lewisc_pipe

Gun Control

Lewis Cunningham — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:46:00 +0000

Gun control is too important a topic for a one liner or a pithy image. These are my thoughts on gun control.

As soon as I heard about the shooting in Newtown, CT, I knew it wouldn't be long before the self-righteous rage of liberals would be heard on the social networks. Sure enough, within an hour of the first report, people were posting little images comparing gun deaths in US against those in Europe. These are a vocal minority and a special breed of hypocrite.

Let's, for now, forget the fact that the US is not Europe. We are not part of the European Union. We have a constitution and a bill of rights that govern us. The right to bear arms is protected. What Europe does with their own laws has very little to do with what we should do.

It is incredibly hypocritical of anyone who waits until someone murders a group of children before they get on Facebook screaming, "something must be done." Where is your humanity when that many or more die every day in hand gun violence around the US? Assault weapons are, statistically, a minimal source of gun deaths in the US.

The far left liberals are using this tragedy to push their own agendas. They don't care about people, they just want guns banned. If you are one of these people and you want to ban guns, repeal the second amendment. Don't try to backdoor your way in.

Would banning "assault weapons" and magazines over 10 rounds have stopped the Newtown shooter? Not at all. Forensic investigation showed that he left many rounds in his spent magazines. That means he was changing magazines more frequently than needed.

Would a revolver have slowed him down? Some, most likely, but then he did have multiple weapons and didn't even bring all of them into the school. If he had only hand guns at his disposal, how many could he have hidden on his person?

On the flip side of the coin, are the far right conservatives who say that any legislation affecting guns is unconstitutional. What reasonable person would argue that mentally deranged people must not get their hands on any kind of weapon? I hear daily from people who agree with that, but are vehemently opposed to universal background checks. How do you reconcile that?

As long as violent sociopaths have access to weapons, they will kill people. A lack of socialization, genetics, and abuse are just some of the things that can warp a person. Guns don't warp people, violent games don't warp people and violent movies don't warp people.

People, who want to kill, will kill. If they don't have access to semi-automatic rifles, they will use semi-automatic hand guns. Or shot guns. Or revolvers. Or home-made bombs. Or hammers, axes and knives.

Banning any particular kind of gun (beyond the fully automatic that are already banned) is destined to fail. There four main reasons why banning weapons is a bad idea:

1. As I started above, banning a rifle will do very little to halt gun violence. The majority of murders in the US, as well as the majority of suicides, are by hand gun. Statistically (USDOJ figures), less than 10% of violent crime involves any kind of firearm.

2. The Second Amendment - If you are against private gun ownership, i.e. you believe that guns should be banned, then repeal the amendment. The constitution is the rule of the land. It's not "just a law". It is the basis of all of our laws. There is a very detailed process for repealing any amendment.

3. Tradition - The US has a tradition of gun ownership. Guns are used for hunting, self-defense and as collectors' items. Parents pass weapons down to their children. It is an American tradition not to be tossed aside lightly. As is obvious, this is a topic that divides the nation.

4. Inertia - There are more than 300 million guns in the US. Unless you confiscate every privately owned weapon, these 300 million weapons will continually recycle. Eventually, the number of privately owned weapons will decline as the police and other organizations legally confiscate them from criminals. Waiting 10s of years (or will it be hundreds of years) to have any affect is quite stupid when there things we can do now that will have an impact.

According to DOJ statistics, 80% of all weapons used in violent criminal activity were acquired from relatives, friends or were illegally acquired. Only 2% were acquired via flea markets and gun shows. These statistics fly in the face of those who blame weapons legally acquired via those routes. Slowing down or blocking sales via new laws is not helpful and impact the financial health of those who sell via these means.

Another idea that keeps surfacing, even though federal law bans it, is a mandatory national weapons registration database. Citizens who own a gun would have to register it and report any transfer of ownership. This is onerous and offensive to those who support the US constitution. It is an egregious violation of privacy, not to mention that it is probably a violation of the fourth amendment (guarding against unreasonable search and seizure). A state database would be constitutional but has the same possibilities of abuse that led to its prohibition by the federal government.

Having said that, a universal background check would prevent those with violent backgrounds, or who have identified mental conditions, from acquiring weapons. We must not allow any new laws or executive orders to violate the constitution, especially when we are not properly enforcing those laws we do have. How do we accommodate what is needed for gun control with the protections inherent in the constitution?

We need to start licensing US Citizens who own and use firearms. There is no reason the government needs to know what particular weapons a citizen owns. A licensing program would provide background checks. Licenses could be renewable every four or five years. Anyone buying a weapon via any means would be required to show a valid weapon license. It would be sort of like using a driver's license to buy liquor. If a gun were purchased at a gun show, flea market, or gun store, the purchaser would be required to provide a valid, non-expired firearms license.

Requirements to get a license could include mandatory weapons training, gun safety, conflict resolution, non-lethal self-defense training, and even include testing for knowledge of gun laws. This kind of a license would be unfair to no one. Legal authorities would verify that a licensee was not a felon, had not participated in any violent crimes and was not being treated (or needing to be treated) for any mental conditions.

Would firearm licensing have stopped the Newtown shooter? Possibly. He had gone shooting with his mother at gun ranges. If he had been required to be licensed to shoot there, he would have been turned down for his mental issues. If he hadn't been turned down for a license (for whatever reason), he would have had additional education such as conflict resolution. No one can truly say what would have happened under other circumstances. At a minimum, the additional education may have made his mother more aware of her responsibility in protecting access to her weapons.

Congress should follow at least one of Obama's executive orders and fund the CDC's investigation of gun violence. More data is never bad. That research could lead to fixes that we can't currently imagine but would be supported by everyone. And if it doesn't? At least we tried.

Congress also needs to step up and provide funding for mental health. We're stuck with Obamacare, might as well roll in mental health with it. Will it cost? Of course, but it won't cost anything compared to Obamacare.

Another idea that could help is for the ATF to track sales volumes by weapon type from manufacturers and distributors. The ATF should track gun and ammunition purchases. Records would be anonymous, but the government would run data mining operations to find possible supply points to the black-market.

We need gun control. Not just to stop the tragedy of the occasional mass shooting, but to stop the daily violence that takes so many lives across the US. Banning the evil weapon du jour is not the answer. Violating an individual's privacy is not the answer. Better training, licensing, and tracking, along with a more consistent enforcement of existing laws, is the answer to gun violence.

New Blog Address

noreply@blogger.com (Lewis Cunningham) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 23:53:00 +0000

This blog was one that I enjoyed writing way back when. I moved on to other things but I am coming back to it. Since I am restarting, I am moving to a new URL, http://easyblogmaking.blogspot.com/

On my new blog, I plan to cover a lot of what I have been doing in the blogging and writing world. I also plan to do some videos on getting your own domain, setting up a wordpress blog, etc.

I hope you'll come over to the new blog and sign up for the RSS feed so that you won't miss any of my new posts. Also, please spread the word.

LewisC

blog blogging

Moving to a new blog

noreply@blogger.com (Lewis Cunningham) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:31:00 +0000

I'm consolidating my various blogs to a common blog, the Database Geek. There is a nice search feature and you can read the blog by category (Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, etc). I also plan to add an RSS feed for each category so you only read the topics that interest you. Stop by and check it out.

Any comments or feedback is appreciated.

I just posted an article on new features coming in Postgres 8.4. It's not detailed, just an overview of a few features I find to be very useful.

LewisC

Technorati : blogging, database-geek.com

Consolidating Blogs

Lewis Cunningham — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:57:00 +0000

I'm consolidating my various blogs to a common blog, the Database Geek. I'm still tweaking the site and I plan to add links to categories (i.e. Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, etc) so that it is easily searchable. I also plan to add an RSS feed for each category so you only read the topics that interest you. Stop by and check it out.

Any comments or feedback is appreciated.

LewisC

Technorati : blogging, database-geek.com

A New Open Source Community

noreply@blogger.com (Lewis Cunningham) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:08:00 +0000

If you are into social sites, check out the newest for OSS: Open Source Universe.

I like this because it seems to me that most people in OSS (developers, designers and even users) tend to cluster around projects. I mean, that makes sense when actually working on the project but mixing with other projects (on a regular basis and not just at the occasional conference) makes sense. If there is regular social interaction, I think that will trickle down to ideas which would make for even better products.

Of course, this isn't just an issue with open source. Technologists seem to want to spend most of their time with people dealing with the same technology. Who today isn't using (even if not developing) multiple OSS applications and tools? On a daily basis I am moving between PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Linux, FireFox, and a plethora of other tools.

So anyway, that's why I wanted to give a shout out to OSU. Now, having said all that, it's a new site and there just isn't much there right now. The forums need help. I don't like the fact that the forum is grouped around project. If I wanted to just hang out with Drupal folks, I would go to the Drupal forums. I think the forums should be grouped by technology. Let database folk hang together, let the PHP, Perl and Python folks hang out in the Language forum, etc.

The link exchange is a but cheesy for my but they are already listing some jobs.

If you don't already have a blog, you can start one. I would rather start one on blogger or wordpress though.

So, give the site a check and maybe post something in the forum.

Lewisc

Technorati : database, open source, oss

Christmas 2008 In New Olreans

Lewis Cunningham — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:10:00 +0000

Photos courtesy of Logan (5 years old) and a new digital camera. I love the perspective he put on the photos.

Technorati : christmas, family, holiday, vacation

Postgres in the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Lewis Cunningham) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:08:00 +0000

The Amazon AWS blog has a good story about about Soocial.com. Soocial.com is an address book on steroid. It works with (or will work with soon): outlook, blackberry, gmail, mac address book and other phones. They just need to add Yahoo and Windows Contacts.

I wrote about it on my cloud blog, 100% AWS.

The AWS blog post has a good overview of the overall architecture. They are using Postgres and pgpool II on EC2 and EBS. They use RabbitMQ for messaging. For high availability they are using HAProxy and memcache.

It sounds like a pretty sweet setup.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, aws, cloud computing, pgpool, postgres, postgresql

New EBook Reader Foxit eSlick

Lewis Cunningham — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Foxit just announced a new ebook reader, the Foxit eSllick. At less than a half inch thick, it has a built-in MP3 player and it uses the same eInk technology that Amazon Kindle uses. It comes with an SD slot and a 2GB SD card. It doesn't have wifi but it comes in at $100 dollars less. It also lets you update the device via USB and supports rich PDF documents, that means that you can load your own documents painlessly (unlike the kindle that makes you jump through hoops and does not support rich documents).

It will be temporarily available for $229 (MSRP is $259). That's still more than I would like to pay. I think $99 is the ideal price point for an ebook reader. For that price, I'd like to see an FM tuner and some kind of video playback. I know the eink technology doesn't refresh fast enough for video though. Still $229 is a bit steep.

Since it supports PDF, that means that any of your business documents can be converted (software included). .doc, .ppt, open office, cad and just about any other document can be viewed on the device. PDF can be zoomed for better reading and an interesting feature is reflowing. That means that if you use a large font for easier reading, the device will flow the text so that you don't need to pan around the screen.

As a bonus, you can listen to your music while reading. I don't know anyone who doesn't already have an MP3 player or a cell phone with MP3 capabilities. Having an MP3 player in the reader is a nice touch, I guess, but I would prefer it to be MP3-less and $50 cheaper.

The OS is an embedded Linux running in 128MB of ram on an ARM 400MHz processor. The SD can take up to a 4GB card. The rechargeable lithium ion battery will last 8000 page turns. That's like reading Battlefield Earth 8 times. That's a lot of reading.

I am somewhat tempted to get this. I don't have a kindle or a sony reader and I am an avid reader. I'm also a gadget freak. Still, I can do so much to my EEE PC or my laptop with $200 and both of those are far more useful to me than an ebook reader. I'll have to think about it some more.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, books, ebook, eslick, foxit, kindle, reader, sony

Temperature in Riverview, FL 20081216

Lewis Cunningham — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:55:00 +0000

The local temp on 12/16, 82 degrees. The reason to live in Florida.

Picture of the Day. Dakota, the Siberian Husky, relaxing his old bones in the sun.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature

Percona Offers InnoDB Replacement

Lewis Cunningham — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:54:00 +0000

Open source the way it ought to be. Today, Percona announced a replacement for InnoDB that improves performance and fixes bugs. The new engine is called XtraDB.

According to Vadim at Percona:

It's 100% backwards-compatible with standard InnoDB, so you can use it as a drop-in replacement in your current environment. It is designed to scale better on modern hardware, and includes a variety of other features useful in high performance environments.

The release is pure GPL (v2) and commercial support is available from Percona. If percona keeps this up, they just might become the new MySQL.

The source is available from Launchpad and from Percona. Binaries are also available and OurDelta will start using XtraDB in future builds. Percona expects a 6 month development cycle. I don't see on here how they plan to incorporate contributions but that may just need a little time to figure out. They do say that they have already incorporated most patches that are available and that make sense for their customer base..

This announcement excites me much more than Drizzle ever did.

LewisC

Technorati : database, mysql, open source, osdb