Supreme Court could take guns case

[joepole]

>Draconian firearm restrictions invariably lead to increases in violent crime, as exemplified in England, Australia, etc. This has been proven true time and again and I dont intend to rehash it here for your benefit.

1. That has most certainly not "been proven true time and again." Again, correlation does not equal causation.

2. England and Australia are not America, there is no reason to believe our population will behave as theirs does.

I asked you you why you believed that DC's crime problem was due "in large part due to the prohibitive gun laws." Like I said it may be in large part due to that, it may be in small part due to that, it may have nothing to do with that, but you offered no evidence to indicate either, you've only offered grammatically questionable insults and delusions of your "putting me in my place."

>ya know damn well you've been dodgin direct questions put to ya on other threads, so dont play dumb.

Is this, like your supposed intellectual victories, made up, as well?

[rhertz]

Originally Posted by joepole

so what explains our homicide rate roller coaster? Crime follows poverty, poverty follows low intelligence, and low intelligence partly (if not mainly in this country) follows dysgenic social programs.

>Crime follows poverty

Tell that to Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, etc. etc.

>poverty follows low intelligence

Our City is $1B in debt.... You might be onto something there...

>low intelligence...follows dysgenic social programs

I would say that low intelligence follows not having your butt whipped by your parents for bad grades or skipping school... I wouldn't call that a failure of a "social program".

I had to look up the word "dysgenic".....

dysgenic is a term describing a progressive evolutionary "weakening" or genetic deterioration of a population of organisms relative to their environment, often due to relaxation of natural selection or the occurrence of negative selection. The antonym of dysgenic is eugenic (see also eugenics).

The plural noun dysgenics refers to "racial degeneration" or "genetic deterioration", the opposite of eugenics, first so used by Aldous Huxley in 1920. Applied to humans, it is not a topic of significant scientific research, but appears occasionally in fiction and the popular media

That sounds a bit racist and not very credable...

[joepole]

>I would say that low intelligence follows not having your butt whipped by your parents for bad grades or skipping school... I wouldn't call that a failure of a "social program".

Our social programs encourage breeding by people that are more likely to be the kind of parents that don't "whip your butt for bad grades and skipping school." Also, I was talking about intelligence, not education, but education is important, as well.

>That sounds a bit racist and not very credable...

It has nothing to do with race, the term "dysgenic" (note that I used the adjective, not the noun) basically means "evolving backwards." If you were to select plants from your garden and selectively breed only the weak ones, you would be creating dysgenic pressure on the evolution of that selection of plants. You get survival of the weakest instead of survival of the fittest.

Same goes with most any system: Intelligence in a population, taxation and it effect on the economy, crime.

[rhertz]

Originally Posted by joepole

Our social programs encourage breeding by people that are more likely to be the kind of parents that don't "whip your butt for bad grades and skipping school." Also, I was talking about intelligence, not education, but education is important, as well.

Intelligence follows education.. My dad should have stamped "social program" on his belt, and then said "Don't make me enact my 'social program'!! LOL, would have been very effective. My dad made sure I was smart, not the government. But I get your point that there is often a negative effect to government programs and handouts.

Originally Posted by joepole

It has nothing to do with race, the term "dysgenic" (note that I used the adjective, not the noun) basically means "evolving backwards." If you were to select plants from your garden and selectively breed only the weak ones, you would be creating dysgenic pressure on the evolution of that selection of plants. You get survival of the weakest instead of survival of the fittest.

Same goes with most any system: Intelligence in a population, taxation and it effect on the economy, crime.

So do you believe that everyone is evolving backwards? Even yourself? Or just some people are evolving backwards, weaked by the trap of "social programs" which creates a government form of "selective breeding" so to speak? Sounds like a touchy subject and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you chose an interesting adjective I had not heard before.

[joepole]

>Intelligence follows education.

Education has almost no effect on intelligence.

>So do you believe that everyone is evolving backwards? Even yourself? Or just some people are evolving backwards, weaked by the trap of "social programs" which creates a government form of "selective breeding" so to speak? Sounds like a touchy subject and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you chose an interesting adjective I had not heard before.

Anything that results in the progression of a system to go the "wrong" way is a dygenic force. The word "evolution" has gotten too tied up in politics and people forget that it simply means "change over time." Our country currently has policies that encourage/enable the breeding of people that otherwise (if they were following normal evolutionary protocols) would not.

Our society encourages/enables the best and brightest to have very few children and the bottom of the barrel to have as many as they can. This is a dysgenic pressure on our society. The average felon in this country has almost three times as many children as the average physician.

[Al Swearengen]

Originally Posted by joepole

Is this, like your supposed intellectual victories, made up, as well?

I've not insulted ya, you're merely feignin offense because eveything I said is true. For example, I stated that ya derive sexual gratification from nitpickery. Do ya deny it? I couldnt even hazard a guess at how much facial tissue ya go thru when you're on here snipin at my posts. It has occured to me that your badgerin me might indicate that you're in love with my online persona here at SBL...some sort of hero worship, possibly. I mean, its either that or ya have an axe to grind...hell, it might even be a combination of the two. In any case, this unhealthy obsession ya have with me has to stop. I've asked ya twice to leave off and ya refuse to comply. I think we're done here.

[joepole]

Maybe I correct everyone I see who posts something incorrect (DC has most murders per capita, etc.) and you're just wrong more than most.

I'm fairly certain I could never love someone that thinks Chili's is a good restaurant.

[Al Swearengen]

Originally Posted by joepole

Maybe I correct everyone I see who posts something incorrect (DC has most murders per capita, etc.) and you're just wrong more than most.

DC did in fact, have the highest murder rate percapita a few years ago. When I checked to see if you were right and found that ya were, I admitted as much. They no longer hold that distinction, but DC still has one of the highest murder rates. What this all boils down to is nitpickery on your part. You're obviously a stickler for detail, but I think most people would agree ya take it much too far. Excessive to the point of obsession. Its downright anal, Joe. You are a classic anal retentive. No doubt your folks had some trouble potty-trainin ya.

I'm fairly certain I could never love someone who thinks Chili's is a good restaurant

This from the guy who thinks the lottery is a tax on people with poor math skills...from the guy who thinks ownin and operatin a computer makes him smarter than about 98% of the population. You're right Joe...I doubt anyone sufferin from such toxic levels of hubris could feel the love.

[Al Swearengen]

And by the way, I'd be willin to bet this aint the first time you've been characterized as an anal retentive.

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by joepole

The average felon in this country has almost three times as many children as the average physician.

I'm agreeing with you in spirit Joe, but since you went the extra mile and provided us with an actual number and a specific population, I'd like to see your source for this data.

Most of the physicians I know have 3-4 children. I don't know all of them, however, and I don't know any felons, so naturally I'm curious about this statistic.

I remember well the "welfare moms" of the 80s-90s, but I thought I remembered reading that this practice had ceased by and large. However, I don't have any proof, and I'm always on the lookout to raise my intelligence by being educated.

[Al Swearengen]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

I'm always on the lookout to raise my intelligence by being educated.

Accordin to Joe, ya cant.

in·tel·li·gence (n-tl-jns)
n.
1.
a. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.


I would argue that as one's knowledge increases, so too does one's ability to apply that knowledge. But Joe does sound pretty sure of himself, doesnt he?

[rhertz]

Originally Posted by joepole

>Intelligence follows education.

Education has almost no effect on intelligence.

A person with a Ph.D is almost always more intelligent than a high school drop out.

Originally Posted by joepole

The average felon in this country has almost three times as many children as the average physician.

So who is the smarty pants and who is the dummy in the eyes of Mother Nature (evolution)? Perhaps now I see how your prior statement could be right. (Re: Education has almost no effect on intelligence)

[joepole]

>A person with a Ph.D is almost always more intelligent than a high school drop out.

Look at it the other way, someone of high intelligence is more likely to be a PhD holder than a high school dropout. The education didn't make him smart, his brains got him educated.

[joepole]

>Excessive to the point of obsession. Its downright anal, Joe. You are a classic anal retentive. No doubt your folks had some trouble potty-trainin ya.

Since I grew up about three decades after anyone that went to college stopped using expressions like "anal retentive" it never really was much of an issue. Are you going to ask about my bodily humors, too? Perhaps I need some leeches.

Also, if I was the guy on the "The lottery is a good investment" side of the argument, I'd probably go out of my way not to remind people of it. When are you going to start sending me my money? I told you I'd give you better odds than the Powerball. Just send me $100M and I'll send you $20M back.

[joepole]

>In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.
>Drastically increasing homicide led Washington, D.C., to ban handguns in the 1970s. So useless was this that D.C. soon had (and continues to have) some of the nation’s highest murder rates.

Define "soon." The handgun ban went into effect in 1977. By 1985, the murder rate was lower than it had been in 1977, despite the fact that the city was falling apart by every other metric. In 2005 the rate for DC itself was 28.5/100K, which is about 3% higher than 1977 (which was 27.8/100K) not 134%. Where did you get 134%?

Also, the homicide rate in DC was already in decline by the time the law was passed in 1977. The trend continued until the mid 1980s until it exploded upwards (with no corresponding change in DC gun laws) so you're going to have to come up with something other than the handgun ban to explain it. I'd bet it probably had more to do with the invention of crack than it did with handgun laws.

Sources:

Rothstein catalog on disaster recovery

FBI Uniform Crime Report