I've worked for federal government. Administrators don't worry about risk to their career for things like this. Elected officials may worry about things like this, but not your average higher up federal employee. Actually most of those higher up administrators believe they are bullet proof or even god itself. More FUD.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/wh_now_is_the_time_full.pdf How about from the whitehouse itself, research on guns was never banned, just advocacy. BOOM. "... the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other scientific agencies have been barred by Congress from using funds to “advocate or promote gun control,” and some members of Congress have claimed this prohibition also bans the CDC from conducting any research on the causes of gun violence. However, research on gun violence is not advocacy; it is critical public health research that gives all Americans information they need."

The only thing 'blocked by the NRA' is a line item for budget from congress. This does not prevent or preclude any kind of research or overhead funding of such a research project by any agency. Please get your information straight. Federal agencies have huge budgets and are granted a certain level of autonomy. A project with less than a million worth of funding will never even cross the desk of someone in congress. It might even take a few million before it starts raising eyebrows. The other thing, if the project doesn't require much in the line of asset acquisition - just people, it can be done without ever being a line item in a budget anyways, the color of money is different. The NRA is not preventing any research from happening. Congress was urged to not line-item-fund the kind of research, and they agreed. You can't blame the lobbyists(not that I like the idea of lobbyists), they aren't the ones putting the the rules into action, that would be congress.

So you are saying, with the only line from the link you posted that is actually relevant (the rest being a retarded emotional appeal, and in some cases totally off topic??), that congress is the only institution that can fund research like this? I find this hard to believe.

If this kind of data manipulation can be done to account for cause and cure with no control groups or understanding of which individuals have taken the medication, please, run the numbers as the data is already available. We have this wonderful invention called the internet where you can self publish your results.

You can already pull crime statistics, nobody is stopping you from doing this - same as disease statistics. Violent crime rates have gone down, ALOT, over the past 30-40 years. With a height of 52 victims of violent crimes per 1000 people down to less than 17 victims of violent crime per 1000 people in 2009. We had less than 50 guns per 100 people in 1969, as of 2009, we are at a 1 for 1 ratio of guns to people. There went your epidemiology calculations.

You should be comparing guns and crime more to the effectiveness of a medication (the gun, in case you need a hint) on a disease (crime, you compared crime to a disease and say you can look at it as an epidemic, right?). The problem is the medication (the guns) being distributed randomly through out the population where some people have a lot of medication, some have zero medication. Now tell me the effect of this medication (guns) at curing a disease (crime) in the populace by looking ONLY at the people that are still infected (victimized). That sounds kind of dumb unless somebody was also keeping track of who used the medication (was armed) and who did not before they were infected (victimized). As far as I'm aware, we are not keeping any meaningful records on who had taken the medication (been armed) and still been infected (victimized) to even pull a small amount of data from the situation. Please, enlighten me how this all works out in your mind.

Legal gun ownership and crime[s committed by those owners] do not correlate on any meaningful level. I figured you were intelligent enough to read into the meaning, don't be ridiculous.

What is your defense now? Look somewhere else. Let me break this down easy for you. Guns don't commit crime, people commit crime. Guns can prevent crime or at least reduce the damage of a crime. This is why we call people with guns when we are in trouble.

Pull off the tin foil hat. Public data requests are public data requests. If you feel inclined to pull some data, pull some data, the NRA can't stop you. What kind of imaginary scenario do you live in where one organization (the NRA - who doesn't even control the data) can stop every public information request in every local government and municipality in the US? The problem is we are just not recording things that haven't actually happened (why would we???). We don't keep data on ALMOST raped or ALMOST mugged as no crime or event actually transgressed. There is no tinfoil hat chaffing organization stopping these studies from happening. The data simply doesn't exist and is not measurable by any government organization with current tactics (hint - we are reactionary). On a side note, I don't even carry a fire arm. I've only shot my own gun on one occasion at a range since buying it quite some time ago. It is a .22 semi-auto handgun and by most gun waving idiot's standards not even good for personal protection/stopping power. Please remove your pre-conceived and incorrectly assumed information asshattery from this argument.

Until you begin to look at actual crimes prevented (and figure out how to do so), you are still skirting the issue. Your argument is invalid. How would someone even prove they were almost raped or almost assaulted? We have a huge burden held by government of proving an actual crime was commited, let alone worrying about proof of a crime almost commited. Diseases (counted by CDC/state/local health departments) and drug arrests (counted by FBI/state/local police) are recorded and measurable data points, almost being mugged/raped/assaulted (counted by NULL/NOBODY/NOTHING) never gets recorded. You are still failing to look at the actual problem. Just because crime is more or less prevalent in an area has nothing to do with crimes prevented by carrying a weapon for personal protection. Crime and legal gun ownership do not correlate on any meaningful level. Stop hiding behind your fear of guns.

This is an ignorant request. Nobody records "I avoided a rape by flashing my gun," "I shot a warning shot over the guy's head on my property to prevent him from coming closer", or even to the extreme, "the potential mugger saw my gun exposed in my holster and decided not to attack me for my wallet". There is no actual Data for this and no way to prove it. Maybe create a law that requires the reporting of all 'almost crimes' that happened? What kind of comical recording agency would take this information? Who is to say every gun nut out there doesn't consider themselves protected EVERY day just walking around with their gun on their hip.

I have no arms. I find this whole concept offensive!

I'll also add, most people don't buy computers that often (once every 4-5 years from some quick google searching). I don't know a single person besides myself and other administrative folks that have ever purchased an OS upgrade or purchased an OS outright with the purposes of replacing an existing OS. People use the OS that came on their computer when they bought it. A yearly cycle, even a three year cycle is just stupid fast for what consumers are doing.

Nobody cares about Microsoft's release schedules, and XP had 5 years of un-touched release time which you appear to have omitted. There are still millions of people happily chugging along with Windows XP. Just because Microsoft decides to speed up their release schedule does not actually mean it is a good thing or useful to anyone but their own corporate profits. What features in the newer versions of Windows is it that you just can't live without? The only interface of concern for every normal computer user (not the slashdot crowd or extreme gamer enthusiast) is their web browser. Nothing else. I will go ahead and restate it, Microsoft should just slow down their release schedule and invest a little more time in development.

Microsoft should just slow down their release schedule and invest a little more time in development.

I would mod you up if I had any mod points. This is exactly what I had envisioned as well. Other than the potential of more debris from space junk if a crash occurs, what would prevent this from happening?

You could park your Samurai in the bed of my truck. However, my truck is 'greener' as I run on straight WVO.

You are poorly failing to compare a weapon with less than 600J of energy to something with 4.184×10^15J of energy. You are equating the power to kill a few people to the power to eliminate a large metropolitan area. This is the same as asking if it were ok to drop a grain of sand on your head or 200 empire state buildings.

You can't buy a nuke on a walmart shelf like you can a gun (behind a glass case, whatever). Anybody can get and operate a gun, I would go as far as to say that ALMOST anybody could even make a rudimentary gun with simple hardware store parts. You cannot do this with a nuke.

Ever heard of the cold war? Mutual destruction? Every country with any significant power/interest in wold politics/commerce does have nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are essentially outlawed with all of the regulation. We try very hard to not let those outlaws get the technology to build weapons of this type. We also try very hard to prevent unstable government entities from getting nuclear technology to prevent the sale of weapons like this to outlaws.

This man has a drivers license! Lets give him his own Airbus A380!

Don't take it too far. Your analogy creates a slippery slope. Problem?