Yeah, I was just spinning off on a side thought.
Guns aren’t much safer yet, though there’s been a lot of talk about ways to make them safer.
I suppose many more guns are kept locked up than 40 years ago, that’s a safety improvement.
And there’s a lot more awareness. But not much in the way of making guns themselves safer.
Debaser is right, guns have gotten safer. If you compare a state-of-the-art pistol from 1973 to one from 2013, the newer will most likely have:
The 1973 pistol will have none of those, and it won’t be drop-safe, either. It probably won’t have a magazine interlock safety or a decocker. By all measures, modern pistols are safer than those of 40 years ago. On revolvers, transfer bar safeties are now universal.
Long guns have seen less improvement, true, but handguns are much safer.
The triggers on handguns are also much better now and usually come with an integrated safety build into them.
I wouldn’t want to try it, but if I handed my loaded semi-auto to a small child it’s unlikely they would even be able to fire it if they tried. That’s not true of a gun 40 years ago.
Ignorance fought- Thanks!
Edit- can we debate whether “safe guns” are a successful conservative response to the more liberal “ban guns”?
Or is it obvious that safe guns are a liberal issue like safe cars, as all people are affected and it’s a matter of the common good?
Edit again- I don’t have a side. Just askin’.
Airline deregulation - Adjusted for inflation fares are down 40% since 1978, this has made flying accessible to more people and the number of passenger miles flown has tripled. It is estimated that deregulation has saved passengers 19.4 billion dollars every year.
Reaganomics- During the 1970s it was thought that in order to have low unemployment you had to have high inflation. In 1980 inflation was 14%. Reagan and Volker stopped the inflation and it has not been a problem for over thirty years. Unemployment recovered after the recession and stayed low for 25 years.
The Cold War- The reason the Soviet Union needed to change was it was being opposed by the US around the world. Gorbachev tried to restructure the USSR to compete with the American economy and ended up dismantling the USSR.
Longer prison sentences- The US crime rate tripled in the 1960s and then doubled again from 1970 to 1991. Since then the crime rate has been cut in half and America has gone from being one of the most dangerous developed countries to being one of the safest.
Gun rights- There are more guns than ever before and crime and murder rates have fallen. Defensive uses of guns have been estimated between 100,000 per year to 2.5 million per year. Americans are safer than they have been in over 45 years.
Bilingual education- After ending bilingual education test scores have improved significantly for english learners.
Charter schools - Charter schools have been shown to be as effective or better than public schools and significantly cheaper. They have also made public schools better in the jurisdictions they have been tried.
The Surge- Iraq was broken for at least 25 years before the surge. Deaths as a result of sectarian violence went from 2100 in December of 2006 before the surge to 200 in November of 2007.
Right to Work laws- Right to work laws have been shown to increase employment and wages while giving workers greater freedom to choose.
It’s neither, as far as I can tell. As concealed carry became legal in more and more states, and more and more people decided to carry a concealed handgun, consumers demand for safer handguns led to the introduction of an array of new safety features, which are now standard. A gun you take to the range and shoot needs only the most basic safety measures: it needs to not blow up in your hands or slam-fire. A gun you wear on your person day after day needs to be much safer.
If the increase in handgun safety came from the political process, I must have missed it. I can tell you that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 specifically does not exempt manufacturers from lawsuits over defective products or inherently dangerous designs. It also mandated included a trigger lock with all newly-sold handguns.
Consumer demand, free market coupled with consumer safety law and mandated oversight. A reasonable compromise… go figure. 
This is the most subtle piece of droll sarcasm I have read in a long time. I swear, I was about halfway through before I caught on. Shit, I thought you were serious!
That is how our system is supposed to work, and the handgun industry is indeed a nice exemplar of it.
For you Reagan-worshippers, here is one of the better Reagan debunkings that I’ve seen for a while. We’re very fortunate to have survived the Reagan years. Any notion of conservative successes can be waved away by one of these:
a) it wasn’t really a success
b) if it was a success, it happened in spite of conservatives
Yeah – as someone who considers himself a fiscal conservative, I want nothing to do with GWB-era fiscal policy, and am increasingly alienated by the Republican party.
Freakonomics disputed this, at least, in NYC. It may be valid, but I’m convinced it wasn’t the primary factor in NYC.
Conservative ideas that worked:
Disbanding the CAB (Carter)
Appointing Paul Volcker to tighten monetary policy (Carter)
Tax reform (Reagan) – we’re due for this again.
NAFTA (GHWB, Clinton)
If you think that is a debunking, you’re an awfully cheap date.
Economically, unemployment was 7% when Reagan took over, inflation was at 14%, and interest rates were at 20%. They had to create a new word, stagflation, to describe the economy.
When Reagan left unemployment was 5.3%, inflation was at 4.8%, and interest rates were at 11%. Inflation was solved for thirty years while unemployment was lower. Many economists thought that was impossible before Reagan did it.
Name one developed country in the world that had a better performing economy than the US under Reagan, except for the UK under Thatcher.
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
Any notion of conservative successes can be waved away by one of these:
a) it wasn’t really a success
b) if it was a success, it happened in spite of conservatives
[/QUOTE]
You sum up your approach to debate admirably.
Unfortunately for the Reagan-haters, the electorate did not respond very well to the Democratic question “Who are you going to believe - me, or your own lying eyes?”
Regards,
Shodan
Freakonomics disputed the causality but the abortion link appears not to be true. If you adjust for crimes per capita instead of overall crimes, the link mostly goes away.
However, the link between crime rates and policing is robust (pdf)
As is the link between longer sentences and reduced crime.
Also Volcker to not tighten monetary policy under Carter, just under Reagan.
Proof that partisan politics is alive and well in liberal as well as conservative circles.
All this praise for Regan, and no updates on how the Grenada Memorial is coming along? Oh, what a lovely little war it was, too.
What definition of “success” are we using? The USA today is almost entirely run by Reaganite policies. The ideological takeover of the country by Reaganism is complete. So there’s that. Now, did those policies work as advertised? Not in every case.
In the sense that it’s been politically popular, yes. It’s still nonsense as economics.
Yes, we put more people in prison longer. We now have massive prison overcrowding. Is this sufficient to claim “success”? Was the actual objective just, “Let’s throw as many poor shlemazels in prison as we can?”
Um, yeah, didn’t the consumer economy decay seriously during that period (first buying things on credit, then just collapsing under red ink)? “Getting people to work,” when there isn’t much demand for work and the money is being sucked up by Wall Street, doesn’t work all that well.
Yes, very popular. And yet the civil service is still unionized, because people who actually write and administer laws know unionization is an advantage. Funny, that. But it was a “success.”
I challenge you to even define that.
Every president should be so fortunate as to be involved in such a tiny and insignificant war.
It’s like the War for Jenkins’ Ear. Only with jump jets.
I didn’t realize that there were so many meanings!
“Neoliberalism”: as in, “social market economy;” as in the stance of The New Republic; or as a Latin American curse word levied at Pinochet and other USA-backed economic imperialists, classical liberals, and fascist oppressors? Or not one of those three?
It’s really hard to project ideologies like liberal and conservative back then - especially in their current meanings. But I’d argue that to the degree it can be done, the Jeffersonians were the conservatives and the Federalists were the liberals.
On foreign policy, the Jeffersonians were arguing that Britain had been our enemy and France had been our ally during the Revolution, so we should stick with France now. The Federalists argued that one the war was over and we were independent, our overall interests were more aligned with Britain so we should reconcile with our former enemy.
On domestic issues, the Jeffersonians were clearly the conservatives. They wanted to have the government based around the pre-Revolutionary states, a small government, and a primarily agricultural economy. The Federalists were the ones pushing for a new strong national government and an economic policy based on industrial growth, government support for building canals and roads, and a central banking system.
So the Jeffersonians were the conservatives because in the first two decades of the 19th century they were essentially saying they wanted to turn the clock back to 1781.