That's photo is from today (Saturday) from a marathon in Salt Lake (where I live). I guess even citizens were beefing up security after Boston.

Somehow I missed this.

Running a marathon in a kevlar vest has got to be some kind of accomplishment - those things don't breath very well.

Considering he has no numbers on, he might be a running security from one point to another. But I don't have any correct info.

Given the fact that only two people in that entire picture have a number bib visible, I'm not sure his lack of a bib says anything significant (lots of the runners put their bibs on their legs). (I'm more curious why the heck that blonde girl is running with full makeup on...)

Anyway, he was actually running in the race (and he ran the whole thing). This was shot at the beginning of the race, so all these people are just taking off.

Oh, I just found his bib. It's on his left leg (your right hand side). It's red.

BOSTON, MA — The manhunt for the two suspects in last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon has only just ended, but FBI and Boston law enforcement agencies are already being inundated by demands that they identify the exact weapons used by the Tsarnaev brothers during the bloody two-day battle that left one local police officer dead and wounded at least fifteen others. "It is wrong for law enforcement to keep this information to themselves," NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre said during a speech yesterday evening. "All across this nation, Americans have been waiting to hear which weapons were used by these terrorists so that our members can go purchase those same weapons. Withholding this information serves no purpose other than make it more difficult for these patriots to know which models of guns they should next be stocking up on."

NRA member Timothy Campbell of Dallas, Texas, says he has called Boston and MIT police departments over a dozen times since the murder of an MIT police officer last Thursday, but neither department has been willing to release the exact brands and models of guns used. While many cite fears that guns like the ones used in acts of terrorism or mass murder will be targeted for stricter regulation or even banning by the government, Campbell, an avid gun collector, says he recognizes that the odds that access to such weapons would be restricted are "essentially zero," he still is eager to purchase the guns as soon as the Tsarnaev weapons are identified. "I don't really know why I want to own them so bad," he said during an interview conducted this morning. "I guess it's probably a penis thing."

An executive with a prominent gun manufacturer said that having one of a company's guns used in an incident of mass murder or terrorism can represent a substantial boon to profits. The executive, who wished his identity and the name of his company to remain anonymous, noted that "the more vicious the crime, the bigger the surge in resulting sales is. When one of our guns was used in the murders at Sandy Hook, our dealers couldn't keep them on the shelves afterwards. We had to add another shift, we were selling so many."

A Boston-area Glock dealer who also wished to remain anonymous agreed. "Having one of our guns used in the shooting of an actual congressperson was probably the best advertisement we ever had. The sales were phenomenal afterwards." He says that while the company urged him to tell prospective buyers that the gun could likely face stricter regulation in the wake of the shooting, "It was nonsense, but I found I didn't even have to. Sure, everybody says those things, but the truth is people just want to own a gun that they know has become infamous. It makes them feel dangerous themselves, and that's what we're in the business of selling."

According to the gun executive, "It's one thing to say that your rifle can quickly kill a whole room full of elementary school children. Any company can say that. But to have it demonstrated and proven true, that's a completely different thing. That's when gun owners know they've got a gun they can count on. You might never need to kill that many kids before the cops come, sure, but that guy proved you could do it if you wanted to."

"It's one thing to say that your rifle can quickly kill a whole room full of elementary school children. Any company can say that. But to have it demonstrated and proven true, that's a completely different thing. That's when gun owners know they've got a gun they can count on. You might never need to kill that many kids before the cops come, sure, but that guy proved you could do it if you wanted to."

WTF?

https://vimeo.com/64432171

What if it could work, because of that that time that it did work.

Whoop-de-doo.

Anyway, let's spice up this thread a little:
904448_10151567173874399_225667092_o.jpg

That's photo is from today (Saturday) from a marathon in Salt Lake (where I live). I guess even citizens were beefing up security after Boston.

Wow. Could they have gotten a worse spokesperson?

That said, isn't the argument that less guns = less guns used kind of tautological? Should you be measuring the type of even before and after guns without requiring gun involvement?

I'm pretty sure for a comedy show they're going to get the worst spokesperson they can. Some obscure gun club vs a former prime-minister, with a not-very-serious moderator isn't a real debate, it's obviously more of a skit.

The argument is that less guns == less chances for gun incidents -- the exact swimming pool example.

If there's no backyard pools, there's no backyard drownings. If people don't have access to gun, there's no gun crime.

Yes pre-meditated murders will likely not be affected, as someone can plan around this restriction, and some heat-of-the-moment murders will still happen with knives, cliffs, etc, instead of guns... but a lot of crimes are avoided by not having guns everywhere. For example, late night shop keepers usually have a steel wire fence across the counter, so you can't jump back there, and so they can lock themselves in. That protects them from being attacked by everything except guns, which is now enough protection in most cases.

Armored vans and police carry guns openly and are almost never attacked due to their monopoly on extreme force. How often do police get injured/killed in the line of duty in the US due to everyone being able to match their level of firepower? Or how often does a policeman shoot someone because they're afraid that said person has a gun.

Both deaths of police and police killings of citizens are rarer when the general population is not as well-armed as they are.

If someone gets shot (or stabbed) here in Melbourne, it's a very big news story, whereas across the US, something like 230 people get shot every day.

We don't have that many homicides at all, so there's a lot of annual variance making it hard to spot correlations. e.g. in 2009, almost 300 people died by homicide, but a summer heatwave killed almost 400...

Yes homicides using guns have nose-dived:

The homicide rate was already on a downward trend before they got rid of guns, and it's continued, so we can't play armchair statistician easily.

However, like Howard said in the video, mass killings have disappeared entirely (for now), which was the intention of the law, so it did work (so far). There's been one attempted gun massacre since, which killed two people, and it spurred on even stronger restrictions on gun types and background checks (the killer was legally found insane).

People that have a need for guns still have them, but suitable ones. e.g. a bolt action for shooting rabbits or deer, but never an AK47 or an SKS.

It doesn't matter which side of the argument you fall on, that evidence has a huge logical flaw in it.