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[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I'd reword the civil forfeiture entry to prevent rules lawyering.

[Rolepgeek]

Don't get me wrong, I hate the pigs and all that. You can't just willingly join an organization like that and even tolerate the kind of things most police do on the regular even if you avoid it yourself without taking on moral responsibility. That just doesn't inform the actual method of making them not be bastards.

I don't know how common the story is or will be, but I've seen at least one where a kid wants to be a police officer basically because of how shitty it is right now. They want to try and be the improvement. Not sure if they're just gonna get corrupted or kicked out for not staying part of the Wall of Silence, but it's something to keep in mind for the next generation of officers. Hopefully. :/

Making guns harder to obtain in general can make it harder to obtain them illegally.

The obtaining part isn't the important bit, really, though, it's the tracking. Citation is a podcast called Science Vs., so you might want a grain of salt, might not. They did one about gun regulation. Making sure the government can keep track of weapons and everything has to be licensed and registered and mandatory reporting of theft and everything is the big part. Australia's got plenty of guns, after all, even after the semi-auto and auto ban. *shrug*

I can basically agree with MSH. Not sure if esprit de corps should be completely broken; feel like it should restructured to where doing the sorts of shit we're seeing is the betrayal, not 'ratting'. Though maybe that is effectively breaking it?

Hardest part on that list, if one could wade through the bureaucracy, is probably the academies. From what I remember, they don't like being told how they have to teach. :/

[misko27]

Just to be safe, I'm going to ask everyone to answer these questions:

1) What is your name?

2) What is your quest?

3) What is your favorite color?

1) misko27. More generally, "misko" followed by a two-digit string, wherein those digits, when added together, equal a number that is more than 5 but less than 10.  Recently I've adopted "Silenus" and variations on that. I also answer to "Spanish", and (more recently) "Inquisitor", although I prefer the latter (I used to go by "The Spanish Inquisitor", but everyone shortened it to "Spanish" instead of "Inquisitor".)
2) To become powerful, popular, and leave the world a better place than when I started. The Impossible Three: many are one, some are two, but few are all three.
3) Tough question; I am going with a dark blue-grey color of some sort.] I would put my vote behind Liberty Blue, although I am tempted by Independence Blue (which is too grey), Air Force Blue (which is just a smidge too bright), and Yale Blue (which is a silly name, colleges shouldn't have their own colors).

I'd add my $0.02, but honestly I've never been big on these sort of conversations, so I don't have anything to contribute other then saying comparing the EU to the US is more then a little bit silly.

Admittedly the eastern half is kinda crappy, but the west?

This though, this is right up my alley. Spoken like a true Western European, OW. "Ignoring the other half, Europe is great!". A reminder the population of West Europe is not even close to double the US population. Did you look up the population of all of Europe and then forget to take out the population of the "crappy" parts? That's not good statistics. What if we only compared the safest 50% of US states? I bet our gun statistics would look a lot different then. But we don't do that. Either choose 100% of Europe or one individual country (I think you could argue for using either), but - and I believe this to be an unintentional mistake, mind, not that you were being dishonest - using only the parts that reflect well on your argument would be statistically deceptive even if you weren't already messing up the population numbers. If you say "European Union", then include ALL of it, or if you say, for example "France", or something, use ONLY France, but there is no reason to string together rich countries. If you include both France AND Germany AND Belgium AND the Netherlands as a coherent government, well, you also have to include Poland, and Romania, since "West Europe" isn't a single country with a standard gun law.

US statistics would probably (I'm not actually going to look that up, it's 2 AM here) look a lot better if we could just forget Tennessee exists, for example, but we can't do that in good conscience without explaining why excluding Tennessee is reasonable methodology (which might be, as a random example, Tennessee uses a different system then the rest of the country and thus cannot be included).

[Orange Wizard]

This though, this is right up my alley. Spoken like a true Western European, OW. "Ignoring the other half, Europe is great!".

Alright, let's include all of Europe. Highest rate of firearm-related death in the European Union is Finland with a whopping 3.25, compared to a few other examples of Croatia (2.68), Austria (2.63), and Bulgaria (1.71). These numbers are prior to the refugee crisis, so they might have gone up a bit since then.
Next, we have the United States at 10.54. That's ~three times the most shooty country in the Union. So no, my statistics are not bad, the US is much more murderous than Europe, full stop.

[Erkki]

Actually when comparing this "rich" West Europe to US in gun control matters... One can buy a shotgun with just an ID card in at least France, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Czech Republic. Yet, there is very little gun violence that involves those permit free firearms. Or any guns actually. UK as an island with super strict gun laws makes the exception but even there people just get stabbed instead. In Estonia, still fairly poor country by Euro standards with large social dividents, one can still get a handgun for self defence and is allowed to carry it concealed or open in a vehicle anywhere, yet gun related deaths are below France's.

Same thing here in Finland, more people drown when drunk every year in midsummer weekend than there die to legal firearm homicides... And of those gun deaths, almost every single one happens when shooter is drunk, of course. There literally are over 21 thousand times more guns than homicides per capita(1,6 million guns, 76 annual homicides), yet guns are still often considered larger problem than alcohol. Its so sad. We are talking about single digit figures for gun violence!

Gun violence rates in EU are low because overall homicide, armed robbery and assault rates are low. Firearms are 90%+ times just the means, not the reason for violence.

Theres so many illegal firearms including full auto rifles and submachine guns in Europe and within Schengen area that theres little to none legislation or policies can do about them... Which hasnt stopped them from trying yet. Theres so many illegal ones that even I, someone who has never committed a crime and has zero contacts with organized or other crime, have came across illegal full auto weapons at least 4 times. Non-full auto illegal firearms more than that. I dont even work in police or security, I'm an engineer, I've just kept my eyes open. You dont even need to know the right people. Yet, in Europe, there still isnt gun violence anywhere in the scale of US or the many poor or unstable countries with very strict gun laws yet horrific gun violence rates. Welfare helps people not want to hurt each other.

This year our Police has made the record since 1980s in gun use, they've had to discharge a gun in as many as 3 occasions. Typical yearly average has been only once. I'm afraid we're heading in the wrong direction there too as the economical situation is getting worse(increasing crime rates) and the police budget got cut this year, about 3% of them all were or will be fired.

Sorry about another rant. 

This though, this is right up my alley. Spoken like a true Western European, OW. "Ignoring the other half, Europe is great!".

Alright, let's include all of Europe. Highest rate of firearm-related death in the European Union is Finland with a whopping 3.25, compared to a few other examples of Croatia (2.68), Austria (2.63), and Bulgaria (1.71). These numbers are prior to the refugee crisis, so they might have gone up a bit since then.
Next, we have the United States at 10.54. That's ~three times the most shooty country in the Union. So no, my statistics are not bad, the US is much more murderous than Europe, full stop.

Also in Finland, vast majority of gun related deaths are suicides. Kinda similar to Japan, we have very low violence rates, but fairly high suicide rates.Guns are annually used in about 12 homicides, of which only 5-6 are with legal gun and in averaging 8-9 cases both shooter and victim know each other and are heavily drunk(what a surprise ainnit!).

[Starver]

and Yale Blue (which is a silly name, colleges shouldn't have their own colors).

One wonders if there is there a Brown Brown...

(And in looking vaguely for such information, I discover that all Brown-Sanford sites are closing...  A loss to slightly-highbrow-yet-possibly-slightly-gutter humourists everywhere, I say...)

[Strife26]

Mass legalization of Marijuana is the obvious solution.

[martinuzz]

Apparently Trump's campaing leader recieved 11.4 million euros in black payments between 2007 and 2014, from Viktor Janoekovitsj, former pro-RUssian president of Ukraine, currently living in exile in Russia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

So that's how Putin paid Trump.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think I've changed my chaos desire from wanting Trump to be president to wanting Trump to be outed as an FSB plant.

[Powder Miner]

Fucking Trump. If the events of this election result in a realignment in the Republican Party in Congress to people that simply support Trump's blind, angry populism and kick civil liberties morr when they're already down, I won't be able to support the Republican Party anymore. I can only hope that Paul Ryan's ilk keep their seats.

[sluissa]

It's absolutely amazing how many republicans have gone from "We've got to get these people out of office. We need new blood." To "Oh god, please, give us the old guys back." since Trump.

[Powder Miner]

I, at least, was too young to really properly understand what was at play in intra-party politics even as early as last election -- I'm only 18 nowadays.

[Playergamer]

I don't get why all you people use populist as a pejorative.

[martinuzz]

Because we still remember the last great populist, some guy named Adolf Hitler. Or rather, Goebbels was the populist, and Hitler was his microphone.

Populism is the fastest route from state of law to authoritarian state.

[Playergamer]

wow okay. really. I mean fuck how did you Godwin that fast. That's just a masterwork Godwin, well done.