5 Surprising Facts About the Death Penalty Worldwide

 

Amnesty International's annual report reveals downward trend.

Bullet holes are visible in the wood panel behind the execution chair at Utah State Prison, where convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by firing squad in June 2010.

Photograph by Trent Nelson, Pool/AP

Alexis Manning

National Geographic News

Published April 12, 2013

Amnesty International released their 2012 annual report on capital punishment this week, highlighting information on the differing ways countries handle execution around the world.

Here are five of the most interesting death penalty facts from last year:

1. The United States ranked fifth for the highest number of executions.

The U.S. takes a spot behind China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia for the most executions in the world last year, sitting ahead of Yemen and the Sudan.

This ranking comes as no surprise to Brian Evans, Amnesty International's acting director on the Death Penalty Abolition Campaign, who said the same countries are in the top eight every year. (See video: "Inside Death Row.")

But why is the U.S.—which seems like somewhat of an outlier politically, culturally, and geographically—always in the top five?

According to Evans, the U.S. has a strict attitude toward punishment in general. Having a severe attitude toward the death penalty is only natural when you consider that the U.S. leads the world in mass incarceration of prisoners and holds records for solitary confinement and sentences to life in prison.

2. Saudia Arabia saw the execution of one man by "crucifixion."

Methods of execution vary between regions based on culture and available technology, and they usually include standard tactics, such as hanging, beheading, firing squad, and lethal injection. In Saudi Arabia, however, one accused man was put on display after being beheaded in a practice known as crucifixion, according to the country's state news agency, SPA.

The reasoning behind executions also vary around the world. In Papua New Guinea, for example, a woman and her two daughters are currently being held captive with charges of sorcery and risk a death sentence. It's common in the Pacific country for those accused of sorcery, especially women, to face horrific acts of violence that often end in death.

3. China keeps its execution numbers secret.

The Chinese government is notorious for keeping statistics about their criminal executions secret, and in past years, Amnesty International was forced to rank China based on the minimum number of executions that researchers could confirm. Since that number was always drastically lower than the assumed reality, researchers now use reliable media sources and human rights groups—rather than official government sources—to estimate the number of executions in China.

Using this data, the 2012 report estimates that thousands of criminals were killed in China last year alone, while the tally for the rest of the world combined stands at 682.

4. Japan's executions actually increased in 2012 after a long hiatus.

While the global trend for the death penalty is actually declining around the world, Japan—and other notable countries such as India and Pakistan—resumed executing criminals after a long stint of being execution-free. At least seven death row inmates were killed in Japan last year, ending a 20-month period without executions.

Why the change? "It all depends on which political party is in power," Evans said. One prime minister will come into power and abolish the practice, then the next will just reinstate it, leaving the lives of criminals in the hands of changing political whims.

5. Just 21 countries in the world carried out the death penalty last year.

In the broad scope of things, only a fraction of the world's total countries (the total being 195 by National Geographic's count) actually used execution as a means of punishment last year. That number is down from 28 countries just a decade earlier, suggesting a downward trend in the global practice.

The few countries that do still practice execution are situated in "regional pockets" around the world, Evans noted. Just four countries in the Middle East, for example, are responsible for all the executions in the region. And in the U.S., death penalty laws differ by state, with hotbeds of execution in the U.S. South, Ohio, and Arizona.

In December 2012, 111 countries—or more than half the world's countries—voted in favor of a United Nations resolution that would declare a global moratorium on executions.

As for the other countries? "They'll come around when they take a longer look at their death penalties," Evans said, "but it'll be a while."

5 Mind-Blowing Facts Nobody Told You About Guns

 

Blogger comment:

This article has been making the rounds on the net.  Entertaining but surprisingly male-focused given that 23% of women own guns. A Gallup poll reported that in 2005, 13 percent of all women owned a gun. That number jumped to 23 percent in 2011. Many women say they are buying guns to protect themselves. From gun-poking men, no doubt:) Don't want to be manipulating my butt cheeks with the "I wasn't raised to be a victim" crowd. But, like the gun as dick article asserts, gun ownership is a complicated, albeit stereotype-laden, affair. From the women's side I'm feeling "gun as dildo." Strap one on and you're empowered with...a bullet-packing penis? Seriously, I look into my own soul and I have trouble sorting out the feelings and motivations connected to my ownership of weapons. Could being raised in a militarized culture (post ww2 cold war) have anything to do with gun interest? Hell, since the beginning of the twentieth century war has been a constant for Americans. The World Wars. Korea. Cold War. Vietnam. And on and on. Our recent video entertainments involve us in increasingly realistic bloodshed. But even back in the electronics-deprived fifties we had gun fun. One Christmas both my brother and I were "gifted" two military-style machine guns, replicas of Browning M1917 machine gun, tripod and all. The guns fired rubber-tipped wooden bullets. The rubber tips were easily removed. First thing we did when the parents left the room was to open up on the Xmas tree taking out multiple ornaments. Prepube penis power!!

HEK

 

 

By:Jack O'Brien, David Wong March 26, 2013 1,429,154 views

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After every mass shooting, the gun debate splits into two camps: One side says it easily could have been avoided if these maniacs weren't allowed to have guns; the other says it easily could have been avoided if each innocent victim had only gone through their daily lives in cover formation, armed like the space marines entering the giant murder womb in Aliens.

And that's pretty much the entire gun control debate, as far as the mainstream media are willing to cover. And that is a shame, because it leaves out all of the most interesting parts. Trust us, the longer you look into this, the weirder it gets. For instance ...

#5. Gun Owners Are Mostly Responsible, But Gun Companies' Ad Campaigns Are Fucking Insane

Bushmaster

The world is no doubt full of level-headed gun owners who are all about safety and responsible ownership (Note: one of the authors of this article owns four guns, one of which he keeps up his sleeve in a spring-loaded apparatus). They scoff at ridiculous macho action movie fantasies, and they have never stuck a gun through the open fly of their pants and said, "Hey look, it's my gun dick." But gun manufacturers do not themselves appear to share their view.

Photos.com/Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net
"We at Ruger find the gun dick extremely refreshing on hot summer days."

For instance, do you insecure males want to get your "man card" back? Then you need to buy a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle, according to renowned masculinity experts Bushmaster (as their ad campaign puts it, "In a world of rapidly depleting testosterone, the Bushmaster Man Card declares and confirms that you are a man's man").

"I haven't seen my penis in years, so this is comforting."

Wait, is that the same assault rifle the Newtown shooter used? It totally is! That's why they had to pull their "man card" campaign. In the aftermath of the shooting, these ads were forwarded around by disbelieving gun control advocates who seemed shocked to find that they existed, as if gun ads had been outlawed back when cigarettes stopped showing up in Sports Illustrated. It turns out that this is a pretty big blind spot in the gun control debate -- one whole side is made up of people who don't encounter gun ads in their natural habitat and therefore miss a big part of the picture. And that picture looks like this:

Advanced Armament Corp
Gunfitti is a major problem in many American cities.

Hell, they even do product placement. You know those newfangled first-person shooter games the kids play these days, like Medal of Honor: Warfighter, where they go online and shoot each other over and over again? No, we're not going to say the games cause violence (they don't -- we'll get to that in a moment), but each level in that game starts with a long list of guns you can load yourself down with ...

... and those are totally real guns you can buy in the real world -- you can go to the game's website to find out how. So, you can go into a match arming yourself with the Daniel Defense M4V1 and, if you like it, just go to the Medal of Honor website and find the link to Daniel Defense, which is listed among other proud partners like LaRue Tactical (slogan: "The Dead Center of Precision") and the McMillan Group ("Shoot to Win").

Well, you can't go to the website now -- they pulled that page after Newtown, for some reason. So our question is, what's the gun makers' line of thinking here? What audience are they selling to? What's the message they want that audience to take home? You have a game where teenagers are doing this ...

... and the gun manufacturers who sponsor the game come off like they're saying, "Hey, if you ever want to do something like this in real life, do it with a Daniel Defense brand M4 carbine!" We know that gun manufacturers aren't actively trying to turn kids into school shooters (at the very least, it's terrible for business and forces them to run less manly ad campaigns). And in the single-player mode, the players are using these guns to shoot terrorists instead of each other. But even then -- are they hoping kids will remember to buy that brand when hunting terrorists? Because if the players join the military, they're not going to shop for their own guns. The Army gives you one for free when you join. They actually get mad when you bring your own.

So what is the goal of that product placement? What is the "something like this" that they hope kids will use their product to do? What fantasy are the gun makers playing into here if the goal is to affect a purchase decision down the line?

"Machine guns are like wallet condoms: You'll be glad you planned ahead when you need one."

Maybe this can shed a little light on it. Gun maker Weatherby, Inc. sells a pump-action shotgun called the PA-459. What does "459" stand for, you ask? Is it the caliber? Is it the 459th iteration of their Pump Action line? Well, remember how rappers used to threaten to pull a "1-8-7" on each other instead of "murder"? That was a reference to the fact that homicide is covered by Section 187 of the penal code. Same deal! Except here, the "459" in the shotgun name is the code for "burglary in progress."

They're not selling it to burglars, obviously, but to people who fantasize about shooting burglars. You can find that gun in the "Threat Response" section of their website, where you can get everything from $500 home defense shotguns to $4,000 rifles promising "long-range, certified tactical accuracy." You know, in case you see your burglar coming from 500 yards away.

Weatherby
"I believe that all life is one, so technically anything I do is self-defense."

"What's wrong with somebody wanting to protect his family?" Nothing. And people do use guns to fight off bad guys (although nobody has any idea how often that happens, because the subject is so politicized, it's impossible to find statistics that agree). But how many of those same people who are willing to shell out used-car money on "home defense" firearms don't, for instance, bother spending 20 bucks to keep a working fire extinguisher or carbon monoxide detector in the house? That Bushmaster AR-15 that mass shooters keep using? It costs a thousand bucks, and bullets are a dollar each (and you need to fire a few thousand of those to get proficient with the weapon). So why not spend those thousands on an alarm system and better locks so the bad guy never gets into the house in the first place?

In other words, are they obsessed with security, or are they obsessed with the idea of getting to shoot some motherfuckers? Are gun manufacturers selling guns they think people will actually use, or are they selling a fantasy? Are they, in fact, filling an emotional need?

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
"'Emotional need' sounds way classier than 'gun boner'!"

All right, so we're blaming gun company ads for all these mass shootings? Nope! In fact .

Continued:

http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html

Violent games strongly linked to youth crime

 

"If you have a kid who is antisocial, who is a little bit vulnerable to influence, giving them something that allows them to escape into themselves for a long period of time isn't a healthy thing," researcher Matt DeLisi says. (Credit: jimsheaffer/Flickr)

IOWA STATE (US) —A new study suggests there’s a strong connection between violent video games and aggressive behavior in kids.

Matt DeLisi, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University, says the research shows a strong link even when controlling for a history of violence and psychopathic traits among juvenile offenders.

“When critics say, ‘Well, it’s probably not video games, it’s probably how antisocial they are,’ we can address that directly because we controlled for a lot of things that we know matter,” DeLisi says.

“Even if you account for the child’s sex, age, race, the age they were first referred to juvenile court—which is a very powerful effect—and a bunch of other media effects, like screen time and exposure. Even with all of that, the video game measure still mattered.”

The results were not unexpected, but somewhat surprising for Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology, who studied the effects of video game violence exposure and minor aggression, like hitting, teasing, and name-calling.

“I didn’t expect to see much of an effect when we got to serious delinquent and criminal level aggression because youth who commit that level of aggression have a lot of things going wrong for them. They often have a lot of risk factors and very few protective factors in their lives,” Gentile says.

The study published in Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice examined the level of video game exposure for 227 juvenile offenders in Pennsylvania. The average offender had committed nearly nine serious acts of violence, such as gang fighting, hitting a parent, or attacking another person in the prior year.

The results show that both the frequency of play and affinity for violent games were strongly associated with delinquent and violent behavior. Craig Anderson, professor of psychology and director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State, says violent video game exposure is not the sole cause of violence, but this study shows it is a risk factor.

“Can we say from this study that Adam Lanza, or any of the others, went off and killed people because of media violence? You can’t take the stand of the NRA that it’s strictly video games and not guns,” Anderson says.

“You also can’t take the stand of the entertainment industry that it has nothing to do with media violence that it’s all about guns and not about media violence. They’re both wrong and they’re both right, both are causal risk factors.”

Researchers point out that juvenile offenders have several risk factors that influence their behavior. The next step is to build on this research to determine what combination of factors is the most volatile and if there is a saturation point.

“When studying serious aggression, looking at multiple risk factors matters more than looking at any one,” Gentile says. “The cutting edge of research is trying to understand in what combination do the individual risk factors start influencing each other in ways to either enhance or mitigate the odds of aggression?”

What does this mean for parents?

There is a lot of misinformation about video game exposure, Anderson says, that makes it difficult for parents to understand the harmful effects. Although it is one variable that parents can control, he understands that with mixed messages about the risks some parents may feel it’s not worth the effort.

“What parent would go through the pain and all the effort it takes to really control their child’s media diet, if they don’t really think it makes any difference? That is why it is so important to get out the simple and clear message that media violence does matter,” Anderson says.

Just because a child plays a violent video game does not mean he or she is going to act violently. Researchers say if there is a take away for parents, it is an awareness of what their children are playing and how that may influence their behavior.

“I think parents need to be truthful and honest about who their children are in terms of their psychiatric functioning,” DeLisi says. “If you have a kid who is antisocial, who is a little bit vulnerable to influence, giving them something that allows them to escape into themselves for a long period of time isn’t a healthy thing.”

Source: Iowa State University

Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1177/1541204012460874

The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License

Click, Print, Gun: The Inside Story of the 3D-Printed Gun Movement

 

By Erin Lee Carr

Being a 3D-printing novice, I was once somewhat skeptical of the promise behind what's being billed as a truly game-changing technology. I saw Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis on the cover of Wiredin late September, and while the novelty of the process incited wonder in my inner 10-year-old, I didn’t think much about it after the fact.

Enter Cody R. Wilson. Wilson is a 25-year-old University of Texas law student working to build semiautomatic weapons using 3D printers. His name first came up in conversation with a colleague after Wilson posted an Indiegogo pitch video demonstrating his intended use for a newly-acquired Stratasys 3D printer, which Stratasys subsequently repossessed.

I was intrigued. Wilson seemed to be an articulate and tech-savvy mouthpiece for a movement that a large portion of the country would deem dangerous and off-limits. To find out more about his fight against gun control, we flew down to his home base of Austin, Texas, where we first met Wilson at his apartment. I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He checked his phone every 10 seconds. He had a hard time making eye contact. Every other sentence ended with “Do you know what I mean?” He spoke on topics ranging from progress in the 3D-printed gun movement to American politics to the inherent revolutionary nature of bitcoins.

• For more on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm's stance on 3D-printed guns, check out this piece by Motherboard's Adam Clark Estes.

Soon enough Wilson showed us the CAD file on his computer for his lower receiver. Over us, a five-foot American flag hung as a self-described ironic statement. He’s a knowledgeable guy, and spoke at length about the development of Defense Distributed’s lower receiver, telling me that failure was a part of the scientific process. As he said, every time one of his designs fails, it offers more insight into what designs work.

Social niceties aside, we were there to watch Wilson build some guns. To be clear, Defense Distributed doesn’t print entire guns--at least not yet. Instead, Wilson’s team focuses on printing AR-15 lower receivers, which house most of the operating parts of that firearm. 

It is also the part of the gun that’s considered a gun by the government. Other parts like barrels and stocks, especially those for the highly-modular AR-15 platform, can be purchased online, and often with no age restriction or background check needed.

Wilson is also focused on 3D printing 30-round magazine clips in anticipation of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapon ban bill, which would limit magazine size. To Wilson, the work is partly an effort to expose what he considers the futility of gun regulation. “[Magazines] prove the point much better than the lower receiver that you can’t ban a box and a spring,” he said.

Printing a lower receiver takes seven hours, but there is something particularly ominous about seeing the ARS plastic begin to take shape as the lower receiver is born.

Whatever your thoughts on gun control, it’s impossible to deny that the 3D-printed gun movement is something that doesn’t fit into the current legal framework. It’s either exciting or scary–or perhaps both–and that polarity is something Wilson recognizes, and which he knows how to bend to his advantage. It all made for a rather confusing week in Texas, during which we were often alone with just Wilson, who appears to have few distractions outside of his work with Defense Distributed. He’s created his own world in this mission, where friends or law school grades take a backseat to the message. 

It’s impossible to know where that mission will end, but just as it’s clear that 3D printing is set to boom, it’s clear that Wilson and company have changed the boundaries of what that boom will bring.

By Erin Lee Carr 1 day ago

MASS KILLERS AND VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

 

"While much of the scrutiny following the lone gunman-perpetrated massacres at Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT has fallen on the National Rifle Association and its lobbying efforts against gun control, the shooters in both of the aforementioned incidents seemed to have been encouraged by violence in movies and video games. The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used. A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research', and added, '[Mass killers such as Lanza] don't believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'. In response, the Entertainment Software Association and other lobbyists representing the video game industry have ramped up their Washington lobbying efforts. While still tiny in dollar terms next to the NRA's warchest, this effort seemed to help derail a proposal to fund a Justice Department study of the effects of video games on gun violence, offered as an amendment on the gun control bill by a Republican senator. A spokesman summarized the ESA's position: 'Extensive research has already been conducted and found no connection between media and real-life violence.'"