Shiftless2
Well-known member
Don't know about prior knowledge but they don't look to be the least bit sad or upset.
Uvalde - the followup
- Thread starter Shiftless2
- Start date
A shooting would leave me a little scared, since the reality is it would make me aware that anyone at any time could be a shooter.
Its almost as if they not only were not nervous, but happy it happened?
Side note is that all 2600 meals got frozen and donated to shelters.
{...
Are there any reports of what happened to the food not consumed at the WHCD?
11:58 AM
Claude responded: Yes — it's a genuinely heartwarming outcome from a chaotic night
Yes — it's a genuinely heartwarming outcome from a chaotic night. The Washington Hilton donated roughly 2,600 meals that went unserved after the dinner was cut short by a gunman.
The shooting took place about half an hour after the dinner began, meaning attendees had only received a salad course before the room was thrown into chaos, leaving around 2,600 plates of prime Chateaubriand steak and Maine lobster untouched.
Hotel staff freeze-dried the steak and lobster for longer shelf life before donating them to two shelters for abused women and children. WHCA President Weijia Jiang gave a public shoutout to the hotel staff for working through the night under difficult circumstances.
The remaining produce items were composted and sent to farms for agricultural use. And in a lighter note, the livestream captured some attendees grabbing bottles of wine on their way out of the venue.
...}
Last edited:
Shiftless2
Well-known member
If nothing else it distracts people from the Epstein files and the disaster that's Iran.
There's a diversity of "explanations" (aka "conspiracy theories") w/ varying degrees of implausibility.
Our OJT CIC flails embarrassingly,
first by punishing our trade partners with $tariffs, insulting our NATO allies,
then cutting them out of the loop on Trump's decision to wage War on Iran again (second time this term),
and then acts imposed upon when NATO allies decline to join in to help clean up the mess Trump created without even the courtesy of consulting them.
And the Strait of Hormuz remains contested.
Trump pretends to professionalism / expertise.
He's a bumbling incompetent.
Anyone that contests that, how can we explain Trump's claiming lowering consumer prices his top priority,
and then sending them spiraling upward? "Competence"? By Trump standards perhaps.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
Sorry, but I have to disagree.
What I read says pistols are 97% of all firearm deaths.
And the graph over time does not seem to show the assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 as having any effect.
How many people die from gun-related injuries in Washington, DC each year? | USAFacts
An estimated 148 people in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. This includes homicides, suicides, accidents, and other incidents where a shooting was considered the primary cause of death.
usafacts.org
The assault weapons ban did not really ban much.
You could still buy an AK-47 for example, only they called it an MAK-90, and it had a thumbhole stock instead of a pistol grip.
You could still buy an AR-15, but just not from Colt.
Shiftless2
Well-known member
There seem to be a lot of different analyses of the effect
www.judiciary.senate.gov
theconversation.com
newhampshirebulletin.com
Studies: Gun Massacre Deaths Dropped During Assault Weapons Ban, Increased After Expiration | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Gun massacres fell 37 percent while ban was in place, rose by 183 percent after ban...
www.judiciary.senate.gov
Did the assault weapons ban of 1994 bring down mass shootings? Here’s what the data tells us
Analysis of the 10 years in which the US banned sales of assault weapons shows that it correlates with a drop in mass shooting deaths – a trend that reversed as soon as the ban expired.
theconversation.com
Did the assault weapons ban of 1994 bring down mass shootings? – commentary • New Hampshire Bulletin
A spate of high-profile mass shootings in the U.S. has sparked calls for Congress to look at imposing a ban on so-called assault weapons – covering the types of guns used in both the recent Buffalo grocery attack and that on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
newhampshirebulletin.com
Thank you S2.
I've long had the uneasy apprehension when reading on the subject that what I'd previously read was not corroborated.
Utilitarianism may be an undeclared or unofficial objective of democracy.
QUESTION:
The Constitution's Second Amendment (2A) absolutizes this right: "... shall not be infringed ...". But,
Can we bell-curve the benefit of this 2A right?
100% disarmed risks authoritarian government oppression.
100% armament risks genocidal cataclysm, the termination of humanity.
Therefore it would seem the ideal is somewhere in between.
Is that close enough to be an objective toward which we strive?
There seem to be a lot of different analyses of the effect
Studies: Gun Massacre Deaths Dropped During Assault Weapons Ban, Increased After Expiration | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Gun massacres fell 37 percent while ban was in place, rose by 183 percent after ban...
Did the assault weapons ban of 1994 bring down mass shootings? Here’s what the data tells us
Analysis of the 10 years in which the US banned sales of assault weapons shows that it correlates with a drop in mass shooting deaths – a trend that reversed as soon as the ban expired.
Did the assault weapons ban of 1994 bring down mass shootings? – commentary • New Hampshire Bulletin
A spate of high-profile mass shootings in the U.S. has sparked calls for Congress to look at imposing a ban on so-called assault weapons – covering the types of guns used in both the recent Buffalo grocery attack and that on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
The first URL is Pelosi defending her own bill, without any real substance, and only a claim of 34% decrease in mass shooting.
The 2nd and 3rd show a graph that to me looks like the 1994 to 2004 ban did nothing.
If there was any effect, it would have been the metal state of the people who were effected by the publicity against gun violence in general.
The actual ban result was simply to reshape the pistol grip into a thumbhole stock, which really does not change a thing about how it works.
The point of a rifle is its greater range than a pistol.
But since all these mass shooting are indoors, there is not a one where a rifle makes any sense.
If a pistol had been used instead, then they could have been firing 2 pistols at the same time, and not have worry about being attacked when reloading.
Last edited:
Let us not forget that before 1900 there were essentially no police, and there were constant threats ranging from bears and wolves, to Spanish pirates.
So before 1800, over 90% of the population was rural and armed.
Meaning that history shows there was little risk of "genocidal cataclysm, the termination of humanity"?
The utility of firearms come from the fact the police not only can become a corrupt arm of a decadent government, but that they simply never arrive in time.
No one can ever count on police defending anyone, since they are not going to show up for half an hour.
And we should examine the motivations for shootings?
There have always been deadly weapons ranging from blunt weapons to exotic toxins.
So why are these mass shootings increasing?
I would tend to guess that they are not due to there being more weapons, but that people are more stressed and unhappy because the wealthy elite have an ever growing monopoly over the only means of survival, like rent, jobs, food prices, healthcare, etc.?
"INJUNS !" [like in the movies]
Historic accounts of that differ.
The only dude capable of accomplishing that with a muzzle loader would have been Adam, in the Garden of Eden.
The "100% armament risks genocidal cataclysm, the termination of humanity" #228
in 3rd millennium context is reductio ad absurdum, carrying 2A to absurd conclusion by the extreme of allowing / enabling a doomsday cultist like Jim Jones to have a genuine doomsday weapon, more than a pitcher of kool-aid.
Nukes wouldn't do it. Killing off literally 99% of Earth's human population in 2026 would leave 1% surviving. 1% of 8 Billion is 80 million, substantially more than needed for a viable breeding population.
No. To terminate the human race in 2026 a doomsday weapon would have to be either a planet killer, like sending an Earth-sized projectile direct hit into Earth's orbital path at planet-shattering velocity, leaving only tiny fragments, dissipating our atmosphere, etc. - OR -
A doomsday bio-weapon, a monstrously contagious, spectacularly lethal weapon that would propagate itself through the population.
The purpose of mentioning it in post #228 is, "shall not be infringed" Constitutionally protects such private individual citizen ownership of such weapon.
Bad idea, but in the 18th Century not a realistic concern for Madison to trifle with in wording 2A.
Modern repeating firearms are force multipliers. They empower the weak against the strong.
Crimes of opportunity?
Psychological recompense for a misperception of lifelong victimization?
Never underestimate cowardice.
Difficult to narrow down specifically, in the abstract.
"Food prices" an interesting example. Food insecurity has been a way of life for most of human history. For most of the years humans have trudged, it was common to not know where their next meal, or next day's, or next weeks meal was coming from.
In the U.S. where food is available in unprecedented abundance, and simultaneously where mass shootings are disproportionately common?
When I was taking anthropology courses, they said that most of the primitives use to spend less than 3 hours a day on survival things like food.
Since we have increased the daily toil to 10 hours a day, apparently food used to come to primitives much more easily than it does now?
And this was not radicals, but the main stream, like Sir Desmond Morris, Margaret Mead, Strauss, Boas, etc.
I never read The Naked Ape.
But for over a year I binge-watched the TV series Alone from The History Channel. 6 hours Saturday night on
broadcast television network.Survivalist participant competitors had more modern gear than they could carry, and yet some of them washed out of the competition for losing over 20% body weight.
I gather modern division of labor has tripled human life expectancy.
So the rest of the time they'd watch Oprah, and munch Cheetos? It depends on which century, which millennium we're addressing. But I doubt there was much leisure time for them.
Even with automation today's family farmer in the U.S. toils from sun to sun. The aphorism is: "A man toils from sun to sun, but women's work is never done." "Never" in this case meaning always, never complete, accomplished, concluded, except by death.
I've seen B&W photos of horse-drawn sledges at logging camps. The loggers are generally lean, seemingly marginally if not under-fed.
What little I've read of it, a few centuries ago obesity was a sign of great wealth, abundance, power, prestige, and was envied. Ironically today in the U.S. morbid obesity is more common among the poor, including inner city poor that live in "food deserts".
The problem with the survivalist competitors is they are dumped in an unfamiliar place alone.
A primitive would never have intentionally done that, but instead would have worked out of a known base camp and expanded territory slowly, experimentally.
In the real world, the primitive explorer would have the old camp resources to draw from.
The problem of modern agriculture or loggers, is that they are not just surviving, but having to pay taxes, rent, etc., that more than triple the amount of labor they have to perform just to break even.
What the anthropologists tell me is that primitives tend to spend most of their time traveling to either visit relatives or to explore, or on things like art or song.
... rather than being born into a viable tribe that has established itself, accustomed to the environment. Certainly true. BUT !!
Though it surely is an imperfect analogy, ALONE still taught me a great deal, and a great deal more than I expected.
This Paiute Deadfall Trap was an insight I gained early in my review of the series.
Unexpectedly, what followed was insights into the psychology of living alone, and the advantages and drawbacks of various approaches / attitudes. An interesting series. I'd love to see it in UHD / 4K.
I suspect it's more likely to be the other way around.
Seems to me human life expectancy has ~tripled since Eden.
Yes we pay tax.
But economy of scale, division of labor, and modern innovation keeps us ahead.
A little, perhaps.
I've forgotten the precise number, not sure it matters.
But I'd read that for most of human history humans were born, lived their entire lives, and died within a X diameter circle.
I've forgotten what the author said X equal. 15 miles?
Yes, things like deadfall traps can take all the work out of foraging.
My father fed his family when he was a kid in the 1920s, with a trapline.
I however I disagree with the idea of humans being sedentary.
First of all, we have South American artifacts in North American sites.
Second is the fact all humans came out of Africa only 100,000 years ago according to the "Eve out of Africa" gene theories.
We also have South Americans getting to Easter Islands and Polynesia.
There also has to be explanation for how South American chocolate and coffee was found in Egyptian pyramids.
While I believe the women and children tended to be sedentary, I believe the men had so much free time that they explored a lot.
While the average life span has greatly increased, I believe that is from reduction of infant mortality.
Historically there used to be individuals over 120 years old in remote rural locations, and that does not seem to happen any more.
Life spans appear to be shortening to me, due to poor food production, air, and water contaminants.
That's about a century ago.
During the Great Depression $cash & food were short.
A cookbook was published: The Joy of Cooking [JOC], in part to help get by.
Though the precise text has been revised over the decades, versions have had recipe for such delicacies as muskrat.
Incidentally in Mom's version was a cocktail recipe JOC claimed would make you see double & feel single.
Primordial humans? ME TOO !!
In the 3rd millennium? Some are, some aren't.
Providing some evidence of trade between locations reportedly 500 miles apart.
Fine.
BUT !
That doesn't mean everyone traveled. Instead it means a few may have. OR
We're being lead astray by some glacial erratics perhaps.