> Not every lunatic where I live can find a gun when they need one
While I agree it is more difficult to find a gun in Europe than in America, that doesn't mean that a lunatic _can't_ get a gun. Guns exist in EU countries that have very strict gun laws. If said lunatic was determined enough, they _will_ get their hands on one.
> Despite these strict laws, France seems to be awash with guns.
> In 2012, French authorities estimated that there were around 30,000 guns illegally in the country, many likely used by gangs for criminal activities.
Firearms in Europe _are_ available, they're just harder to find. But I believe that if someone is determined enough, they'll find them, and use them.
Places like England, and Whales, which have very strict gun laws in comparison with places like the US, still suffer from gun related homicides all the time.
> gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year. [...] Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed. [...] Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362. [...] It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise
A crime motivated by anger might not happen if a few days pass while searching for a weapon. Passion fades with time
Effort is also a factor. Most people I have worked with will completely fail at a task if it requires them to get up from their desk and talk to someone. Finding a gun on the black market seems significantly harder than a shopping trip to Walmart
Comparing your proposed 30000 guns in France with more guns than inhabitants in the US.
Yes people get guns here in Sweden. You see it on the news almost weekly sometimes how gang members shoot each other. Smuggled weapons or imported plugged weapons that have been modified into live firearm.
This argument still does not negate the fact that it's much harder to get your hands on a working firearm. And that makes all the difference in crimes of passion.
> Comparing your proposed 30000 guns in France with more guns than inhabitants in the US.
My point is, even countries with very strict gun laws have lots of guns, most of which are illegal, but they're still there, still accessible to people who want them and go through the effort to get them.
> This argument still does not negate the fact that it's much harder to get your hands on a working firearm.
I wasn't trying to negate that. In fact, I agreed: "While I agree it is more difficult to find a gun in Europe than in America..."
I'm countering this claim that you made:
>Not every lunatic where I live can find a gun when they need one
I believe that, yes, any lunatic _can_ find a gun. Yes, again, I agree, they are harder to get. However, I do believe that if said lunatic _really_ wanted one, he'd find one.
Well if you call criminals lunatics, which is a fair assessment, then yes. But not every person has contacts in the criminal underworld.
You're just going to have to trust me that I have a first hand perspective of both worlds in one european country and I can promise you that it's not easy to get a gun for any average person. Unless they are willing to jump through the legal hoops to get a licensed firearm.
One of my co-workers did this and from start to finish I think it took him a year to get a handgun. This does not count the hunting license because he was not interested in hunting, he wanted a handgun.
And once acquired he has to report to the police every route he wants to take with the handgun. For example between his home and the gun club.
And storage of the gun unloaded in a locked safe goes without sayhing.
Another friend had an AK47 brought up from Serbia, because macho reasons, and he was only allowed to have it because he was a member of the home guard here. But he had it mounted on the wall, once the police found out they forced him to take it down, disassemble it and store it in three different pieces as it was meant to.
Same here. Last time I was at a craps table: pass line, come bet, with odds on both. Made something like $500 in less than an hour ($5 table). Granted, this doesn't happen every time. I do lose money sometimes. But, the atmosphere is fun. Chips flying all over the table... everyone drinking and feeling loose... laughs, jokes, chatting with others... the cheer when the shooter hits... camaraderie... it's great. Definitely better than sitting in your room. I see it as a form of entertainment. Before I go gambling, I plan it out. Determine how much I can comfortably play with. I also expect that I will lose it. And then once the money is gone, I'm done gambling.
> I'm italian and I visited united states a couple of months ago. In my opinion the biggest problem is that you don't have decent food at affordable prices. Healthy food has nonsensical high prices and if you want something at a human price you don't have much choice except fast food. What a shame.
We recently just spent a week in Spain. We went to the grocery store and bought a whole cart full of food for like 20 euros. I was blown away. The equivalent amount of food in the US would have easily been like 100 dollars, probably more.
Listen to what you're saying here. Crime rates drop because people are scared that they might get shot. That's literally the implication of that statement.
You're saying that the best response to crime is for people to shoot each other. Not better policing or a better criminal justice system, but random gun battles.
Is it any wonder that the murder rate so much higher in the USA than in other similarly-developed countries?
"you pissed me off. That's practically a crime. I should shoot you now. Oh look I'm carrying a gun. bang"
You're assuming that all honest people want to naturally kill other people when they're mad at them. If that were the case, crime rates would be astronomically high regardless if guns existed or not. If person A gets mad at person B and desires to kill them, they'll find a way to kill them. If they don't have a gun, then they'll use a knife, or a bat. Hell, they'll use their bare hands if they have to.
Honest people don't kill other people unless they feel their own lives are threatened. Criminals by definition do not follow the law, so by outlawing guns, only outlaws will have guns. What you effectively do is remove the gun from the honest person desiring to protect themselves, and arm the criminal with bad intent. The honest person is left defenseless.
Case in point: "Shooting incidents in London have almost doubled compared with the same period last year, prompting grave concerns that gun crime in some areas is out of control." [0]
Aren't guns illegal in England? How are people then getting shot, by guns, in a city where guns are illegal? Again, because criminals by definition don't follow the law and will find a way to get a gun regardless.
> [T]he quality and design of recent Thinkpads has gone utterly to shit. The new keyboards are particularly atrocious.
I've never owned a Thinkpad until recently. I purchased a Thinkpad T450s and I love it. I also think the keyboard is quite nice as well. Now I'm curious how the older Thinkpads were. Were they considerably better? Did I buy a bad product and not even know?
Yes, in my opinion the Thinkpad peaked somewhere around the T43 or the IBM-made T60 (which was also made by Lenovo). Good keyboard layout, travel distance, spring distance. Even silly stuff like the shape of the key and the precise type of plastic were somehow better.
And everything apart from the keyboard was solid too. How many non-Macbooks can be picked up by any edge or corner? How many laptops have a metal hinge for the screen? A magnesium rollcage inside? Clever drains that divert water out of your keyboard and out holes on the bottom, all without damaging the electronics? Easily user-accessible battery, RAM, HDD…even more advanced components like the screen and the wifi card?
Pretty sure the T60 was designed and manufactured entirely by Lenovo but they had permission to use the IBM logo on it.
Nobody makes laptops like IBM used to :-( I know they seem to strongly prefer low-volume high-margin industries but I really would like to see what they could do today.
The W540 has really awkwardly placed Ctrl and Fn keys, and the trackpad is terrible. Not sure what the timeline is between W520 and T450. But I do know that the W520s were the predecessor to the W540, and it didn't have all those issues.
The old keyboard wasn't merely "quite nice". Apart from the short travel (which was still quite long by notebook standards and rather easy to get used to), it had a feel very like a good full-sized desktop keyboard. No, it wasn't a Model M or anything, but it was head and shoulders above most of the crop. I used the old USB Thinkpad external keyboard with my desktop as well as my laptop (when it was on the docking station). Unfortunately, it's been discontinued as well.
This is like asking for people's personal religious experiences.
I upgraded from a T60P last year, and opted for a used W520 (circa. 2011). The W520 has been good so far, but I should have gotten something a little lighter. That was the last year before the keyboard went down the road of shedding functionality. It's not just the island-style keys, but moving and discarding keys isn't that beneficial to me.
My T60P survived a lot of abuse. I've had to replace some parts and the cpu fan, but it was easier than having to upgrade to a new machine. I would have kept using it a little longer if not for the 4gb ram cap on it.
Current models just seem too much like Mac "Me Too" machines. Becoming too much like a Mac and people have an easy choice of just getting a Mac instead.
I recently got a t540p and the keyboard feels like mushy crap, but it has a ten-key and trackpoint and it's backlit so at least I can find the weirdly spaced keys in the dark. Anyway the screen is fantastic and the rest of the build quality is nice so I'm not complaining, they're just not what they used to be.
I personally much prefer the newer thinkpad keyboards to the older one. I however, don't consider either keyboard to be good enough to do serious work on. For that I have a real ergo keyboard and real mouse.
It's unfortunate that you are "traumatized" in regards to Plato, or anything, for that matter. Even though you consider yourself "traumatized", Plato still has good ideas, and likely some not so good ideas as well. I would encourage judging the ideas on their own merit, and not to immediately dismiss them simply because you don't like Plato.
I guess that is one way to do it. I don't know if I would do that myself. I went through the normal channels and here in SLC it went very smoothly. The thing with the "do it yourself" approach is, without the sleep study, you don't know what pressure to use. They use the analysis from the sleep study to determine what pressure to use. Also, you will consistently need to purchase new supplies on a regular basis. You'll be paying full price for those forever, whereas mine are covered by my insurance (since I went through the proper channels), so over time you will spend more money than I will.
APAP is shown to calibrate as well as a sleep study, and at least in my case, it was pretty straightforward to find the right pressure by feel.
Personally, I did steps 2-4 above, got an APAP prescription valid until the end of time, and bought a new machine online. (Maybe insurance would reimburse? I didn't even bother; time is money too.)
