That statistic is one of the most widely quoted among the RKBA crowd. And no, most gun owners that I know don't exaggerate about these sorts of statistics. This is simply because most of us don't see the point of winning an argument by lying. Now group size on the other hand. Well, I threw away the target, but...

Anyway, back to the point. The statistic is not Wayne LaPierre's nor does it belong to the NRA-ILA. It comes from a paper published in The Journal of the American Medical Association by Gary Kleck, PhD titled "What Are the Risks and Benefits of Keeping a Gun in the Home?" In it he cites a study by himself and Marc Gertz which estimated as many as 2.55 million defensive uses of firearms each year in the US. This includes situations in which merely displaying a firearm stopped the confrontation.

The paper may be obtained from the JAMA website:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/pdfaccess.ashx?ResourceID=3329130&PDFSource=13

A copy of the original study is here:
http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html

Incidentally, in 1994, a year after the Kleck/Gertz study The Department of Justice conducted their own survey and estimated only 1.5 million defensive uses annually.

I would also add anecdotally, a few years ago I was part of the 2.5 million (or more?) for that year, when the display of the full-size 1911 that I had holstered under my jacket that day dissuaded an urban youth from using his knife to collect my wallet. He approached. I told him to stop. He pulled his knife. I pulled back my jacket. He smilled and went the other way. I walked on.

LaPierre is deserving of criticism on occasion, but this is not one of them.

I'm an admin not a programmer, but I was writting sort routines in assembler at 12 years old on an Apple ][+ with a bootleg copy of the Merlin Assembler. I didn't find out about linked lists until 1988 in CS101, but even I have always understood the importance of fundamental data structures as a diagnostic method for debugging.

You may never use them in a high level language, but you still need to know what they are. Without that you're like the auto mechanic who doesn't understand the internal combustion process or automotive electronics, and just replaces parts until he finds the right one. Then when he encounters a vehicle with two or more problems he's really lost. Plus he's slow to begin with.

The funny thing about being an old fogy (If you do the math you'll see I'm one too) is that many of the best practices worked out by folks who were doing systems work before I was born serve me very well. And I usually get better results in less time than my more juvenile counterparts.

Sometimes cutting corners is just cutting corners, and new is not always improved.

Actually, I'm more than qualified for your position on the technical side, but if you want an active clearance with that diverse a skill set, then you're severly limiting your pool of applicants. It's a hassle to jump from cleared job to cleared job, and staying in the commercial sector too long makes it difficult to reactivate easily.

But based on the tone of your statement, and that you apparently want to cut corners by hiring one person with multiple specialties who is also already cleared tells me that you would be a PITA to work for. This may be why you aren't getting many good applicants. I'm continually amazed by the number of IT managers, some with many years of experience, and some who are close friends of mine, who really don't understand how little they know about managing IT. You may be one of them, but I don't know you.

The biggest mistakes most managers make are assuming that it's all about the money, and that the negotion is all on the employer's side. Hint: if you have nothing to offer me besides money, then it better be a LOT of money, and I better be in the mood to put up with your bullshit.

I work in IT because I want to. I like what I do so much that I have often worked for below market salary just because I liked the people and managers who I was working with. The problem is that most managers are too clueless to realize that their most important job is functions are to be a crap deflector and resource provider. Get too much crap in the gears and the machine stops. Don't provide adequite resources, same thing. Your team leads, if they are any good, will help organize the team. Its a lot like driving a boat. You have to correct issues before they become problems, and back off before you oversteer. All of the good teams I was on ran that way.

I think it goes beyond that. I'm seeing H1B's getting the same or even beter rates on contracts than US citizens or even NAFTA visa holders. In spite of that, I've seen uniformly inferior work out of those H1Bs from India. It seems to be a cultural thing since I see good and even superior work from Americans, Canadians, and Wetern Europeans of Indian decent. Yet, the H1B's are getting the jobs. The customers (employees of the contract issuers) are complaining bitterly about the poor service, and nothing changes.

I'm missing something here. If it's money, where are they cutting costs?

I have noticed that well over half of the recruiting companies I've had dealings with are Indian owned. It also seems that ALL of the IBM contract positions go through these Indian owned companies.

That's very interesting. And here I always viewed my limitations as obstacles to be overcome rather than rather than badges of superiority.

Since we now know that it was the invention of beer that spurred the invention of agriculture,
It must have been the need for reliable beer wagons which spurred the invention of the wheel.

I have a bottle of whiskey and I'm driving through the storm tomorrow morning. Yeeee-Haa!

I agree that the unbundled services are not worth the money, and I will vote with my wallet. Specifically, I'll be keeping the streaming service and save $2.00 per month. That's a couple of lattes made at home on my prosumer espresso machine. (I saved about $600.00/year when I started making them at home.)

Meanwhile, I'll be looking at their competitors to see what my options are. I'm not real comfortable with a service provider that takes such huge gambles with a service I'm using as my primary form of video entertainment.

Call me once it's possible to remotely zap Jehova's Witnesses and other annoyances.

I notice that when the Mormons see the square and compases on my ring, they wish me a good day and leave. Or perhaps it's simply my demenor when strangers atempt to tell my that my religious beliefs are wrong. I don't care for door spamming, which is what this is.

Regardless, that's why I've had a door phone attached to an asterisk box for some years now. And, yes, it can call my cell when I wish it to.

Nothing new here, but congrats to the kid on a nice hack.

Actually, in the context of the GP, that's correct.

The Christian Bible (bible is a generic term, we are referring to the specific Christian Bible) is the basis on which the Christian Church (The Church) is organized. The Church specifically does believe that The Bible is "the be all end all of what God wants." Failure to believe that makes one something other than Christian. This has nothing to do with acceptance, it is a specification of the definition of Christian.

Ironically, a large segment of modern Christians fit the same category.

You could claim that a Christian is anyone who believes that Jesus is divine. However, the Christian Church (all Catholic and protestant faiths) is the originator of the definition, and says otherwise. It's sort of like saying that an atheist is anyone who doesn't follow an organized religion.

That's very accepting?

You're no better. You confuse the fact that the GP is making a factual statement with the impression that it is being done in a disparaging way. Call the poster an ass hole if you think that to be the case, but he most specifically cannot be accepting or tolerant of this and many other beliefs among others of his faith. Otherwise, he would not be a Christian either.

Perhaps, as a Deist, I should start calling myself an atheist. That way I could go around telling other atheists that they are intolerant for not accepting atheists who believe in God.

I would have written:
You haven't fully experienced Top Gun unless you've watched it in the original Chinese.

With the above you allude to the original joke without hitting us over the head with it. Thus giving all of us who "get it" a chance to look down our collective noses at those of less depth in Sci-Fi pop culture.

this isn't lying. Where's the story

Are you astroturfing? Of course it's a lie.

In a strong tail-wind my car really can get 4-5 more MPG for an extended period of time. However, using that as a metric for a car's performance, while factually correct under certain conditions, denies the implication of routine repeatability, and makes the metric unreliable.

It may be technically true that I can get the maximum bandwidth at 02:00 for 2 hours, but that's of no use to me. So I toss out the idea of ever getting the theoretical maximum and instead use maximum bandwidth as a metric to set my general expectations, and to decide the relative value of the exchange (bandwidth for money.)

The ISP knows that maximum bandwidth is my metric, and attempts to deceive me by inflating that metric in an unreasonable and unexpected way. This is exactly the same as inflating MPG ratings on cars based on theoretical maximum conditions.

The lie is, knowing that routine repeatability does not exist for the numbers they quote, ISPs prominently advertise this useless metric in order to deceive the customer as to the true relative value of the product.

The news is that this report proves it.

Pluto may be a dwarf planet, but it has a LONG orbit.

You'll never convince hoplophobes with logic. Their opinions are an emotional reaction derived primarily from fear of themselves.

I used to suffer from a benign form of this condition when I was in college. I had never tried to control my temper and saw no reason to. I viewed firearms as extending the range and destructive force of my temper. I assumed that everyone else was like me. They are not.

Both conditions were cured for me when I inherited my father's police service pistol and after educating myself on its safe and effective use, began shooting it. That led me to the conclusion that I had a lot more to learn about myself and about other people.

Now I carry daily, and only worry about the damage of ignorant and fearful politicians. I also try to take as many people as I can shooting. After some instruction in safe handling and proper technique, and about $20 worth of ammo, something changes and they begin to reassess their views.

Most completely change their views. Some never come around completely but understand more than they did. For the rest there's organized political action.

I can not see why anyone would want one for themselves.

Worse, It's a .22. I presume .22LR and not some more capable .22 like 5.7x24. The article didn't say, but called it a plinker.

I can barely understand my wife wanting a .380 auto (Ruger LCP) instead of a 9mm. But at least she'll carry it, and it's better than pepper spray or harsh language.

This sounds like a novelty to me.