Is these "laws" something we should worry about?

[curious aardvark]

that's right: so trying to establish who will perform the illegal actions and stopping them getting the objects that will help them - is a good idea :-)

It's called positive discrimination and it should be used a lot more.

In the uk we're so bloody liberally backwards we refuse to use positive discrimination.
Which leads to the situation we had last week at dover.

Instead of just checking swarthy looking nervous folk boarding the ferry from france to the uk - which is logical and positive discrimination.
They instead stopped and checked every single vehicle going from the uk to france.
Leading to 18 hour delays for people going on holiday.
That's 18 hours stuck in the middle of a bloody motorway with no facilities.

Given that getting hold of firearms and explosives on the continent is an absolute doddle now there are no border checks or controls and given that getting hold of same in the uk is extremely bloody difficult.
And also given that cars full of mixed age british families and all their luggage are around 99.999999999% less likely to be terrorists than a car with a single or couple of asian blokes in who look a bit nervous.

The situation was just ludicrous.
What is the point of criminal/terrorist profiling if the information recieved from the profiling is just going to be totally ignored in the face of bureacratic and officious political correctness.

It's the same nonsense that means everyone boarding a plane has to be checked down to the composition of their fillings, instead of just the ones more likely to cause problems.

The annoying thing (what just the one ?) is that the millions of pounds has been spent on profiling and intelligence on who is likely to do what - is just ignored in the desire to show the world we're not racists, religionists and biased.
When By rights using the available profiles and intelligence does not mean you're being racist, just sensible.

And that's thursday's rant :-)

[Ama-fessional Molder]

that's right: so trying to establish who will perform the illegal actions and stopping them getting the objects that will help them - is a good idea :-)

It's called positive discrimination and it should be used a lot more.

That's why felons aren't allowed to buy and own guns, or people with diagnosed mental health problems, or histories of violence. How exactly do you intend to stop someone who has no negative history? And even if you do, how do you intend to prevent them from getting a firearm illegally?

You can stop them from buying them from legal sellers, but you wont stop them from getting illegal guns.

I understand the whole "well just get rid of all the guns and problem solved" but then you are punishing everyone who's never done anything wrong, and that will probably never happen in this country.

And it's been proven time and time again that you don't need guns to kill a BUNCH of people. In china, at least twice now, there have been mass stabbings that make 95% of our "mass shootings" look like accidental discharges. And by the way, what they (the reddit users who started this tracker that the media is using) call a mass "killings" these days in the US is 4 or more *injuries*during an attack, regardless of what weapon was used, including the attacker. You don't even need to get shot. You could trip over a curb running away and break your neck and you will be counted towards that number. That's why it "looks" like we have almost 400 mass shootings a year but in reality most of those are gang violence, and a fair amount of them are self defense cases - a couple armed people break into a house, shoot the homeowner, homeowner shoots back, the kid falls down the stairs, and somehow that counts as a "mass killing" even though everyone survived. There doesn't even have to be a gun involved, and in one case a bunch of kids were messing around shooting each other with pellet guns (still super dangerous) and their tracker counted that incident.

Now, the former LEGAL definition of that is 4 or more deaths NOT including the perpetrator.

So now they are applying any assault that injures 4 or more people to these statistics of "mass shootings", because they are tracking these attacks as "mass killings", and defining them as "mass injuries", and the media just rolls with the old word for it because sensationalism.

[Graham]

The situation was just ludicrous.
What is the point of criminal/terrorist profiling if the information recieved from the profiling is just going to be totally ignored in the face of bureacratic and officious political correctness.

It's the same nonsense that means everyone boarding a plane has to be checked down to the composition of their fillings, instead of just the ones more likely to cause problems.

The annoying thing (what just the one ?) is that the millions of pounds has been spent on profiling and intelligence on who is likely to do what - is just ignored in the desire to show the world we're not racists, religionists and biased.
When By rights using the available profiles and intelligence does not mean you're being racist, just sensible.

And that's thursday's rant :-)

Well said... and the USA is at least as ridiculous, if not more so.

[ralphzoontjens]

In the end people are most important but the objects we create and use are a big part of our culture, and help to give rise to our behavior and actions.
They invite certain actions and inhibit others, like a speed bump invites slower driving inherently because that's more enjoyable.
I find life much more enjoyable when I can trust that weapons are used only by trained professionals in extreme cases. In the same way that I only want a certified doctor doing the stitches when I have hurt myself. So I am all for reducing the chance that weapons fall in the hands of just anyone. I see positive discrimination as a normal and healthy way of social control. Of course you could always buy a 3D printer and find 3D models to print weapons, though if the most trusted brands include chips that prevent printing of certain models, or can recognize what type of part you are printing, we are creating a healthy and sane environment..