love to talk about.

The ACA is not failing. It's not perfect, but as we've recently seen, the Republicans currently can't come up with a better alternative and in the meantime, a lot of people are benefitting from it. Many states now facing the biggest problems with their insurance markets actively resisted the health law, refusing to expand Medicaid or to help build a new marketplace where consumers could shop for health plans. Of all the conservative focal points, being against a universal healthcare system is the most baffling to me. The U.S. medical system is the most expensive in the world while providing pitiful coverage to its citizens. And population with better access to healthcare means more efficient work and overall raised happiness levels. A few months ago, when the ACA was in jeopardy, news stations were full of stories of Republicans who'd benefitted from the ACA. It's so easy to be on a high horse about healthcare when you're healthy and wealthy. And really, the ACA does the bare minimum - it's hardly very socialist in practice, and falls far short of other countries' public healthcare systems. And in other news... John Kelly's phone has been compromised for months, lol. The ACA's contraception mandate has been rolled back, because of course it has. Never mind that the pill is used for various reasons, including the management of endometriosis (which affects 1 in 10 women in the U.S.).

I found this fascinating - I had no idea how hard it was to trace guns, or that computers were forbidden in the keeping of records.

Actually every left news source I read explained that in full and from @Sias's link itself:

What's a moderate? Serious question with relation to the U.S. parties. There's not enough difference between the Democratic and Republican parties right now for anyone to hover somewhere in between the, IMO. Most self-described centrists seem to be somewhere outside the two parties. This, exactly.

Yup; the link I posted on the previous page mentioned you can be imprisoned for possession of 1 gram of crack (vs 100 grams for coke - and which is used more by black people and which by white?!)

Well, first you're also assuming the baby survives to a year old. And how does one define killing? Parents do (perfectly legally) withdraw care/assisted feeding and allow their child to die naturally, even when they're over a year old (I know of a child who survived to 4 years old; his quality of life was declining, so his parents withdrew assisted feeding and he died a few days later). It's obviously a complicated subject, and not really one with a right or wrong answer; there have been many lawsuits in cases where medical staff and the parents have been at odds over the decision. There was a law proposed in Ireland recently (to allow abortion in the case of fetal incompatibility with life; it was struck down) and there were parents - all with experience - on both sides of the fence. Some had children originally diagnosed incompatible with life who'd beaten all the odds to survive, whereas others had felt the trauma of watching their infants die a slow death was inhumane.

The U.S. judicial system is hugely racist. I know you'll no doubt disagree with some of the points linked but particularly with regards to the war on drugs, the facts are indisputable. An easy example is in the treatment of crack vs powdered cocaine; the latter is largely used by middle class white people, the former by poor black people, and sentencing for carrying crack is much harsher and predicated on a much smaller amount than on powdered cocaine. There are many other issues with the U.S. prison system, including the length of time people are held in jail without trial/sentencing (you may be innocent, but meanwhile you lose your job if you're not free to work), the privatization/monetization of prisons, the lack of rehabilitation, and the extremely long sentences for non-violent crimes. Oh, and crime rates in the U.S. have been in a steady decline these past few decades. But to suggest that mixed cultural society is naturally going to raise crime rates and that's the reason for the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate... actually, all studies have shown the opposite is true: Crime fell fastest in big cities and high-density suburbs that were poorer, more minority, and had higher crime rates to begin with. At the same time, all kinds of suburbs saw their share of poor, minority, and foreign-born residents increase.

I keep re-reading this and I don't see how this answers my question? Are you saying a mass shooting has to have 4+ dead victims or not? Personally I'm absolutely fine with the media's definition, as are many other people. Whether it's a drive-by-shooting or a familial murder-suicide or a school shooting, an incident in which 4+ people are shot at says mass shooting to me. We're all quite capable of realizing that not every mass shooting results in 4 dead people, but we care about the wounded living, too.

How does this contradict what @Sias is saying? Are you saying a mass shooting requires there to be 4+ dead victims? Because otherwise, select any example from here and explain how it is does not fit the definition of a mass shooting. Given that gun injuries are often extremely debilitating and have lifelong consequences, I don't see how nitpicking between whether a victim lives or dies does anything except obscure how frequently shootings occur in the U.S. Also if you deny that there is a lack of opportunities and privileges that black communities have, then calling it a part of 'culture' is as meaningless and as racist as claiming violence is inherent to black people. It's true that it's a complex matter and one that is not easily solved (although welfare programs and universal healthcare DO help lift people out of poverty) but a lack of privilege and a history of oppression are to blame.

And what of harm to the baby? The majority of babies aborted after 20 weeks are aborted because they have issues incompatible with life. A lot of issues aren't picked up until the crucial 20 week ultrasound (or are detected at the first ultrasound, typically held around 12 weeks, but are often 'wait and see' cases since sometimes issues either resolve, or the fetus was simply too small/underdeveloped to detect anomalies with a high degree of accuracy). Tim Murphy is an excellent example of why it's hard to take the pro-life stance seriously; it's actually not uncommon for people with a pro-life stance to change their mind when they find themselves (or their partners) in a precarious position. As I said earlier, some of the women I've known who swore they would never have an abortion ended up having one - usually for medical reasons, but even people who have abortions for the most tragic medical reasons still require there to be safe, legal abortion providers available to them.

Making his first appearance in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico since Maria’s landfall, President Trump offered a hearty round of congratulations to federal relief efforts and thanked the island’s governor. But the president also suggested Maria was not a “real catastrophe,” made an odd and misleading comparison to the death toll from Hurricane Katrina, and joked about how the hurricane would affect the federal budget. Considering this was Trump's chance to show a little compassion after his outburst on twitter over the weekend, he failed spectacularly. PewDiePie is also a Swede living in the UK so what on earth does the First Amendment have to do with him?

Not even touching the inaccuracies here, but who mentioned sexual abuse? All the Starbucks baristas said was that he cowed his girlfriend, possibly speaking to a particular mindset. What's not to believe there, and how does it relate to sexual abuse? And we already discussed the whys of that... Anyway, I feel that at the very least the U.S. could enable gun violence research to be conducted; more facts and insight couldn't hurt.

So the gunman was known at his local Starbucks for berating his girlfriend; if he treated her that way in public it's probably safe to assume it was probably worse at home, which if of no surprise since the one factor that links together more mass shooters than anything else (other than maleness) is domestic violence.

FE7 - Canas (I really don't have a favourite, though) FE13 - Lon'qu FE14 - Takumi FE15 - Lukas

I meant to post this yesterday and forgot! Yes; we can look at cultural reasons and other ways to decrease homicide rates and gun crimes without restricting guns. Sadly, the same swathe of the population so desperate to preserve the second amendment is generally against better public school funding, school desegregation, national healthcare and other measures that would raise the overall monetary and educational health of its population.

There's definitely no ideal time to have kids, IMO! I had my first at 28 and I'm a little envious of my siblings and friends who have either had or are expecting their first baby around the age of 32/33. Those extra 4 years have given them SO much more money and the chance to buy a house/go traveling. On the other hand, they'll be turning 50 with their kids still at home. I find 2 a perfect number. ;) I think it's really sensible to concentrate on college first. Although like you said, many people juggle college and babies successfully, I don't know anyone who considers it ideal. Both pregnancy/newborns and college are really exhausting. Juggling jobs/baby was bad enough and at least I didn't have homework!

Where's your evidence for trigger-happy reactionaries being the reason? Gun homicides were always low in the UK. We're talking less than 100 per year, and nearly all gun deaths, at least this century, have been confined to illegal gang activity. Simply put, being shot by a gun is not something the ordinary civilian ever has to worry about since gun restrictions were put into place (also, you have to understand that there were 5-6 tightenings of restrictions over the 20th century, so it wasn't that all guns were suddenly banned in 1997). Additionally you've already been provided one example of why there was a spike in non-gun homicides in the form of Harold Shipman; overall, homicide rates are low enough in the UK that a single event or person can significantly skew results. I'm still looking for a reason for the 01/02 spike anomaly in gun homicides (which only translates to *30* more deaths in a population of 65 million) but there's a 0% chance that it's because citizens were mad that their gun rights were restricted. Additionally do you realize how insulting it is to insinuate that people would turn into murderers simply if gun restrictions were tightened? Apparently everyone in the south is a trigger-happy moron who requires appeasement in order not to commit a crime. It's equivalent to when people claim that without a religion to guide them, that they would commit murder or rape with impunity. There is a correlation between more guns and more homicides, even in countries that aren't the U.S.

Oh, I agree, but I still feel the need to at least discuss it. It's also worth pointing out (especially in the light of yesterday's political discussions) that we're really talking about the rights of white people to bear arms, because a non-white person bearing arms should be expected to run the risk of being shot by police, and the NRA is certainly not going to back them up. McSweeney's is also on point today with their list of things more tightly regulated than buying a gun. And to follow up on my above post, here's one example (I'm sure there are many more): Ron Johnson, who opposes gun restrictions and has received over $7,000 in campaign money from the NRA, considers even food and shelter privileges, not rights. The U.S. homicide (general, not just gun homicide) rate may be lower than, say, Mexico, but it's still 3 x higher than most of Europe's. Finally, here's some of the known victims so far. Better to learn their names than the perpetrator's. It also has links to their fundraisers. They're a thing! And if I'd been engaged in these kind of discussions aged 25 I'd have definitely not moved to the U.S., which is shaping up to be my life's biggest regret so far. C'est la vie.

What's really fucked up is that amidst all the arguing about the right to bear arms is the fact that the same people so hot on maintaining gun rights typically view access to healthcare as a privilege. We usually talk about gun crime in terms of death but gun injuries are serious and often have life-long consequences. Some of the living victims are going to be bankrupted by the cost of their medical care. That's what really disturbs me in all this debating. Hahahaha people are so crazy for wanting to decrease mass shootings, right? No one is calling for the abolition of gun rights in the U.S. People are asking for discussion and for tighter restrictions, and that's across the political spectrum.

Banning guns may not prevent my spouse or family member (the largest percentages of homicides are committed by people close to their victims) murdering me, but it means less chance of me being killed by a random person in a club or at a concert or on the street. It means less chance of my children being killed at school. So yes, there IS validity in looking at gun deaths and not just overall homicides. Gun-related accidents are also significant in the U.S. A child is killed in a gun-related accident almost every other day. What was really significant in Australia was suicides drastically fell. Suicides by methods other than guns remained about the same, but suicides by guns drastically decreased, thus decreasing the overall suicide rate. People have a far better chance of surviving a suicide attempt by cutting or poisoning. Also, relevant paragraph from the Slate article I posted earlier: