States with the Most Gun Nuts

Here's some numbers the NRA can't spin;



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks the number of gun-related fatalities — including homicides, suicides, and accidents — in each state. The frequency of firearm-related deaths varies widely across the U.S. Firearms were associated with just 3.0 deaths per 100,000 residents in Rhode Island in 2011, the lowest gun-related fatality rate of any state. Louisiana, on the other hand, reported 18.8 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 residents, the most of any state. 


24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 states with the highest gun-related death rates.


24/7 Wall St. discussed the CDC’s figures with John Roman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank. Roman explained the probability of accidents, suicides, and domestic violence goes up in homes with guns. Americans are “three times more likely to have a suicide in a home with a gun than [they] are in a home without a gun.”

According to Roman, “The overwhelming trend is that strong gun law states have seen dramatic declines in violence. Weak gun law states have not seen the same decline.” 

While stricter gun laws lead to less violence, Roman noted, this relationship is not exactly straightforward, because people may purchase a gun in one state and bring it into another. “As long as there are weak gun law states, even strong gun law states will see gun violence.”
Federal law controls some aspects of firearm regulation, but for the most part, state legislatures choose to what extent firearms are governed. None of the states with the most gun violence require permits to purchase rifles, shotguns, or handguns. Gun owners are also not required to register their weapons in any of these states. Meanwhile, most of the states with the lowest rates of gun deaths require a permit to purchase a handgun.
 States with the Most Gun Violence

MAN MISTAKES PENIS FOR "BAD GUY"

Georgia Man Accidentally Second Amendments His Penis | FreakOutNation

A man in Macon, Georgia, was treated at a local hospital after he accidentally shot himself in the penis. The penis shooter was parked at the gas station at about 9:30 p.m. on June 12th when he attempted to holster his .45 caliber gun.

DRUG INDUCED STUPIDITY

It's no wonder the US continues to slide into chaos and dysfunction given the number of Americans who drug themselves just to be able to cope with their lives. This approach to life is a fools quest and self defeating since the more we become detached from reality the less we are able to cope with it.

A survey of prescription drug trends among 2.5 million insured Americans from 2001 to 2010, found that one in five adults is currently taking at least one psychiatric drug. Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion on drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2010. And according to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control, 87 percent of people who visit a psychiatrist’s office leave with a prescription.


To make matters worse we are now projecting our dysfunctional behaviors on to our pets and the drug manufacturers are jumping on it like a dog on a bone.


Do our pets need Prozac? Are we making them feel better, or ourselves?


The U.S. market for pet pharmaceuticals is large and growing, from $6.68 billion in 2011 to a projected $9.25 billion by 2015. Zoetis Inc. is the world’s largest maker of animal medicines. Once a subsidiary of Pfizer, it went public in January of 2013 and raised $2.2 billion in its initial public offering, the largest IPO deal for an American company since Facebook. Elanco, a pet pharma company owned by Eli Lilly, has $1.4 billion in annual sales and is the fourth-largest animal health business in the world. Growth in Lilly’s animal division recently outpaced its general pharmaceutical division for humans. Yearly sales of Pfizer’s animal pharmaceuticals are worth roughly $3.9 billion, with companion animal meds representing 40 percent of the total.


There are those that benefit from this;

Why Does the Right Embrace Ignorance as a Virtue?

This mentality, in its modern form, can be traced back to the Bush White House. In 2004, Ron Suskind of the New York Times interviewed an unnamed Bush official who famously pooh-poohed what he believed to be the shortcomings of journalists who insist that the truth matters more than fantasy:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

LATE NIGHT CHILD ABUSE

How pathetic. Americans actually sit around their flat screens and entertain themselves watching a child be put on display by her parents and abused.

The real Honey Boo Boo: What reality TV did to the pint-size pageant queen

So this edited version of Honey Boo Boo becomes what we celebrate. We laugh at this kid with the funny catchphrases, the quirky dances, the affinity for go-go juice, but I suspect that she might not actually exist. The Honey Boo Boo we know is a compilation of shticky moments in what has clearly been a strange, tough childhood. The Alana I saw on “The Tonight Show” set was visibly troubled: disrespectful, defiant, entitled. Of course, with a bit of editing, “disrespectful” becomes “precocious,” “defiant” becomes “sassy,” and “entitled” becomes “confident.”

THEY'RE BACK!

William Rivers Pitt | They Belong in Prison, Not on TV



Tony Blair: "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't."

Paul Wolfowitz: "Look, it's a complicated situation in which you don't just come up with, 'We're going to bomb this, we're going to do that.'"

Doug Feith: "This is the education of Barack Obama, but it's coming at a very high cost to the Syrian people to the Iraqi people [and] to the American national interest."

John McCain: "What about the fact that General Petraeus had the conflict won thanks to the Surge and if we had left a residual force behind that we could have - we could, we would not be facing the crisis we are today."

Karl Rove, when asked about the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq: "Yeah, that's an old argument that we waste time on."

Dick Cheney: "He (Obama) abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."

THE HYPOCRITE OATH; DO HARM

The problem is not the good doctor who easily sells out to marketeers. The bigger problem is the millions of Americans who are so dumbed down actually buy into the crazy hype.





Watch Dr. Oz attempt to defend his weight loss “miracles” before Congress



In what’s commonly known as the “Dr. Oz Effect,” products that the cardiologist endorses on his show — or that advertisers claim to have been endorsed by him — fly off the shelves. “People want to believe they can take an itty-bitty pill to push fat out of their body,” McCaskill scolded. “I know you know how much power you have. I know you know that.”

STERLING DOING NBA'S LAUNDRY

Leave it to and old rich demented white guy to drop the curtain down on a bunch of other demented old rich white guys. 

Sterling Hires Team of Investigators to Dig Up Dirt on NBA

Sterling has returned to true litigious form, deciding to fight the NBA—and fight dirty if necessary. The AP reports that Sterling has hired investigators to "dig up all the dirt they can find" on the other 29 NBA owners and the current and former commissioners, David Stern and Adam Silver. The investigators’ objective: to look for any evidence of any discriminatory conduct, inappropriate comments, or questionable financing and compensation practices.