SirEDCaLot

Sounds like a fantastic deal to me.

I'll add to that- within a year's time, less than 50% of the affected devices will even have a patch available.

Determining the exact count is difficult. If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it's not centrally tracked and many go unreported, the only way to get any sort of number is with phone surveys and statistical analysis. That leaves a lot of opening to interpretation of the data.

Thus you have anti-gun researchers like Hemenway who put it at ~60,000 incidents/year and pro-gun researchers like Lott who put it at 2-4 million incidents/year. (I say anti/pro gun because Hemenway's other writings advocate for gun control, while Lott's other writings advocate against gun control). Obviously the number is somewhere in the middle.

But the firearm homicide rate (excluding suicides) is around 10k-15k/year, which means even if you only go with worst case data it means there's 4x more DGUs as there are firearm homicides.

I'll give you that's a slightly apples to oranges comparison, as many firearm assaults don't end in death.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.

I'd argue that the lion's share of those 10-15k homicides per year are committed with illegal guns / prohibited owners, they are gang and drug related. The problem is that's often hard to prove and it doesn't show up in data sets. For example, you have incidents in sites like 'mass shooting tracker' like:
'On friday at 11pm, victim1 and victim2 were leaving a house party in the 12,000 block of Nowhere St. Two unknown males opened fire from a moving vehicle. Victim1 and victim2 were wounded, along with bystander1 and bystander2 who were injured non-critically.'
Now that's a 'mass shooting' because 4 people got shot. Read between the lines and it's 'gangland drive-by'. But you can't prove that as the victims won't admit to being in a gang and the perps weren't caught. But you can bet those guns were illegal and the car was stolen.

American here (not a Trump fan).

There's three things we should be looking at IMHO.

First- Trump is a publicity man, an actor. He understands the camera.

Think of a magic show. You have the magician and the cute assistant in a swimsuit. So when they set up the trick the assistant is flourishing her hands and dancing over the stage to distract you from noticing that the magician palmed your card instead of shuffling it back into the deck.

Trump understands this. And he knows how to play both the magician and the assistant.

So if he says something wild like this, understand he WANTS attention on that statement, which probably means he DOESN'T want attention on something else. Like Epstein. If those files have any kind of actual proof he partook in Epstein's services, there's a good chance that an impeachment might actually succeed to conviction. Because it's easy to 'stand with your party leader', it's a lot harder to say 'yes I stand by my vote that the guy in the picture with his dick in a 14yo girl should stay President'.

Point being- whenever Trump says something outrageous like this, your first question should be 'what DOESN'T he want me paying attention to?

Second- understand that USA literally cannot annex Greenland by force. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of NATO. If the US invades Denmark, all other NATO companies are OBLIGATED to provide military support. So that would basically kick USA out of NATO, and you can bet your bottom dollar that not only NATO but also Russia, China, North Korea, etc would all fall over themselves to 'help respect and defend the sovereign territory of Denmark from illegal invasion'. That very quickly becomes a 'US vs Rest Of World' war and even with our giant military there's NO chance we win against the entire rest of the planet combined. Plus militarily we would be isolated, ostracized from the world economy.

Americans understand this. Our government understands this. Congress understands this. Even if Trump does not, Congress would not authorize such a war.

As for tariffs- Congress is much more hesitant to curtail Trump's tariff powers, but their tolerance has a limit (somewhere). It's one thing to enact tariffs 'to protect American manufacturing', they'll generally tolerate a 'good faith' effort like that. But when the tariff becomes punitive to countries that aren't supporting an annexation that obviously isn't going to happen, I think Congress might step in.

Third- While this all may well be a distraction or a strategy, it is doing actual harm to our international relations. If I was a citizen of EU, AU, Asia, etc, I would be saying 'the US can no longer be trusted to lead the world economy, the rest of the world needs to find a solution where the US is 'one among many' not calling the shots. And a big part of that would likely be a different worldwide reserve currency. Because right now this is like being on a bus where every few minutes the driver jokes about swerving in front of an oncoming semi truck- even if he won't do it, you still don't want to be on that bus.

What this also means is that the next Presidential election is important not just for American internal politics but for determining what our place in the world will be going forward. While Trump is ineligible to be re-elected, I think it's important that the US send a clear message this isn't the sort of statesmanship that we want representing us. That DOESN'T mean blindly vote blue. It means vote in primaries, vote for candidates who act like statesmen.

As a gun owner, and someone who has studied many use of force situations, I know all of this.

However someone who takes 10 rounds and keeps coming is extremely rare. And that will generally only happen when none of those rounds hit critical areas.

Part of responsible gun ownership is understanding that you are responsible for every bullet you fire, and it will keep going until something stops it.

However I would challenge your position really with two core concepts:

1. The overwhelming majority, 90+%, of defensive gun uses end with no shots fired. The criminal sees the gun and runs away. In those situations, the gun did not kill, it protected.

2. Look up the Wikipedia page on defensive gun uses. Depending on which researcher you go with, there are somewhere between 60,000 and several million defensive gun incidents each year. If what you are saying is true, even if you assume that 90% of them have no shots fired, there would still be tens of hundreds of thousands at minimum incidents where the gun killed rather than protected. Because it didn't stop the assailant, because an innocent bystander was hit, etc. Why is this not major news? Why are the anti-gun lobbyists not showing up to Congress with a stack full of news articles?

I would argue that is simply because it does not happen the way you say.

This article is from 2014.

It's important, but also vital to provide context, as the headline makes it sound current.

I'm not so sure. There are numerous widely circulated videos shot by members of the public that are easily available online. Any of those could be entered in as evidence. You just have a question of strength of case. If the video original starts 30 seconds previous and shows the agent not identifying himself and charging at the car, then you have a pretty open and shut case. The only question becomes identifying the specific agent. If ICE will not turn over the identity and it's not clear from the video, it may be more difficult to charge that person. That would lead to an interesting State versus Federal showdown where the state court would try to subpoena a federal agency, and I'm sure the federal agency would do everything possible to stop that subpoena.

That's a legal. Metered utilities can be either included in the rent, or metered on a per unit basis. In this setup, if your neighbor uses a lot of utilities your bill will go up. That's why this is illegal.

Look up the stats on defensive gun uses. Just Google it.

The vast majority (90+%) end with no shots fired- the criminal sees the gun and runs away.

If someone threatens me and my family I want a better option than 'hope the violent criminal decides to let us live'.

If you have an emergency you want the tool that protects against that emergency.

If there's a fire you want a tool to put the fire out. That could be a bucket, but a fire extinguisher works better.

If you are threatened with a violent person who wants to do you harm, can you name a more effective tool than a gun?

I love theaters, but I haven't been in a long time because it's a big investment of time.

I like IMAX, I like that theaters now have better food rather than just popcorn.

I don't like that there's half an hour of advertisements before the film, or that basic politeness etiquette seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird and the kids will be on their phones and talking and what not

I've never set my house on fire, but I still feel better having a fire extinguisher.