Insurance is literally a market of risk assessments. The odds of any given event are x, y and z and the cost of each of those events are a, b, and c. Take the number of people who are applying for policies and spread the cost based on the risks and figure out how much each needs to pay to be able to cover x, y or z should/when any of them occur. There’s discussions to be had on how much a percentage of profit should be allowable on the top and how much to subsidize on known high risk coverage that is not mathematically reasonable but it all boils down to buying risk based on the chance and cost of any given event happening. Act of God/Force Majeure make complete sense when framing it this way. The insurance policy is based on known and predicted risks. You don’t have volcano insurance in NJ and you don’t have hurricane insurance in Kansas because they aren’t expected disasters so they aren’t included in the risk calculations. Act of God is a catch all term for things beyond the expected scope of the policy which is based on clearly established limits and scenarios.

They’re not smooth brained at all. They know exactly what they are saying, but them gaining full control always takes priority over all other factors. Just because a foreign adversary did it to us, which they don’t like, doesn’t mean that they don’t still want to do it to us.

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I assume everyone is owned by someone terrible, but the individual policies and changes are what drives me to swap.

I pay for things on sites processed by PayPal too, I just don’t have an account.

Just standard credit card processing for purchases and zelle or venmo for transfers.

Good thing I deleted my PayPal years ago over a previous TOS change.

Thanks, I saw it come across my FB feed and knew what had to be done.

Most of the truly ridiculous knife laws are in states with equally ridiculous gun laws. A few have been challenged under 2A grounds with some degree of success but it just isn’t being pursued that much.

They’re a joke to all the manufacturers that went all in on EVs before the market fell out from under them.

Prices for even 200k mile used vehicles are skyrocketing and cheap new cars simply don’t exist. Yes, ICE is the majority of vehicles out there, especially in rural areas, but they are more expensive and less available than ever. 10 years ago I bought a 100k mile Volvo wagon for $10k, put 50k more miles on it then sold it for $5k; if I wanted to buy the exact same car back today with 250k miles i would need to pay $15k for it. As manufacturers shift to EVs that problem is only going to get worse.

There is a logical reason to be against forced adoption before the technology matures. For a lot of the country they are not a viable replacement for ICE yet. They’re improving, but not as fast as ICEs are being phased out and that leaves a lot of places where a dwindling used market will be the only option for many people.

So the GOP is pouring water into their sinking raft over abortion and Biden decided “oh shit, I need to find a way to ruin my chances and even the playing field.” Got it.

Fair enough, I’ll let you get on with your night. It was just refreshing to have someone genuinely willing to read and have a civil discourse. More than anything I just hope I was able to give you more perspective. It’s rare to change someone’s opinion outright but I have had surprising success many times with just the right nudge that started the thinking down a different path. Have a nice day.

I mean, I created my standard username when I was starting highschool and haven’t changed it. Considering at the time I was literally being paid to yo-yo, it stuck. If your never ending need to project is that strong and all you have to counter what I’m saying is literally attacking a username then go ahead. Maybe one day you’ll grow up enough to realize that shit like this never convinces 3rd parties of your views.

Properly executed defensive carry does not add much volatility. Having in place defenders also results in situations being ended almost immediately which reduces the actual volatility. Most cable news shootings only last a few minutes and end the moment the asshole doing it is challenged. Once the shooting stops the situation is much easier to work through with a calm and collected demeanor as first responders secure the area and assist the wounded. As I said earlier, defending is far easier than assaulting. Making the primary response an assault team that needs to enter and clear the building adds complexity and volatility. Having multiple faculty in defensive positions waiting for the shooter to enter their zone is a much safer tactical solution. While clearing the building is still a tactical challenge, if there is no threat that presents itself it can be done in a much safer manner with each room being cleared one by one based on pre-established protocols that are already in place nationwide as part of the existing lockdown planning.

Gun control always results in a ban. The US thankfully has it built into the Constitution as the fundamental right that it is. The issue is that “reasonable” gun control is rarely reasonable and even bans aren’t effective so no matter what concessions are made, when the results don’t match the aspirations it progresses. The other part of this is that it doesn’t generally work in most countries and correlation does not equal causation. The US is a far more heterogenous society than any of its peers and as such has an exponentially higher degree of societal tension. It is an unfortunate by product of the diversity that makes us as strong as we are. While you say that gun control works everywhere else it has been enacted, that is simply false. What actually exists is countries that have always had lower crime than the US, that at some point in the past enacted gun control and saw little to no effect. In order to support the hypothesis that it was successful, you would need to show examples of places where it was enacted and led to a reduction in crime following implementation. The only two near peer examples in a modern time frame would be the UK and Australia who both enacted draconian restrictions in the 90s. It just so happens that the 90s also coincided with a worldwide reduction in violent crime (normally attributed to the removal of lead from gasoline). Virtually every single developed country saw the exact same reduction, except for two. The UK and Australia bucked international trends during the decade and saw spikes. Immediately following the UK’s strict gun control, their murder rate nearly doubled. While the US’s rate was nearly 10x the UK’s at the beginning of the 90s, during the next 20 years the US’s was cut in half while the UK’s doubled and eventually stabilized at its pre-gun control rate. Australia saw similar results while the rest of Europe saw declines similar, but not as pronounced as the US. During these years the US expanded access to guns with the number in circulation consistently rising despite the extreme reduction in violent crime and murder. Also, using fact checks alone really don’t tell the full picture, they are wildly biased and when it comes to politically charged topics they go out of their way to get the result they want regardless of the truth. When it comes to guns they often straight up lie. Israel does have a lot of good lessons to be learned about effective self defense but it is nowhere near a 1:1 example. There really isn’t anywhere close enough to the US to compare us to. There are plenty of schools in the US within states that allow armed teachers and so far none of them have been a target of an incident so there is no data. It’s a catch 22 where they are already extremely rare and if an event doesn’t occur or is prevented it doesn’t count as an event so there is no data for it. Armed teachers won’t do anything for gang shoot outs in the street across from frat row or people in their 30s committing suicide at 2AM on a Sunday in a parking lot of a building that used to be a school, so things like the school shooting tracker won’t show any appreciable difference based on its enactment (the second scenario was literally one of the first events loaded into it when reddit started the tracker). There is plenty of actual information out there, but normal primary sources are deliberately hiding it from the masses because both the media and tech giants have a strong bias against it and are forcing the ignorance.

Dedicated armed and trained security is great to take over the police’s clearing duties, but from a tactical point of view, allowing teachers to be armed is still a superior option. Being embedded and able to self protect is a far stronger advantage, even over a response time of essentially zero. Just like counter-insurgency vs guerilla tactics, not knowing which door is defended is a far better deterrent than just specifying which expected opposing force you will be encountering. Either way, addressing the causes of cable news shootings is by far the best approach versus trying to restrict a single means of accomplishing one or debating the best way to stop one that has occurred.

Just out of curiosity what part of my slightly rambling response gave you the impression that I did not think they should get specialized training? I intended to state the exact opposite so I would genuinely like to know which part of my phrasing failed to convey my intent. I was merely explaining that real world results without training are highly successful in the limited scenarios where they have been able to play out, and with that as a basis proper training can mitigate or eliminate the unique risks associated with schools.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I genuinely believe that gun control is 100% based in ignorance and lies, with a small group deliberately lying to the public to create ignorance and generate support for their own goals. As such, whenever I find someone genuinely willing to read and discuss it I try to do what I can to show the other side of the argument. A specific act of targeted violence is not the same as a cable news shooter in a school, but there are more similarities than you would expect at face value. Both are committed by damaged people who society allowed to go without proper support and moral guidance. Both should be prevented by proper upbringing with human kindness as a core value and both can only be stopped in the moment after tragedy strikes with equal or greater force. The right to be armed with whatever may be used against you is only the final measure rather than the ideal way to prevent it.

Yeah, at least half the posts in memes aren’t even memes at all. Just cringe statements like a 13 year old newly communist edgelord would make.

I never said it would prevent every single crime, criminals are generally dumb and some try really dumb shit. A lot of the time when they do so they end up dead fairly quickly. A successful armed robbery of a gun store during business hours is extremely rare. When it comes to risk vs reward they are super attractive targets, but only the most desperate and stupid of criminals actually attempt it.

The issue with that point of view is that it’s based on a limited knowledge and understanding of a topic. It’s a fair hypothesis but the thing about general hypotheses is that they should be updated when challenged by a more in depth understanding of the topic. In real world scenarios when shit hits the fan it isn’t quite like in the Avengers when alien portals open over the street and people run in every direction. The basic shape and function of schools makes them highly compartmentalized. Short of being in a cafeteria, gym or assembly hall there really isn’t much room for people to be running in all directions. Even then, in both cafeterias and auditoriums the natural response to an event like a shooting is to drop lower for cover, unless you’re the shooter. Add in the fact that a single teacher shooting back at the primary person standing that has everyone moving away from is likely to end in a better outcome than not having a teacher there to do so and the tactical risk analysis tips heavily in favor of allowing properly vetted armed bystanders. In real world events armed bystanders are actually very effective with only a few cases of the attackers out gunning or police misidentifying the actual shooter.

While armed intervention is somewhat rare, it’s because the vast majority of non gang related, random public shootings specifically occur in gun free zones. Take an extremely rare statistical event and then filter out >90% of events where a legal armed intervention is even possible and the data pool is close, but not quite zero. In cases where an armed bystander is present and able to engage they are highly effective. I do not have links handy but last I saw it was greater than 90% of cases with armed intervention available they were able to neutralize or impede the attacker appreciably. Now with schools, like airlines, having unique challenges that make them sensitive, I am all for offering advanced training as part of the process for allowing faculty to carry. This training absolutely should include tactics to avoid the hypotheticals you are concerned with. That being said, a large portion of people that carry every day don’t just strap on a gun and go out into the world. We are the ones that do train and learn tactical scenarios and learn how to maximize defensive advantages. I don’t carry a gun because I’m scared of the world, I carry one because I want to be as prepared as I can be for any situation. It’s why I have a first aid kit, fire extinguisher, tire patch kit and jump start battery in my car as well. None of those things are useful without training and understanding of how they work. When it comes to guns I have had both formal and informal training in basic usage, function, repair and tactical employment. I have carried while around town in restaurants, bars, hospitals, amusement parks and movie theaters. I have also carried on airplanes and at airports and have specific training on how to defensively use a gun on an aircraft. I’m likely much more trained than the average, but I am not alone and the vast majority of my experience is purely voluntary and with the people I meet along the way I am by no means an isolated case. Armed teachers shouldn’t be the primary method of preventing school shootings, but they absolutely are the best option to stop them.

Terrorists are bullies that take it to truly evil levels. They prey on the weak to force their opinions on others. A school shooter and the asshole in this news article are both evil, it’s just a matter of how they chose to exert their evil on others. Who knows what his actual thoughts or motivations were, something tells me that the lack of any info on him from authorities means he doesn’t meet the cliche MAGA asshole they would love to pin it on so they’re just letting the shock of the crime run its course rather than diffuse what is a powerful political tool for furthering their own goals. Whatever his motivations or demographic were, he’s a monster that society failed to allow him to develop those views, as a last resort I just wish that for someone that evil there had been enough of a deterrent to prevent him from trying once he got the idea in his head.