Is that an ableist slur, or just an ad hominem?

I like that idea. Armed cops who focus only on violent felonies, and are forbidden to involve themselves in lesser offenses.

“Feedback” IS escalation. “Feedback” IS an extra-risky driving behavior. Specifically, you are distracting two drivers (yourself and the “shitty” driver) from focusing on driving.

Deterring you from such offensive behavior is a good thing. So long as guns serve as such a deterrence to you, I cannot support your desire for disarmament.

How many dashcam videos do you need to see of drivers crashing into vehicles or obstacles while giving or receiving such “feedback”?

You are turning your attention away from driving, and focusing instead on “feedback”. Simultaneously, you are distracting the shitty driver from driving, and forcing them to focus on your attempt at providing “feedback”. Two drivers are now distracted from the road because you felt some pressing need to communicate your displeasure.

You say “feedback”, I say “escalation”, and “endangerment”. Again, if the possibility of a gun is what keeps you from choosing to escalate in this fashion, I cannot support your efforts to disarm.

Quite the contrary, I would prefer that you chose to arm yourself. Then you would understand that your feedback is not worth the risk, and a person providing you with such “feedback” is not worth your time. You would recognize that if you drew your firearm during a road rage incident, you would invite prison time for brandishing, manslaughter, or attempted murder. You would already understand the extreme dangers of escalation, and would actively avoid it. You would hold your ego in check, rather than allowing it free rein over your actions.

The best course of action is to open the distance between you and the shitty driver. Not try to convince them of their shittiness. If you need them to be possibly armed for your ego to allow you to retreat, then it is better for everyone on the road that they be armed.

You most certainly did. You indicate you are more tolerant because other people are armed. You indicate you tolerate (“put up with”) greater offense because of it.

You’re not an asshole road rager, and you’ve indicated you won’t escalate to some other asshole’s road rage, specifically because of guns. If guns are no longer an issue, what will it take for you to continue “putting up with” what you perceive to be shitty behavior on the road?

The roads are a much safer place while you’re “putting up” with it. I really, really, need you to keep putting up with it, even if all the guns are removed. If guns are the only reason you’re “putting up” with it, we can’t get rid of the guns. Give me a better option.

No. Guns give assholes carte blanche to be an asshole without consequences.

The idea that actions should have consequences is the real problem that both your latest and your parent comment describe. Parent comment talks about “putting up with shitty behavior”, implying that they should be able to directly respond to such behavior. Any such response is “escalation”. Your parent comment is describing a desire to commit offensive behavior, but that offensive behavior is held in check out of fear of a gun. You behave better.

Your current “consequences” argument says the same thing: You observe what you perceive to be poor behavior, and wish for “consequences”. If that wish culminates in any sort of direct interaction with the poorly behaved, you have escalated. Your “fear for our lives” holds your own behavior in check. You behave better.

I can’t control the road raging asshole. You can’t control the road raging asshole. There will always be one road raging asshole somewhere. There doesn’t need to be three. You can look inward and recognize the harmful, hostile attitudes in yourself that would lead to road rage, and you can actively suppress them. Alternatively, you can fear the external consequences arising from entertaining those harmful attitudes, and elect against such behaviors.

So long as you are going to continue to rationalize your good behavior as being the result of other people being armed, I’m not going to support your efforts to disarm the people creating those good results.

(Edit: Somehow I thought that you were an additional commenter. Edited to reflect that you are also the parent commenter)

Pure nonsense? Parent commenter specifically indicated that the presence of firearms induced improvement in their own behavior.

Like I put up with a lot more shitty behavior on the road because I live in a state with a high incidence of guns being involved with road rage incidents.

That’s called “de-escalation”.

That’s exactly what we should all be doing.

Rather than responding to a road rage incident with our own rage, we are actively reducing the risks of road rage to ourselves and to everyone around us. We are not pushing the initial rager to increase the egregiousness and danger of their rage.

The possibility of getting shot has broadly convinced the general public to improve their own behavior.

Paradoxically, if we didn’t fear they would pull guns on us, we would be more likely to respond to their rage with our own. We wouldn’t “put up with it”, but would instead confront them, impede them, seek “justice” for their offensive behavior, or otherwise escalate. In doing so, we would invite them to escalate as well. Your argument suggests that the high incidence of guns being involved in road rage is reducing the occurrence of road rage. I agree completely.

Concealed is concealed. If we’re seeing them, they’re doing concealment wrong.

We can look at the rate of licensing to get an idea of scale and prevalence.

In 15 states, more than 1 in 10 adults have permits. Pennsylvania, ~1 in 6. Colorado, ~1 in 5. Indiana, over 22% of adults are licensed concealed carriers.

Nationwide, 7.8% of adults are licensed. Outside CA and NY, 9.3% of adults are currently licensed.

Licensing numbers peaked in 2022, but 29 states (Covering 47% of the population) have recently abandoned licensing requirements. The reduced number of licenses don’t indicate falling carry rates.

To me, the most interesting statistic from that link is almost overlooked: We all know that cops are under-prosecuted and under-convicted for their crimes. ACAB. Despite their cop-privilege, police are still convicted of gun crimes at 12 times the rate of licensed concealed carriers.

They aren’t an excuse for buying guns. They are an explanation for why certain people in certain situations would legitimately need guns.

And if they have guns for that situation, they have guns for any situation. And if guns are available for people in those situations to acquire, guns are available for anyone to acquire.

9.9999%

AI;DR

Think bigger.

As an intellectual exercise, I rather enjoy flat-earth theories. “Knowing” that the earth is round, without having actually proven it for ourselves, is dogmatism, not science.

Constantly challenging even our most basic assumptions is how science advances.

To get a pi ratio, you need one measurement to be made with the diameter of the wheel, and another made with the circumference of the same wheel. You can certainly use ropes, but one of those ropes needs to be a multiple of the diameter, and the other a multiple of the circumference.

You might be measuring short lengths with a particular unit, say, a “stick”. To get consistent longer measurements, you might measure 100 turns of rope around a spool one “stick” in diameter. The length of that rope might be called a “string”.

The architects of a building might pound two rods into the ground, one “string” apart, and tell the masons to construct a wall between those rods. The architect wants a wall; the architect doesn’t particularly care how long the bricks are. The masons don’t particularly care how long the wall is going to be, just where they need to start and stop. The brickyard workers don’t care how long a string is, they just need a consistent measurement for their molds.

Nobody involved particularly cares about pi, and yet the resulting building will have pi ratios all over the place.

Only if that light escapes through a window. Otherwise, it is heat.

It would be away from the stove. The normal flames are blue. Moving toward the stove would blueshift them to violet; away would redshift them to green.

Agreed.

Eh, that’s not really true. The concept of “privacy” has been broadly corrupted by centralized services. There is no “privacy” when you provide information to another person, let alone publish it to the world. Never has been. You never had any actual “privacy” on any platform. What you had was admins lightly concealing from you the manner in which they used the information you provided. That’s not “privacy”.

Actual privacy only comes when you shut your mouth and keep a thought to yourself. As soon as you put the idea out, you abandoned your expectation of privacy.

The purpose of Lemmy is communication. It is designed to share the information you provide to the general public, whether that information is a post, a comment, an upvote or downvote. It is designed to limit and bypass attempts at centralized control over the flow of that information.

On reddit, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever Reddit decides it to be.

In the Fediverse, the distinction between “admin” and “user” is whatever the user decides it to be. You are completely free to build and admin your very own instance. So can I, and everyone here. You are free to use the admin-only information you glean from that instance under the user account you are using here.