[CA renter]

[quote=Jazzman]I don’t think “will” or lack of it has anything to do with mass slayings. If anything, the reserve could be argued. Hitler an Stalin spring to mind. Many simple cultures don’t exercise “will” in the cultural sense referred to, and yet don’t suffer the same cultural ills. I also don’t believe making guns too expensive would be a practical solution. You may as well just ban guns, if you are going to do that. The focus should be on an immediate solution to prevent callous killings. Gun control is as clear cut as any solution to address that problem. Apparently, 90% of Americans believe that to be the case. Yet, the legislation that was to bring about greater gun control failed. So whatever you think is the problem or likely solution, you are possibly going to be denied the means do deal with it, if your detractors are more powerful than you. I think that is a concern and needs to be addressed before philosophizing.[/quote]

How do you suggest we protect the potential innocent victims as you try to cleanse the streets of guns?

And what do you do about all of the criminals who will simply use different tools and devices to kill? Surely, you’re not naive enough to think that removing guns from a murderer’s possession will cause him to stop murdering, do you?

And if guns are the problem, why don’t we hear about mass shootings like this at NRA conventions, hunting events, or other places and events where most people are armed? It’s always in the “gun-free” zones.

[CA renter]

[quote=Blogstar]Kind of starting a new or additional theory, I wonder if this guy had been victim of sexual abuse or seen some pretty disturbing stuff to go with the divorce and possible neglect.

That someone is born a demon or something like that, that’s just fantasy, probably some holdover from religious myths about the devil or similar stories.
That doesn’t make me a denier of mental illness , just want to say that those accusation don’t do anything but short circuit logical investigation.

O.k. So I searched it, other people already made similar conjecture public in various venues. The guy had sexual issues enough to drive a lot of people crazy. A lot of people don’t like the questions at all.[/quote]

I’m 100% convinced that some people are born evil. I’ve personally seen it, at least once (a kid I knew; and he had a cousin, too, who tried to burn a baby when this toddler was two or three years old…the family believed it was probably genetic in nature), and heard about at least one other story. It’s a mental illness, probably schizophrenia in this case, so call it what you will, but this particular kid came across as pure evil.

[CA renter]

[quote=flu][quote=FlyerInHi]I use economic principles.

Make guns 100 times more expensive and you still would not violate the second amendment and there will be less shootings, period.

Raise the price if gas and people will drive less. Simple.

There are levers you can pull to achieve aggregate behavior change.[/quote]

I got a better solution. In this particular case…

Ban knives and BMW’s…Or raise prices so knives and BMW’s are incredibly expensive….I’m sure that would be as effective too…

Might also want to ban gasoline and fertilizer too….[/quote]

And pressure cookers and nails…airplanes, too.

——–

Brian,

You might want to ask the millions of people (or tens of thousands, even by the most conservative measures) who use guns in self defense every year how they feel about gun bans. You might think they aren’t useful, but millions of people strongly disagree with your naive assumption.

[CA renter]

[quote=SD Transplant]I just checked and it is a sad 1.7% for the year. I’m glad I parked the other 401k in mutual funds….I can’t trust a market expected to grow forever[/quote]

I’m bummed for you, but glad I’m not the only one with a 1.7% return. 🙁

[CA renter]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=FlyerInHi][quote=CA renter] The most dangerous criminals like a challenge.[/quote]

Yes, but Elliot Rodgers was not a most dangerous criminals.

I’m pretty convinced Elliot Rogers would not have began the killing spree had he not been able to buy a gun. He would not even have stabbed his roommates to then continue on with the shooting spree. The series of killings were all related.

To me, gun controls is like seat belt laws or food safety. Is it worth it to mandate certain things to save a few thousand lives per year?[/quote]

the odds of persuading anyone toa different position are vanishingly. small.[/quote]

Very true, on both sides.

[CA renter]

OR…you’d have more gun thefts.

OR…they’d just use different tools.

[CA renter]

If you believe that, Brian, then you don’t understand how these people work. The most dangerous criminals like a challenge.

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Without guns he may have been able to kill using others means but there would be no shooting spree.

Sick people who shoot do so for the sensational effects of shooting. Plus there is a copycat effect that begets more shootings.
I’m pretty certain none of this would have happened has Elliot not been able to buy guns.

The second amendment is a separate issue, if you want to argue that random shootings is the price of freedom then all the more power to you. But jazzman made an excellent point re access to guns.[/quote]

Personally, I’d rather be shot than stabbed to death. The sickest of murderers like to use knives or other hand tools because they are closer to their victims when the kill them and can more easily torture them first. To each his own, I guess.

You’re totally wrong, though, about this guy not killing if guns were illegal. Someone who is hell-bent on killing will do so, no matter what kind of gun laws are in place.

[CA renter]

Doesn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, IMO. The point is that people who want to kill will do so, irrespective of the tools that are legally available to them.

[CA renter]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=Jazzman]There is still a lot of soul searching going on in America over this issue. From the outside, the focus on psychoanalysis to try and explain the problem starts to look like an excuse for it, with the unfortunate unintended consequence of deflecting attention away from the real victims. Whether you believe the solution lies in vitamins, psychoanalysis, and better parenting another disaster is waiting to happen. The NRA is credited with highjacking gun control legislation, which addresses the immediate problem of access. If there is even a grain of truth to this, then the exercise of rational prioritizing would appear to be obliquely conspicuous by its absence.[/quote]

I agree.

this guy was not a criminal who knew how to get an illegal gun. If he didn’t have access to guns he wouldn’t have planned his revenge this way. it’s pretty safe to assume this tragedy would not have happened without access to guns.[/quote]

As flu mentioned above, you seem to be missing the fact that 50% of the victims were STABBED to death.

A wannabe murderer will kill, no matter what type of weapon he has at his disposal. There are knives, bombs, poisons, cars, etc…so many ways to kill. The tools are not the problem; killers are the problem.

[CA renter]

[quote=ltsdd][quote=AN]But don’t you think Old Town/Mission Hills is an anomaly (along with other Uptown areas) when it comes to cost of living? Here’s an example of Mira Mesa.

http://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-140023149-92126

This house was sold in 1983 for $96,500. Mortgage rates back then was ~12%. So, monthly payment back then was $794/month. Today, that house just went pending @ $465k and current mortgage rate is ~4.25%. Which puts the monthly payment @ $1830/month. You’re looking at an increase of 2.3x in housing cost for your average middle class family. That doesn’t seem to outrageous to me.[/quote]

Minimum wage earners are not middle class.

Regardless, let’s play with your example and use that to calculate what it would take to come up with the 20% down payment:

20% down payment for $96,500 is $19,300. That takes roughly 5761 man hours to earn at $3.35.

20% down payment for $465000 is $93,000. That takes roughly 11625 man hours to earn at $8.

How is that better?[/quote]

Don’t forget property taxes. And then there’s healthcare, and all of the other expenses that have shot up since the 80s. That leaves less money for house payments (P&I), too.

I’ve lived in the 80s and today. Things are much worse today for most working people than they were in the 80s.

[CA renter]

[quote=flu]Another day another record close….

Shorts are getting the arses kicked…[/quote]

Yep!

[CA renter]

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one, spdrun. 🙂

[CA renter]

Ah, perhaps you don’t understand how Prop 13 works.

If a person bought a home in 1978, for instance, their property taxes are 1% of the price at the time of purchase, plus a 2%/year maximum increase.

Another person can buy an identical house next door to the one above for 3X (or 10X+) the price of the house purchased next door, and their property taxes are assessed at 1% of their purchase price, plus the 2%/year max annual increase.

So, you can have two identical houses where one owner is paying say $1,000/year, while the next-door neighbor is paying $10,000/year. Now do you see why this is a subsidy?

Now, I don’t mind doing this to help out the elderly neighbor (or any owner-occupier who owns and lives in only that one house) so that they aren’t taxed out of their home, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay a higher tax bill than the landlord who is pocketing this entire subsidy for no reason.

[CA renter]

Please read the above definitions (and feel free to look it up for yourself). If a person or group of people are given a subsidy that enables them to pay less than market taxes, then they are being subsidized by other taxpayers, and/or other service providers, and/or consumers of those public services.

Money doesn’t grow on trees, and when some people are specifically excluded from paying the same tax rates/amounts that others are paying, then they are being subsidized.

Yes, renters *can* be more engaged, but study after study shows that ownership is what enables most lower/middle-class families to gain wealth, and it also shows that neighborhoods where most people own tend to be cleaner, safer, and nicer than neighborhoods in which people rent.

Of course, correlation isn’t causation, and I do understand that traditional mortgage standards excluded those who would be less desirable neighbors (irresponsible, broke, don’t pay bills, BKs, etc.), so the comparison between renting/owning neighborhoods isn’t exactly fair because it’s not the act of owning that makes a person a (generally) better neighbor, but the fact that they’ve shown the responsibility and capability to pay off a mortgage over time.

[Author]

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