Bombadil

Not sure about this. Frankly I thought the current guidance was if police were called due to domestic violence then you would have your cert removed/not granted. By the looks of things, it seems that your right to posess a firearm will be based purely on how the FEO feels on gut instinct. I can see the merits of this system, I think my FEO would do a good job of it. But I excpect to see a lot of regional injustices, bitter X-wives and imaginitive Antis.

No WW2 but I have two artillery shells that are from the fist world war. They are absolutely huge. My great grandma took them to the german P.O.W camp that was near her and had them engrave it with the date and I think maybe there platoon or regiment. It's really well done and must have been done by someone with talent. Either that or they were bored enough to put a lot of time into it. Not got any pictures but could probably get a couple if anyone is particularily interested.

Unfortunately not, that's the misconception. Fact of the matter is nothing you do on the internet is anonymous, all you can really do is make your data slightly harder to find. The plus side is unless you are a high ranking politician or doing something illegal no one really cares what you are looking at (except maybe advertisers and researchers)! If you do believe in personal privacy the internet is by no means safe, so anyone with enough dedication can find out what you're up to. DuckDuckgo is a good service from what I hear but as far as i'm aware it doesn't stop the sites you are browsing from collecting and saving personal data. @Beardo Chrome incognito mode just doesn't save cookies or browsing history, it's not close to private browsing. Firefox's private browsing is better, but still widdling in the wind.

In case you guys are interested here are a few pictures I took on my visit to Texas last year. Not of the highest quality sorry, I'm not much of a picture taker! http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/bombadilo1/library/Texas (The paw print is that of a GIANT MOUNTAIN LION that happened to walk the exact route we took the dog the day before, I realised this as I was showing the pictures to the land owner).

Well even if there does have to be a balance then god being all powerful could just change it so there doesn't need to be a balance! God could make it so there never was a Lucifer, god could make it so that evil simply doesn't exist or need to exist.

I look forward to it! And yep that was a mistake, oops.

Well that would make sense. I don't rule out the possibility of a creator (though I find it as likely as the world secretly being a giant goose who only eats beans) but I do rule out many religions because they claim god is all loving. There is a theory, which I can't remember the name of, which says that god can not be 1. all knowing 2. all powerful and 3. all loving. God can be two of those, but not all 3. All knowing, all powerful, but not loving to stop evil. All powerful, all loving, but does not know the evil going on. All knowing, all loving, but not powerful enough to stop evil. [Just as a side note I don't harbor any hostility to people base on the faith they choose, and I'm not trying to belittle anyone. Creationists have been some of the nicest most honest people I've ever come across].

"Chimps etc. along with early "humans" had no trouble giving birth, yet over X00,000 or even a couple of Million years the cranium has grown to help contain the brain that grew as humans capacity of thought grew. The human pelvis did not, this meant that during childbirth the baby has to be turned to exit the birth canal, causing not just pain but deaths in some cases. Why did the cranium evolve and not the pelvis?" I don't understand? The pelvis, also grows throughout development. Biological inefficiencies aren't a sign that evolution is not correct. To the contrary, biological inefficiencies such as the appendix and the nature of random genetic variants which are a disadvantage are trademarks of evolution. The issue of people dying during childbirth is more damning to the theory of a loving god then evolution. "The problem is that ancient cultures, world wide, have a culture of handing down information by oral tradition and it is extremely accurate as I mentioned before the aboriginal Australians handed down many stories relating to 10K years ago about lower sea levels across the continent and even areas of the barrier reef exposed as dry land. The early Jewish traditions were for young boys to be able to recite word for word the Torah along with the hugely pedantic methods, when they moved to papyrus etc. of using several scribes to copy out the scriptures where one would write from start to finish, another from the end to the start another from the middle to the front and another from middle to end, the scriptures where counted letter for letter, iota for iota, and any scripture that did not conform was burned. Beats any proof reader of today by a light year." Perhaps, but that doesn't mean the account of the story in the first place was correct. Reality is very subjective, and without technology and a wider understanding on the world many eye witness accounts can be skewed by thoughts of the super-natural. What I am saying is a phenomena observed by someone in the bronze age could easily be attributed to god, because no other explanation makes sense with the knowledge they had at the time. Not only that but it doesn't stop people from just lying in the first place. I don't know how anyone can believe it. The question any child asks, is if god is loving why does god allow people to suffer. It's explained away by saying we must learn to deal with our own problems, or that we would not be human if we did not have free will, but this is god, a man who can supposedly do anything. Why not make it so we are permanently content, happy and loving and have free will? He can do anything. Why not reduce deaths to 0 and make it so the world grows larger to accommodate the growing population and have everyone on earth be happy. Why does he create the pedophile rapist, allow him to commit evil then send him to hell? Rather then not creating him in the first place? To test people? Why would he create such a test, why would he make people suffer so unnecessarily?

Likewise I also appreciate differing opinions. What I am saying is that your stats infer but don't explicitly draw a connection, and that is because they can't. I could see a thousand graphs showing murder rates and gun owner ship but that wouldn't mean a connection. You will find that since David Cameron was elected internet usage has gone up, but that doesn't mean the two variables are related. I haven't as of yet put forward my beliefs on the worryingly high murder rate in the USA, I have simply said that you can't draw the explanations you offer from the statistics you provide. I believe that the causes for the high murder rate in America are deep routed in the pathology of the American dream, capitalism, ego and it's historical context. Something a single graph can not accurately convey. And something that no single piece of legislation can solve. To think that more guns = more murders or violent crime would assume that irradiating firearms would turn society to a bunch of angelics and hapless criminals. People portray the USA as a wild west like place, rife with gun violence, but if you were to pass legislation which made owning a gun illegal (which would be the obvious conclusion if you believe that more guns = more murders) then you would leave a lot of innocent people at the mercy of criminals.

Well you could show me a raft of correlating graphs and it wouldn't mean that 'guns = more gun deaths'. Oddly enough your link contains data on Switzerland which had a lot of buzz in the current debate due to it's incredibly high rate of firearms ownership and yet comparatively low crime rate. Why not link information about gun crime in developed countries with strict gun control such as Brazil? See how that fits in. You should also keep in mind that America is a diverse country, and the places with the highest rate of gun ownership have some of the lowest crime. LA, Chicago and New York all have strict gun control measures yet they are places with high murder rates. The old mantra that guns don't kill people - people kill people, is still relevant. Places with varying degrees of gun ownership have varying crime statistics. Countries aren't filled with people just waiting to shoot each other but unfortunately without access. Just as an example of the usefulness of correlating statistics and the varying explanations of crime take a look at this: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline It's also worth noting that I assume you meant to say 'more guns = higher murder rate' because obviously in a world without guns there would be 0 gun deaths.

I'm probably the wrong person to give any kind of careers advice, but one thing I would say is network as much as you can. Let as many people as possible know what you passion is. You'll find people introducing you at pubs 'hey this guy is interested in pest control as well' etc. And when people hear about opportunity you are the person that comes to mind.

The common aspect of things is the problem really. What is called common sense is all to often the incorrect conclusion. There are plenty of developed nations with a high amount of individuals with access to firearms that don't mirror the US and some that do. To simply say high murder rate + high rate of gun ownership = guns are the problem, is far to simplistic. When I see these arguments it reminds me of American fundamentalist Christians who critisize atheists by saying that without god, there are no moral restrictions and that therefore there is no barrier for committing rape and murder. It worries me that people think that if there is access to guns, society will just break down into some murderous mayhem because they can. Many things can account for the high murder rate in America.

No I agree entirely, I would not encourage any further gun laws in the USA except making the ones they already have better, e.g better maintained and more thorough licensing checks. Legislation at the moment is targeting semi-automatic rifles which look scary to the ignorant. Which are rarely used in crimes. If the USA wanted to protect it's children rather then pass laws which incrementally took away constitutional rights then they would pass environmental reforms to reduce global warming and pollution. However the NRA's way of handling the situation doesn't seem to be putting up a rational argument but instead causing a hysteria, blaming video games and pretending American society is one under threat which requires an armed response.

Just the nature of being a young man! By far the demographic in the UK most likely to be a victim of crime, and at the same rate probably the most overlooked. I myself had a guy punch me to the ground and stamp on my face when I was younger completely out the blue. Most of my friends have similar stories. Only one out of three of my relatives living in Glasgow (all peaceful and completely non-violent people) have not been 'bottled'.

It's pointless and I think the potential for accidents far out weighs the potential benefits of stopping an attacker. I think the NRA have acted terribly in response to proposed new legislation by going on the counter attack and scaring people into thinking teachers need to be armed. A horrible fact of life is things like this happen. With incredibly high populations and human nature being what it is, there will always be some sick deranged people who do something which horrifies us. It's always been this way, mass killings are certainly not new to this world, and if anything society values human life more then it ever has before. To try and ban all guns or to try and arm every citizen isn't going to stop tragedies from happening. However I don't think arming teachers will make it more likely that they will kill pupils, except by mishandling and misuse of firearms.