A worthy goal, but is it attainable? We'll never reach the level of zero homicides because some people are just born broken.

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War is god

One of the first things I learned in engineering school is not to try and solve a problem that already has a solution written down somewhere.

There are dozens of nations which are generally equal to the US in all aspects of life - democracy, personal freedoms,opportunity, wealth & development, but differ radically in murder and suicide rates. No need to invent this from first principles.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Most people are born sociopaths. Getting them socialized is the job of the parents. Some kids are highly resistant to getting over their sociopathic ways, some parents don't try all that hard. But at the end of the day, human behavior is controlled by incentives. They way to stop unacceptable behavior is to punish it. If the punishment doesn't work, then it wasn't severe enough. I got the beat down for suggesting a harsh punishment for the FL kid the other day. That tells us that if we have to chose between protecting future victims and cultural ideals re. "cruel", we choose in favor of the violent criminal.

Everyone should be free to make that choice w/o criticism. But each should recognize the cost of their choice.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I think I know where you're going with this, but all of the nations with radically lower murder rates have *always* had lower murder rates than the US, to include before they introduced very restrictive gun laws. And, there is zero correlation between the number of guns and suicide rates in a nation. There are many countries with very low murder rates but have a higher suicide rate than the US.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Considering that public health expenditures are being cut back, mental health will probably take the first hit.

I think we can all reject the standard of either being assured 100% success or we do nothing.

This is very true. Once we take it as a given that a person wants to kill as many other people as they possibly can before being gunned down or committing suicide themselves, well, we've got an ugly problem with no feel good solutions.

I like to think the best of people but I understand that the worst in them often comes out and in ways completely unpredictable to us. That's because they're human beings.

"Men arise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves from attack, and then they attack others." -- Niccolo Machiavelli


We are not so evolved as we like to think ourselves, believe me.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."