friendly_iconoclast
friendly_iconoclast's JournalBoston Globe: "Gun licenses on the rise in Mass.; 7.8% increase seen" (+44% over 5 years)
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/01/27/gun-licenses-rise-mass-percent-increase-seen/mru1o8yuwM9MiMuG1GRd6O/story.htmlBy Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff January 27, 2016
Tens of thousands of new gun licenses were issued to Massachusetts residents in 2015, continuing a recent surge, according to state data.
There were 342,622 active Class A firearms licenses statewide, according to figures provided by the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services earlier this month. That was up about 24,700, or 7.8 percent, from the same time a year ago.
A Class A license, the broadest license available under state law and by far the most popular, allows the holder to carry rifles, shotguns, or handguns. It also allows the holder to carry a concealed handgun.
The number of Class A licenses has increased by 104,150, or 44 percent, from five years ago....
Of course, the Globe had to dig out John Rosenthal to peddle some more of his old claims:
Too bad no one as yet has had the huevos/ovarios to tell him to his face that his
timeworn screeds are, frankly, bullshit:
gun ownership) compared to 2014 (the latest available full-year statistics)
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports/ Crime in the United States
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s
2014 is the latest full year available
Massachusetts violent crime rate
2010: 466.6 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants
2014: 391.4/100K
Murder/nonnegligent manslaughter:
2010: 3.2/100K
2014: 2.0/100K
Aggravated assault:
2010: 331.8/100K
2014: 267.6/100K
Robbery:
2010: 105.0/100K
2014: 89.5/100K
I didn't include rape as the reporting criteria changed. Nonetheless, the disinterested reader
can find at the FBI site that the rate under the old definition is also lower
The prohibitionists have yet another truthiness problem:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/126210284Yet another study refutes the notion that guns make anyone safe.
I'll leave the citation-free argument from authority to the disinterested reader, my
interest lies in the last line from the OP
hence my reply to their x-post in the Women's Rights & Issues group:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11388712#post1
...both in rate *and* absolute number over the last 15 years, all while the number of guns in
the US nearly doubled:
There were 3,076 women murdered in the US in 2000- source:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2000/table2-4_vicrace00.xls
143.4 women in the US in 2000-source:
https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-9.pdf
Rate: 1 in 46,619
There were 2,715 women murdered in the US (that number includes victims of unknown sex)
in 2014- source:
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_1_murder_victims_by_race_ethnicity_and_sex_2014.xls
161,979,384 women in the US in 2014- source:
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
Rate: 1 in 59,661
A decision to obtain (or not) a gun should be made for real reasons, not ficticious ones.
Chicago police must finally produce stingray records, judge orders
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/chicago-police-must-finally-produce-stingray-records-judge-orders/by Cyrus Farivar - Jan 11, 2016 6:10pm EST
Court knocks police for relying on generic FBI affidavit as argument for withholding.
A local activist has won an important intermediary step in his legal quest to force the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to produce documents that fully explain the department's use of cell-site simulators, also known as IMSI catchers.
In a Monday opinion in Martinez v. Chicago Police Department, Cook County Circuit Judge Kathleen Kennedy denied the citys motion to dismiss. This decision paves the way later this month for a closed-door hearing (in camera review) where the judge gets to privately review the documents in question.
Back in September 2014, activist Freddy Martinez filed a request under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Among other items, Martinez initially asked for:
All court orders for any instances in which Chicago Police deployed IMSI Catchers
All formal or informal policies, procedures, orders, directives, or other such records that pertain to when, why, where, how, and by whom IMSI Catchers may be deployed
All records discussing the constitutionality of deploying IMSI Catchers
That request was originally denied by the CPD. By the end of that month, Martinez suedhis second records-related lawsuit against the CPD of 2014. As of nearly a year ago, the city owed over $120,000 to defend the cases. Martinez and his legal team still dont know exactly how many documents will now be released.
Layered perovskite-on-silicon could boost photovoltaic efficiencies to 30 percent
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/layered-perovskite-on-silicon-could-boost-pv-efficiencies-to-30-percent/by John Timmer - Jan 7, 2016 2:52pm EST
Given how fantastically cheap silicon-based photovoltaic cells have gotten, it might be hard to muster much excitement for developing any other material. But the cost of silicon-based PV has created a potential nicheit's so cheap that installation costs now dominate the price of solar power. If we could squeeze more energy out of a single installation, it could drop the costs even further.
That's one of the reasons researchers have been trying to develop perovskites. Not only are these made from chemicals that are cheap and easy to manufacture, there are indications that they can be tuned to absorb some wavelengths while allowing others to pass through to an underlying silicon photovoltaic. The big problem: they tend to decompose when exposed to intense light.
Now, an Oxford-Berlin collaboration is reporting they may have solved the decomposition problem and, in the process, accidentally made a material where they could tune the absorbance across a wide range of wavelengths. With some additional improvements, they suggest a combined silicon-perovskite cell could reach 30 percent efficienciesup from the neighborhood of 22 for silicon alone.
Perovskites aren't actually a single material; instead, they're a variety of chemicals that all form a similar crystal structure. For photovoltaics, they're often a mix of lead, bromine or iodine, and a small nitrogen-containing organic molecule. None of these is very expensive, and it's relatively easy to form a layer of perovskite materials using bulk techniques. The best of these materials has photovoltaic efficiencies in the teens. That's lower than silicon, but expectations are that it can be brought up even higher...
NY City Settles Lawsuits Over Muslim Surveillance by Police
X-posted from Latest Breaking News:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141306522
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nyc-settles-lawsuits-muslim-surveillance-police-36145432
By Tom Hays, Associated Press
NEW YORK Jan 7, 2016, 2:58 PM ET
The New York Police Department will strengthen safeguards against illegal surveillance of Muslims in investigations of terror threats and install a civilian representative on an advisory committee that reviews the probes under the terms of a settlement of two high-profile civil rights lawsuits, lawyers said Thursday.
The announcement of a deal following months of negotiations formally ended litigation over accusations that the nation's largest police department cast a shadow over Muslim communities with a covert campaign of religious profiling and illegal spying.
"We are committed to strengthening the relationship between our administration and communities of faith so that residents of every background feel respected and protected," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The suits were among legal actions that followed reports by The Associated Press that revealed how city police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques and otherwise spied on Muslims as part of a broad effort to prevent terrorist attacks.
NYC Settles Lawsuits Over Muslim Surveillance by Police
Source: ABC News
The New York Police Department will strengthen safeguards against illegal surveillance of Muslims in investigations of terror threats and install a civilian representative on an advisory committee that reviews the probes under the terms of a settlement of two high-profile civil rights lawsuits, lawyers said Thursday.
The announcement of a deal following months of negotiations formally ended litigation over accusations that the nation's largest police department cast a shadow over Muslim communities with a covert campaign of religious profiling and illegal spying.
"We are committed to strengthening the relationship between our administration and communities of faith so that residents of every background feel respected and protected," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
The suits were among legal actions that followed reports by The Associated Press that revealed how city police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques and otherwise spied on Muslims as part of a broad effort to prevent terrorist attacks.
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nyc-settles-lawsuits-muslim-surveillance-police-36145432
"Clearly, all of us have done more.." More of what, exactly? Wearing out keyboards? Posting pics?
Reposting someone else's cartoons and op-eds?
What you do, and what the vast majority of your fellow gun control advocates do,
can be described with one word:
Slacktivism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
Granted, you might have developed carpal tunnel syndrome scraping photos from the Web...
NSA's biggest congressional apologist is outraged that the NSA spied on him and Israel
https://boingboing.net/2015/12/30/nsas-biggest-congressional-a.htmlThen Hoekstra is "outraged" and wants "NSA and Obama officials... investigated and prosecuted."
This happens literally every time a Congressional spying apologist gets spied on: they freak out about privacy and the Fourth Amendment, and forget all about spying as a "fact of life" and "nothing to hide, nothing to fear."
What happened to all the dismissive lectures about how if youve done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide? Is that still applicable? Or is it that these members of the U.S. Congress who conspired with Netanyahu and AIPAC over how to sabotage the U.S. governments Iran Deal feel they did do something wrong and are angry about having been monitored for that reason?
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Sep 8, 2006, 12:47 PMNumber of posts: 15,333