Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a DKos group of second amendment supporters who also have progressive and liberal values. We don't think that being a liberal means one has to be anti-gun. Some of us are extreme in our second amendment views (no licensing, no restrictions on small arms) and some of us are more moderate (licensing, restrictions on small arms.) Moderate or extreme, we hold one common belief: more gun control equals lost elections. We don't want a repeat of 1994. We are an inclusive group: if you see the Second Amendment as safeguarding our right to keep and bear arms individually, then come join us in our conversation. If you are against the right to keep and bear arms, come join our conversation. We look forward to seeing you, as long as you engage in a civil discussion.
Fog guy:
Nerd prank @ Dell computers draws 26 officers & SWAT
ROUND ROCK — The calls came in about 10:45 a.m. Monday: Masked gunmen were in two of the buildings at the Dell Inc. headquarters. Round Rock police sprang into action, with 26 officers, including the SWAT team, racing to 501 Dell Way. Officers started evacuating buildings. The Department of Public Safety readied helicopters to provide air support. At 10:56 a.m., news came that it was a false alarm, police said. There was only one "gunman" - a Dell employee. "Two members of a small sales team had enacted an in-house product-promotion scheme with little or no notice to co-workers, internal security or office executives," said Eric Poteet, a Round Rock police spokesman. Police said Bryan A. Chester, 48, of Austin was the "gunman." He was arrested and charged with deadly conduct, a Class A misdemeanor. Poteet said Chester wore a mask with a skull pattern and dark clothing and "held aloft small metallic items as he rushed through densely staffed areas while yelling, `Go to the lobby' … believed by many of the 400-plus witnesses to be directives under armed threat."
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10-year veteran of the Charleston Police Department, specializing in patrolling this city’s palmetto-lined streets, improving community relations and keeping big crowds in check — until his unit was disbanded, a victim of budget cuts.
Napoleon lost his policing job, along with the other five police horses here, as Charleston joined the growing number of cities that have retired their horses and closed their stables to save money. The Great Recession is proving to be the greatest threat to police mounted units since departments embraced the horseless carriage.
This month, the clip-clop of police hooves was silenced both on the cobblestones here and on the streets of Newark, a much harder-hit city whose department recently laid off 163 officers. The downturn has also claimed the mounted units in San Diego; Tulsa, Okla.; Camden, N.J.; and Boston, whose police horses dated to the 19th century and were regulars at Fenway Park.
KV:
Let me restate some statistics from a diary I did a little bit ago:
The Brady Campaign says that there are over 283 million firearms in civilian hands and each year about 4.5 million new firearms are sold.
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We have 283,000,000 firearms for 311,000,000 people. This equals out to about one gun per person for 91% of the US population.
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If I use the adult firearm related homicide numbers, I get 11,314 which I'm going to round up to 12,000. There are 208,800,000 adults in the US according to Wolfram Alpha. Both of these numbers are using 18-65 as ages. The CDC numbers are from 2007.
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61,000 nonfatal firearm related injuries + 12,000 firearm related homicides = 73,000 firearm related injuries and homicides. Let's go back up to the 208,800,00 and find the percentage. 61,000/208,800,000 = 0.000292145594 or, in percentage terms, 0.0292145594% and just to make that clear, that's roughly 3 hundredths of 1%.
We are a populous country and our firearms are numerous (see above numbers.) Yes, we have a higher firearm related death rate (even if you don't include suicides) than most other industrial countries (except, ya know, like Russia or Brazil.) We also have more firearms per capita than all other countries out there (again, see above numbers.) Yet when compared to the number of firearm owners and the population of the United States, firearm related injuries and homicides are a small amount.